Bulletin 374: LANL required to at least double plutonium pit production, new plutonium facility planned, Zoom meeting Monday March 2 10 MST to discuss, strategize
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Prior Bulletin (373): NNSA to leave "life extension," "stewardship" paradigm to build new weapons; LANL pit aspirations triple; LANL rad exposure standards loosened fivefold; Zoom discussion this Thursday noon MST, Feb 2, 2026
Dear friends and colleagues --
At the beginning of this week, the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA's) Feb. 11 plan for more nuclear weapons as fast as possible ("Responsive Today, Dominant Tomorrow: Enhancing American Nuclear Dominance") was leaked to us.
It lays out the Administration's "framework" strategy to accelerate warhead design, testing, and production to support the "continued supremacy" of U.S. nuclear weapons, so the U.S. can "prevail in an era of renewed great power competition."
This shocking memo was issued 6 days after the expiration of New START. It was clearly written earlier.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the principal "acceleration" required is to at least double the rate of planned plutonium warhead core ("pit") production, from at least 30 pits per year (ppy) to at least 60 ppy with the capacity to go further, to "100."
Most of the environmental impacts would scale along with production rate, if these plans succeed.
At the same time, across NNSA's warhead complex, safety and security rules are being "streamlined" to enable higher warhead production. (Just in yesterday: "Secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules are made public," Geoff Brumfiel, National Public Radio, Feb. 26, 2026). At LANL, the allowable radiation dose has been increased from 1 to 5 rem/year, among other changes.
We can't help but recall Robert Peters of the Heritage Foundation telling us that LANL workers must be willing to risk their very lives to make pits (at our National Press Club panel in 2024).
This policy is the nuclear complement to Marco Rubio's speech in Munich, in which he unabashedly called for renewal of the West's 500 years of colonization and domination. (For one of many succinct reviews see Moon of Alabama, "U.S. Calls For New Colonial Era,, Feb 16, 2026).
To enable this external domination, internal colonies are also needed. That's New Mexico, first and foremost.
We hope you will be able to attend. We will record the meeting and post it on our YouTube channel for those unable to do so. We aren't going to allow anonymous call-ins.
This morning the Santa Fe New Mexican covered these new developments in a solid, accurate article, which is reproduced with our comments below.
Also yesterday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a review of NNSA's major construction projects. There you can see mention of the proposed LANL Pit Conversion and Disassembly Facility (PDCF), to be completed by 2035 at a cost of up to $3.4 billion. This would be a major new plutonium facility for LANL.
Greg Mello, for the Study Group
LANL may be asked to double plutonium pit production, per federal memo
By Alaina Mencinger amencinger@sfnewmexican.com
To help achieve “American nuclear dominance,” Los Alamos National Laboratory may be expected to produce at least 60 plutonium pits per year — double the previously set minimum.
It’s not exactly clear based on the memorandum — sent by David Beck, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s deputy administrator for defense programs, on Feb. 11 — when the lab might be expected to meet the new 60-pits-per-year minimum. According to the cover letter, the memo lays out a series of objectives across the nuclear enterprise “that Defense Programs believes are achievable by the end of calendar year 2028.”
“Our adversaries are advancing their capabilities in key nuclear domains, eroding traditional sources of the United States’ strategic advantage,” the memo reads. “To ensure continued supremacy of America’s deterrence posture, we must urgently accelerate the modernization of the nuclear weapons stockpile and the revitalization of its associated facilities and infrastructure.”
The memo was provided to The New Mexican by the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear disarmament advocacy organization, which obtained it from a “trusted source.”
The federal nuclear agency did not respond to requests for comment or additional information this week. LANL referred questions to the NNSA.
Los Alamos Study Group Executive Director Greg Mello said the current national security posture seems to be focused on removing bottlenecks for pit production. He feels it’s an “open question” whether that can be done without running into safety issues or other roadblocks.
But he sees an increased urgency from federal agencies to beef up the stockpile — and quickly.
“The policy is, go fast,” Mello said.
In October 2024, the national laboratory completed its first “diamond-stamped” plutonium pit as part of its new mission producing the trigger devices for nuclear weapons. At a December 2025 town hall, lab Director Thom Mason said while the exact number of pits produced since then could not be released, the lab had met production goals.
Years of delay
LANL previously produced a small number of plutonium pits between 2007 and 2011. In 2007, the lab was the first place to produce a stockpile-quality plutonium pit since the closure of the Rocky Flats plant in 1992, after the main government contractor running the Colorado plant pleaded guilty to several violations of environmental law.
In 2018, LANL was directed to start producing plutonium pits once again. The nuclear security enterprise planned to eventually manufacture pits both in New Mexico and at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Savannah River Site was expected to take on the lion’s share of production: at least 50 pits per year to LANL’s minimum of 30. Between the two sites, the NNSA wanted to see at least 80 pits per year by 2030.
Now, Savannah River appears to be taking a back seat, with the Feb. 11 memo asking the site to support expanded pit production in New Mexico until their own plutonium processing facility is fully up and running. Beck called on involved national laboratories, plants and sites to submit plans to achieve the goals laid out in the memo by March 7.
In 2018, neither site was set up for the large-scale manufacture of pits, according to a 2021 LANL publication.
“Los Alamos’ [plutonium facility PF-4] was designed for research and development and surveillance; the facility at Savannah River was designed for mixed-oxide fuel fabrication (which never happened),” authors for National Security Science, LANL’s national security magazine, wrote. “Changes — such as new equipment, updated buildings, new employees, and 24-hour operations — are necessary to turn these facilities into functional pit production facilities.”
LANL to take front seat
Building up the plutonium processing facility at the Savannah River Site may fall behind schedule, according to a Thursday report from the Government Accountability Office on large National Nuclear Security Administration infrastructure projects. According to the report, as of June 2025, officials were updating estimated project costs and timelines to convert an existing building into the facility’s main plutonium processing site.
Although estimates were still being updated, costs could increase from an estimated
$6.9 billion to $11.1 billion to more than
$22 billion, according to the report, with a completion date in fall 2035, which was originally at the high end of the anticipated range of completion dates.
“However, officials told us the completion date may be delayed,” the February report indicated.
That leaves Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“We have said that they will not be satisfied with 30 pits per year,” Mello said. “It’s not enough to do what they want to do with the stockpile … [and] it is now clear that 2035 is the earliest date that Savannah River could make any pits.”
Mello has been skeptical about the ability of the lab to meet pit production goalposts. He’s still skeptical, but between the memo, comments made by federal officials at an annual deterrence summit and an announcement last year that the Department of Energy would lift “burdensome” permitting requirements at national laboratories to kick-start construction projects, the winds could be changing.
“No one’s ever made all these changes, all at once,” Mello said. “And so we have to reexamine our assumptions.”
China, China
The Thursday GAO report references a “30 diamond strategy,” which it described as a plan to “support the fastest path to a production rate of 30 war reserve pits per year at Los Alamos National Laboratory by December 2028” approved by the NNSA in 2024.
To meet that goal, the federal agency planned to change the scope of a handful of infrastructure projects, including the installation of gloveboxes and other equipment, and prioritize certain projects. According to the report, officials said the 30-diamond strategy could increase costs and extend timelines in some areas.
Aging infrastructure has been a concern across the nuclear enterprise. In 2019, LANL reported around 40% of its buildings were built before 1970. PF-4 started operating in 1978.
A January 2023 powerpoint, obtained by Los Alamos Study Group through a Freedom of Information Act, titled “30 Diamonds WHY” said the United States was facing a “grave threat” from a buildup of nuclear forces in China, driving the need for the project.
CNN reported earlier this week that U.S. State Department officials claimed China had conducted an explosive nuclear test in 2020, which they believe was part of an arsenal modernization program, although Robert Floyd, executive Secretary for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, said the organization’s monitoring system picked up no evidence of this.
“LANL, right now is the only place with the capability to build pits,” reads the second slide. “We have to achieve the capability to make Diamond Stamped pits, our country is depending on us to produce these.”
Our published comment:
Thank you, Alaina, for writing so accurately about this dire development. (We can drop "may.")
The Feb. 11 memo is exactly in line with what some of us heard at a nuclear weapons conference in January, where "several" new nuclear weapons were mentioned. The date of the long-prepared memo, which is a plan for how to accelerate production across NNSA's entire enterprise, was just 6 days after the expiration of the New START treat. This indicates that NNSA was just waiting until the stockpile limits in that Treaty no longer applied before dropping this memo. How much of this is Trump's personal doing, and how much comes from the powerful nuclear contractors and senators (Heinrich and Lujan among them) is a moot question.
This memo is the official starting gun for a new nuclear arms race. The balance of Trump's presidency, it says, is to be divided into eleven 3-month execution periods, with Triad (i.e. LANL) and the other contractors required to meet specific acceleration goals each period. Here's the memo: Transformative Objectives framework for enterprise modernization, David E. Beck, NNSA's Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, Feb 11, 2026.
For more details see our press release earlier this week, ""Responsive Today, Dominant Tomorrow: Enhancing American Nuclear Dominance:" Nuclear agency outlines ambitious near-term goals for nuclear warheads, labs, factories, and operations; Pit production at Los Alamos to be at least doubled if not tripled; other NNSA sites to help Los Alamos do so, details TBD, Feb 23, 2026.
Regarding the nuclear weapons conference where these matters were discussed in January, see Bulletin 373: NNSA to leave "life extension," "stewardship" paradigm to build new weapons; LANL pit aspirations triple; LANL rad exposure standards loosened fivefold, Feb 2, 2026.
This is a real wake-up call. LANL is the best-funded facility for weapons of mass destruction in the whole world, and now its signature mission is the actual manufacture of the most dangerous parts of those weapons, the plutonium cores ("pits"). Santa Fe, the Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis, is unfortunately enabling the new nuclear arms race, through its role as a bedroom community for several thousand LANL workers.
According to DOE's most recent budget breakdown, 87% of LANL's work is directed toward nuclear weapons. Only 1% of LANL's budget is "science," again according to DOE, Thanks to Alaina and many of you, all of us reading this newspaper now know what is going on. Knowledge brings responsibility. If you can, please register your opposition at stopthebomb.org
Part of the plan is to eliminate 20% of "indirect" (overhead) costs at LANL, including support staff not directly working on nuclear weapons. If the work of these people is replaced -- and the memo says much of that work is not necessary -- it will be replaced by AI.
Safety rules are being "streamlined," i.e. loosened. Maximum radiation exposures for LANL workers have already been increased by a factor of five (from 1 rem annually to 5 rems annually). This increases the risk of cancer and death by a factor of five for those receiving those respective doses. Maximum public exposures may also be loosened, as they already have been for DOE nuclear energy projects (by a factor of four, from 25 millirem to 100 millirem). As the Heritage Foundation put it at one of our events in Washington (yes, we talk to them too), LANL workers must be ready to risk their lives to produce new pits for new weapons. There is a direct link between the Heritage Foundation's nuclear weapons proposals to what LANL is being asked to do now.
LANL works primarily on death-oriented solutions to the problems caused by organized greed and stupidity. Mass death, in fact. Seen narrowly, there is technical competence in weapons science at LANL. In non-weapons fields, not so much. Widen one's vision just a little bit, and one sees the organized madness, the well-paid sickness. If you want to help, contact us via lasg.org.
