Facilities

Infrastructure Reduction

Y‑12’s infrastructure reduction effort focuses on removing excess buildings and infrastructure. The initiative supports the goal of reducing the active footprint at Y‑12 by 50 percent in the next decade.

Infrastructure Reduction (IR) has already significantly changed the face of Y‑12. Through FY 2003, workers demolished 179 buildings (574,000 sq ft). In FY 2004, IR activities demolished 30 structures (an additional 114,000 sq ft). Among those was the 60-year-old Y‑12 Administration Building, recently demolished to make way for a new structure that will consolidate administrative and technical functions currently dispersed across the site.

Major Modernization Projects

As part of Y‑12's modernization, numerous construction projects are also under way or are planned for the future. Some are refurbishments or upgrades to plant systems, such as those for potable water, electrical distribution, compressed air, and steam. Others involve construction of new buildings, like the new state-of-the-art records storage facility that recently opened and the following:

• Purification Facility — Construction is almost complete on the first major production facility built at Y‑12 in more than 30 years. The request to begin operation will be submitted in the spring of 2005.
• Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) — The HEUMF Project, the largest single design effort at Y-12 in more than a decade, will replace multiple aging facilities within a single state-of-the-art storage facility. Engineering was completed in December, and full-scale operations are slated to start in 2008.
• Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) — The UPF Project, cornerstone of Y‑12's new modernization strategy, will replace current enriched uranium and other processing operations. The design phase will begin in FY 2006, construction in FY 2008, and operation in FY 2013.
• Beryllium Capability Project — Design approval is expected in early FY 2005, with start of construction expected in FY 2008.

Modernization via Innovative Financing

Y‑12 is using an innovative approach (the operating lease concept) to finance construction of two new facilities: the Public Interface Facility and the Production Interface Facility.

Current plans have the proposed Public Interface Facility going up where the small community of New Hope once stood at Y‑12’s east end. The structure will house a visitor’s center and other functions requiring frequent interaction with the public.

The Production Interface Facility, to be built north of the recently demolished Y‑12 Administration Building, will house administrative, technical, and scientific functions now scattered across the site.

Together, these new facilities will replace about 1 million sq ft of obsolete work space with about 540,000 sq ft of modern office and laboratory space for about 1,500 employees.

For more about the operating lease concept and the long-term cost savings anticipated with this approach, see Focus on Innovative Financing in the Fall 2004 issue of The Y‑12 Report.