Budget bill gives LANL pit-making a boost, now goes to president

By Mark Oswald / Journal Staff Writer
Friday, August 3, 2018 at 6:11pm

Copyright © 2018 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE – As expected, the U.S. Senate has passed a defense funding bill this week that includes money and language that supports ramping up production of the plutonium cores of nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The bill tasks the lab with implementing “surge efforts” to make more than 30 of the so-called plutonium pits a year to meet national defense and nuclear weapons policy.

The bill passed the House last week, so it’s now headed to President Donald Trump for signing.

In May, the Nuclear Weapons Council certified the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan to repurpose the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to make 50 pits a year coupled with “an enduring mission” to produce at least 30 “pits” per year at Los Alamos, currently the only place in the country set up to make the weapon cores.

Since then, New Mexico’s congressional delegation has been fighting to keep all the pit work in Los Alamos, which has faced scrutiny over safety issues involving the handling of radioactive materials in recent years.

The defense bill calls for a new, independent review of an NNSA study that supported moving most of the pit production to South Carolina.

The bill also mandates that NNSA produce plans for LANL to make 30 pits annually by 2026 or to eventually make all of the mandated 80 pits per year, possibly through use of multiple work shifts, in case the South Carolina facility “is not operational and producing pits by 2030.” There is a legal fight going on in South Carolina over whether the Savannah River Site should be switched to pit production.

The new pits would be used as part of a massive plan for modernizing the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

According to the offices of New Mexico U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, the defense bill also includes:

• $361 million for plutonium research and pit production at LANL, up $140 million from the previous year.

• $191.6 million for ongoing cleanup of radioactive and other waste at LANL.

• $31.2 million to fund the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which provides independent safety oversight of the nation’s weapons labs. A recent proposal to get rid of the board was rejected but a plan to limit the board’s access to lab information is under consideration.

• $125 million for military construction projects at Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands Missile Range and $7 million for upgrades to the Wyoming Gate at Kirtland Air Force Base.

• $48 million to continue construction of a new NNSA complex in Albuquerque.