Before Sen. Lamar Alexander's speech Wednesday at the Tennessee Valley Corridor Summit, I asked him about the Uranium Processing Facility and reports that it's on the verge of going over the top end of its cost range (currently set at $4.2 billion to $6.5 billion).

I asked the senator, who's been a big supporter of UPF, if there was a price tag that is too high to support. Here's what he said:

"Well, we'll have to decide that. One thing I want to make sure is we don't start constructing the facility until we have a design. And then I want it to be more like the big Spallation Neuron Source which we built a few years ago that (now ORNL Director) Thom Mason was in charge of. Once we knew the design and we knew the cost, even though the number was big ($1.4 billion), they stayed on time and on budget. I've pretty well had it with these big Energy Department projects that start out costing a billion dollars and end up costing $6 billion. We can't afford that. And we can use the money much more wisely, either to reduce the debt or to pay for energy research."

Is there a price tag that is simply too high?

"Well, I'm not going to say that. This is an essential building. As long as you're going to have a nuclear weapons defense system, you have to have a uranium facility to process what we use in our weapons. We have to have that. But we don't have to spend an extra billion dollars on it when we have a big debt and we could use the money better for energy research or for education scholarships or for other needs."

Posted by Frank Munger on May 30, 2013 at 8:59 AM |