For immediate release June 1, 2021

Administration budget for warhead cores ("pits") jumps again, as Biden team struggles with Trump's rushed "double-factory" plan

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-577-8563 cell
Permalink * Prior press releases

Albuquerque, NM -- The National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA's) fiscal year 2022 (FY22) budget request, delivered after business hours on the Friday preceding Memorial Day weekend, continues the Trump policy of building two separate factories to produce plutonium cores ("pits") for nuclear warheads -- a smaller one at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and a larger one at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. NNSA hopes LANL will produce at least 30 pits per year (ppy) starting in 2026, while SRS is to produce at least 50 ppy -- up to now, by 2030.

The day before the budget was released, Jill Hruby, the Biden nominee for NNSA Administrator, predicted that the SRS plant will start producing the required 50 ppy not by 2030, as NNSA has consistently testified since 2018, but by some time between 2030 and 2035 (5/27/21 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, at 56:55. See note 1 below).

Hruby believes LANL will be able to meet its 2026 deadline for producing 30 ppy.

The new budget request publicly confirms what has been an open secret in Washington for some months: the larger SRS pit facility, dubbed the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF), is going to cost more than twice the $4.6 billion that was estimated in 2018 (slide 8).

NNSA now estimates SRPPF may cost as much as $11.1 billion and will not be completed until the 2032-2035 timeframe (p. 211), 4-5 years later than the highly-optimistic "2026-2030" estimated by NNSA's consultants (slide 8).

Of note, NNSA's budget is contradictory on the question of whether the $11.1 billion is actually the upper end of estimated SRPPF costs (compare pp. 211 & 215 vs. pp. 220, 225, 232). We believe NNSA's upper-end estimate for SRPPF may be greater than Friday's budget says. A formal "Critical Decision One" (CD-1, "Approve Alternative Selection and Cost Range") is expected later this month.

The new SRPPF budget implies an average out-year annual cost of $766 million to $996 million ($9.96 billion divided by 10-13 years).

The smaller of the two pit factories, centered in LANL's 1970's-vintage main plutonium facility ("PF-4"), has also increased in cost. As will be explained further below, LANL's startup costs are now at least $10 billion, spread across at least three large construction projects and many smaller ones -- and separately, in a massive program with operational and capital equipment costs poised to soon reach nearly a steady billion dollars a year henceforth, for as long as production continues. NNSA is now requesting $660 million for the "LANL Plutonium Modernization Program" for FY22, $25 million more than NNSA estimated last year.

In late April NNSA announced that LANL's main pit production infrastructure project, the "Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project" (LAP4) had achieved CD-1 -- and in the process, roughly doubled in price ("NNSA announces huge cost increase for mysterious LANL plutonium warhead project; Project schedule extends well past legal deadline", Apr 28, 2021). In addition to the $636 million that will have been appropriated by the end of FY22, assuming Friday's request is fully funded, LAP4 will need an average of $543 million/year for the following 6 years.

The other two main infrastructure projects working in and around LANL's PF-4 are the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) Project (current total cost, $2.87 billion, with $835 million yet to go, p. 518) and the "TA-55 Reinvestment Project, Phase III" (TRP III, current total cost, $236 million, p. 450). The ever-evolving CMRR project has postponed its completion date by some 18 years (p. 494). The TRP III schedule has slipped over a year since February 2020 (p. 449).

Other pit-production-driven infrastructure projects at LANL have been completed recently or are nearly complete, including the Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility upgrades, the Transuranic Liquid Waste Facility (TLWF), and the Transuranic [solid] Waste Facility. Many other smaller projects have been or are being pursued using General Plant Project (GPP) and other funding lines.

The LAP4 project does not include acquiring the equipment needed for pit production up to 10 ppy, which is currently not present but is being installed using Plutonium Modernization Program (i.e. operational) funds (p. 210). Neither does LAP4 include "other infrastructure upgrades necessary to support pit production goals," which "will be acquired by other means" (p. 205). NNSA does not say what these additional LANL infrastructure projects are, or will be.

LAP4 consists only of a) deactivation and decommissioning gloveboxes and equipment in PF-4 in preparation for installation of pit production equipment; b) installation of equipment to increase LANL's production rate to 30 ppy (with equipment for the first 10 ppy provided by program funds as noted); c) a new entry control facility; and d) a pit production training facility.

All three of LANL's main pit production construction projects are expected to complete well after the 4th quarter of 2025, and thus will not be finished in time to begin the FY25 or FY26 production year, when 20 ppy and 30 ppy are required. LAP4 is slated to complete in the 4th quarter of FY28; CMRR in 4Q29; and TRP III in 3Q27. This raises questions as to the actual purpose of these projects, as well as the likelihood of meeting production deadlines while the construction that is supposed to make production possible is far from finished.

Using this budget request and the previous one as necessary, construction costs incurred since FY19 (when LAP4 began), plus costs expected through completion, for LAP4, CMRR, TRP III, and TLWF only, total $5.59 billion.

LANL Plutonium Modernization Program costs will total about $5 billion over the FY19-FY26 period.

Thus assuming no further cost increases, startup costs for pit production at LANL will exceed $10 billion.

As noted previously, LANL's cost per pit will be in the $50 million range (slides 23-31; see note 2), largely due to the necessity of staffing two production shifts in LANL's small plutonium facility. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the marginal cost of pits made at SRS -- that is, pits made at SRS once SRPPF is fully operational and thus unaffected by the new construction estimate -- at roughly $6 million each (p. 14). Thus LANL's per-pit costs will dwarf SRS's, due to the former's smaller capacity and need for multiple shifts.

Of considerable interest, NNSA asserts that PF-4, which began operation in 1978, can remain operational through 2078 (p. 209), a century later.

Further details on this evolving picture can be found in a detailed May 17 letter to congressional and administration staff, and in the links provided in that letter. As we note there:

If we assume that no pit older than 55 years will be used in a life extension program (LEP), a 30 ppy facility starting up in 2026 and running perfectly thereafter could, by itself, build a new-pit stockpile of about 540 warheads, including spares and surveillance units, by 2044. If existing pits could be used in LEPs conducted than 2044, a larger stockpile could be supported -- larger by 30 warheads for every year past 2044....Allowing pits up to 70 years old in LEPs would enable a 30 ppy facility to support a roughly 990-warhead stockpile.

That being the case, and as much as some of us would prefer a much smaller stockpile than today's 3,800 warheads, an immediate commitment to a 74% to 86% cut -- which is what sole reliance on a 30 ppy facility would mean -- is not politically realistic. And again, the notion that PF-4 would or could be a reliable 30 ppy facility, let alone remain reliable over any length of time even assuming on-time, successful startup, is ridiculous. PF-4, built for other purposes in 1978, with or without augmentation by other facilities, is far from a "forever facility."

SRPPF is the only adequate, timely pit production infrastructure project available, however much some may object to this fact on ideological or partisan grounds. Unlike PF-4, SRPPF is a) adequate and b) enduring.

SRPPF will be expensive -- although even at $10-14 billion (B) it is no more expensive than starting up pit production at LANL, as it turns out (see slides 23-31; estimated LANL costs have increased by roughly $2 B since then).

What may not be obvious to new members of Congress, or to others new to the issue, is that the "two-site" pit production strategy announced by NNSA in May 2018 actually implies more than these two pit production facilities -- at least three but possibly as many as four or more remodeled plutonium facilities. That two-site policy is an expensive mistake. Only SRPPF is needed, because pits are not needed in the 2020s.

Study Group director Greg Mello:

"First, a month ago, we had the announcement that the sucker's price, the down payment, for LANL's pit facility modifications had doubled in price. Then came official testimony that, like it or not, the 2030 deadline to produce 80 pits per year is unlikely to be met -- no surprise there! Then came the May 28 announcement that the Savannah River pit project was going to cost much more than originally advertised, and take much longer to build. Well, more shoes will drop. Pit production is expensive, difficult, dangerous -- and unnecessary any time soon even if you want to keep a huge arsenal. Which is madness to begin with. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, as they say.

"The new administration's nuclear weapons budget is the residue of decades of this madness. At LANL alone, more than $4 billion will be spent this year. In constant dollars, LANL now spends 10 times what it did when it was developing H-bombs in the early 1950s. Our nuclear weapons establishment is morbidly obese.

"Now that the painful ordeal of producing a budget based on little but blind momentum is past, it's time for the Biden Administration to assess the benefit, and the cost, for making more than a de minimus number of pits in the 2020s and early 2030s.

"Why in the world would the Biden Administration want to set up an emergency, quite likely temporary, pit facility at LANL, in a small old facility that has to operate 24/7, when there is a brand new facility five times the size of LANL's waiting to be remodeled, one ten times farther from residences and far more accessible for workers? 

"The problem for many progressives and arms controllers who want to concentrate pit production at LANL -- the management problem, the budgetary problem, the environmental problem, the social justice problem -- is that building a pit factory at LANL ALSO requires a pit factory at Savannah River. It requires both. The reverse is not true: production at SRS would be enough. In truth, production at LANL requires more than two plutonium facilities, because the LANL facility is too small, too unsafe, and too old. It's a fixer-upper with deeper problems than meets the eye. NNSA hints at these problems when it says it sees the need for "other infrastructure upgrades necessary to support pit production goals."

"Here's another mystery: "Why would people who oppose the new W87-1 warhead support early pit production, the only purpose of which is to support that warhead? The only real justification for investing in pit production at LANL is to get as many pits as possible in the 2025-2035 decade, for the W87-1. Why do that?

Notes:

1. Whether she is confirmed or not, Hruby's testimony last week on the timetable for pit production liberated the new Administration from an impossible deadline. In 2014 Congress (pp. 3885-7) established a requirement to create the capacity to produce at least 80 ppy by no later than 2029, preferably no later than 2027. On November 25, 2015 the Obama Administration formally approved the need for a new infrastructure project at LANL (the "Plutonium Modular Approach") to meet this requirement (p. 4). In 2016, still on Obama's watch, the Nuclear Weapons Council validated this 80 ppy requirement (p. 1), by then specified in detail (pp. 5-6). By September of 2017, with NNSA under Trump but still being run by Obama appointee Frank Klotz -- NNSA knew it would be impossible to achieve 80 ppy prior to 2033 (p. 2), assuming facility design were to begin immediately (it did not).

After Klotz, the new leadership of Lisa Gordon-Hagerty and her deputy Charles Verdon stuck to an ambitious "at least 80 ppy by 2030" policy throughout their tenure. By late 2019 Congress had made this a statutory requirement. Congress did so despite (or because of) a March 2019 review of NNSA's pit production plans by the Institute for Defense Analyses, which found that a 2030 deadline would be virtually impossible to meet, and efforts to do so would be counterproductive (pp. v - vii).

Finally in December 2020 Congress managed to pass a compromise measure that would allow up to a five-year delay in the 80 ppy capacity requirement under certain conditions (text, discussion).

Thus Hruby's testimony, to the effect that the 2030 deadline was unlikely to be met, articulated a long-standing expert consensus -- now a force majeure, given the greater duration of the SRPPF project.

2. The new budget changes the details, but not the overall per-pit cost, that was presented in this briefing. If anything it is higher. That briefing assumed LANL would produce an average of 43 pits each year, following NNSA's interpretation of "at least 30 ppy" as noted there. Upon current information and belief, the estimated maximum average capacity at LANL is 30 ppy, 30% less, making per-pit costs correspondingly higher. And as noted above, LAP4 will cost about $2 billion more than previously thought.

***ENDS***