By George Lobsenz
Facing budget constraints and the possibility of even deeper cuts in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal than currently planned, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has preliminarily proposed building a scaled-back Uranium Processing Facility at its Y-12 plant–but not the smallest such facility it considered for the Tennessee site.
NNSA, the semi-autonomous Energy Department agency that manages the department’s nuclear weapons complex, announced its initial decision in favor of a “capability-sized” Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) in a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) released Oct. 20 that evaluated modernization alternatives for Y-12, the only site in the complex capable of processing enriched uranium and building warhead components called “secondaries” and cases.
The agency said its “preferred” UPF would have the capacity to produce 50-80 secondaries and cases per year, compared to a “nominal-sized” UPF with a capacity of 125 of those components per year.
A third alternative examined in the EIS was for a “no net production/capability-sized” UPF, which it said would be able to produce only 10 secondaries and cases per year.
NNSA said the two smaller “capability-sized” UPFs would be similar in size and scope to the larger “nominal” UPF, with studies showing only 15 pieces of equipment could be eliminated with the scaled-down alternatives.
The agency indicated the smaller UPFs were considered in light of the shrinking U.S. stockpile, but provided few specific comments as to why it chose the UPF with the 50-80 annual component production capacity over the design with an annual capacity of 10 components.
However, in one passage in the draft EIS, NNSA said while the smallest UPF would provide warhead maintenance, dismantlement and replacement capacity, “this alternative would not support adding new types or increased numbers of secondaries and cases to the stockpile.”
That touches on a key issue regarding the UPF as well as a new plutonium processing facility that NNSA is planning to build at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In addition to being very expensive projects–with some estimates of the UPF rising as high as $3.5 billion–the new weapons facilities are politically sensitive because many antinuclear groups see them as an effort by NNSA to develop high-tech facilities capable of producing new kinds of warheads.
Those groups say the new uranium and plutonium facilities not only are unnecessary for national security, but would undermine U.S. nonproliferation policy internationally by adding new U.S. weapons production capabilities at a time when President Obama is calling for the stockpile cuts and the ultimate abolition of nuclear weapons.
NNSA rejects those allegations, saying the new facilities actually will help the United States reduce its stockpile further by providing more assurance to U.S. policymakers that reliable warhead production capacity is available if needed in the future to counter new threats.
The agency also says the UPF will provide major cost and security benefits by replacing outdated Cold War-era production facilities now being used at Y-12.
However, over the last year, NNSA officials have acknowledged that their initial UPF facility might needed to be down-sized in light of budget constraints and the shrinking U.S. stockpile.
In line with such “right-sizing” concerns, NNSA said it developed the two smaller-sized UPF proposals for consideration in the draft EIS in recognition of ongoing efforts by the United States and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals.
The current U.S.-Russia arms control agreement requires warhead cuts by 2012, and President Barak Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reached agreement in July on “joint understanding” that directed U.S. and Russian negotiators to seek a new post-2012 agreement under which each nation would reduce their strategic warheads to a range of 1,500 to 1,675.
“NNSA’s analyses in this [EIS] are based on current national policy regarding stockpile size (1,675 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads) with flexibility to respond to future presidential direction to change the size,” NNSA said in the draft EIS.
“Although the size of the [U.S.] stockpile beyond 2012 is not known, the trend suggest a significantly smaller one,” it added. “Consistent with this trend, NNSA developed [the two smaller-sized UPF alternatives] to analyze the potential environmental impacts associated with operations at Y-12 that would support stockpiles smaller than those currently planned. NNSA assumed such a stockpile would be approximately 1,000 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads.”
The agency said any of the UPF alternatives would provide major cost, security, operational efficiency, environmental protection and worker safety benefits compared to continuing to operate Y-12’s decades-old uranium processing facilities or upgrading them in place, two other alternatives examined in the draft EIS..
Many of the benefits from the UPF would flow from building the new facility right next to the new High-Enriched Uranium Storage Facility (HEUMF) recently completed at Y-12 and expected to begin operation in 2010. The HEUMF will allow NNSA to consolidate all weapons-usable HEU in one robust building that is far sturdier and easier to protect than the multiple aging buildings now used for HEU storage at the site.
In particular, NNSA said building a scaled-back UPF next to the HEUMF would allow a 90 percent reduction in the size of the high-security zone at Y-12, greatly reducing demands on security guards. It projected security cost savings of $32 million annually over the 50-year life of the new facility.
In addition, NNSA estimated that the scaled-back UPF would provide annual operational savings of $205 million annually over the 50-year life of the new facility, in part by eliminating burdensome access restrictions for hundreds of Y-12 workers that do not work with sensitive HEU but whose jobs routinely take them into high-security areas of Y- 12.
The agency also said the scaled-back UPF would provide environmental and health benefits because “operating a nominal-sized UPF to produce 125 secondaries and cases per year would emit more uranium to the atmosphere, increase the dose to workers and produce greater quantities of waste.
“However, any UPF option significantly reduces atmospheric uranium discharge, worker dose and waste quantities compared to” continuing to operate current Y-12 facilities or updating them in place,” the agency added.
Still, NNSA noted that even the smallest UPF alternative would not be substantially smaller than then largest UPF,” with both of the scaled-back alternatives estimated to cover 350,000 square feet compared to 388,000 square feet for the nominal-sized UPF.