Press Note, March 8, 2018

Bingaman, Domenici, Udall, Richardson, LANL, UC, and NNSA have all argued against Los Alamos becoming a larger, permanent plutonium "pit" production site

Contact: Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group, 505-265-1200 (office) 505-577-8563 (cell)

Permanent link * Previous press releases

Albuquerque, NM – In a Senate Armed Services hearing this coming Wednesday March 14, the newly-confirmed National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty will face questions from New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich (as well as, most likely, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham) on the future of US plutonium warhead core ("pit") production.

Ms. Gordon-Hagerty has said pit production is NNSA's "#1 priority." The Trump Administration has requested a staggering amount of money to build the factories needed to start production again.

New Mexico's previous senators, and previous representatives from the district hosting Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), were not supporters of LANL becoming a permanent center for industrial-scale plutonium processing and pit production.

We gathered some statements from them on this web page.

Even Senator Domenici did not want industrial-scale pit manufacturing at LANL. Neither did Senator Bingaman -- consistently, over many years.

Neither, "back in the day," did then-Congressman Tom Udall.

Bill Richardson didn't think LANL was the right place for expanded pit production. Neither did NNSA Administrator Tom D'Agostino. LANL and University of California (UC) spokespersons repeatedly said it would never happen, from 1990 almost to the present day. LANL Director Sig Hecker, himself a plutonium scientist, said production activities all but wore out LANL's main plutonium facility, which was built for research, not production.

Pits are the fissile cores of atomic bombs, the first explosive stage in US nuclear weapons. The US has about 23,000 pits in all, of which roughly 12,000 are either in warheads or could be. DOE and DoD have concurred that current pits will last at least 85-100 years from original manufacture, i.e. at least until 2063. This and other background information can be found in our recent "Questions about projected U.S. plutonium pit production capability" and "US Pit Production: Background and Issues." Last fall's fact sheet may be helpful. Much more is available at this web page and in recent bulletins and press releases.

If you have a yen to see what pit production used to look like, check out the extensive photographic collection gathered from Rocky Flats under the auspices of the American Historical Engineering Record. Extensive facilities on the scale of Rocky Flats are not expected at a "small" pit factory today, in part because the production rate would be much less.

But how "small" are we really talking about? It is all too tempting to "low-ball" the scale, cost, and extent of facilities required for pit production, nuclear and otherwise. Indeed that is what has been consistently done for more than two decades by facility planners, budgeteers, congressional committees, and public relations agents. Making the occasional pit is one thing. It takes hundreds of people and a considerable nuclear infrastructure, including extensive waste management. Making pits at significant scale, reliably, year-in and year-out for decades is altogether a different thing.

In NNSA's 9-page summary of its "Plutonium Pit Production Analysis of Alternatives" (AoA), NNSA estimates the upper-end cost (always the best estimate) for expanded pit production at LANL at about $9.5 billion (B). As far as we know NNSA did not include in its calculations the cost of replacing the seismically-unqualified Sigma Building, which is necessary for pits. NNSA certainly did not include the cost of replacing the aging, constantly-under-repair main LANL plutonium facility, which we believe would be necessary sooner rather than later under expanded pit production scenarios.

We believe the capital cost of building (and re-building) the facilities necessary for expanded pit production at LANL between now and 2040 would be more than twice NNSA's highest figure.

For reasons we cannot fit into this Note, we do not believe LANL can manage the pit production mission reliably at any scale. We will explain why in a later publication.

With no new pits needed until 2063 at the earliest, why is any of this necessary?

The New Mexico senators are not expressing anything like the "will of the people" in their support for expanded pit production at LANL.

We're sure about this because northern New Mexico governments have repeatedly expressed doubts (at least 20 times) about LANL's weapons mission, its environmental impact, and the pit production mission.

So have others. Over just a two or three year period, 329 New Mexico businesses, 118 organizations, plus the New Mexico Council of Churches and other churches, stepped forward in opposition to the pit production mission at LANL.

For its part the University of California (UC), the management and operating (M&O) contractor for LANL from 1943 to 2006 and since then one of the four partners in Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the current LANL M&O contractor, has repeatedly expressed its own misgivings about expanding the pit production mission.

This is interesting because UC has again bid to manage or help manage LANL operations, which now explicitly include at least some degree of expanded pit production.

In 2008 the UC Faculty Senate learned that "the present contract...allows the government to increase the lab’s production of plutonium “pits,” the triggering mechanisms in both fusion and fission bombs, for weapons purposes beyond any limits UC may have envisioned." So the Academic Assembly "voted overwhelmingly to endorse a resolution not only expressing those concerns, but also recommending that UC re-examine its involvement in LANL if pit production rises above current levels or if the University is unable to determine the number of pits being produced."(Full text of the resolution at "Academic Assembly Resolution on Limiting UC’s Role in Manufacturing Nuclear Weapons").

This was a compromise. A 1990 Academic Senate survey had found 64.6% of faculty favored severing UC's ties to the weapons labs altogether, with 34.6% opposed. (See "The University of Nuclear Bombs, Will Parrish, East Bay Express, Feb 28, 2018; republished today at CounterPunch).

There are other issues to bring forward but this is enough for now.

***ENDS***