Morning Briefing - May 19, 2020
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May 19, 2020

NNSS Ceased Nuclear Ops in April

By ExchangeMonitor

Some of the Nevada National Security Site’s nuclear programs ground to a halt in April, according to a new report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (SNFSB).

At the same time, the independent federal agency reported Friday, some non-nuclear work continued at the U1a Complex, which the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is expanding for future underground subcritical tests, and at the Device Assembly Facility, where the agency performs other subcritical plutonium tests and stores weapon-usable plutonium scheduled to be turned into warhead cores beginning later this decade.

“NNSS site personnel continued to cease all programmatic nuclear operations in all NNSS facilities, except for maintenance activities and surveillances as specified in the approved safety basis,” the board reported.

On Monday, a spokesperson for NNSS prime contractor Mission Support and Tests Services said the site had been in limited operations since April 1, “when we resumed some mission-critical and high-priority programmatic activities.” The former Nevada Test Site is also “preparing to implement our Return to Normal Operations Plan,” though “in the short term, most of the [site’s] workforce will continue to remain on telework,” the spokesperson said.

When the Nevada National Security Site initiated limited operations to cope with COVID-19, the NNSA was working on its U1a Complex Enhancements Project (UCEP). The effort, which Mission Support and Test Services is subcontracting, will mine out space near existing underground drifts U1a.100 and U1a.104 to create a new subcritical testing lab. There, the NNSA will assess the aging refurbished nuclear weapons intended for deployment well throughout the latter half of the 21st century.

Mission Support and Test Services, led by Honeywell, has not identified the UCEP contractor. The prime expected the mining subcontractor to be on the job for three to five years. UCEP itself, which only includes making space for the new lab, is expected to cost more than $525 million from fiscal 2015 through fiscal 2024, according to the NNSA’s 2021 budget request. That excludes related U1a lab costs, such as the new $1 billion X-ray camera to be installed in the expanded underground test facility, once mining is done after 2024.

That is a substantial increase from the estimate the agency published last year in its 2020 budget request. At that time, the NNSA thought UCEP would cost a little under $175 million through fiscal 2024.

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