National Nuclear Security Administration chief Frank Klotz told Senate appropriators yesterday that the Uranium Processing Facility planned for the Y-12 National Security Complex was on track to be completed by 2025 within a $6.5 billion budget cap. Testifying before the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, Klotz was pressed about UPF—and NNSA’s two other major capital projects, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and a project to maintain Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium capabilities—from two of the most concerned appropriators: committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “It’s still our intent to be on track to have this work done and be out of Building 9212, which as you know is the oldest facility that we have there, by 2025 at a cap of $6.5 billion,” Klotz said.
Klotz said the NNSA will reach the 90 percent design completion point in Fiscal Year 2017, and won’t begin construction until that point. A project to establish site infrastructure and services is expected to begin soon and wrap up in the spring of 2018, Klotz said. Alexander said he was pleased with the NNSA’s progress on the project, which includes a significant change last year to a modular approach to the project. Under the new plan, three facilities will be built rather than one “big box” building. The NNSA has also put into place a new Uranium Program Manager to consolidate responsibility for uranium matters across the complex, including UPF. “I like the idea that there seems to be now a clear accountability—someone is on the flagpole for meeting the goals we have,” Alexander said, later adding: “I’m encouraged based on where we were two to three years ago in terms of big projects.”
Alexander, however, acknowledged that NNSA’s overall budget request, which represented a $1.2 billion increase from FY 2015 levels, could face heavy scrutiny given the threat that sequestration could return in FY 2016. The Obama Administration ignored budget caps when submitting its FY 2016 budget, requesting about $38 billion more for defense activities. “Governing is about setting priorities, and we are going to have to make some hard decisions this year to make sure the highest priorities are funded,” Alexander said in his prepared remarks, citing major infrastructure projects like UPF, warhead life extension work, and the Naval Reactors account as his top three priorities.
The Administration requested $430 million in FY 2016 for work on UPF, and $345 million as a placeholder for the controversial MOX project while a pair of reviews of alternatives are conducted. MOX, which the Administration tried to put in cold standby last year before Congress demanded construction would continue, got the attention of Feinstein, who said plutonium disposition was a worthy effort but worried about the “enormous” cost of the project. “I don’t want to see us look back on this as we have looked back on other projects and say $600 million has been wasted,” she said. “I think it’s really a hard problem for you all.”
