Costs continue to spiral out of control at demolition of “world’s biggest building”.
The cost of tearing down the K-25 uranium-enrichment facility and disposing of the waste could ultimately cost more than $1.2 billion, according to a federal audit that slammed the Department of Energy’s years-long management of the big cleanup project.
The new cost estimate for the K-25 decommissioning and demolition project, which began in 2004 and may not be completed until 2016, is multiple times higher than the original cost estimates and almost double the project’s baseline in 2008.
In a July 13 memo to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Inspector General Gregory Friedman said the early cost estimates and schedule for demolishing the K-25 building were “significantly exceeded” because of serious technical issues. Those issues included the concerns that enriched uranium in process equipment could go “critical” (involving an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction and release of radiation); the sheer size of the mile-long facility, which was the world’s largest building under one roof at the time of its construction during the World War II Manhattan Project; and hazards associated with the degraded condition of the 65-year-old structure.
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