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April 30, 2024
By Exchange Monitor
At a Monday meeting of the South Carolina governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council, the Savannah River Site’sprime contractor discussed starting plutonium pit production in the early 2030s and an antinuclear activistfrom New Mexico said the state should take on the government’s entire pit mission.
“We have put a stake in the ground that we will deliver a facility to
hot operations by 2032
,” and turn out thefirst production units by 2035, Dennis Carr, president and CEO of prime contractor Savannah River NuclearSolutions told the South Carolina governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council.
Later in the same meeting, Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group and frequent DOE critic, saidthere are many challenges to overcome in order for Los Alamos National Laboratory to meet the NationalNuclear Security Administration (NNSA) goal of turning out 30 pits per year by 2030.
“We don’t really love pit production,” Mello told the advisory council. “We don’t really like it. We don’t reallywant it. But if pit production needs to happen, we think it should happen at the Savannah River Site,” Mellosaid.
Los Alamos is a much smaller site, Mello said. While Savannah River is a
310-square-mile site, Los Alamos inthe northern New Mexico desert
is only 40 square miles. Los Alamos also suffers from traffic jams and housingshortages. The national laboratory is also surrounded by culturally significant tribal lands, he said.
Mello’s analysis appeared to resonate with advisory board member
James Little, a former Atkins nuclear executive.
“This is not a surprise to me,” Little said, adding Los Alamos is a research facility. “There are really brilliantpeople who work there … but it is not a production facility. It never will be …. There is no way in hell 30 pits ayear will ever be made at LANL.”
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