NNSA seeks to lease office, light lab, and warehouse space within 50 miles of LANL on urgent basis

July 23, 2020

Dear colleagues --

Plans for pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) are proceeding apace, though they are still evolving, still secret, still unsupported by any pertinent analysis of alternatives (AoA), and still lack any environmental, economic, or fiscal analysis.

As far as we can tell the up-front cost of establishing a 30 pit per year (ppy) capacity at LANL has at least doubled since 2017 (from $3 billion in the 2017 AoA to, according to this year's budget request, over $6.4 billion over the coming 5 years, adding to Plutonium Modernization only the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement [CMRR] project, LANL TA-55 Reinvestment Phase III, and the LANL TRU Liquid Waste Facility).

LANL costs are still rising. The known new costs include, almost certainly, finding a new home for the plutonium oxidation mission to make room for pit production, or else terminating the mission -- and now, urgently leasing one or (as is likely) more than one offsite LANL facilities.

The hard-working Los Alamos Reporter has put together some of the local discussions: DOE/NNSA Seeks Office And Warehouse Space To Lease Within 50-Mile Radius Of LANL. (Our press release, with more general background: Warhead agency seeks to lease office and warehouse space within a 50-mile radius of LANL, Jul 21, 2020.)

As you can see, LANL or NNSA -- which? -- hopes to issue a Request for Proposals as soon as early August.

As you likely already know, GAO has flagged costly leases as high risk. We can only add that costly leases negotiated on an urgent basis are surely at least as risky as leases in general.

Of note, an amendment to give NNSA M&O contractors leasing power was introduced by Rep. Ben Ray Lujan last year but failed (At the link: "States that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator may enter into a lease agreement or authorize a Management and Operating Contractor of the NNSA to enter into a lease agreement with any person for the accommodation of the Administration in a building (or improvement), to be used by the Administration as offices, warehouses, light laboratory use or other similar use, without regard to whether the building exists or is being constructed by the lessor.")

The expansion of LANL faces multiple barriers, as Dep. Director Kelly Beierschmidt has explained on multiple occasions. His quotes in the article above are a good introduction. These were taken from a July 13 video presentation by Dr. Beierschmidt, which is available from the Los Alamos Chamber of Commerce (Recording from July 13, Access Password: 6w=1=f+l).

We have been pressing for more public information about these plans, so far with no success whatsoever.

We are not sure if Congress has fully taken on board NNSA's need, or its intent, to move to 24/7 operations at LANL's TA-55, including hiring 1,600 additional staff, to accommodate a production level of only 20 ppy (p. 12). An additional 400 staff, or 2,000 new staff in all, are deemed necessary to reach 30 ppy. This expansion, should it occur, will be very far from easy or simple.

Thank you for your attention. Write or call if you have any questions.

Greg Mello

PS: Our comments about the Cooper amendment to H.R. 6395 (now section 3115 in H.R. 6395) are posted here. They were in small part reprised in the Statement of Administration Policy, covered by the Aiken Standard.