Albuquerque, NM -- Acquisition of plutonium warhead core ("pit") production capacity is the largest warhead program since the end of the Cold War. It is by far the largest endeavor in the 23-year history of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

An August 2021 analysis (spreadsheet, discussion) of NNSA cost and personnel estimates found that NNSA's pit production program would cost between $32 and $39 billion (B) from FY19 through fiscal year (FY) 2033, with $18-20 B of these costs at LANL. [1]

For its part, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) estimated in 2021 that its pit production costs over the present decade would be $18 B, $3.7 B higher than our high-end estimate for that period, based on NNSA's projections.

Poor transparency, no accountability

NNSA has never prepared a complete budget for pit production -- especially at LANL, where billions of dollars of costs driven by pit production, but not included in the "Plutonium Modernization" budget line, are occurring and planned (see this discussion). Complete project data sheets for the main construction projects have not been provided to Congress, and accountability for program (operating) expenses is almost nonexistent. Pit production is also cryptically supported by other budget lines such as increases in site security, to pick just one.

In May 2018 the Trump Administration, under pressure from New Mexico Democrats and congressional hawks in both parties, chose for the first time in history to build two pit production facilities at two sites, instead of one (fact sheet, statements and letters here, here, and here). The cost will be more than twice that of a single, adequate production site.

This 30/50 pit-per-year (ppy) "split production" option had been rejected by NNSA in 2017 for economic and feasibility reasons (pp. 45-46). At present, the costs are invisible to Congress and the public.

Economies of scale

Pit production has enormous economies of scale. The cost of building and starting a "small" pit factory is essentially the same as for a large one within estimating precision (see discussion and references, slide 28; also NNSA's slide 4, which estimates that tripling the capacity of a new facility would cost just 10% more).

The baseline design and cost of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF) -- the pit production facility at the Savannah River Site (SRS) now under development -- will have considerable surge capacity, "far beyond 80 ppy," creating "built-in redundancy and resilience," according to senior project sources.

Upon information and belief, the capacity of SRPPF as currently designed will be sufficient for 80 ppy.

In 2017 NNSA estimated that providing for 80 ppy as versus 50 ppy at a facility like SRPPF would require only 22 additional pieces of equipment (p. 45) in a small additional space, easily accommodated in the SRPPF building (p. 2-30).

To meet the full 80 ppy production requirement at LANL, on the other hand, would require a new nuclear facility that would be even more costly than SRPPF, according to Michael Thompson, Principal Deputy Assistant NNSA Administrator, speaking at the August 2021 Nuclear Deterrence Summit. This was also a conclusion of NNSA's 2017 analysis (slide 9).

A new production facility project begun at LANL today, assuming one were possible (see outline, slides 33-34), might not be in full production until the early 2040s (just add 6 years to NNSA's estimates at slide 9; see also discussion at our slide 9 here).

Sticker shock

In 2017, NNSA told Congress (slide 2) -- and at least until 2020, others such as the Government Accountability Office (GAO, p. 15) -- that startup costs at LANL would be $3 B for a 30 pit per year (ppy) capacity.

Despite having the "development and demonstration" pit mission (not the actual stockpile production mission) since 1996 (see references and discussion at slide 9 here), more than two decades ago, LANL's estimated costs to start pit production have exploded six-fold in the last four and half years.

Costs to bring the larger SRPPF on line at the Savannah River Site (SRS), with a nominal capacity of 50 ppy, were estimated at $4.6 B in 2020 (GAO, p. 15). In 2021, a year later, NNSA estimated the cost of the SRS pit factory at $6.9 to 11.1 B, roughly double.

About $2 B of LANL's $11-15 B projected cost increase over this decade is due to higher-than-expected costs for its central pit production renovation project, the Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project (LAP4). Clearly, this is only a "small" part of LANL's bad news. 

NNSA discovers that LANL's cramped facilities must be run around the clock to make pits

In its October 2017 and April 2018 studies (here, at p. 13, and here, at pp. 2-6, 2-7), upon which NNSA's May 2018 decision was reached, NNSA assumed that LANL's 30 ppy could be produced during a single production shift. [2]

By February 2020, that had changed. In its congressional budget request for FY2021 NNSA admitted for the first time that LANL's plutonium facility would need to run "24/7" to meet its 30 ppy production goal (p. 194).

One month later, in March 2020, NNSA spoke of "24-hour operations" with the addition of 1,600 full-time-equivalent (FTE) staff members to reach just 20 ppy (p. 12). Another 400 FTEs would be necessary to reach 30 ppy (p. 14).

Reliable sources told us that as of the beginning of 2020, LANL employed about 2,000 FTEs engaged in pit production. By May 2020 LANL employed 2,316 FTEs in pit production (p. 9). In August 2020 NNSA stated it needed to hire an additional 1,900 FTEs to reach the 30 ppy capacity (p. 15, 17), bringing the total LANL future pit production workforce needed for the 30 ppy mission to at least 4,216 FTEs.

By contrast the 2018 Engineering Assessment (EA) for pit production estimated that to produce all 80 ppy at LANL, LANL would need from 833 to 1,156 total FTEs, including both direct- and indirect-funded activities.

Thus, LANL's estimated staffing requirements have grown by more than a factor of four over the past four years, for 38% as many pits. LANL's staffing needs have grown by a factor of 11, per pit produced.

Never before in U.S. history has planned baseline pit production been dependent on multiple production shifts. [3]

Multiple production shifts create numerous operational, fiscal, and safety challenges as well as greater environmental impacts. NNSA's Engineering Assessment notes two production shifts increase costs due to "shift labor premiums, duplication of support and administrative staffing, increased power and utilities, and increased maintenance, repair, and replacement frequency for equipment," as well as cause an "increased threat to [adequate] training and qualifications for operations, surveillance, safety, and supervisory personnel" (p. 4-23).

In June of 2017, under Administrator Frank Klotz, NNSA ruled against using PF-4 for the enduring pit production mission (pp. 47-48). All dependence on PF-4 for enduring pit production was deemed “high risk” (p. 40). When a real pit production capability is established, “PF-4 can return to the research and development mission for which it was built” (p. 2).

NNSA's April 2018 Engineering Assessment found that the greater the dependence on PF-4 for pit production, the greater the risks to success (p. 4-24).

NNSA is still ignoring the stern 2019 warning from the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) that trying to increase production at LANL by installing more equipment and operating a second shift in LANL's old, small PF-4 building would be a "very high risk" strategy.

NNSA is thus pursuing the exact strategies it knows, and was warned, not to follow.

Round-the-clock operations at TA-55 have now begun, 3 years before the 20-ppy production level said to require it

At the beginning of February 2022, LANL began round-the-clock operations at its main plutonium facility (PF-4):

Plutonium Facility–Operations: This week, Triad management commenced operations in the facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the near-term, night shift activity will be similar type and tempo as to what was previously performed on the backshift. Longer term, they expect night shift activity to significantly ramp-up in tempo and complexity.

The reason for this is the staggering amount of, and complexity of, the work remaining to be done before LANL can reliably produce pits. Just considering the years between FY22 and FY28 inclusive, NNSA estimates include about $10 B worth of complexity at LANL. Triad's cost projection, as noted above, is more.

NNSA is not confident in LANL's production

As noted in detail in Bulletin 289, NNSA is itself lukewarm about its plan to produce plutonium pits at LANL (see NNSA's "Assessment," obtained by FOIA in redacted form). Nowhere in this "Assessment" can the reader find an endorsement, ringing or otherwise. Instead, NNSA concludes that "more work will need to be done to improve the current plan and mitigate risks" (p. iii).

Further, as NNSA has now admitted, LANL is likely to miss its interim pit deadlines prior to 2026.

We believe it is already clear to close observers that LANL pit production will not meet the statutory requirement of 30 ppy in 2026 and after. If LANL badly misses its 2024 and 2025 deadlines of 10 and 20 ppy respectively, why would LANL not also be likely to miss its 2026 deadline of 30 ppy?

Regardless of what happens at LANL, NNSA will not meet its pit production requirement of at least 80 pits in 2030

In May of 2021, NNSA finally admitted --again -- that it could not meet the 2030 deadline ("SRS Pit Plant Might be Five Years Later Than Hoped, NNSA Administrator-Designate Tells Senators," NSDM, Dan Leone, May 28, 2021).

Congress and NNSA have been ignoring, and in some respects still are ignoring, NNSA's 2017 conclusion that achieving production of at least 80 ppy could not be done prior to 2033 at the very earliest (p. 2), which in effect became 2034 because NNSA and Congress delayed initiating work on the SRS facility for a year.

The IDA told (p. vii) DoD, NNSA, and Congress the same thing in 2019: the 80 ppy, 2030 deadline was impossible. (See further references and discussion at slide 9 here).

Despite all this, as late as April or May 2021 NNSA was telling the Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) that it could meet the 2030 deadline, as was reported to us.

This week, STRATCOM Commander Adm. Charles Richard laid any remaining uncertainty to rest:

“We have crossed one of those points of no return that I referred to previously, in that we now know we will not get 80 pits per year by 2030, as is statutorily required, and even unlimited money at this point will not buy that back,” Richard said.

“So there is active work underway inside the Nuclear Weapons Council to understand exactly how much of a delay we are going to have, how much of it can be addressed by funding,” he said. “We’re not mitigating this problem. We have shot all the mitigation to get us to this point, the fourth time the nation has tried to recapitalize its production infrastructure. Now the question becomes, how much damage have we done? And what are the consequences of that? And we’re working to better understand that.”

(See video at 29:53.)

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Notes

[1] This dwarfs the second and third most expensive programs in NNSA's history, which are expected to be the W87-1 and W93 warhead programs, weighing in at $14 B and $18 B respectively (p. 5-27 here).

NNSA's FY2023 budget request, expected no sooner than March 23, will help refine these estimates but will almost certainly not shed further light on pit production costs incurred in other budget lines, for example in increased site security capital and operating costs.

The Omnibus Appropriations bill (H.R. 2471) passed by the House on 3/9/22 added to pit production costs at LANL by adding $30 million (M) to the Transuranic Liquid Waste Facility (07-D-220-04), which was expected to be completed in FY2021 at a total cost of $40.4, representing a 74% increase in total project cost. No other pit production cost increases were apparent. See the report (p. 153).

[2] The only two-shift pit production envisioned at LANL in the Engineering Assessment was one option (2c), which was included at LANL's request. Multiple-shift production was to be temporary in that option, which was judged to have 3 "very high threats" to success and 19 "moderate threats," far more risk than any other option, after risk mitigation efforts (pp. 4-23 and 4-24).

[3] In addition to the single-shift assumption in the 2017 Pit Production Analysis of Alternatives and the 2018 Engineering Assessment, see also NNSA, "Plutonium Pit Production in the 21st Century" with its single-shift baseline assumption (page 1). Options for the Modern Pit Facility (MPF) were evaluated for three possible single-shift production capacities (125, 250, and 450 ppy), each with a possibility of two-shift "surge" production if needed (p. 5-1 here). "Surge" production is by definition not baseline production.

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