nuclear-news

USA National Nuclear Security Administration’s projects all behind schedule and over budget

Sentencing delayed for Duluth nuclear protester, Duluth News Tribune A judge has delayed a sentencing hearing for a Duluth man and two other protesters for breaking into a nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee. By: Associated Press staff,, 16 Sept 13 

“………..Nuclear facilities across the country are getting renewed scrutiny in light of forced across-the-board federal budget cuts and security lapses such as the incident last year at Y-12. Before finally being detected, the three protesters cut through security fences, hung banners and crime-scene tape and hammered off a small chunk of a building inside the complex that is the nation’s central repository for bomb-grade uranium.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a seven-year, $213 million upgrade to the security system that protects the lab’s most sensitive nuclear bomb-making facilities doesn’t work. Those same facilities, which sit atop a fault line, remain susceptible to collapse and dangerous radiation releases, despite millions more spent on improvement plans.

In Tennessee, the price tag for a new uranium processing facility has grown nearly sevenfold in eight years to upward of $6 billion because of problems that include a redesign to raise the roof. And the estimated cost of an ongoing effort to refurbish 400 of the country’s B61 bombs has grown from $1.5 billion to $10 billion.

Virtually every major project under the National Nuclear Security Administration’s oversight is behind schedule and over budget — the result, watchdogs and government auditors say, of years of lax accountability and nearly automatic annual budget increases for the agency responsible for maintaining the nation’s nuclear stockpile.

The NNSA has racked up $16 billion in cost overruns on 10 major projects that are a combined 38 years behind schedule, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reports. Other projects have been canceled or suspended, despite hundreds of millions of dollars already spent, because they grew too bloated.

Advocates say spending increases are necessary to keep the nation’s nuclear arsenal operating and safe, and to continue cutting-edge research at the nation’s nuclear labs. But critics say the nuclear program — run largely by private contractors and overseen by the NNSA, an arm of the U.S. Energy Department — has turned into a massive jobs program with duplicative functions…….http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/278086/

September 18, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war