Los Alamos National Laboratory has restarted work on a security upgrade project that was derailed earlier this year and hopes to have the project completed by the end of September, the lab said yesterday. The second phase of the Nuclear Materials Safeguards and Security Upgrade Project, which was designed to upgrade physical security systems, protection strategies and security requirements in the lab’s Technical Area-55 and Plutonium Facility, had been stalled since September, when the lab revealed the project had been badly mismanaged, driving up costs by tens of millions of dollars and delaying the completion of the effort. What was expected to be a $213 million project will cost $254 million, but the lab agreed late last year to repay $10 million to the NNSA to lower the cost to finish the facility. The lab has mobilized subcontractors Burns and Roe, Kiewit New Mexico, JB Henderson and Hensel Phelps, and lab spokesman Fred DeSousa said engineering and design work has already restarted on the project. Limited construction activities that aren’t impacted by the weather will begin this month, and the bulk of construction work on the project will begin in March when the weather in Northern New Mexico warms up. In early spring, the first section of the security system is expected to be ready for testing. “There are people out there walking around, looking at access panels, designing the fixes as we speak,” DeSousa said.
The project was scheduled to be completed in June 2012 and up and running by this month, but during commissioning of the security system officials discovered significant problems with some of the construction. The largest errors involved fiber optic cables essential to the operation of the security system that were supposed to be physically separated but were instead routed together, as well as issues with the perimeter lighting system and a perimeter denial system. “We’re very pleased with the collaboration and teamwork from NNSA to restart this project,” NMSSUP Project Manager Ty Troutman, who was brought in from parent company Bechtel to revive the project, said. “The project integrates a number of security technologies for the first time and will give TA-55 a better, modern, more efficient security system. We have the right Federal and Lab team in place to bring this project to a successful conclusion.”
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