House Armed Services Committee Chair says he supports pit production at Savannah River Site

• By Matthew Christian mchristian@aikenstandard.com
• June 17, 2022

The chair of the House Armed Services Committee says he supports the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plans to produce pits at the Savannah River Site and Los Alamos in New Mexico.

U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Washington, told reporters this week that Congress should move forward with the plan to produce 80 pits per year by 2030. 

In order to understand what pits are, it’s important to remember that all matter is composed of millions of tiny atoms, that atoms consist of protons, neutrons and electrons and that protons and neutrons form the nucleus at the center of an atom.

Normally, the nucleus of an atom is stable and doesn’t change but the nuclei of certain elements, hydrogen, uranium and plutonium, can begin to change when an extra neutron is added. When a neutron is added to uranium or plutonium, the nucleus splits into smaller versions of itself releasing energy and neutrons. This is known as nuclear fission.

Those neutrons can cause a chain reaction when they’re absorbed by nearby atoms of uranium or plutonium. In nuclear weapons, this chain reaction is uncontrolled and begins when neutrons are injected into a plutonium shell, called a pit, by an inward-focused explosion. Over time, the plutonium in these shells can begin to change on its own which necessitates their replacement every so often.

The National Nuclear Security Administration has announced plans to construct the replacements at the Savannah River Site and Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Smith’s comments mark a change from August when he said at a Brookings Institution event that he was highly skeptical that the former Mixed-Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site could be turned into a pit production facility. Smith said the Savannah River Site gave him an involuntary twitch after the failure of the MOX facility and that he didn’t believe the site could produce the pits the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan calls for it to by 2030. 

Construction on the MOX facility began in 2007, seven years after the U.S. and Russia signed an agreement to convert surplus plutonium into mixed oxide fuel that can be used for nuclear power generation; however, the facility quickly fell behind schedule, ran over budget and was ultimately canceled by President Barack Obama in 2016. 

Because the facility was supposed to dispose of surplus plutonium, lots of plutonium was moved to the K-Area of Savannah River Site to await the new facility coming online. When that didn’t happen, South Carolina sued the federal government over an agreement that required the federal government to move the plutonium out of the state if the facility didn’t start production by 2016. This litigation ultimately resulted in the state’s $600 million settlement with the federal government.  

Smith’s predictions of difficulties with pit production at the site appear to be coming true: the National Nuclear Security Administration has said that production of 80 pits per year by 2030 wasn’t going to happen and that the production facility at the Savannah River Site could cost up to $11.1 billion and may not be completed until 2035.