nuclear-news

Los Alamos nuclear weapons site – what a mess!

The aging facility was slated for replacement 20 years ago. But in 1998, designers identified a fault line beneath the structure. The discovery pushed the price of reconstruction so high that no administration was willing to sign off. The Obama administration says safety requires its replacement — at a cost of $6 billion. Critics in Congress and among anti-nuclear groups, however, say the expensive new plant is unnecessary and would still present environmental dangers if built on the fault line.

The metallurgy facility at Los Alamos isn’t even the most pressing example of neglect and deterioration among the 40 buildings nationwide that the NNSA says need repair. That dubious honor goes to Building 9212, a uranium-processing facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex near Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Known in its heyday as the “Secret City,” Y-12 produced highly enriched uranium for “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Today, Y-12 is the primary facility for processing and storing weapons-grade uranium and developing related technologies.The 150-acre complex was in the news in late July when three peace activists, including an 82-year-old nun, cut the outer security fence, slipped past the perimeter and reached a building where highly enriched uranium is stored. They splashed blood on the outer walls and carried banners denouncing nuclear weapons. Though they never got inside the facility, the incident sparked a two-week shutdown at the plant and a security review across the nuclear complex. Several officials have been fired or reassigned.

Nearby is Building 9212. Protected by layers of razor wire two stories high and monitored by surveillance cameras and motion sensors, technicians inside process enriched uranium for civilian and naval nuclear reactors. Armed guards greet the few authorized visitors allowed into the structure.

The operations inside Building 9212 are deemed so vital that an unplanned shutdown could cause critical problems across the nuclear supply chain. An extended stoppage would disrupt the weapons safety work and could force the closing of domestic and foreign civilian reactors that rely on low-enriched uranium from the facility, according to the NNSA.No reporter had been allowed inside Building 9212 before The Washington Post’s visit. Because of the radioactivity, visitors and workers must wear multiple pairs of yellow rubber gloves, socks and booties, an overcoat, goggles, a head covering and thermoluminescent dosimeters that measure possible radiation exposure.

Conditions inside belie the significance of the work and the danger of the radioactive material.  The building is made of clay tile and cinder blocks and looks its age. Darrel Kohlhorst, the general manager at the time, pointed out large patches of rust and corrosion on interior walls. He said the walls and roof leak when it rains…..  The floors themselves are stainless-steel panels bolted together at thick seams. With age, they have become uneven and warped. ….Nuclear experts say the building should have been replaced years ago. But successive administrations decided to fund less costly renovations and purely scientific endeavors instead. In the meantime, the replacement cost has risen from $600 million in 2004 to $6.5 billion today.

Explaining the huge increase, NNSA spokesman Joshua McConaha said that initial cost estimates are always “speculative” and that final figures can’t be determined until most of the design work is finished.

Other factors push up costs. These nuclear facilities are one-of-a-kind plants, and the expertise and equipment needed to build them often doesn’t exist anymore, so it has to be invented.

“We’re facing questions that have never been asked or answered, and we’re doing it 20 years after the urgency of the Cold War,” McConaha said. “We’re building rare, incredibly complex nuclear facilities that nobody has had to build in decades.”   Some 640 people are designing the new uranium processing plant at Y-12. It will use 10 experimental technologies still being invented….. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-nuclear-arsenal-is-ready-for-overhaul/2012/09/15/428237de-f830-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html

September 17, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war