The National Nuclear Security Administration is planning roughly $140 billion in uranium enrichment efforts through 2105, but has not provided Congress with required cost information, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
NNSA’s current inventory of low-enriched uranium and highly enriched uranium is expected to meet national security requirements into the 2040s, GAO said in its Aug. 20 report.
The agency’s four-part strategy includes: continuing to use existing inventories; deploying large centrifuges at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site at Piketon, Ohio, site; developing a small centrifuge technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and ultimately establishing a large-scale unobligated enrichment capability.
NNSA’s Defense Fuels program expects limited production at Piketon to begin in fiscal 2030, with two planned centrifuge cascades eventually producing about 100,000 separative work units per year. A pilot plant in Erwin, Tenn., meanwhile, is expected to begin limited operations in 2035 and transition to highly enriched uranium production around 2049.
But GAO found significant gaps in NNSA’s program management. The Defense Fuels program’s planning documents substantially met only two of nine GAO best practices, while four were partially met and three were minimally met. The program lacked an integrated master schedule and a comprehensive program management plan, among other deficiencies.
GAO also said NNSA had not included its long-term enrichment cost estimates in the biennial Enriched Uranium Management Plan required by Congress. The agency estimated the three long-term enrichment efforts at about $140 billion through 2105.
GAO recommended that NNSA report those costs in future plans and bring Defense Fuels’ management documentation into compliance with NNSA’s Program Execution Instruction requirements. Both recommendations remain open.