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September 16, 2013

Nuclear agency's construction projects are $16B over budget and 38 years late

  • Critics say the nuclear program — run largely by private contractors and overseen by an arm of the Energy Department — has turned into a massive jobs program with duplicative functions.
    • By JERI CLAUSING
    Associated Press

    LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — At Los Alamos National Laboratory, 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.


     
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