Amarillo-area nuclear weapons plant affected by cost overruns for federal program
Consolidating the management of two critical sites where nuclear weapons are assembled would yield huge taxpayer savings, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) promised in 2013 – as much as $3.27 billion over a decade.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in savings were to be spent on the modernization of the nuclear weapons production complex, and billions of dollars were to revert to the public treasury. The government was so pleased with the promised benefits that in 2015, it gave one of the department’s highest awards to the 14 sharp-eyed officials who processed the single-contract paperwork.
But four years after the consolidated contract was won by Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) LLC, a group of corporations led by Bechtel National Inc., there’s not much to celebrate, government documents and reports show.
In particular, much of the promised quick savings haven’t shown up, while the annual federal costs of running and overseeing the two sites – the Pantex Plant in Texas and the Y-12 site in Tennessee where nuclear weapons are disassembled and modernized – have risen more than 30 percent from nearly $1.85 billion to $2.48 billion. Despite these numbers, the government still awarded the contractor extra profits for cost savings.
Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/02/05/trump-administrations-planned-nuclear-upgrade-being-undermined-cost-ov/
