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DOE approves Savannah River plutonium project construction Oct 20, 2026 The U.S. Department of Energy has authorized “full construction” of a plutonium processing facility in Aiken, S.C., a long-anticipated project that would further the federal government’s plans to establish two plutonium pit production sites, according to Los Alamos National Laboratory. The $23.5 billion Savannah River Plutonium Production Facility, included in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two-pronged plans for pit production dating back to 2018, is now expected to be complete by December 2038, six years later than the agency initially proposed. According to an agency spokesperson, the project is “the most appropriate solution to meet the nation’s pit production mission need.” Plutonium pits — the hollow, bowling ball-sized bomb triggers, are the key component to developing nuclear warheads and are now exclusively produced at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Under current federal law, the Savannah River Site is set supply no fewer than 50 plutonium pits per year, along with 30 produced at the Northern New Mexico lab. The new processing facility will sit on a 310-square-mile site about an hour southwest of Columbia, S.C. It seeks to provide “robust, large-scale production of plutonium pits in strategic resiliency” with New Mexico, officials said in a 2024 report. With this latest approval from the federal government, construction activities will “significantly increase” an effort to repurpose facilities at the Savannah River Site initially intended for a mixed-oxide fuel generation. That project was shut down by the Department of Energy in 2018, leaving an “unfinished concrete structure with more than 400,000 square feet of available” space, according to a 2026 overview report. The plutonium pit effort will create 3,000 local jobs during construction, and a workforce of 2,000 upon completion, Savannah River Site officials said in a news release issued Monday. “From the local community perspective, the employment numbers are a big deal,” said Bryan Cox, a spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Savannah River Field Office. “That’s separate from the larger national security mission,” he added. Initial timelines estimated the project’s completion date as 2030, then 2032, but the Department of Energy’s recent announcement places its completion closer to December 2038 . “The further away the completion date is for a deeply troubled program … the more there’s an increased chance of the collapse of the project, given the constantly escalating costs and scheduled delays,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of the nonprofit watchdog Nuclear Watch New Mexico. Coghlan said delays and issues with the South Carolina-based project would shift more of the burden of pit production to LANL, which some critics say is already significantly ramping up production. Plans have long called for the production of at least 30 pits per year at Los Alamos, but prior reporting from The New Mexican found that number could jump to as high as 60 pits under possible federal directives. LANL Director Thom Mason said during a town hall earlier this year the national lab’s facilities are “ahead” in both pit production goals and infrastructure work, but he did not provide details about those targets. Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, another nonprofit nuclear weapons watchdog, said increased nuclear weapons production takes global policy in the wrong direction. Mello also contends the “two-site plan is … a mistake, and it’s twice as expensive as it should be.” “What they’re building in Los Alamos is not really permanent, and it’s not really big enough, nor does it meet modern safety standards,” he added. He said in a statement Monday “there is no sound justification for pit production at LANL beyond technology demonstration and training.” He also argued “the public, Congress, the Pentagon, and NNSA itself do not know, within any reasonably tight estimate, what the LANL pit production effort is going to cost or how long it will take. All we have are the rough estimates from the most recent presidential budget request.” The Los Alamos Study Group believes “the SRS project, when completed, can support the entire U.S. stockpile for decades to come,” Mello said in the statement. “... The LANL project cannot. In the meantime, all parties agree that there is no pit-aging-related need to make pits for at least another decade if not two.” Safety concerns at national laboratories also have been cited by the U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent federal agency created to provide oversight at nuclear sites around the country. Last month, officials said the Department of Energy had been “stonewalling” the board’s efforts to obtain records on plutonium pit production amid a range of changes they fear will weaken safety protocols. The safety board has only one sitting member, with four vacant seats that require appointment by the president and confirmation by the U.S. Senate. A letter written in July by the lone board member, Patricia Lee, to members of Congress noted the board cannot issue formal recommendations without a quorum of three members. Lee wrote the board this year has experienced “increasing access challenges,” which she went on to describe as “the most significant in its history." Published comments by Greg Mello:
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