POGO Requests Independent Study to Determine Need For Nuclear Facility

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Dear Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member Kaptur, Chairman Feinstein, and Ranking Member Alexander:

As you know, the Department of Energy (DOE) is planning to build the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee. This project, still in the design phase and now known as the Uranium Capabilities Replacement Project, is already vastly over budget and behind schedule. It has become yet another multibillion-dollar DOE boondoggle. The UPF project was originally intended to consolidate enriched uranium operations, including assembly, disassembly, and dismantlement of nuclear weapons components,¹ but it is likely the project will be scaled back.² Not only is it over budget and behind schedule, there may not even be sufficient mission to justify its construction at all.

When the Uranium Processing Facility was initially sold to Congress in 2005, it was expected to cost between $600 million and $1 billion, and early estimates expected it to be operational in 2018.³ The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) official cost estimate is now at least four times that—between $4.2 billion and $6.5 billion.⁴ Even though this estimate takes into account the effects of inflation, other estimates are even higher. In 2011, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the facility could range from $6.5 billion to $11.6 billion depending on annual appropriations and budget constraints,⁵ and an analysis by the Department of Defense’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation group estimated that completing the entire facility as designed could cost up to $19 billion.⁶ In response to the escalating price tag, DOE has deferred some of the work originally scheduled for the UPF.⁷

In addition to the UPF’s escalating cost, the building will not be fully operational until at least 2030, twelve years behind schedule.⁸ Close to a billion dollars has already been spent over the course of nine years on the design, which includes $540 million to fix gross errors that were found too late in the initial design process, which is partially to blame for the project’s delay.⁹

The NNSA claims that the UPF is necessary to replace Building 9212 and two other Y-12 buildings, Beta 2E and the 9215 Complex, which are allegedly aging beyond the point of repair.¹⁰ The UPF would perform several uranium processing missions, including the manufacture of Canned Sub-Assemblies (CSAs), which mainly house the highly enriched uranium component of a thermonuclear warhead.¹¹ Unfortunately, the NNSA refuses to publically release information on how many CSAs will require manufacturing or remanufacturing in the coming years and therefore what capacity will actually be required of the multibillion-dollar facility.

One factor in establishing whether CSAs need to be remanufactured is if they have a hydride problem.¹² Hydrides are formed when a small amount of moisture gets into the CSA, particularly the highly enriched uranium component.¹³ If that happens, it could reduce the yield of a weapon.¹⁴ But even if the worst were to happen and warheads with a hydride problem were to be detonated, the nuclear yield would still be catastrophic. For example, the W-76 warhead’s nuclear yield is supposed to be 100 kilotons¹⁵; if the warhead had a hydride problem, the yield could be reduced, but would still be multiple times greater than that of the devastating Hiroshima bomb.¹⁶

According to Project On Government Oversight (POGO) sources, one justification for building the UPF is that NNSA must remanufacture a high percentage, if not all, of the CSAs because of this hydride problem.

But POGO has been told by a number of knowledgeable sources within the government that this is a non-issue. According to one congressional staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “there is no problem with the nuclear package of our warheads.” A former federal employee with knowledge of NNSA’s weapons surveillance program, who also did not want to be identified, does not recall a hydride problem. And POGO was told by a former high-level DOE official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, that annual random inspections of weapons did not indicate a hydride problem and therefore the weapons were certified as effective. The official was not aware of a hydride problem in any of the annual assessment reports.¹⁷ In addition, there was no mention of a hydride problem in the Pantex Environmental Impact Statement, which mentions the re-qualification of weapons components.¹⁸ POGO interviewed other experts as well, including a former Lockheed executive at Sandia National Laboratory and a former federal employee at the Pantex Plant, both of whom asked to remain anonymous, and neither of them was aware of hydride problems.

Yet POGO has learned that now several warheads—the W-76 and B-61—have begun going through Life Extension Programs (LEP),¹⁹ NNSA is claiming it will have to remanufacture CSAs due to the hydride problem. Unfortunately, NNSA’s only solution for the undocumented hydride problem is to build the UPF for up to $19 billion. During the course of our investigation into the UPF and the alleged hydride problem, another POGO source, who asked to remain anonymous, stated that most CSA remanufacturing is not required and it was simply a “jobs program.”

In fact, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported that the B-61 LEP “will not use newly built CSAs” and that remanufacturing “might be unnecessary, but the NNSA may simply want to retain the capability to do so” in the future.²⁰ In POGO’s opinion, it is wasteful to spend billions of dollars to build a facility that isn’t needed now and may not ever be needed.²¹

So what is the required capacity to manufacture and remanufacture CSAs? NNSA isn’t saying anything publically and estimates provided to Congress are uncertain according to one congressional source. POGO has tried to find out, requesting the B-61 LEP data—which would clarify the current condition of the nuclear weapons stockpile—from a number of sources. Unfortunately, we have come up empty. We also submitted a Freedom of Information Act request six months ago for data from NNSA’s surveillance program—nonnuclear tests that evaluate the condition, safety, and reliability of stockpiled weapons²²—which could shed light on whether or not there is a hydride problem; we have yet to receive a substantive reply. Questions about the reliability of the current stockpile and the need for new facilities should be answered before breaking ground for a multibillion-dollar building.

Another claimed justification for the UPF is equally ridiculous. The Department of Defense has argued that NNSA needs new facilities “to surge production in the event of significant geopolitical ‘surprise.’”²³ This claim, however, holds little weight and is nothing more than another attempt to justify the need for a large weapons complex, including the UPF. The Union of Concerned Scientists discredited the surge capacity theory for the UPF, stating:

one rationale for an annual production capacity of 80 CSAs is to provide surge capacity in the event of a “geopolitical surprise.” As noted above, such a surprise is not feasible, reserve weapons would allow a rapid increase in the deployed nuclear arsenal if needed, and the U.S. deterrent would remain robust even at far lower levels of deployed and reserve weapons. Acquiring a surge capacity is therefore not a reason to build a UPF with an annual production capacity of 80 CSAs.²⁴

Not only is there an insufficient mission to justify a new multibillion-dollar building, but there are alternatives that NNSA refuses to consider. One such alternative is to perform what mission there is at existing facilities elsewhere in the complex. Some of the major functions to be performed at the UPF—dismantlement and the certification of secondaries—can easily be accomplished at Pantex, for instance, which already dismantles weapons and certifies pits.²⁵ Adding additional functions to Pantex’s operations would also remove the need to move certain nuclear components around the country as the secondaries would not have to be shipped to Tennessee for these functions.

Former DOE official Earl Whiteman has questioned the long-term viability of uranium operations at the many different DOE facilities around the country, stating “[b]uilding the several billion dollar UPF at Y-12 essentially commits the nuclear weapons program to that site for the foreseeable future,” locking NNSA into staying in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.²⁶ Whiteman went on to offer some arguments for keeping UPF at Y-12 including strong political support, a technical workforce already in place, and a study by the Institute for Defense Analysis which found that the cost savings of relocating the Y-12 missions wouldn’t be seen until 2040.²⁷ He ultimately recommended, that “a smaller sized, reconfigured, and less costly UPF should be constructed, but the schedule should be delayed.”²⁸

POGO has supported the design of a smaller facility instead of the stand-alone UPF for those jobs that cannot be performed elsewhere.²⁹ Earlier this year, the Committee to Recommend Alternatives to the Uranium Processing Facility Plan in Meeting the Nation’s Enriched Uranium Strategy³⁰ (the Red Team) reviewed the UPF design and came to a similar conclusion. They determined that the current design will not be able to manage the necessary safety and risk reduction activities within the $6.5 billion budget.³¹ One of the Red Team’s recommendations is to stop the “big box,” single structure plan. It also concluded that a new “comprehensive reevaluation of program requirements and applicable design standards” be conducted.³² The Red Team’s recommendation was founded on the theory that an alternate design would allow the UPF to stay on budget and open by 2025. NNSA, however, has not officially announced whether it will follow the Red Team’s recommendations.

Another alternative that isn’t being fully pursued is to downblend surplus Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) into Low Enriched Uranium (LEU). Doing so reduces a security risk, cuts government spending, and could generate millions (if not billions, depending on the market) of dollars for the United States Treasury through sales of the LEU to nuclear power plants. ³³ NNSA sources told POGO that the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) at Y-12—a facility that opened in 2010 and exceeded the original cost estimate³⁴—is only 57 percent full. The Red Team stated that making full use of the HEUMF should be done with the “utmost urgency.”³⁵ If the government dismantles more CSAs and downblends the resulting HEU,³⁶ even more space would be available in HEUMF for other operations. As a result, a number of the activities planned for the UPF could be consolidated in the HEUMF, thereby alleviating the need for UPF and its multibillion-dollar price tag.

NNSA’s demand for bigger and better facilities seems to be a running theme, but the agency has fabricated the missions and cost of many of these projects. Only a few years ago the NNSA pulled a similar scheme with the estimated requirement capacity for plutonium pit production at LANL and the need for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF). Similar to the UPF, the CMRR-NF was first intended to replace an existing facility, but CMRR-NF’s mission, cost, and design spiraled out of control, resulting in the project being placed on hold.³⁷ The debacle with the UPF is like a re-run of an old movie.

In the case of the CMRR-NF, it was first claimed by the NNSA that it needed the capacity to build 450 pits per year.³⁸ When that was questioned, NNSA reduced the number to 125, then to 80.³⁹ However, according to Philip Coyle, a former associate director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “an average production rate of only about 25 pits per year could sustain the U.S. Strategic Stockpile if it were reduced to about 1,000 weapons by the year 2050.”⁴⁰ Additional experts questioned the need to produce more than the “existing 10 to 20 annually,” as plutonium has a lifetime of 150 years.⁴¹ The irony of the situation is that, despite claims of needing hundreds of pits, NNSA has not been able to produce any pits at LANL in over a year because outstanding structural safety and operational issues at the PF-4 production facility shut down operations, which have only recently begun to be resumed.⁴²

We also witnessed the same scheme with the HEUMF. The Department’s cost estimates for HEUMF were “inaccurate” and the building isn’t being utilized to the fullest extent possible.⁴³ NNSA has a habit of under-estimating costs and over-asking on mission without genuine data to support its proposed operations or effective and more taxpayer-friendly alternatives.

POGO urges you to include language in the Committee’s appropriations reports tasking the independent advisory group known as JASON to assess the number of warheads that require disassembly and remanufacturing in order to determine the extent of that mission.⁴⁴ Depending on the outcome of JASON’s assessments, DOE should consider the alternatives to the UPF, individually or in combination, that best meet the needs JASON has established: such alternatives include moving operations to other facilities at Y-12 such as the vastly underutilized HEUMF; adopting a more conservative approach that will utilize smaller, modular buildings; and moving operations to other facilities within the weapons complex.

Taxpayers should not be asked to spend billions of dollars on a project for which the need has not been specifically defined and deemed essential. If you have any questions or need additional information, please contact Lydia Dennett or me at (202) 347-1122.