The contractor for the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee is preparing a new cost estimate and other information needed for the Department of Energy to sign off on construction of the complex.
The Department of Energy expects by the end of fiscal 2017, Sept. 30, to receive a design that is at least 90 percent completed, a validated cost projection, and a construction schedule for the remaining portions of the UPF, a set of buildings that will assume highly enriched uranium processing activities for the U.S. nuclear deterrent that are now housed in decades-old facilities at Y-12, according to the office of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).
The material would undergo five to six months of review and independent evaluation, after which the DOE project risk management committee will make its recommendation to the project acquisition executive on whether to approve Critical Decision-2 of the UPF. The executive makes the final call on whether to proceed, which Alexander’s office expects in mid-2018.
The acquisition executive in this case would be the deputy energy secretary, one of numerous senior Cabinet agency positions that have yet to be filled by the Trump administration. However, President Donald Trump has formally announced his intention to nominate former DOE and Capitol Hill staffer Dan Brouillette to the job.
In DOE parlance, Critical Decision-2 represents approval of cost, schedule, and scope targets for a project. Critical Decision-3 would normally be authorization to start construction. In this case, the two milestones are being “bundled,” the Knoxville News Sentinel reported in 2013.
It was not immediately clear whether the CD-2 information is being prepared by Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the corporate partnership that manages Y-12 for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration; or by Bechtel, one of the CNS partners that is the subcontractor for design and construction of the Uranium Processing Facility.
After years of delays and escalating cost estimates, and under pressure from lawmakers, the NNSA has pledged to open a reworked version of the UPF by 2025 at a cost of no more than $6.5 billion.
