Update as of 14 Feb 2022: "Admiral Asks, What is NNSA’s ‘Real Capacity’ for Pits and When Can Agency ‘Really’ Make Them," Exchange Monitor Publications, Dan Leone, 11 February 2022, is now mirrored here, with permission.

For immediate release February 12, 2022

Nuclear Warhead Agency Admits Los Alamos Likely to Miss Interim Warhead Core Deadlines

Review of value, cost, of Los Alamos factory needed

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell

Permalink * Prior press releases

Albuquerque, NM -- The outgoing Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Dr. Charles Verdon, said on Tuesday (February 8, 2022) that NNSA has "challenges" to overcome in meeting its interim statutory warhead core ("pit") production deadlines at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), while expressing confidence that the "real goal" of producing 30 pits in 2026 would be met ("Admiral Asks, What is NNSA’s ‘Real Capacity’ for Pits and When Can Agency ‘Really’ Make Them," NSDM, Dan Leone, 2/11/22, paywall).

NNSA's basic statutory requirements are to produce:

• At least 1 War Reserve (WR) pit in 2023;
• At least 10 WR pits in 2024;
• At least 20 WR pits in 2025;
• At least 30 WR pits in 2026; and
  
• At least 80 WR pits in 2030.

None of these is a "goal." In addition,

Los Alamos National Laboratory will produce a minimum of 30 pits per year [no date specified] for the national pit production mission and will implement surge efforts to exceed 30 pits per year to meet Nuclear Posture Review and national policy.

According to NSDM, Verdon went on to say "[W]e’re trying to find out ways to get more time to schedule implementation of equipment” at LANL. He suggested the early production deadlines "serve as a good metric to force the system....If we only make nine in '25, it shouldn’t be viewed as a failure.” (NSDM, same article.)

LANL Director Dr. Thom Mason threw more shadow on expectations when, in response to reporter Dan Leone's question, he said LANL's “thirty pit per year capability is based on assumptions in terms of staffing, how many shifts you’re running, how efficient are you in using that equipment and also the expected downtime you would have due to equipment failures and maintenance and all that sort of stuff... Embedded in that plan is a capacity to do more than 30, at least for a period of time.” (same article.)

Regardless of what happens at LANL, NNSA will not meet its pit production requirement of at least 80 pits in 2030 and in every year thereafter. In May of 2021, NNSA finally admitted --again -- that it could not meet that deadline ("SRS Pit Plant Might be Five Years Later Than Hoped, NNSA Administrator-Designate Tells Senators," NSDM, Dan Leone, May 28, 2021).

Congress and the Trump NNSA had been ignoring the agency's own 2017 conclusion that achieving production of at least 80 pits per year (ppy) could not be done prior to 2033 at the earliest (p. 2), which in effect became 2034 because NNSA and Congress delayed choosing and initiating the required facility for a year.

NNSA and Congress had also ignored stern warnings from the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) that a) the 80 ppy by 2030 production goal was impossible, and b) trying to increase production at LANL installing more equipment and operating a second shift in LANL's old, small main plutonium facility (Building PF-4) is a "very high risk" strategy -- as all parties are now learning, by direct experience.

The Trump NNSA chose, and the Biden NNSA is implementing, a pit plan at LANL it had been strongly advised to reject.

Some of LANL's on-going difficulties were foreshadowed in a May 2021 internal NNSA assessment of LANL's pit production plan, which was rather lukewarm (assessment, our summary).

Verdon's and Mason's comments were made at the Exchange Monitor's "Nuclear Deterrence Summit" in Arlington, VA. The day after Verdon's comments, Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe, Director of the Navy's Strategic Systems Programs, said the Nuclear Weapons Council was “really spending a lot of time and focus to understand, what is the real capacity going to be? When are we really going to get to that capacity?” (NSDM, 2/11/22).

Study Group director Greg Mello:

Dr. Verdon is still not being completely candid. As we said two days ago, even the public portion of LANL's pit production plans doesn't make sense. To repeat:

We believe it is already clear to close observers that pit production at LANL will fail to meet the statutory requirement of producing 30 pits per year in 2026 and reliably continue production at that rate or higher.

There are just too many unresolved problems, some of which really can't be fixed, for LANL to produce pits reliably and in quantity.

Even a year ago, big projects necessary for pit production had published schedules that extended all the way through 2028 in one case, and through 2029 in another. Safety issues are increasing and may never be resolved. Waste handling issues are still an unsolved conundrum. Hiring is not going well. Transportation issues remain unresolved. Other issues could be mentioned.

By the time the current suite of difficult problems is fixed -- if that ever happens -- others will crop up. Pit production at LANL is dependent not on just one or two but nine key facilities, most of which are old, inadequate, or mismatched-to-mission. 

LANL is just a terrible place for an industrial plutonium mission and the new administration is in the process of finding that out.

Will NNSA admit these problems in congressional testimony this year?

Given this week's revelations, it looks like NNSA will tell Congress, "Don't worry, while we are likely to miss our deadlines for 2024 and 2025, we are likely to meet our 2026 'goal,' provided you appropriate generously."

Admiral Wolfe's questions are good, but deeper questions are needed. What is the cost of pit production in the 2020s and early 2030s, at LANL? LANL believes its startup costs over this decade alone will run to $18 billion. The cost per LANL pit is at least $50 million, assuming production goes perfectly. It won't, so the per-pit cost is likely quite a bit higher. Using LANL pits will at least quadruple the currently-estimated cost of W87-1 warheads.

NNSA has kept Congress from understanding what it is buying when it funds pit production a decade before it would otherwise be needed, just for early production of that warhead.

What is the value of pit production in the 2020s, then? What is the United States getting for all these billions? All preliminary indications are that LANL pit production will be unreliable in both the short and the long run. It is also early-to-need for the stockpile, and competes with a far more solid project centered in a large new building with adequate capacity and lower overall cost, which would come on line in the early-to-mid-2030s. To repeat, LANL's is the costlier project (here and here).

Why is the Biden NNSA continuing with the very strategy that was advised against by the Institute of Defense Analyses -- trying to cram more equipment into PF-4 and running that old facility 24/7? Using LANL's PF-4 for industrial pit production was rejected altogether by Obama's NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz (p. 2), as was the whole idea of building and running two pit factories (same report).

Building two parallel pit production plants more than doubles the overall program cost and will lengthen the schedule, since the two endeavors compete for federal and contractor staff as well as for specialized equipment. The Biden Administration and Congress should reexamine the approach taken by the Trump Administration, which is apparently failing.

***ENDS***