The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will flex up the Kansas City National Security Complex’s manufacturing capacity by leasing some 275,000 square feet of industrial space about a mile from the nuclear security enterprise’s main components shop, according to an environmental notice published Monday.
The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency plans to lease more than half the available space of 14901 Andrews Road in Kansas City, Mo. To be called Building 23, the site will handle plastic molding, testing of electrical components, and parts fabrication, among other operations, according to the new supplemental environmental analysis.
The NNSA says it needs to expand the facility to finish on time for the B61-12 gravity bomb life extension; the W80-4 air-launched cruise-missile warhead life extension; and a major alteration for the W88 submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead.
“Approximately 200 employees and numerous pieces of large manufacturing/warehouse equipment would be immediately relocated from Buildings 2, 3 and 4 of the KCNSC to Building 23 at Andrews Road,” the NNSA said in a summary of the environmental document.
Eventually, the agency would bump Building 23’s headcount to around 500, according to the document. The entire Kansas City National Security Campus employs about 4,500 people.
Before settling on a lease of the nearby Building 23, the agency ruled out alternatives including expanding the existing Kansas City facility; moving production to another site, or building an entirely new manufacturing plant somewhere other than Kansas City, according to the supplement analysis.
Eventually, the NNSA will need to lease even more space, the Government Accountability Office reported earlier this year.
The Kansas City National Security Campus manufactures and acquires the non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons. Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, a Honeywell subsidiary, manages the plant under an NNSA contract awarded in 2015 and worth about $10 billion over 10 years, with options. The contract has five years of guaranteed money.
