The U.S. agency in charge of producing key components for the U.S. nuclear arsenal has cleared the way for new equipment to be installed at a New Mexico Laboratory. The new equipment is part of a multibillion-dollar mission. However, nuclear watchdog groups say that the project is already behind schedule and budgets have ballooned.
The approval for moving equipment into place at the Los Alamos National Laboratory was first outlined in an internal memo issued by the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy in January. the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DoE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) made a public announcement last Thursday.
The project will include the design, fabrication and installation of gloveboxes and other special equipment needed to make plutonium cores, also known as pits, for nuclear weapons. The work will be divided between Los Alamos in northern New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. These two locations are facing a congressional mandate to make at least eighty cores each year by 2030.
The deadline for meeting that capacity has been pushed back. The recent memo is the latest evidence that the minimum equipment necessary will be in place at Los Alamos by August 2030. This is four years later than originally expected.
The nuclear agency contends that the installation of the equipment is not necessary for Los Alamos to produce thirty pits per year. The lab will be building war reserve pits using existing equipment as the project proceeds.
Agency spokeswoman Shayela Hassan said in a recent email to the Associated Press that the NNSA expects an increasing number of pits to be produced each subsequent year until the new equipment is installed. She said that she had moderate confidence that the increased capability will be able to produce thirty pits per year.
The long-closed Rocky Flats Plant outside of Denver was capable of producing more than one thousand reserve pits annually before work halted in 1989 due to environmental and regulatory concerns. In 1996, the DoE provided for limited production capacity at Los Alamos. Los Alamos produced its first war reserve pit in 2007. The lab ceased operations in 2012 after producing what was needed at that time.
Greg Mello is the director of the watchdog Los Alamos Study Group. He said that the NNSA has made contradictory statements about the delays and what they mean for the overall plutonium pit project. He mentioned NNSA statements in 2017 and 2018 in which the agency predicted problems if it were producing pits while also replacing gloveboxes and other equipment at the same time.
Mello said that “There is more they aren't saying. We believe NNSA and LANL will struggle mightily, with further setbacks, failures and accidents in a misguided attempt to produce any meaningful number of pits in that cramped, aging facility.”
The memo provides formal cost and schedule estimates for getting equipment installed in Los Alamos. However, it is not clear when construction will begin. The cost has been estimated to be about one billion eighty-five million dollars.
More details about spending and schedules for the project are expected when the NNSA submits its budget to congress next month.
In January, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report that NNSA plans to reestablish plutonium pit production do not follow best practices and run the risk of delays and cost overruns.
The GAO described the modernization effort as the agency’s largest investment in weapons production infrastructure to date. The GAO noted that plutonium is very dangerous material and making the cores for the nuclear weapons is difficult and time consuming.