Consolidated Nuclear Security has nearly installed all the glove boxes for a new uranium purification process at the Y-12 National Security Complex and hot commissioning should start early next year, a spokesperson said recently.
Site prime Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) put the electrorefining glove boxes and related equipment into Building 9215 last year, though installation is not yet finished, a spokesperson said Friday. No subcontractors were used.
Cold commissioning, without radioactive materials, is ongoing and should wrap in November, the spokesperson said. Hot commissioning and operations, once it starts, “will last several months,” the spokesperson said.
A prototype electrorefining system with “surrogate material” — depleted uranium — has been used to afford workers experience and feedback opportunities, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. NNSA estimates the new electrorefining project will cost about $100 million, according to its 2022 budget request.
The new glove boxes are part of the NNSA’s plan to replace, by 2023, the wet-chemistry process used in Building 9212 to recover and purify uranium metal from byproducts of weapons manufacturing on-site.
Some of the modern electrorefining operations, according to the statement of work included with the next management and operations contract for Pantex and Y-12, will be located in Y-12’s Building 9998.
“Buildings 9998 and 9215 are connected, and both buildings are considered part of the larger 9215 Complex,” the CNS spokesperson said.
CNS manages both Y-12 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. The company was scheduled to remain at the site through March 30, pending the outcome of protests against a follow-up management and operations contract the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) awarded in November.
Building 9212 is Y-12’s earliest nuclear weapons production facility. It will be mostly, but not entirely, replaced by the three-building Uranium Processing Facility that CNS is scheduled to finish by December 2025 at a cost of no more than $6.5 billion.
