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| | | published Wednesday, May 22, 2013 | 54 Views :: 0 Comments |
By Frank Munger From the Knoxville News Sentinel May 21, 2013
 | | From B&W Y-12: The latest conceptual image of the Uranium Processing Facility released by the National Nuclear Security Administration. |
For the past couple of years, the government has stood behind a cost range of $4.2 billion to $6.5 billion for the Uranium Processing Facility, but that range may not be able to contain the giant project's growing costs as the schedule gets pushed into the future and funding gets stretched out.
Todd Jacobson of Nuclear Weapons & Materials Monitor this week reported that, based on a Government Accountability Office briefing prepared for congressional committees, the cost of UPF could go beyond the $6.5 billion estimated cap and perhaps go well beyond it.
According to information in the GAO's 27-page briefing package, the "space/fit" problem that forced the UPF team to re-do the building's design to accommodate more equipment is a big part of the cost escalation. The GAO cited NNSA documents that say the space problem will add $540 million to the project's cost, delay the start of construction and delay the start of facility operations by 13 months.
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| | | published Thursday, November 08, 2012 | 2495 Views :: 0 Comments |
.JPG) | From left to right: Kathy Crandall-Robinson (Women's Action for New Directions), Jonathan Epstein (Senate Armed Services Committee), and Katherine Fuchs (Alliance for Nuclear Accountability)
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Nov. 8, 2012
Recently, a delegation of Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) staff and members met with Senate Armed Services Committee Majority Council to discuss our opposition to the proposed Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) facility. Our delegation represented 67 organizations opposed to building the new Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Site in Tennessee. These organizations include national groups such as Physicians for Social Responsibility and Women’s Action for New Directions, as well as local groups like the Archdiocese of Detroit.
The 67 organizations all signed onto a letter circulated by ANA requesting that Senator Levin and his colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee not accelerate funding for the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) project. The UPF exemplifies many of the problems endemic to National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) projects, and has recently received media attention for contractors’ failure to design the building large enough to fit all necessary equipment inside.
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| | | published Tuesday, October 02, 2012 | 1986 Views :: 0 Comments |
October 2, 2012
By John Fleck From the Albuquerque Journal
Efforts to refurbish the U.S. stockpile of aging W76 nuclear warheads are falling behind schedule and threatening to bust the project’s budget, according to an internal Department of Energy investigation.
The problem “could have national security implications” as the federal budget crunch collides with the need to upgrade the nation’s aging arsenal, according to a report from the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General.
Built in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the warheads are carried aboard U.S. missile submarines. An estimated 768 are deployed, according to nuclear weapons analyst Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. That number is more than any other nuclear weapon type in the U.S. arsenal.
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| | | published Monday, August 06, 2012 | 1859 Views :: 0 Comments |
Aug. 6, 2012
ANA's Director Susan Gordon discusses the possibility of a Manhattan Project National Park on CBS This Morning
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| | | published Monday, August 06, 2012 | 1630 Views :: 0 Comments |
Holy cost overruns, Batman!
Aug 5, 2012
By Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board
Appropriate, because cost overruns in the nation’s nuclear weapons complex have reached comic book proportions. But this isn’t funny. In fact, the ineptitude and incompetence of the National Nuclear Security Administration is becoming a real threat to our nuclear deterrence and our national security.
The price tag to refurbish the B61, a nuclear bomb designed by Sandia and Los Alamos national labs in the 1960s, has doubled from about $4 billion two years ago to $8 billion, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration. And it might get worse. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, says an independent review being done by the Defense Department puts the cost even higher, at $10 billion.
This budget buster is hardly an anomaly.
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| | | published Tuesday, June 19, 2012 | 861 Views :: 2 Comments |
June 15, 2012
By Richard Simon
From the Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- Sites of the once super-secret Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II, could soon become a national park under legislation expected to pass Congress.
The bill would designate sites at Los Alamos, N.M., Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash., as the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.
But at least one anti-nuclear activist expressed concern that "such a park, if done in a historically inaccurate and biased way, could end up presenting a false picture of the development of nuclear weapons and the monumental costs and ongoing environmental impacts of the Cold War."
"Given their political influence, those that have profited off nuclear weapons would likely have a disproportionate say in the park's development and could turn it into some kind of nuclear Disneyland," said Tom Clements, nonproliferation policy director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
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| | | published Tuesday, May 08, 2012 | 1123 Views :: 0 Comments |
May 8, 2012
By Frank Munger From the Knoxville News Sentinal
 | Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance members Mary Dennis Lentsch, left, and Dennie Kelley sign a oversize letter to U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander Monday at the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Federal Courthouse. A dozen members of OREPA delivered the letter to ask that cost and safety issues be addressed at Y-12's proposed multibillion-dollar Uranium Processing Facility. (J. Miles Cary/News Sentinel)
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A peace activist group waged its growing campaign against the Uranium Processing Facility on two fronts Monday.
Members of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance hand-delivered a letter to Sen. Lamar Alexander's Knoxville office, asking the Republican senator to help slow work on the multibillion-dollar project until safety issues raised by a federal review board have been resolved. In a separate action, the group sent a letter to Gregory Friedman, the U.S. Department of Energy's inspector general, and urged Friedman to investigate the project's work to date, with more than $500 million spent designing the new production facility, for evidence of government waste and possibly fraud.
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| | | published Monday, April 23, 2012 | 1409 Views :: 2 Comments |
The following op-ed was written by ANA board member Ralph Hutchison. Ralph explains the financial and safety reasons why the federal government should stop its rush to build a new uranium processing facility at the Y-12 National Nuclear Security Site.
April 21, 2012
By Ralph Hutchison From the Knoxville News Sentinal
On April 2, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board released highly critical report about the design plans for the Uranium Processing Facility planned for the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge. The Safety Board's report, coupled with findings of the General Accounting Office, make a strong case for putting a hold on funding construction of the UPF.
Why should we care? Well, there is a lot of money at stake, for one thing. But some other important things are at stake as well. The Safety Board's report said two things that should give all of us pause.
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| | | published Wednesday, April 18, 2012 | 2449 Views :: 3 Comments |
For Immediate release: April 18, 2012 Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.920.7118, jay@nukewatch.org Santa Fe, NM – Our colleagues and friends at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) have released an explosive report based on a leaked Department of Defense memo concluding that “The Department of Energy’s network of privately-operated nuclear weapons laboratories are riddled with waste, redundancies and lackluster scientific standards.” POGO also found that “that seven of the top 15 officials at the three DOE nuclear labs make more than $700,000 per year, with one earning $1.7 million—more than the president of the United States and many government executives.” Coincidentally, Nuclear Watch New Mexico had been independently compiling data on the salaries of the three laboratory directors, as presented in the table below. It shows that the salary of the Los Alamos Director has nearly tripled since for-profit management began in June 2006, even as the Lab is cutting some 600 jobs. As seen below, privatization of the nuclear weapons labs’ management contracts has resulted in directors’ salaries far above average in both the federal government and the private sector.
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| | | published Thursday, April 12, 2012 | 1720 Views :: 0 Comments |
April 12, 2012
In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by ANA member group Nuclear Watch New Mexico on March 28, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has released the Performance Evaluation Reports for its eight nuclear weapons sites. These reports are the government's scorecard for awarding tens of millions of dollars to nuclear weapons contractors, and were available to the public until 2009. But since that time NNSA has withheld them in a general move toward less contractor accountability.
Click the links below to download the Performance Evaluation Reports for each nuclear weapons site (PDFs) Note: the Sandia National Laboratory report is still undergoing review by the NNSA before it is released.
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