Contractor Problems Add to Plutonium Facility Concerns

On Friday, November 30, POGO sent a letter to Dept. of Energy Undersecretary Tom D’Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), recommending that the NNSA place a “stop work” order on the Los Alamos Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement (CMRR) program. POGO offered the recommendation in response to findings that Austin Commercial, Inc., the company tasked with completing the initial CMRR construction phase, has so far failed to meet industry quality standards. There’s also evidence to suggest that the company may have falsified quality assurance documents.

The CMRR program has faced a high level of criticism from Congress and from organizations concerned with nuclear policy. Last year, House appropriators cut funds for CMRR and referred to it as an “irrational” project. Appropriations for FY 2008 may continue to be withheld. The House committee report states:

The recommendation provides no funds for the CMRR project, a decrease of $95,586,000 from the budget request. The Committee direction halts the construction activity at the CMRR facility. Proceeding with the CMRR project as currently designed will strongly prejudice any nuclear complex transformation plan. The CMRR facility has no coherent mission to justify it unless the decision is made to begin an aggressive new nuclear warhead design and pit production mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The NNSA is directed to develop a long-term plan to maintain the nation's nuclear stockpile requirements that does not assume an a priori case for the current program. Production capabilities proposed in the CMRR should be located at the future production sites identified in a detailed complex transformation plan that supports the long-term stockpile requirements. The Committee is concerned the NNSA is proceeding with large expenditures for this project while there are significant unresolved issues, and recommends the fiscal year 2007 funding be held in reserve.

Although the Senate committee recommended funds for the project, the amount still falls considerably below the original request. The Senate also pointed to several potential problems with the program as well as the lack of a clear NNSA strategy.

Austin Commercial, Inc. is a division of Austin Industries, a construction company based in Dallas, TX with annual revenues of about $1 billion, mostly from private contracts.

-- John Pruett

Comments

[POGO]

It's been said before: "You can learn a lot from a dummy."

Here are the facts we have.

The RULOB will contain some radioactive material that makes it a DOE-Nuclear Facility – and falls under the full QA 10-CFR830,subpart A.

We've also been told by government officals that the LANL-Austin contract has a requirement to abide by ASME NQA-1 standards.

Hey dummies. The building under construction is an office building with a radiological light lab (hence the term RULOB).
Since when do rad laboratories need to be built to NQA-1 standards for nuclear facilities????!