A group of environmentalists stopped trying to convince a federal judge to stop construction of the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., according to a recent court filing in a three year-old lawsuit.
The plaintiffs — the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and the Natural Resources Defense Council — said on inauguration day that they planned to drop a motion to enforce what they characterized as an implicit order by Judge Pamela Reeves for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to stop building the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) until the agency further assessed earthquake hazards in Tennessee.
Reeves ruled in 2019 that the NNSA should have incorporated earthquake data provided in 2014 by the Department of Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey into UPF’s environmental reviews. The data showed that eastern Tennessee was more seismically after than thought when the NNSA published its initial environmental review in 2011.
The plaintiffs had argued that Reeve’s 2019 order meant the NNSA had to stop building UPF while the agency folded the 2014 seismic data into the facility’s environmental paperwork.
Reeves’ order did not explicitly tell NNSA to stop construction, and the agency never did, even after the COVID-19 pandemic forced Bechtel National, which is building UPF, to stagger construction shifts and bus in workers on partially filled busses in an effort to slow the virus’ spread.
UPF should still be built by 2025, with the construction bill ringing in at no higher than $6.5 billion, NNSA says. The facility will manufacture uranium secondary stages, replacing Manhattan Project and Cold War-vintage infrastructure. Bechtel is a subcontractor to, and lead partner on, Y-12 prime Consolidated Nuclear Security, which is losing its Y-12 management contract on Oct. 1, 2021. The team will remain on site after that to finish building UPF under the supervision of the new Y-12 contractor, whoever that may be.
As for the environmental groups’ lawsuit, “the parties intend to attempt to negotiate a mutually agreeable resolution of any claims Plaintiffs may have for attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses” and so “[t]here remains no need for the Court to take any action on any matters at this time, including on Plaintiffs’ Motion to Enforce,” the environmental groups wrote in a filing with the U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee.
The environmentalists likewise plan to drop an appeal of Reeve’s decision that they filed in the Sixth Circuit Court in 2019. Arguments in the higher court never started. Appeals are time-sensitive, so the groups filed a placeholder case with the Sixth Circuit in order to lock down another forum to argue for shutting down UPF construction — something they will now give up, depending on the outcome of ongoing talks with the NNSA’s lawyers at the Department of Justice.
The parties are scheduled to file a joint status report about the progress of their closed-door talks on Feb. 19.