Letter to Congressional Colleagues, May 13, 2019

The (sequestered) IDA study of pit production (we have posted the executive summary), along with welcome LEP schedule delays, offers a tremendous opportunity to Congress to cancel or delay W87-1 and otherwise bring NNSA plans closer to realism and actual national security.

Dear colleagues --

(The following remarks were sent to our wider mailing list last Friday as Bulletin 257: Pentagon pit study: The Trump plutonium pit schedule is impossible. NNSA: 2 warheads are delayed.)

It will be very hard for NNSA to meet the Trump Administration’s goal of operating an industrial warhead core (“pit”) production facility by 2030. “Hard” as in virtually impossible. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) itself honestly said as much in 2017, and we have also said it.

Now, an independent study of pit production alternatives – required by Congress (at 3120[b] here) – has added a clear and fairly authoritative opinion. We have not yet seen the full report for the Pentagon on pit production options from the Institute for Defense Analyses, but the Executive Summary leaves no room for misinterpretation: “[n]o available option can be expected to provide 80 ppy [pits per year] by 2030.”

Since June 2017 (p.3) NNSA’s goal has been to be producing, by 2030, at least 80 ppy in 9 out of 10 subsequent years, which according to NNSA process modeling (p. 13) would lead to an average production rate of a 103 ppy in single-shift operations for the most difficult types of pits – that is, at least 1,000 pits per decade, single shift.[1]

This result has a number of implications for the Administration’s nuclear warhead plans, especially if considered in connection with the May 8 announcement of delays in the first production units (FPUs) of both the B61-12 gravity bomb and the upgraded, life-extended version of the high-yield warhead for the Navy’s Trident D5 missile (W88 Alt 370). Both FPUs were expected in FY2020 (see Figure 2-3) and will now be delayed for at least several months due to supply chain issues (paywall). Sources say the B61-12 could be delayed longer – perhaps by two years – as we reported May 7.

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the US has at least five multiple nuclear warheads in various stages of design, production, and certification.[2] The “Kansas City National Security Campus” (formerly Kansas City Plant, KCP) is struggling to keep up, as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has documented and congressional staff have told us.[3] Staff size is doubling, an extra half-million square feet of space is needed, and some production lines are now running at three shifts per day. There has been particular trouble with the scheduling and quality of outsourced components, as is now quite apparent.

Sources tell us the (W80-4) warhead for the (controversial, destabilizing) Long Range Stand Off (LRSO) stealthy cruise missile will also be delayed, as we reported on May 7. With the high workload of the warhead complex, with parallel programs underway, it is difficult to see how the W80-4 could avoid being delayed given any significant delays in the B61-12 and W88 Alt 370, the first two warheads to be produced in the 2020s.

At the other end of the decade, the planned 2030 FPU of the W87-1 “life extension program” (LEP – a misnomer in this case because the plan has been to produce the W87-1 with all new components including new pits and secondaries; see p. 2-13) depends completely on the pit production schedule.

The W87-1 is to be mated with a new reentry vehicle (RV), the Mark 21A and according to secondary sources will have MIRV (multiple independent reentry vehicle) capability. We believe it will be hard to certify as reliable, especially in a new RV, and many flight tests using Minuteman III missiles will be necessary. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which is designing the new warhead, is reportedly seeking to avoid peer review on its design.

With adequate pit production by 2030 now a long shot at best, plans for the W87-1 are now uncertain. There are rumors of a new design (for some of the warheads?) that use recycled pits. Upon information and belief there are no actual problems with the W78 warhead. The W87-1 warhead is not necessary.

We believe the entire warhead production schedule for the next two decades now needs to be re-written. (The third planning decade has always been highly speculative). To some degree it will be rewritten.

It is a wonderful opportunity to re-think the grand plan for increasing nuclear threats that was laid out in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) – and in the 2010 NPR and 2010 New START ratification “deal” before it. With its unilateral withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and in many other ways, the Trump Administration has long abrogated that lousy deal in any case.

There is more in the IDA report summary. IDA found that “pursuing an aggressive schedule creates major risk to achieving an 80-ppy production capability under any option” and “[s]trategies identified by NNSA to shorten [pit production] schedules will increase the risks of schedule slip, cost growth, and cancellation.”

We are pleased: this we have also said, many times (e.g. here, last slide). Long-time congressional analysts remind us: nuclear operations cannot be rushed and must be pursued deliberately at every stage, or setbacks and accidents will derail projects. A US special forces motto is: “Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.” The Mello family backpacking mantra is: “Slow, steady, safe, strong.” The Trump Administration does not know this.

In another conclusion, IDA makes clear that Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) cannot “surge” to meet this deadline: “[t]rying to increase production at [LANL’s main plutonium building] PF-4 by installing additional equipment and operating a second shift is very high risk.” This was also a conclusion of both the 2017 Pit Production Analysis of Alternatives (AoA, executive summary, briefing of results) and subsequent 2018 Engineering Analysis (EA, briefing of results).[4]

However unsurprising, this is still necessary to say because despite these clear prior warnings, Congress, led by the New Mexico delegation and by the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote into law a requirement last year not just to study, but to implement “surge” production with multiple shifts at LANL.

According to congressional staff, the risks IDA tallied in its report from any such “surge” at LANL include not only high risks to other LANL plutonium programs such as pit surveillance (necessary to maintain the present stockpile, with no other home for this function available besides PF-4), but also serious safety risks.

In another of its principal conclusions, IDA believes that “eventual success of the strategy to reconstitute plutonium pit production is far from certain,” and “[e]ventually achieving a production rate of 80 ppy is possible for all options considered by the EA, but will be extremely challenging” (emphasis added).

This is a remarkable conclusion for a Pentagon contractor. We agree (see pp. 4-5 here) – except for the “all options” part. Setting that aside for the moment, for perhaps the first time an officially-mandated study has concluded that the United States may not be able to stand up an industrial pit production facility – ever. To succeed at this, “where many previous efforts have failed,” “[c]areful and skilled management and consistent, focused leadership will be required.” All that is necessary – and perennially absent in the U.S. nuclear warhead complex – but, as we said earlier this week (pp. 4-5), it is not sufficient.

We have explained many times why we believe LANL will not be able to successively host an enduring, reliable pit factory at any scale. Here’s a graphical summary (see slides 4-6) of just some of the issues.

According to IDA,

A key milestone [toward 80 ppy] will be achieving the PSP [Plutonium Sustainment Program] goal of 30 ppy at LANL. Successfully demonstrating a pit production capability at this scale would greatly increase confidence in the eventual ability to produce 80 ppy.

But can LANL produce at 30 ppy? According to congressional sources, IDA says in the body of the report that

…getting to 30 ppy will already require several shifts to meet the tight timeline and is already risky. Everyone (even NNSA and LANL) acknowledges that getting to 30 ppy is a tall order and will be very challenging.

Yes, they do acknowledge that. As NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty said in so many words on May 8 in response to questions from Senator Heinrich in a hearing of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC/SF), if PF-4 should be shut down NNSA will have no place for the pit surveillance program, and PF-4 is “40 years old.” She didn’t spell out everything she implied by that, but clearly PF-4 cannot be considered a sound, modern, enduring facility upon which future pit production can be based. In June 2017 NNSA made the official finding (p. 76) that “continuing to rely on PF-4 for the Nation’s enduring pit production capability presented unacceptably high mission risk.”

The IDA report is Unclassified Controlled Nuclear Information (UCNI), and to our knowledge no redaction of sensitive facility drawings, etc. has as yet been made. For those who care about the future of the nuclear weapons complex, there’s obviously a great deal more of interest than we have summarized here. Multiple people in government have told us that a cloak of secrecy has descended over government, which in their view is designed to stifle debate within and from outside government.

There are many implications of what we have relayed here, for all interested parties. We must leave them to another occasion.

Thank you for your attention.

Greg Mello, for the Study Group

[1] With the sponsorship of the New Mexico delegation – Senator Heinrich especially – working hand-in-hand with the Pentagon, this goal became a legal requirement last year.

The “80+” ppy requirement evolved and gradually expanded from prior military and legal requirements that date back to G.W. Bush Administration. At bottom it rests on representations provided by LANL of how many pits could be produced at LANL after completion of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF). See: Assessment of Nuclear Weapon Pit Production Requirements, report from Sec. of Defense Chuck Hagel to HASC, Jan 16, 2014, obtained by the Study Group via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

[2] “At least” because there may be “black” warhead programs, for example to go with the two ground-based intermediate-range missiles, a cruise missile and a ballistic missile, that are to be tested this year. 

[3] Attendees at the February 2019 Nuclear Deterrence Summit hosted by Exchange Monitor publications heard of this struggle directly from John Ricciardelli, President of Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies, which operates KCP for NNSA.

[4] Redacted versions of the EA and AoA were supplied to the public as a result of Study Group FOIA litigation in 2018.