Pit production: what precisely is NNSA poised to do where, and why?

February 27, 2018

Dear colleagues --

I am looking forward to seeing some of you this week. I hope to see others another time.

You are all working to add as much sanity as possible to current nuclear weapons policy. There is not much there, so every little bit helps.

This note concerns one issue only: plutonium warhead core ("pit") production, the "number one" priority for National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) according to Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty.

It looks a lot like NNSA is poised to start throwing even more money at this problem than it has been. To what end, and with what prospects for success?

The NNSA budget request released this past Friday contains this spending plan:

For the entire Future Year Nuclear Security Plan (FYNSP), the proposed increase in Plutonium Sustainment is 43% of the proposed increase in all of Weapons Activities (WA). For FYs 2022 and 2023, Pu Sustainment composes 69% and 77% of the proposed WA increase. That's a powerful lot of money. I am not completely sure what it is for.

Although I am not privy to any classified briefings and reports which attempt to justify it, this jump-up is quite a different track than the one proposed by our last president -- he of the unprecedented-since-Reagan, $1.2 trillion 30-year nuclear weapons plan.

Can this much new money be spent wisely? I think the answer is obvious: no.

We know it is not necessary. We are very far from that. Even granting all the stockpile assumptions that NNSA brings to the table, in 2008 DOE and DoD made it clear that the best minimum estimate for pit life was 85-100 years, depending on pit type. Pit reuse across type in some cases (those cases being already supported by pre-1992 nuclear tests) and pit rebuilding options provide a margin of confidence as well. Nothing in the public domain undercuts the 2008 implied assessment that no stockpile pit will need replacement prior to 2063 (assuming that a maximum stockpile pit age of 40 years is correct, as of this year).

These and other references can be found in the short overview and background on these issues I just wrote for the blog of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM). More will follow on that blog. I will send subsequent posts.

As you know much better than I, NNSA completed an Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) for pit production in November. That document is, I am told, Unclassified Controlled Nuclear Information (UCNI). We seek a redacted version. We would like to know if any non-federal persons have that document, which if true would make it easier to get a redacted version for the public.

We posted two (slightly different) non-UCNI AoA summaries, which might be useful for sharing with the public:

• NNSA pit production Analysis of Alternatives (7 pg summary), presented to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), Jan 2018
  
  
• NNSA pit production Analysis of Alternatives (9 pg summary), Nov 2017

(They are different in that the 7-page summary omits a) the quantitative conclusions of the AoA and b) "surge capacity" as an evaluation criterion.)

NNSA is now conducting (or has conducted) an Engineering Analysis (EA), prior to making a final recommendation for how to acquire a capacity of 80 pits per year (ppy).

As you know, NNSA has selected Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL's) PF-4 building and supporting facilities as the place for a 30 ppy capability and is in the process of investing large sums, which by 2026 will total in excess of $3 billion (B), in capital projects to support that aspiration.

The Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement project alone (04-D-125) has a total project cost (TPC) of nearly $3 B; transuranic waste facilities (liquid and solid) costing hundreds of millions are also being built or were just built.

Going back farther LANL, since formally acquiring the pit production mission in 1997, has already spent billions of dollars on plutonium sustainment in operating and capital costs. Over two decades, the future year in which reliable pit production was to be established has receded mirage-like, and the capacity aspired to has declined from an "intrinsic" 50 ppy in 1996 to the present 30 ppy by 2026. As of today, there is no reliable pit production at LANL and none is expected (or needed, of course) for years.

The AoA states that looking forward, and in round numbers, NNSA will need to spend an additional $2 B in capital projects and $1 B in operating costs at LANL to realize 30 ppy.

There are many reasons to doubt that LANL can or will achieve this capacity. Additional capital investments beyond those in the budget pipeline today will certainly be needed. For example, the 1950s-era Sigma Building in Technical Area 3 does not even meet 1997 seismic requirements, let alone those of 2007 or today. Most pit parts are made there. 

As NNSA has previously written, establishing a 80 ppy capacity at LANL will not be possible without major new facilities. In the draft Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (CTSPEIS), NNSA did not think even the cancelled Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF), plus PF-4, plus the Radiological Laboratory, Utility, and Office Building (RLUOB), could handle the 80 ppy mission without an extra 9,000 sq. ft. of Hazard Category II capacity. In the Final CTSPEIS however, NNSA decided that the extra 9,000 sq. ft. were not necessary, but the $6 B CMRR-NF certainly was.

By the mid-2030s, now the earliest date at which such a capacity could be operating at LANL, a new plutonium research facility to replace PF-4 may be needed, and must at least be in process. NNSA projects PF-4 end-of-life at 2039. Perhaps in part for that reason, the AoA does not envision maintaining two parallel pit production facilities beyond a transition period, whatever political promises are being made now. That would simply be unaffordable.

A number of objective factors weigh against LANL, as vs. the Savannah River Site (SRS), for the 80 ppy mission. These include:

• The SC/GA region in question has a larger population, many more technical schools and industries, significant manufacturing employment and skills, greater residential desirability, and a significant nearby airport with interstate service. Northern New Mexico has very little manufacturing, and few technical schools. LANL is 1.75 hours from an airport with significant interstate service, though very limited service is available in Santa Fe.
  
  
• Though not great, SC and GA K-12 educational ratings are significantly better than NM's.
  
  
• SRS is huge relative to LANL in land area as well as facilities. It has a large industrial and waste management infrastructure, experience with plutonium, a big analytical laboratory building, and will be much easier to manage as a production site.
  
  
• LANL has significant seismic issues, including the likelihood of temporarily losing emergency access in earthquakes.
  
  
• As mentioned, PF-4 will be 50 years old by the earliest year LANL could reach 30 ppy. PF-4 has never been brought up modern standards of ventilation and fire protection and may never be. Increasing down-time will sooner or later become a problem at that facility. Underground "modules" will not mitigate these problems.
  
  
• LANL pit operations have never achieved reliability.
  
  
• Northern NM and indeed NM as a whole have among the highest poverty in the US, including the highest level of child poverty of any state. NM also has the highest levels of income inequality, in which LANL and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) play no small part. The "aura of apartheid" surrounding LANL creates delicate management problems in the workforce. One Santa Fe mayor called Los Alamos "an island of privilege and paranoia."
  
  
• Rio Arriba County, where much of LANL's blue-collar workforce lives, has a drug overdose fatality rate four times the rising national average.
  
  
• There is trenchant, organized opposition in New Mexico to pit production.
  
  
• There are great differences in local government support between LANL and SRS. In SC, the pit production mission is widely supported. In NM it is questioned or opposed. A (circa-2000) LANL-sponsored poll showed twice as much opposition as support. For local government resolutions, please see:

• NM government resolutions on nuclear weapons issues and against pit production
• SC government resolutions in favor of plutonium pit production

Until this decade, neither LANL itself nor leading New Mexico congressional leaders -- including then-Congressman Tom Udall, as well as then-Rep. Heather Wilson and current Rep. Steve Pearce -- thought LANL was the right place for an industrial pit production mission. Here are just a few of their remarks, which in at least Senator Bingaman's case were remarkably consistent from circa 1990 to about 2007, when the subject went "underground" for a few years. Here are a few quotes gleaned from this partial record of New Mexico opposition to pit production over the 1989 to 2006 period.

Bingaman said regardless of what happens with the new warhead, LANL is not the best choice for a permanent facility to produce pits.

Not only does Bingaman have concerns about security and the additional nuclear waste that would be created by such a facility, but "(LANL) has always been a science lab, so it doesn't necessarily fit in with the mission of the lab," said Jude McCartin, the senator's spokesman.
        ("Labs at Center of Pits Debate Again," John Arnold, Albuquerque Journal, Dec. 4, 2006,  http://www.abqjourna1.comlsantafe/517912north_newsI2-04-06.htm)
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Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., campaigning in New Mexico, responded to a question about the possibility that LANL might be selected for the consolidated plutonium center.

"Given the site's layout on a mesa with surrounding local communities, LANL does not appear to be suited to become home to the nation's central storage facility for weapons plutonium," Bingaman said.

A spokesman for Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., Tom Nagle said, "From the briefings we've had, it doesn't look like Los Alamos is the best place for this."
        ("Feds bid to transform weapons complex," Roger Snodgrass, Los Alamos Monitor, Nov 2, 2006)
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Domenici: Lab Not Right Fit

One of Los Alamos National Laboratory's most enthusiastic and influential boosters Sen. Pete Domenici is down playing the idea of LANL becoming the home of a huge new facility for manufacturing the plutonium cores of nuclear weapons.

Friday, the Los Alamos lab officially was named a possible site for a plant to manufacture plutonium pits, which trigger the first stage of a nuclear weapon blast....

But in a news release this week, Domenici, R-N.M., suggested Los Alamos is not the right spot for the pit plant, which is expected to cost up to $4 billion, be online by 2020 and create jobs for as many as 1,500 people.

Domenici a champion for LANL funding and operations over the years noted the Los Alamos lab already is developing an interim pit production operation, intended to make a small number of pits by 2007. But the senator's news release said "it is unlikely that a large manufacturing operation would be a good match to the research focus at the lab."

"I anticipate that further study will decide against locating this capability at Los Alamos, which could enhance the prospects for Carlsbad," Domenici said.
        ("LANL on Plutonium Plant List," Mark Oswald, Albuquerque Journal, Sept 21, 2002)

But why is pit production an important issue? Certainly Ms. Gordon-Hagerty thinks it is an important issue. Here are some of our reasons:

• It will have a great effect on the institutions involved. In the case of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) it would have a negative effect, as senior politicians like Domenici and Bingaman used to say -- as did LANL itself, again and again for the first two post Cold War decades. (Until some time during the Obama administration after Administrator Tom D'Agostino left, LANL disparaged any idea that it sought a larger-scale, permanent, pit production mission. Mr. D'Agostino did not support such a mission for LANL, for the same reasons -- institutional "bad fit" and implied harm -- as the New Mexico senators. See the 2006 articles cited above.)

• A decision to resume pit production -- with such a huge arsenal (including a huge reserve arsenal), with other stockpile confidence options at hand, with arms control comatose, with orders for destabilizing new nuclear weapons coming down the pike, and with disarmament and nonproliferation leadership passing from leading Western and allied states toward the Global South -- will reverberate negatively for the US around the world. There will be losses in soft power and nonproliferation leadership ability.

• Related to this, pit production is symbolically important, inside the US and out. It marks, along with so many other indicators, an alarming growth in what might be called a permissive posture toward threatened mass destruction across the board, from "fire and fury" on the Korean peninsula to green-lighting more conflict in Ukraine with shipments of lethal weapons, to the US-aided action of Saudi Arabia in Yemen, to continued support for al Qaeda factions in Syria, and so on. People in other countries who have reason to be concerned about the US, from our allies to adversaries (most of whom we have created), will not fail to note that the US is resuming the production of more nuclear weapons cores on top of everything else.

• Within the US, and on balance, nuclear weapons have never been popular. The perception of renewed arms racing, including (with pit production) in a quantitative form, may well affect recruitment, morale, and retention in the weapons complex, especially as the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons gathers momentum and visibility. The nuclear weapons complex, as a management challenge, always has been fundamentally unstable. In our view it cannot be managed successfully in the medium or long term without a better narrative than it now has.

• Pit production is of course very expensive.

• Pit production implicitly entails great costs in other programs, as well as large environmental liabilities.

• Finally, it is also poorly thought-through at this point, especially given the Mixed Oxide (MOX) impasse. Some 7 or 8 attempts to build pit production facilities have foundered in the years since 1990.

To repeat: it looks a lot like NNSA is poised to start throwing even more money at this problem than it has been. To what end, and with what prospects for success?

That's it for now. Thank you for your attention.

Greg Mello