Fed plan to move plutonium to Nevada is halted

Friday, July 11, 2003 | 11:03 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Ballooning cost estimates have forced the federal government to halt a project aimed at moving several tons of plutonium and weapons-grade uranium from New Mexico to Nevada.

Plans to move the material from the Los Alamos National Laboratory to a more secure area at the Nevada Test Site were under way, at an initial estimated cost of $100 million.

But a new estimate from contractor Bechtel Nevada was $310 million, according to a June 20 memo from Everet Beckner, deputy director for weapons programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the arm of the Energy Department that manages the nation's nuclear stockpile. The memo was sent to department managers in Nevada and New Mexico.

A watchdog group, Project on Government Oversight, released the memo this week.

"That's a figure that has surprised a lot of people," NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said. "And quite frankly, we don't know why it's so high."

In the memo Beckner said the new cost estimate was "excessive and unsupportable." Beckner said there was "no reasonable explanation for this significant change" and he said he was ordering a temporary halt to the project.

NNSA officials plan to review cost estimate analysis work at a meeting July 28, according to the Beckner memo. There is no new timeline for the project, so it's not clear when the move would be made, Wilkes said.

The move would involve about 2.6 tons of plutonium and 11 tons of uranium. The Energy Department last fall confirmed its plans to move the sensitive material from Technical Area 18 at Los Alamos, a 1940s-era lab, to an area at the Test Site called the Device Assembly Facility. The underground facility is notably more secure, department managers believe.

The Energy Department completed work on the $100 million high-tech, high-security facility in 1998, but it has been mostly unused, in part because of a 1992 nuclear testing moratorium in the United States.