|
(Letter to many key congressional, executive staff)
May 10, 2022
Re: New resources on plutonium pit production
- "NNSA budget request for Los Alamos warhead "pit" project adds five proposed plutonium buildings, fresh rad waste cost overruns, adding $329 million to LANL pit costs; Meanwhile, White House cuts $500 million from DOE's "requirements-based" budget for Savannah River Site pit project," May 9, 2022
- Warhead plutonium modernization spending, actual & proposed by year, budget line, and site, May 6, 2022 (link is to pdf; ask me for the live spreadsheet if you want; an attachment might be unwanted or prevent delivery of this email)
- NNSA: early pit production a "hedge," not strictly necessary; is there a "pit gap?", May 3, 2022
- NNSA letter to HASC Chair Adam Smith re: unfunded priorities, Apr 12, 2022 (new to us and perhaps to some of you; referenced in 1. above)
Dear colleagues --
These and other resources can be found here.
Regarding 1:
- It is difficult to avoid the impression that within the Plutonium Modernization Program, cost overruns and additional program scope at LANL are being paid for by cuts to the SRS portion of the Program, cuts that may delay startup and full production at SRS, as Dr. Hruby testified in the SASC on May 4 when questioned by Senator Fischer. That said, we have limited visibility into the SRPPF project. We suspect SRPPF competes with LAP4 for scarce federal attention, limited glovebox manufacturing capacity, and skilled labor.
- We do not understand why LANL's twin liquid waste projects are so fraught, especially the Transuranic Liquid Waste Facility. The subject appears ripe for a third DOE Inspector General investigation.
- There are also difficulties regarding solid TRU at LANL which we did not mention here, documented (for example) in the May 2021 NNSA Assessment of Pit Production at LANL. Competition between legacy TRU waste shipments and new (Triad) TRU shipments is ongoing. In addition, Triad lacks capability to reduce the size of large TRU objects, such as gloveboxes, to prepare them for shipment and disposal.
- As mentioned in 1., and despite a concerted effort to limit "bad news," there is a lot of it out here at LANL, which we hope summarize as quickly as possible for you and others.
Regarding 2:
- There are a lot of misconceptions about what NNSA's program to reconstitute pit production will, or may, cost. This spreadsheet is our best shot.
- There is no fully objective way to tally some of these costs -- a small portion of them are necessary even without a pit manufacturing program. Neither is it clear to us whether some needed pit expenses are included in LANL program costs. Other pit production costs appear indirectly in the costs of site-wide expansion. We omit all these costs, as well as all the sunk costs associated with the LANL pit production program over the 1997-2018 period, except those shown.
- That said, pit production is going to cost at least $30 billion through FY33, a year we have chosen as the most optimistic year for full production at SRS. There is considerable ambiguity and uncertainty as to that date, and Congress has not received a consistent message about it. Does the "2032-2035" window apply to full production, or to completion of construction, with a multiyear startup process still to come? It seems to us that both major pit projections are in considerable trouble, for different reasons.
- Regarding costs at LANL in particular, Congress has been treated to many years of deceptively small numbers, which trace back to over-optimistic projections by the LANL M&O contractor and its congressional advocates.
Here is an example of Senator Reed using a cost figure for LANL last year that was an order of magnitude too low.
In 2017, NNSA said LANL could reach a 30 ppy "plutonium sustainment" production level (not at all the same as reliably producing 30 ppy in 9 out of 10 years) at a total cost of $3 billion (B) (a $2 B capital investment plus $1 B in operating expenses from FY2018 to FY2026) (NNSA, slide 2). This was single-shift production.
That cost is much more now. Using FY28 as a date for "completion" of preparation for reliable pit production at LANL, and even omitting all costs prior to FY19 and omitting all the other costs as noted, our best estimate of the cost of starting up 30 ppy pit production at LANL is now $14.08 B minus the $1.85 B spent before FY19 or $12.2 B, i.e. four times as high.
In 1996, LANL was assigned an "interim" pit production mission, partly on the basis of faulty assumptions made in the Analysis of Stockpile Management Alternatives (DOE, July 1996). There, DOE said that acquiring a production capacity of 50 pits per year (ppy), with a single shift working 5 days per week at LANL would require a $310 million (M) capital investment, followed by $30 M/year operating costs. Full production could begin in 2002 (p. 8-7), i.e. in six years. An additional $44 M in capital investment would provide a capacity of 100 ppy, again working with a single shift for 5 days per week (p. 8-19). 100 ppy was thought to be the maximum LANL capacity (p. 8-2). (Multiply those dollars by 1.85 to arrive at today's value using a CPI inflator.)
Regarding 3:
- We provide a few reasons why we believe the risks inherent in long-term projects of any kind are much greater than is usually appreciated.
Thank you for your attention and work.
Greg Mello
|
