Industrial pit production at LANL: mistaken mission, wrong place

By Greg Mello, Guest Columnist
Sunday, June 30, 2019

Should Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) provide industrial plutonium warhead core (“pit”) production, as opposed to its historic missions of R&D, test pit production, and surveillance? Make no mistake: “industrial” is the right word, as Los Alamos could sadly learn.

If so, at what scale, and for how long? Is there a limit to what LANL can or should do? Should LANL be the only site making pits?

What would the environmental and community impacts be at different scales of production? What construction would be needed, both of nuclear facilities and of support facilities such as offices, shops, and parking lots? Where would excavation spoils be dumped? How would traffic be affected?

How much transuranic waste would be produced, and how would this compete with risk reduction efforts across LANL, especially at Area G, given the limited number of WIPP shipments available? NNSA has recently warned that pit production will take precedence over waste inventory reductions.

It is essential that local government, citizens, and tribes understand the magnitude of what is being planned and implied. Momentous decisions are being rushed through pell-mell, entirely out of public view, not only about national policy but also about the future of Los Alamos and surrounding communities.

At this point it is not clear if anybody really knows what the evolving plan is.

For their part, DoD and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) want two pit production sites, LANL and the Savannah River Site (SRS). NNSA has testified that LANL alone cannot make enough pits, and has questioned the suitability and longevity of LANL facilities. LANL’s track record is also less than stellar. Nonetheless all the pit-making expertise lies with LANL at this point.

At SRS, a 310-square-mile industrial site, there is a brand-new, very large, partially-built plutonium facility, built to higher hazard standards than any of LANL’s. Two NNSA studies have found that repurposing this facility would be faster, require less capital, and entail less risk than LANL options. The SRS facility would also provide much more flexibility, and production could be expanded at very little cost if needed.

For their part, New Mexico’s senators and representatives have done their best to maximize the required rate of production (anticipating the Trump Administration’s requirements by years), while trying to keep the whole production mission at LANL. They have threatened to use their pull with the Governor to withhold renewal of the WIPP operating permit unless that happens.

House Democrats agree with our senators that all the pit production should be at LANL, but they question the quantity.

Meanwhile, no analysis of the impacts of various alternatives is on offer from NNSA. Local government, tribes, and citizens have no opportunity to comment, let alone any genuine input.

Now is the time to speak up. Pit production will affect all of LANL, including whether LANL’s above- and below-ground inventory of roughly 20,000 drum-equivalents of transuranic waste (with more to come) ever leaves the site.

With this major contemplated mission change, LANL badly needs a new Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS). None is planned.

Since 1996, DOE and NNSA have committed, in four decisions filed after extensive public comment during National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews, to limit LANL pit production to a maximum of 20 pits per year (ppy).

Nonetheless in 2014 Congress required LANL to produce 30 pits in 2026 and to demonstrate a capacity of 80 ppy by 2029 at the latest, an ambitious goal. After major studies in 2017 and 2018, NNSA and DoD decided that in addition to LANL’s 30 ppy, SRS would be tasked to produce at least 50 ppy by 2030. According to NNSA this should provide an average production of 103 ppy.

Concerned lest part of LANL’s growing pit mission be moved to SRS, the New Mexico delegation successfully added a requirement to last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for LANL to “implement surge efforts to exceed 30 [ppy] to meet Nuclear Posture Review and national policy as well as to assess ”the strategy…for manufacturing up to 80 [ppy] at [LANL] through the use of multiple labor shifts and additional equipment at PF-4 until modular facilities are completed to provide a long-term, single-labor shift capacity." NNSA was also to provide a detailed plan for production at LANL “of plutonium pits 31–80, in case the [SRS] facility is not operational and producing pits by 2030.”

This week, an amendment introduced by Senators Heinrich and Lindsay Graham passed which would make the administration’s “at least 80 ppy by 2030” statutory law.

NNSA now believes it is not necessary to do further national-level NEPA analysis for production of 80 ppy at BOTH LANL and SRS (that is, “at least” 160 ppy total or on average 206 ppy, single-shift). Environmental analysis is going forward at SRS and might also at LANL, if NNSA decides that increasing production from 20 ppy to “at least” 80 ppy merits further environmental thought.

Back in the day, senators Domenici and Bingaman, and then-representatives Richardson and Udall, as well as the University of California itself, all said LANL was ill-suited for industrial pit production. Which it is. LANL’s topography, geology, seismicity, and location can’t be changed by Washington diktat. Neither can LANL’s R&D identity and culture.

The US has about 11,000 long-lived, usable pits. What would Los Alamos get in return for turning itself inside out for this mistaken mission? Nothing good, that’s for sure.