Plutonium pit production in SC might happen in 2035. The target was 2030.

• By Colin Demarest cdemarest@aikenstandard.com
• June 12, 2021

Over the course of two weeks, a government pledge, that dozens of nuclear weapon cores known as pits could be made by 2030 at new and improved facilities some 1,600 miles apart, publicly crumbled.

Cracks began to show late last month. On May 27, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration, former Sandia National Laboratories director Jill Hruby, said a plutonium pit factory proposed for the Savannah River Site would likely bear fruit years later than initially hoped.

Then came the president’s fiscal year 2022 budget request: The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, the hub Hruby referenced, could be ready as late as fiscal year 2035 and could cost billions of dollars more than previously projected, it read.

And then on June 10, Dr. Charles Verdon, the acting leader of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told Congress his agency no longer thinks it is possible to produce 50 plutonium pits in South Carolina by the 2030 deadline, hobbling the grander plan.

What was once a whisper – scuttlebutt floated through events and gatherings, passed from person to person like a grown-up game of telephone – has now been affirmatively stated, captured on livestreams and on the pages of federal spending blueprints.

Officials have described the revival of plutonium pit production as a necessity; the U.S. has for years been unable to craft the key warhead components en masse, and that has perturbed those charged with maintaining the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal. (The last place where plutonium pits were made in great volume, the Rocky Flats Plant, was raided by the FBI and EPA. It was later scuttled.)

Two heads – one current, one former – of U.S. Strategic Command have described renewed pit production as crucial to the wellness of the nuclear stockpile. Without the capability, Adm. Charles Richard has said, “the only alternative is to now start to accept pits that have aged past the point that we have a good analytical basis to have confidence in their operation.”

“We don’t have data that says they will work. We don’t have data that says they won’t work,” the STRATCOM boss said. “But if we don’t reach 80 pits per year, we’re going to, kind of, find out the hard way how that works out.”

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican whose congressional district includes the Savannah River Site and all of Aiken County, considers pit production delays a serious concern. A request for comment made to the office of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was not immediately returned.

“Right now, the U.S. is the only nuclear state that cannot produce a war-ready pit,” Wilson, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Aiken Standard this week. “This makes plutonium pit production the top priority when it comes to our nuclear modernization.”

“Learning from past mistakes and working in partnership with the Los Alamos National Laboratory,” he continued, “I am optimistic about NNSA’s approach to achieving pit production capabilities at the Savannah River Site.”

To meet the military demand for plutonium triggers, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Defense in 2018 formally recommend a tandem approach, what some reference as the two-site solution: 50 pits per year would be made south of Aiken at the Savannah River Site, they counseled, and 30 pits per year would be made at Los Alamos National Lab, near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In an interview in 2019, then-National Nuclear Security Administration chief Lisa Gordon-Hagerty told the Aiken Standard she was “absolutely confident that we will make not less than 80 pits by 2030. That is our plan. That is our goal. That is our effort.”

“It’s a high bar, I have to say that. It is absolutely a high bar,” Gordon-Hagerty presciently admitted, or hedged. “But I believe that our entire infrastructure, the investments that we’re making, and the commitment of our enterprise, we can do it.”

Despite the newly publicized woes, the South Carolina-New Mexico approach is still seen as the best option, Verdon said Thursday. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Hruby have endorsed the two-prong strategy, which took off during the Trump administration.

“When we look at the schedule, when we look at the cost, it still comes out to be the most effective way for us to implement and to achieve that requirement,” Verdon said, “to take advantage of both the existing facilities at Los Alamos and at Savannah River to implement pit production.”

Doing it all at Los Alamos, the acting administrator suggested Thursday, is not possible. But older National Nuclear Security Administration reviews have shown both Los Alamos and the Savannah River Site could boost production and staffing to hit 80 pits – the sought-after figure. Exactly when that would be possible, though, is unclear.

“Even with a potential surge in production at Los Alamos, there remains uncertainty about that capability, especially with their history of outages,” Wilson said this week. “I plan on continuing frequent dialogue with both NNSA officials and military leadership to address the best strategy to mitigate this risk.”

A major decision about plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site – at the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, a transformed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility – is expected in the coming weeks. Verdon confirmed that to Wilson on Thursday. The Los Alamos pit production venture, at a ballpark cost of $3.9 billion, got the green light earlier this year.

Watchdog groups and independent monitors expect costs to balloon.

“Based on Dr. Verdon’s testimony last month at the Senate Armed Services Committee, he estimated that one site would be almost twice as expensive as doing the two-site solution,” Wilson said. “While the high-end price tag is steep, it is currently the best and most resilient option for our national security moving forward.”

More precise cost and schedule information will roll out as the respective projects progress.