Nevada site gets new system

$35M project at nuclear assets facility north of LV completed

WASHINGTON — A $35 million enhanced security system at the Nevada National Security Site north of Las Vegas has been completed at $1.7 million under budget and five months ahead of schedule, federal officials said Friday.

The completed Argus Project will improve the security mission to protect nuclear material and other assets at the Device Assembly Facility, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Lisa Gordon-hagerty, the Department of Energy undersecretary for nuclear security, was in Nevada this week for a dedication ceremony for the project’s completion.

“Argus will keep the nation’s special nuclear material and NNSA’S vital workforce safer,” Gordon-hagerty said in a statement.

“The completion of this project will enable better protection for the nuclear material, personnel and crucial equipment used as part of NNSA’S Nevada complex,” she added.

About 2,400 workers are employed at the site, 65 miles north of Las Vegas on land that spans 1,370 square miles, larger than the state of Rhode Island.

The Device Assembly Facility was designed in 1980. It consists of 30 individual steel-reinforced concrete buildings where weapon assembly and disassembly and modifications and maintenance of nuclear devices are consolidated.

The mission of the facility shifted to stockpile stewardship after the nuclear weapons testing moratorium in October 1992.

Nevada filed a lawsuit against the federal government last year after it secretly moved weapons-grade plutonium to be stored at the site. The Department of Energy was under court order to move the plutonium from another site in South Carolina.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-nev., secured a pledge from the Energy Department to begin removing that plutonium from the Nevada site in 2021.