Department of Energy FY 2012 Congressional ... - The FIRE Place

Detailed Justification
(dollars in thousands)
FY 2010
Actual
Approp
FY 2011
Request
FY 2012
Request
Operations of Facilities 1,336,399 1,257,991 1,485,254
Operates and maintains NNSA-owned programmatic capabilities in a state of readiness, ensuring
each capability (workforce and facility) is operationally ready to execute programmatic tasks of the
entire nuclear security enterprise. Operates the program infrastructure and facilities in a safe,
secure, reliable, and “ready for operations” manner. The RTBF Operations of Facilities subprogram
provides and sustains core capabilities, including: material operations capability, such as plutonium,
uranium, tritium and high explosive materials; component production, fabrication, and assembly
capability; testing capability, such as environmental testing, special nuclear and non-nuclear
material testing; and site mission and infrastructure support.
The NNSA tracks, manages, and justifies the RTBF Operations of Facilities portion of the
President’s Budget Request using a recently revised Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The RTBF
Operations of Facilities WBS has been redesigned to provide better insight and granularity of the
costs required to operate and maintain nuclear security enterprise facilities. The new WBS is
organized by capabilities provided, such as material operations, component production, fabrication
and assembly, and testing. At the most detailed level of the Operations of Facilities WBS, all
identified capabilities are separated into three distinct categories: Operations, Capability Risk
Reduction, and Transformation. These categories contain all activities performed at specific sites,
including: facilities management; maintenance; utilities; environment, safety and health; capital
equipment; emergency operations; waste management; maintenance of the Authorization Basis for
each facility per 10CFR830, National Environmental Policy Act activities; and, general plant
projects. “Operations” includes daily operations, infrastructure, corrective and some preventive
maintenance, and staffing requirements. The “Capability Risk Reduction” category includes
activities associated with sustaining equipment, systems, facilities, or capabilities to sustain their
performance or good operating condition, as well as activities that ensure current capabilities will
meet safety requirements, sustain effectiveness and/or extend the life of that capability. Finally, the
“Transformation” category includes all activities related to reducing Site footprints, related security
requirements, the hazard/safety categorization of a facility/capability or the development/start-up of
a new or replacement capability. The majority of the budget request supports “Operations” and
reflects an infrastructure that provides a minimum-operations capability state of readiness.
The RTBF Operations of Facilities budget request generally supports minimum-operations
capability conditions of RTBF funded facilities, infrastructure and capabilities. Under a “minimumoperations”
level of operation, base operations are sufficient to sustain the capability through the
fiscal year, assuming the absence of significant upset conditions or emergent requirements.
Operations of Facilities also funds general infrastructure support activities such as General Plant
Projects (GPP) and Other Project Costs (OPCs) for line item construction projects. However in the
Weapons Activities/
Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities Page 147
FY 2012 Congressional Budget