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Department of Energy nearing production of first war reserve plutonium pit
The Department of Energy is nearing the production of the first war reserve plutonium pit, the No. 2 official in the National Nuclear Security Administration said recently. Los Alamos National Laboratory is hoping to produce the first war reserve plutonium pit this year, Frank Rose, principal deputy director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said during a Jan. 8 visit to the Savannah River Site. "We hope to produce the first war reserve pit later this year," Rose said. "It is a pit that's certified to go into an operational mission. Why that's important? One, it shows that we're actually making progress." The production of the first war reserve pit is a step forward in the National Nuclear Security Administration's plans to produce 80 war reserve pits per year by the mid-2030s. The administration plans to produce 30 pits per year at Los Alamos beginning in 2030 and 50 pits per year at the Savannah River Site's Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility beginning in the mid-2030s. Specifically, the administration plans to remove existing pits from nuclear weapons at the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, and ship the pits to Los Alamos and the Savannah River Site. At either facility, the administration plans to use a pyrochemical process — really hot temperatures and chemicals — to remove impurities in the pit. Plutonium is a notoriously unstable element and atoms of it decay into other elements — uranium, neptunium and americium — over time, according to a National Security Science explanation of pit production. The impurities will be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, and the purified plutonium from several pits will be combined into a new pit. The administration originally planned to begin production of pits at the Savannah River Site facility in 2030, but that date has been moved back to the mid-2030s. The date change could remind some Aiken residents of a previous plan to build the Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site. That facility was constantly delayed and involved several billions of cost overruns before it was cancelled. Pit production is different from MOX, Rose said. "In regard to pit production, this is on the critical path to the U.S. nuclear modernization program," Rose said. "MOX never was. That was about disposing of excess plutonium. It wasn't about making sure that our weapons are safe, secure and reliable." Another concern Aiken residents may have is that a change in the ultimate decision makers, the president and Congress, could change the administration's plan. This isn't a concern, Rose said. He said the Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations have all remained committed to nuclear weapon modernization because of the geopolitical landscape of the early 21st century: an aggressive Russia and a China that's committed to upgrading its own nuclear arsenal. |
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