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Previously: Bulletin 296: (03/26/22) The troubled logistics of LANL pit production: how will LANL staff and contractors get to work?
Bulletin 297: LANL pit production is incapable of meaningfully contributing to production requirements
April 11, 2022
Dear friends and colleagues --
The following is an expanded version of a letter sent to congressional staff and other federal parties today in preparation for meetings here in Washington, DC, where I (Greg) now am. It may be of interest and utility to some of you although it may be a tough read. It follows and helps fill out our March 10 press backgrounder, sent to this list (and still recommended). The overall conclusion of this Bulletin is in the subject line above.
We also promised this analysis way back in Bulletin 285 but at that time we needed to wait for a little more information. We don't have time to make this any simpler today so perhaps you will forgive me (Greg) for the remaining complexity.
We need to write to you about other highly pressing matters but in the meantime, this.
Without further ado here's today's letter, expanded and clarified somewhat:
...an analysis of pit production quantities relative to program requirements previously promised to some of you is now available, albeit in a terse form and without references (although some have been inserted, with further explanations, below).
The overall conclusion of this analysis is that even in the best case, LANL production is incapable of making enough pits to meaningfully contribute quantitatively to the W87-1 program, which is (and will remain, for schedule and workload reasons) the only program of record for which new pits are actually needed in this decade.
Training and technology development and demonstration at LANL for pit production are by contrast required, if pit production is to proceed.
It is difficult to imagine a clearer policy signal.
This conclusion is not really new. Until 2018 U.S. pit production policy never called for splitting production between two sites, which maximizes cost and exposure to risks without creating genuine resilience. The "resiliency" so often mentioned in congressional testimony is illusory. We know of no data proferred in any public setting or congressional testimony to justify it. NNSA's own 2017 analysis of "split production" strongly advised against such an approach.
Here is a more detailed summary of the conclusions of the worksheet:
- LANL pit production for the stockpile is not needed if:
- No new warheads for silo-based missiles (currently, W87-1s) are built (for example because the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, GBSD, is not built and US silo-based missiles are retired, with no new warheads built), or if
- GBSD is partially or fully built as planned (in the latter case, with 400 missiles deployed in silos and 50 silos with available missiles are kept in reserve) and these 450 missiles and reentry vehicles are all equipped with life-extended W87-0 warheads but additional warheads are not made available for uploading as multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs), or if
- GBSD is built and deployed as planned and a MIRV warhead option is made available with new warheads made with non-W87 reused pits currently in inventory as NNSA has studied.*
*In June 2012, the Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) authorized the W78/88 Life Extension Program (LEP) to enter into Phase 6.2 (Feasibility Study and Option Down-Select). W78/88 LEP Phase 6.2 Study (Feasibility Study). On March 10, 2013, the NWC approved the down-select to the Mk21 aeroshell, used with the W87-0 warhead on the Minuteman III silo-based missile. A June 2013 study evaluated three pit types for pit reuse to replace the W78 in the Mk21 aeroshell (the W87 pit, as subsequent commitment has shown, and two others) and one type (the W87) for new manufacture. A June 26, 2013 brief to the NWC "identified the W87 pit as the preferred solution...The NWC endorsed the W87 pit down-select decision in December 2016." [Quotes from "W78 Replacement Program (W87-1 Modification Program): Analyses of Alternatives and Requested Information," Report to Congress, May 2019, p. 3. Obtained by the Los Alamos Study Group under the Freedom of Information Act.]
- If GBSD is equipped with half W87-1 warheads but not MIRVed, LANL production at ~2 pits per year (ppy) would suffice. Requirements in this case and the previous three can be satisfied with a “technology development and training” program, i.e. de minimus War Reserve (WR) pit production, at LANL. We believe this is the best realistic policy for pits at LANL.
- If 200 GBSD missiles are to MIRVed with W87-1 warheads, or if a full GBSD deployment is to be 100% MIRVed with W87-1 warheads, LANL pit production alone, at an optimistic 30 ppy (average), would be inadequate. In the latter case (a full MIRV option for GBSD), LANL + SRS production would be inadequate within the time span allotted.
- The more GBSD warheads that are made with reused pits (whether W87 pits or another, or both), the greater the burden on post-2038 production if deployment continues. Pit reuse shifts production to later times but does not decrease it. Only partial disarmament does that.
- There could be a new-pit W87-1 or a new-pit W93 in the 2030s but not both, even with two production sites, unless relatively few W87-1s pits were required. LANL can only make one kind of pit at a time, slowly.
- Assuming no pits >80 yrs old are fielded, i.e. all current pits are too old after 2060 (for the oldest pits) to 2069 (for the newest pits) (see: DoD Nuclear Matters 2020, excerpted at slide 7 here, and other references), pit reuse fades away for 30-yr LEPs or 30-yr new warhead builds over roughly the 2030-2039 decade. For LEPs or new builds with 20 year lives, pit reuse can be used until roughly 2049. In other words, we assume no pit older than 60 years would be the foundation of a LEP or new warhead.
- In the unrealistically optimistic case that LANL-only production starts on schedule and continues at 30 ppy through 2069, 1,471 pits would be produced over that period. Assuming 5 pit types with 30 surveillance units built for each type, plus 10% spares, gives a total arsenal (deployed + hedge if any) of ~1,174 warheads, about 39% of today’s arsenal. This is two-shift production. We can argue that this is plenty for nuclear deterrence but there is no proposal on the table for such deep cuts. Since pit production capacity has a very long lead time to acquire (slide 9) it is the present political climate which matters for pit production investments.
- Over these production years, LANL would require a whole new pit factory and many new supporting facilities in addition to the complex now being remodeled and built at great cost. There is no obvious place at LANL where an adequate, modern plutonium production facility could be built. Nor, we believe, is an adequate, stable, trained labor force likely to be available.
- What limits LANL? Limits include A) labor availability; B) waste handling capacity; C) traffic, housing; D) regional water, regional education and social factors; E) age, inadequacy of buildings and need for continuous construction; F) culture (safety, R&D vs. production) (institutional and regional); and F) seismicity, topography.
- If on the other hand pit production occurred at SRS only starting in 2035 at ≥80 ppy (average: 103 ppy) through 2069, the 3,502 pits produced in these new facilities would be adequate for a total (deployed + hedge) arsenal of 3,002 warheads, with single-shift production. SRS would have flexibility and surge capacity (using two production shifts) also. Upon information and belief, the baseline SRPPF design will have multiple production lines and built-in surge capacity.
- Would LANL production provide resilience? No, LANL provides the opposite of resilience. LANL production would not be adequate in the event of an emergency at SRS, even with a second LANL factory, because the latter wouldn't be ready until the late 2030s at best, and because of LANL's other deficiencies. Meanwhile inadequate, unsafe LANL pit production competes with setting up adequate, safer SRS production in several ways.
Third, I had hoped to have a fresh analysis of pit production costs ready by now, but this must wait until the FY23 budget details are released. Meanwhile last year's summary ("What will NNSA's plutonium pit production cost?," Aug 24, 2021, with this spreadsheet, remain our best cost analysis to date, as modified by the mystery of LANL's own higher estimate:
Impeccable sources tell us LANL has estimated its costs for pit production over the FY20-FY30 decade at $18 billion, not including other plutonium programs. This exceeds our high-end cost estimate (here, details here) by some $3.7 billion. LANL pit production evidently requires a greater preparatory work than we have understood...
In our August estimates, we could not find a set of realistic cost assumptions under which LANL could produce pits, over any time period, for less than about $50 million apiece. This new information supports that figure as a realistic minimum through the 2030s, and increases it in the 2020s and early 2030s.
For comparison's sake, GAO recently estimated the total cost for each W87-1 warhead at $15.6 million or less, including new pits, which NNSA estimated would cost between $0.3 million and $0.8 million apiece. LANL's startup costs were not included, which GAO naively took to be $3 billion (p. 22).
Thus, using LANL pits in the W87-1 will increase the cost of that warhead by a factor of anywhere from 4 to 7. This is a staggering cost overrun. As long as pits are required -- and alas, our national authorities do want them, badly -- LANL's pit production role should be limited to "process prove-in and training, or at most to single-shift operations, on the order of 10 pits per year" as we said in the Los Alamos Reporter.
Fourth, you may have seen this widely-reprinted article about LANL pit production. The problems at LANL are beginning to spill more widely into the public domain. We comment on and correct that article here, and add new information.
Fifth, we are now suing NNSA for more and better information about its pit production program and related matters of public accountability ("Lawsuit seeks agency plans to accelerate production of nuclear warhead cores; Largest program in agency history is effectively secret -- and in trouble, Apr 6, 2022). An Associated Press article about this lawsuit appeared in the Washington Post and various other places.
Thank you for your attention and very best wishes in your important work for the people of the United States, and personally....
Stay well, be encouraged, work for peace,
Greg and Trish, for the Study Group
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