Albuquerque, NM — The Los Alamos Study Group has organized a panel discussion on plutonium warhead core (“pit”) production at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW in Washington, DC (map) on Wednesday, Nov. 13, from 1-4 pm EST.
The panel will not be livestreamed but it will be video-recorded and posted for later viewing at the Study Group’s YouTube channel.
Our panelists include:
- Dr. Jill Hruby, Undersecretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA);
- Allison Bawden, Director, Natural Resources and Environment at the Government Accountability Office (GAO);
- Robert Peters, Research Fellow for Nuclear Deterrence and Missile Defense at the Heritage Foundation; and
- Greg Mello, Executive Director of the Study Group.
Dan Leone, Managing Editor at ExchangeMonitor Publications, will moderate the panel.
We are grateful to our panelists and especially to Dr. Hruby for being with us to discuss this important program, NNSA’s largest.
As of this past April, NNSA’s rough estimate for the cost of acquiring pit production capability was $28-37 billion (B) (p. 3). So this is a very large program, indeed “the largest and most complex infrastructure undertaking at NNSA since shortly after the Manhattan Project,” as Dr. Hruby has said (Ibid.) (Our own estimate of the cost for acquiring pit production capacity in both factories combined is ~$46.5 B, of which $13.3 B has already been spent, which may be comparable with NNSA’s estimate after allowing for definitional differences.)
Acquiring two separate factory complexes for plutonium pits for nuclear weapons is one of the very largest infrastructure projects currently funded in the United States.
We have written extensively on this topic and continue to do so.
Under the supervision of Ms. Bawden, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has written important reviews of the pit production program, of which you will be aware, as well as of NNSA modernization more generally. And of course NNSA itself has done so.
Mr. Peters paper, “A Nuclear Posture Review for the Next Administration: Building the Nuclear Arsenal of the 21st Century,) The Heritage Foundation, Jul 30, 2024, argues for a 200 pit per year (ppy) production capacity by 2035. For reference, this is 60-100% more than the current mandate of “at least 80 ppy” (which NNSA has said would lead to an average production of roughly 100 ppy if conducted at a single site, or about 125 ppy if conducted at two sites as is the present plan; see p. 13).
For our part, we do not believe the nation will continue to support two pit factories indefinitely, and we strongly question the wisdom of proceeding “full steam ahead” in the meantime with the conversion of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL’s) nearly 50-year-old plutonium facility to accommodate a temporary industrial pit mission. In this, we agree with what NNSA itself wrote until 2018, when decades-long policy was changed by Dr. Hruby’s predecessor.
After all, as NNSA said in 2020, “If pit production at LANL were paused for some reason, overall pit production requirements could be satisfied at SRS” (p. 23). That is exactly the framework in which we believe U.S. pit production policy should be discussed.
An infrastructure and manufacturing program of this magnitude generates a lot of issues, impacts, and review. A few of you may be interested in a recent declaration of ours in federal district court in South Carolina (“Motion to File Amicus Curiae Declaration and Incorporated Memorandum in Support Thereof, Civil Action No. 1:21-1942-MGL,” Oct 30, 2024. Others may find our recent community briefing and discussion in Los Alamos useful (“Overview of Pit Production at Los Alamos National Laboratory,” LASG presentation, SALA, Oct 24, 2024).
Thank you for your attention and we look forward to seeing some of you on the 13th.
