diff --git a/gensim/models/nmf.py b/gensim/models/nmf.py
index 18a0ed97d5..d312e22ce3 100644
--- a/gensim/models/nmf.py
+++ b/gensim/models/nmf.py
@@ -193,7 +193,7 @@ def __init__(
 
         self._W = None
         self.w_std = None
-        self._w_error = None
+        self._w_error = np.inf
 
         self._h = None
 
@@ -561,8 +561,6 @@ def update(self, corpus):
 
         chunk_idx = 1
 
-        prev_w_error = np.inf
-
         for _ in range(self.passes):
             for chunk in utils.grouper(corpus, self.chunksize, as_numpy=False):
                 self.random_state.shuffle(chunk)