“The removal of the surplus machine tools has generated significant savings to Sandia, NNSA and the American taxpayers,” said Ken Powers, NNSA’s Associate Administrator for Infrastructure and Environment.
– Edited By Tom Lamar –
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Sandia National Laboratories announced that they have teamed up to successfully dispose of several surplus machine tools, saving the taxpayers more than $100,000 in the process.
By avoiding the expense associated with characterizing, packaging, transporting and disposing of these tools, Sandia and NNSA demonstrated their shared commitment to being effective stewards of tax dollars.
“The removal of the surplus machine tools has generated significant savings to Sandia, NNSA and the American taxpayers,” said Ken Powers, NNSA’s Associate Administrator for Infrastructure and Environment. “This project is another example of our commitment to identifying creative ways to improve the efficiency of our operations as we work to transform a Cold War-era nuclear weapons complex into a 21st century national security enterprise.”
The machine tools were used to support various national defense related projects at Sandia. The tools were used for the demilitarization of sensitive and classified hardware for which there was no longer an intended use. Alternate strategies for managing unneeded sensitive and classified hardware are now being employed, which resulted in these machine tools becoming surplus.
Working with NNSA and a Nuclear Regulatory Commission Agreement State licensed vendor authorized to possess and process items contaminated with radioactive materials, Sandia was able to transfer title of the equipment at no cost to NNSA. The licensed vendor provided all transportation, logistics and dispositioning services as compensation to NNSA for the equipment.
The vendor will reuse this equipment for its intended purpose as machine tools in accordance with its radioactive materials license. NNSA coordinated authorization for this transaction with the NNSA Service Center and the Sandia Site Office.