Six summary talking points on pits & NNSA's stockpile plan; four editorials
June 19, 2019
Dear colleagues --
I know that some of you are more or less done with these issues for the moment; others are not.
And though politics (as opposed to policy) is at high tide on these issues now, and is turbulent as hell I am sure, it may do the country some good to restate the following:
- No factual case for near-term quantity pit production has been publicly made. After so many years and opportunities without such a case appearing, and all available data stating otherwise, I don't think there is one. At bottom, the case for any near-term pit production (beyond de minimus) boils down to ideologically-based narratives and material interests.
- No analysis of alternatives (AoA) for the W87-1 warhead has been done. The AoA that was done for IW-1 -- that is, with Navy constraints on potential alternatives -- isn't enough, by a long shot. The throwaway analysis of W87-1 vs. a W78 LEP was far too narrowly-scoped to matter. Also, to our knowledge no analysis has appeared that considers ending MIRV capability for GBSD either. One can list many interesting alternatives to the W87-1 program. It is shocking to me that the W87-1 is being funded at all given the host of unresolved issues, costs, and risks associated with it. It is almost unbelievably poorly justified even as nuclear weapons programs go. Where is the oversight?
- There is a world of difference between planning for pit production as a contingency, versus actually constructing and then operating a factory, especially at what appears to be a breakneck pace. There is a spectrum of speed NNSA appears not to have explored. Now NNSA must do so, given the near-impossibility of, and the high risks imposed by, its current plans.
- NNSA's stockpile management program and schedule of record are not executable as written. Many of us have long seen this coming. What and where is the new plan -- and why should the old plan be funded?
- We have repeatedly heard members of Congress say that pit production at LANL will cost roughly half what (NNSA is mischaracterizing as) a two-site plan would cost. This is false for at least three reasons:
- First, NNSA's Engineering Assessment (EA) inexplicably omits the cost of replacing PF-4 (in its 50-year life-cycle cost estimates). Comparing a new facility with a plan anchored by a 52 years old (in 2030) facility built to inferior standards isn't at all objective. Nobody knows if PF-4 can be replaced at LANL, given the geological and topographical problems of the site, just to mention two. The EA imagines PF-4 will last more than a century.
- Second, NNSA's EA downplays or omits uncertainties about whether PF-4 can reliably function at all as a pit production facility or pit production support facility, given its known problems (not to mention its management problems, which have very long consequences). The following short description of PF-4 weaknesses closely prefigures subsequent (Jan. 4, 2019) set of issues tabulated by DNFSB. The repetition of themes struck us as interesting. From "Aging Infrastructure at DOE Sites," report for DOE EM by Florida International University, May 2, 2014.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Plutonium Facility (PF-4)
Began service: 1978
Remaining service: Approximately 30 years
Infrastructure weakness: Seismic analysis identified building vulnerabilities that could result in loss of confinement or facility collapse with resulting high radiological dose consequence to workers and the public. In addition, the facility lacks a set of safety controls (fire suppression system and active confinement ventilation system) that would adequately protect the public and workers from the consequences associated with post-seismic accidents. [The LANL Ten-Year Site Plan states that seismic improvements are being completed at PF-4 (LANL 2013).]
- Third, LANL has had the pit production mission for 23 years. Since 2013, LANL's war reserve pit production capacity has been zero. Given the issues above, it will remain zero for at least another 3-4 years. There is no factual history of success in pit production at LANL and many big problems remain without any apparent near-term solutions, e.g. in transuranic waste management.
- In other words, given LANL's limitations for the industrial pit mission NNSA's plan is not really a two-site plan at all. It is a one-site (SRS) plan, with a legacy facility at LANL conducting training and pilot production, augmented by a repurposed analytical lab and miscellaneous other capabilities. The EA options ginned up for LANL look a lot like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something will stick.
- The bottom line (of these points and many others which would render this note too long to read) is that NNSA is proposing, and Congress is still funding, a stockpile plan and schedule which lack a) any logical basis and b) any practical means of realization. Money is not the limiting factor, either. The fundamental problem underlying NNSA's poor management is that its stockpile program of record is, in a single word, too stupid to succeed. Proceeding along the present course will certainly fail.
I have written a couple of recent guest editorials on the pit question, which are linked and appended below the line.
As you know I put together some wider policy considerations here, which also explains why failure is likely: The Great Transformation: Nuclear Weapons Policy Considerations for the 116th Congress, Mello, May 6, 2019
Thank you for your attention,
Greg Mello
- Guest editorial on pits, Mello: (pending)
Every US nuclear warhead and bomb has a plutonium core, or “pit.” Not counting surplus pits, the US has about 11,000 usable pits, which will remain serviceable until the 2060s or after, according to a 2008 joint DOE/Pentagon report.
Despite the absence of a clear need to produce pits any time soon, in June 2017 the current Administration decided the US must have, by 2030, an operating pit production capacity making a minimum of 80 pits per year (ppy), single-shift. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) estimates this would provide an average of 103 ppy.
By October 2017, a detailed analysis by NNSA had concluded that pit production in a repurposed MOX facility had the least capital cost, most attractive schedule, and lowest program risk of any alternative.
In April 2018, NNSA contractors finished an engineering assessment (EA) of four alternatives, which observed that standing up a production capability at the Savannah River Site in addition to the smaller program at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) would entail large extra costs. All-LANL alternatives were however estimated, despite the rosy assumptions used, to have higher failure risks.
Shockingly, the EA omitted to mention that LANL’s plutonium facility, upon which all LANL options depend, would need replacement during the 50-year life-cycle analyzed. The LANL facility was designed in the early 1970s for research, not production, and lacks safety-class fire protection and ventilation. Its seismic safety is still unknown. In 2017 NNSA formally decided this facility provided no enduring production capability. Replacement, if possible at all, would cost much more than the MOX facility has cost.
In May 2018, NNSA and DoD decided to rely on LANL for 30 ppy (and training), and on SRS for an additional 50 ppy, which unlike LANL could be readily expanded.
In April 2019 the Institute for Defense Analyses concluded (as NNSA also had in 2017) that the 2030 deadline was virtually impossible, and any attempt to rush pit production was likely to prove counterproductive.
DoD, NNSA, and Congress must now revisit their decisions. Congress is in the process of doing so.
LANL was assigned the pit mission in 1996. Twenty-three years and many billions later, LANL’s capacity is zero. It will remain zero until essential repairs, installations, and safety enhancements are complete. This will take at least five years and cost, according to NNSA, $3 billion.
Success would be unprecedented. Many obstacles lie ahead, including the profound institutional mismatch of trying to jam a high-hazard production mission into a scientific laboratory, and LANL’s intractable, severe cultural problems. NNSA doesn’t acknowledge half these problems and has no plan for dealing with the rest.
LANL is entirely unsuited to production for fundamental, unchangeable reasons. Washington diktat can’t change LANL’s inappropriate location, topography, geology, institutional identity, and culture. If NNSA wants more than R&D, pilot production, and training, SRS is the only option.
But again, why the rush? DoD and NNSA must revise their arbitrary requirements in accordance with reality. There are far better near-term uses for these funds.
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