NNSA preparing to explain UPF delays to Congress

November 4, 2022

By Staff Reports

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration late last week was still preparing to explain to Congress what caused construction of the agency’s next-generation uranium manufacturing hub in Tennessee to fall two years behind schedule, the agency’s head said here.

“We’re not ready for public statements” about the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) told the Exchange Monitor in a brief interview on the sidelines of the 2022 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference. “We need to do notifications about UPF before I talk to you about that. We’ve got to talk to Congress.”

In early October, during an industry conference, another NNSA official said the agency would work out the particulars of the new UPF schedule after the agency finishes a cost review. 

The NNSA has blamed the delays at the Uranium Processing Facility on the COVID-19 pandemic, though Hruby would not say Thursday whether materials, construction trouble or other factors were at the root of the problem.

UPF is the next-generation uranium center that the NNSA is building at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to replace the World War II-era Building 9212. Among other things, the agency will produce the uranium-fueled secondary stages of nuclear weapons there.

The agency had been trying to finish building UPF, if not begin operations there, by the end of December 2025 at a cost of no more than $6.5 billion. The construction-complete date will slip by at least two years, Teresa Robbins, manager of the NNSA production office said Oct. 5.

NNSA publicly disclosed looming delays to UPF in May during a congressional hearing. Related uranium modernization projects at Y-12 also fell behind.