Budget Office Skeptical of $80-Billion Price Tag : Nuclear Weapons Plant Modernization Report Stalled

A classified Energy Department report seeking $80 billion for modernizing and cleaning up the nation’s nuclear weapons production plants was withheld from congressional committees last week by White House officials who are skeptical of the high price tag, according to a senior budget official.

Submission of the report to the House and Senate Armed Services committees was being delayed by Office of Management and Budget officials who said they suspect the Energy Department’s figures may be exaggerated.

Other sources familiar with the report, however, expressed frustration with the budget office’s stance. They said budget officials seem unable or unwilling to comprehend the enormity of restoring a unique industrial complex, much of it built in the 1950s, that the congressional General Accounting Office has called one of the most “potentially dangerous industrial operations in the world.”

Outlines Costs

The Energy Department sent the report to the White House two weeks ago. It outlined the costs of refurbishing 17 major weapons facilities through the year 2010.

Administration sources said the document, dubbed the 2010 Report, puts the cost of modernizing and relocating critical weapons facilities away from population centers at just over $50 billion over 21 years. Another $30 billion will have to be spent on cleaning up scores of chemical and low-level radioactive waste sites, the sources said.

“There are a lot of skeptics about the DOE plan,” a senior budget official said. While it is clear that the modernization and cleanup tasks will be large and expensive, the official said, it appeared that the Energy Department was asking for far more than it needed to cover any foreseeable contingencies that might arise.

“We realize this is a big problem, but there is a tendency over there (at the Energy Department) to come in with their hands wide open,” the budget official said.

Some of the Energy Department’s cost figures “just seem too big,” he said, adding: “We want to know a lot more about where they’re going.”

Cites Previous Attitude

One source familiar with the outlines of the report and sympathetic to the department’s case said this skepticism reflected “the same head-in-the-sand refusal to face tough choices” on the part of budget officials that has contributed to the decline and obsolescence of the weapons plants over the past 15 years.

“This is one of the reasons the Department of Energy facilities are in their current state,” this source said.

Energy Department officials have declined to comment on the contents of the report, citing its classification.

Administration sources said the Energy Department recommends closing two controversial facilities, a uranium fuel fabrication plant at Fernald, Ohio, near Cincinnati, and a plutonium processing facility at Rocky Flats, Colo., near Denver.

Both plants, built in the 1950s, were slated for shutdown in the 1970s but were kept in production despite growing maintenance problems and a succession of leaks of radioactive material after the Reagan Administration began a major buildup of the nuclear stockpile in the early 1980s.

Target of Lawsuit

The Fernald plant is the target of a $300-million class-action lawsuit by nearby residents who contend that pollution from the plant has caused cancer. A major laboratory at Rocky Flats has been shut down for weeks after three plant inspectors were contaminated by small amounts of toxic plutonium dust.

To replace its three aging and deteriorating weapons production reactors at Savannah River in South Carolina, which have been shut down for safety concerns, the Energy Department has proposed building two new units over the next 10 to 12 years at a cost of $6.8 billion to generate plutonium and tritium for weapons.

One, at Savannah River, would use proven heavy-water technology. The second, to be built at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, would be a new modular design gas-cooled reactor. The nuclear industry hopes this plant would demonstrate the feasibility of an “inherently safe” generation of reactors that is not susceptible to sudden, catastrophic accidents.