For immediate release May 9, 2018

NNSA, DoD, DOE poised to deliver decision to Congress on how and where to make plutonium warhead "pits"

Los Alamos likely to lose industrial mission to Savannah River Site for several compelling reasons

Beyond DoD diktat, no need to make pits

Pit production for the late 21st century undercuts US nonproliferation leadership and goals

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

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Albuquerque, NM – By Friday National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty and Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette, with the concurrence of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Ellen Lord, are expected to provide the armed services committees their recommendation for where and in what facilities plutonium nuclear warhead cores ("pits") will eventually be made on an industrial scale, pursuant to Public Law 115-91, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Section 3141 of that law states in part:

...the Administrator for Nuclear Security shall submit to the congressional defense committees and the Secretary of Defense a report on the recommended alternative endorsed by the Administrator for recapitalization of plutonium science and production capabilities of the nuclear security enterprise. The report shall identify the recommended alternative endorsed by the Administrator and contain the analysis of alternatives, including costs, upon which the Administrator relied in making such endorsement.

Further,

the Chairman of the Nuclear Weapons Council shall submit to the congressional defense committees the written certification of the Chairman regarding whether—

(1) the recommended alternative described in subsection (a)—

(A) is acceptable to the Secretary of Defense and the Nuclear Weapons Council [NWC] and meets the requirements of the Secretary for plutonium pit production capacity and capability;

(B) is likely to meet the pit production timelines and milestones required by section 4219 of the Atomic Energy Defense Act (50 U.S.C. 2538a);

(C) is likely to meet pit production timelines and requirements responsive to military requirements;

(D) is cost effective and has reasonable near-term and lifecycle costs that are minimized, to the extent practicable, as compared to other alternatives

(E) contains minimized and manageable risks as compared to other alternatives; and

(F) can be acceptably reconciled with any differences in the conclusions made by the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation of the Department of Defense in the business case analysis of plutonium pit production capability issued in 2013; and

(2) the Administrator has—

(A) documented the assumptions and constraints used in the analysis of alternatives described in subsection (a); and

(B) tested and documented the sensitivity of the cost estimates for each alternative to risks and changes in key assumptions.

Omitting prior deadlines, NWC certification of NNSA's report on the recommended alternative is due May 11. Ms. Gordon-Hagerty and Assistant Secretary of Defense Guy Roberts have both testified in Congress that this deadline will be met.

Last year, an analysis of alternatives (AoA) was prepared and briefed to the armed services committees on November 30. A redacted 9-page briefing summary of the AoA was made available to the Study Group, which included a precis of NNSA's conclusions, including a set of 41 hypothetical pit production alternatives, which the AoA winnowed down to five:

• Repurposing existing facilities at the Savannah River Site (SRS) or the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), or


• Building new pit production facilities at SRS, INL, or the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

From these five, two were selected:

• Construction of new facilities at LANL, and


• Repurposing the partially-constructed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at SRS.

Criteria included:

• The ability to accommodate surge capacity;


• The ability to accommodate future changes in mission requirements;


• The capacity to conduct pit reuse operations simultaneous with pit remanufacturing; and


• The ability to house synergistic missions in plutonium science, metal preparation, and production.

The final two alternatives were subsequently analyzed further in an Engineering Analysis (EA), which is now complete.

The executive summary of the AoA, later provided to a city government, provided further details:

• NNSA found that its previous strategy -- of building two or more underground plutonium "modules" to expand LANL's existing plutonium processing space (see 50 U.S.C. 2535a) -- was "not viable;" the LANL alternative carried forward into the EA was a new facility with an 80 pit per year (ppy) production capacity;


• The 80 ppy requirement means this rate is to be met in 9 out of 10 production years; it is not directly comparable to the objective of a 30 ppy production rate in the "plutonium sustainment" program, which means achieving this rate at least half the time;


• There is very little difference between the facility and equipment requirements between 50 ppy and 80 ppy;


• LANL's main plutonium facility (Building PF-4) is not capable of producing more than 30 ppy;


• Renovating LANL's main plutonium facility in an attempt to achieve 80 ppy would place the existing plutonium sustainment program -- all current pit production, in other words -- at risk, as well as other programs at LANL;


• All pit production options are complex and involve schedule risk; a functioning 80 ppy capacity cannot be achieved earlier than 2033.

The other principle legal mandate affecting plutonium pit production is found at 50 USC section 2538a, which sets forth the required "War Reserve" (WR) pit production schedule from 2024-2027:

• During 2024, not less than 10 WR pits;


• During 2025, not less than 20 WR pits;


• During 2026, not less than 30 WR pits (these first three requirements can only be achieved at LANL); and


• During a pilot period of not less than 90 days during 2027 (which can be extended 2 years for cause), demonstrate the capability to produce 80 WR ppy.

Reading only slightly between the lines, one of the findings of the 2017 AoA is that the required 90-day demonstration of 80 ppy during the 2027-2029 cannot be achieved -- anywhere.

Beyond these, there are no legislated pit production requirements. The FY2018 NDAA mandate incorporates executive branch requirements from the Department of Defense (DoD) and NWC by reference. These may change. At present, DoD requirements are to have the capacity to produce 80 WR ppy, with high confidence, by 2030 (see the AoA briefing, p. 3, and the AoA executive summary).

As far as we know these are all single-shift capacities, meaning the full implied capacity required could be, or could approach, 160 ppy. (See notes to paragraph 2, Pit production recommendations & considerations, LASG memo to NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty and others, 6 Apr 2018, especially the 2014 pit production requirements memorandum of Sec. of Defense Chuck Hagel, p. 6).

Given these criteria and assumptions and what is known about NNSA's findings so far, as well as other realities to be discussed below, it is unlikely that LANL will be chosen for the larger and more permanent pit production mission. Except in an emergency, when NNSA's backup options (AoA briefing, p. 7, redacted) could be implemented, LANL is the only site capable of pit production for the coming decade. For now, LANL will keep its pit production program under the "plutonium sustainment" moniker and budget line.

It is likely that the plan to be announced will say, explicitly or implicitly, that all WR pit production will eventually be shifted to SRS if and when a facility becomes available there, either a wholly- or partially-repurposed MFFF and/or -- and this now goes beyond what we know about the AoA -- another facility. A new facility at SRS was among the five alternatives judged feasible in the AoA, but its cost and schedule were less advantageous than a repurposed MFFF and were grouped with the LANL new facility option (AoA briefing, p. 9).

At present, we do not know the details of NNSA's 2017 analysis. On March 14, 2018 the Study Group filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the AoA. Defendant NNSA's reply is due May 15 (this coming Tuesday).

In a related development, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, in a May 2 letter to Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, threatened legal action to prevent DOE from ending the MOX program, required if all of MFFF were to be repurposed. To repeat, we do not know if this is what NNSA has envisioned.

If SRS is chosen and the MOX program continues in MFFF, to avoid litigation from the state it will be necessary to either a) redesign the huge MFFF to house both MOX and pit production, which do have some processes in common, or else b) build another facility at SRS.

If LANL is chosen, it will be necessary to build a new pit factory. That was one of the messages in our previous press release (Leaked Summary of Nuclear Warhead Plutonium "Pit" Production Analysis Identifies Serious Problems with Los Alamos Manufacturing Plan, Apr 30, 2018).

Concretizing whatever pit decision occurs this week will take a long time, and may fail. All prior plans (seven, or eight including "modules") have failed (Jonathan Medalia, Congressional Research Service, U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress, Feb 21, 2014, pp. 18-25). Given this history, no NNSA decision can be considered final.

Los Alamos is likely to lose industrial mission to Savannah River Site for several compelling reasons

Given the published criteria, LANL is unlikely to be chosen for the pit mission for a number of strong reasons. Most of these reasons are mentioned or discussed in our "Pit production recommendations & considerations" of Apr 6, 2018. In addition to the advanced age of PF-4 and other key facilities, LANL's drawbacks have their roots in three intractable challenges: geology and topography, institutional identity, and location.

In brief:

• LANL has had uniquely severe criticality safety problems for more than a decade, as well severe project management, conduct-of-operations, and safety culture problems for many years, which led to early termination of the management and operating (M&O) contract;


• These problems have led to repeated, sometimes prolonged, plutonium facility shutdowns at various times over the past 12 years; 


• There is local government concern and opposition to nuclear weapons and the pit production mission in New Mexico, in contrast to strong local and state government support in South Carolina and Georgia;


• By and large, civil society has opposed expanding pit production at LANL (see here and here); in response, and again over decades, NNSA has repeatedly emphasized the small and/or interim nature of pit production at LANL to local governments, tribes, and citizens;


• Until relatively recently there was unanimous bipartisan opposition in the New Mexico congressional delegation, as well as from LANL itself, to industrial pit production at LANL, whereas there is unanimous support in South Carolina for the mission;


• LANL's main plutonium facility is 40 years old, was not designed to meet current seismic requirements or for industrial production missions, is not expected to last into the 2040s, and so provides no enduring pit production capability; the MFFF is by contrast brand-new;


• Other LANL facilities will also need replacement if pit production is to proceed (this may also be true at SRS);


• LANL's narrow plutonium mesa area (TA-55) is bounded by steep canyons, especially on the south, and is underlain by a thick layer of unconsolidated volcanic ash which amplifies seismic accelerations, is hydraulically unstable, and provides little resistance to lateral building motion; the only building sites available are near the less-stable south edge, which NNSA has determined will provide insufficient lateral buttressing for a large plutonium facility and would therefore require complete building footprint excavation to a depth of 130 ft in a crowded, operating technical area, with attendant high costs;


• Creating a second plutonium complex at LANL on a larger mesa would have high operating costs and potentially untenable daily security risks; whereas, upon information and belief, the SRS site has many possible locations should a new facility be needed;


• LANL is, and strongly identifies as, a research and development facility which since the 1940s has never had an industrial mission; whereas SRS has been an industrial plutonium facility from its beginnings;


• As the Congressional Research Service has noted, there is already a large analytical laboratory, the F/H Laboratory, at SRS; whereas at LANL the plan is to modify an existing radiological facility into an adequate analytical facility to support pit production, which is a complicated, expensive, and risky process;


• Mixing R&D with high-hazard industrial production has not been successful to date at LANL; there is no reason to think it could be;


• LANL is industrially, scientifically, and educationally isolated, far from an interstate airport, and is situated in a state and local area with poor educational outcomes overall as well as high poverty and drug abuse rates;


• For these reasons and others, New Mexico was recently rated the worst state to raise a family, which affects recruitment and retention; as does the fact that


• Los Alamos scores low on residential desirability in comparison to other DOE sites, a situation which is being exacerbated by climate change, loss of forested land on the Pajarito Plateau, and diminution of other amenities such as skiing.
  

For these reasons and others we believe (and have written) that reliable, enduring industrial-scale pit production at LANL is essentially impossible.

It is difficult to believe NNSA would be so foolish as to choose LANL and LANL alone for a high-confidence 80 ppy mission.

It should be mentioned that LANL's PF-4 currently houses a program to convert 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium into plutonium dioxide, either for the MOX program (if it is not cancelled) or for the DOE-preferred Dilute and Dispose program, should that be chosen by Congress. Expansion of LANL's current pit disassembly and conversion program, as is planned, will impose a tremendous burden on PF-4 and its supporting facilities. In our view it is an impossible ambition, even without larger-scale pit production and its scaled-up analytical chemistry and other supporting requirements.

Beyond DoD diktat, there is no need to make new pits.

Apart from DoD diktat there is no data or analysis in the public domain -- or, as we believe, anywhere -- which suggests that having a capacity of 80 ppy by 2030 is necessary to maintain the present nuclear stockpile, or any planned future stockpile. Toward its end, the second G.W. Bush Administration stated that existing pits would last a minimum of 85-100 years depending on type (DOE and DoD, “National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century,” Sept. 2008, p. 21ff, ) -- which means, given the production history of the present stockpile, until at least 2063. This is discussed further with references in:

• Pit production recommendations & considerations, LASG memo to NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty and others, 6 Apr 2018


• Questions about projected U.S. plutonium pit production capability, Greg Mello, 22 Feb 2018


• US Pit Production: Background and Issues, Greg Mello, 22 Feb 2018

Of particular note, NNSA has determined that “Pit production to replace pits in the deployed stockpile due to plutonium aging is not required, nor is it planned to occur.” (LANL talking points to Congress, week of 6 Dec 2012; interlinear commentary at http://www.lasg.org/LASG_comments_LANS_ltr_12Dec2012.html).

The final three paragraphs in Patrick Malone's May 1, 2018 Center for Public Integrity article are important:

Linton Brooks, a former NNSA chief from 2002 to 2007 who serves as a consultant to several nuclear weapon sites, noted the many challenges faced by the Energy Department when he questioned during a recent public appearance whether the 80-pit-per-year target is realistic. 

“Sometimes hard things turn out not to be possible,” he said during a nuclear weapons contractor conference on Feb. 22 in Arlington, Virginia. “There are enough things that can go wrong, and the recovery time for problems here is … between long and very long.”  

Brooks recommended that the government undertake a new study of how to reuse some of the 14,000 [>16,000] plutonium pits that technicians have removed from retired nuclear weapons and stored at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas. Their reuse, he said, could be a fallback option if meeting the new pit production goal proves to be impossible.

For many years, pit requalification and reuse within a given warhead type have been routine in Life Extension Programs (LEPs). For more on how this is done please see the Fall 2013 Pantexan, pp. 8-9.

In addition to this, rebuilding the external portions of pits while retaining the innermost plutonium shell intact (LANL calls this "partial flowsheet" manufacturing) is also planned. This work does not need to be done in a plutonium processing facility. Significant capacity is already in place to do this, is about to be, or could be if needed. In 2013 NNSA was aiming for a pit rebuild capacity at LANL of up to 90 ppy by FY2021. This capacity goal was unchanged as of 2015. (See NNSA, FY2014 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan [SSMP], June 2013, p 2-22, and NNSA, FY2016 SSMP, March 2015, p 2-34.

Pit reuse across warhead type (pit substitution) is also possible, is supported by nuclear testing in selected cases, and has been used to produce deployed warheads, specifically the W89 ("Innovative Warhead Design 'Pit Reuse'", James Tyler, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 1994 presentation to the Galvin Panel).

In the FY2008 NDAA (Public Law 110-181), Section 3121 required a study of using existing pits for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, which was prepared.

The roots of today's new-pit production requirements can be discerned in that report, as well as in the 2014 Hagel memorandum cited above. Both rest heavily on estimates, made by LANL, of future LANL pit production capacity after completion of the (later cancelled) Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF). The logic was circular.

Needless to say, stockpile reductions increase pit reuse options by increasing the number of extra pits available from dismantlement while decreasing the number of warheads and/or warhead types which might need them.

Pit "refurbishment or reuse" was the preferred option in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review; by contrast "replacement" (i.e. new manufacture) was to be done only as a last resort (p. xiv). This is now no longer policy, obviously.

More could be said on pit reuse, including from documents recently obtained by the Study Group, but this must wait for another day.

Pit production for the late 21st century undercuts US nonproliferation leadership and goals.

Finally, it must be said that planning for industrial pit production does not comply with the spirit of Article VI of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which requires the US and all other signatories to negotiate "in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament..." Far from being a throwaway obligation as many see it, the NPT is the foundation and bedrock for all nuclear nonproliferation efforts. Violating its spirit so obviously and blatantly will no doubt further undercut US leadership and contribute to the ongoing destabilization of the Treaty and the nonproliferation regime.

In 1996 the International Court of Justice unanimously found that a binding disarmament obligation exists for all nuclear weapon states:

The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law ... There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.

Nuclear weapons are inherently heinous. Most states and experts agree that nuclear weapons cannot be exploded in war, or used to threaten other states under international law, the practice of nuclear deterrence. A dense framework of international treaty and customary law applies. Any use would violate US military standards (short analysis; book-length). As a result a majority of the world's states have negotiated a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, now in its first year. Austria is the latest state to ratify this treaty (this week).

Humanity now faces challenges to its very existence. To successfully meet these challenges will require great political focus, international cooperation, a renewed emphasis on protection of the vulnerable, and great investment of resources. The obvious folly of pit production -- obvious on so many levels -- embodies values and actions almost perfectly opposite from those we need for civilization's survival. We sincerely hope the news media will be able to address the pit production issue in some of these wider dimensions.

***ENDS***