Workers at the Savannah River Site in June removed the last pieces of plutonium recycling equipment from a building that will house the site’s pit plant, the site’s management contract said Wednesday.

Over 18 months, workers removed over 2,500 gross tons of material from the area, according to the press release from Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.

The effort is part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) drive to turn what was the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility into the Savannah River Plutonium Production Facility, a factory for the fissile first-stage nuclear-weapon cores called pits.

According to NNSA’s latest informal estimate, the construction project will cost up to $25 billion, take until 2035 to complete and employ some 2,500 people represented by 19 local unions. When the pit plant is complete, it will employ about 2,000 people, NNSA has said.

The NNSA plans to produce at least 80 plutonium pits per year between the Savannah River pit plant and a smaller plant being built at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. That latter was to start casting pits this spring, the lab has said. NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby has said the Savannah River plant will have to produce more than its nominal minimum share of 50 pits annually when it starts operations some time next decade.

Critical-Decision 2 for the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility is expected to come in April 2025. The site completed Critical-Decision 1 in 2021, at which time the estimate for the facility was $12 billion and Critical-Decision 2 was expected during fiscal year 2024. 

The House this week was debating an NNSA budget bill that if approved by the chamber would meet the White House’s request of $1.3 billion for Savannah River plutonium modernization. That would be an increase of 20%, or more than $210 million, compared with a $1-billion appropriation for fiscal year 2024.