Should LANL make more nuke triggers?
Congress orders more production of plutonium pits for nuclear weapons
SANTA FE — The National Nuclear Security Administration is under orders from Congress to produce as many as 80 new nuclear weapons triggers a year by around 2030, and Los Alamos National Laboratory is the only place in the country equipped to make them.
The plans for a higher-capacity plutonium pit production facility make Los Alamos key — some call the lab “ground zero” — as the Obama administration and Congress have moved forward to upgrade and modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons force. It is a plan that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will cost $350 billion in the next decade.
But ramping up pit production is a huge undertaking. The United States, after mass producing pits during the Cold War at the defunct Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado, hasn’t made any new ones since 2011, when
LANL completed the last of 29 plutonium cores for Navy submarine missiles. The most pits ever made at Los Alamos in a year is 11. For the moment, the lab can’t resume pit production until safety issues are addressed, possibly by the end of this year.
More pits would mean more radioactive materials at Los Alamos and more leftover waste that must be handled and safely stored, most likely at the temporarily closed Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.
Critics of the plan say it’s unnecessary for maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile and way too expensive, particularly in today’s tough budget times.
In addition to pits currently installed in nuclear warheads, 10,000 or more previously manufactured pits are in storage and a few thousand more are said to be “strategic reserve.” A 2006 study for the government that was undertaken by scientific experts, and that NNSA touted at the time, found that the existing pits installed in warheads can last for many decades with “credible lifetimes” of more than 100 years.
A pit is the grapefruit-size plutonium core of the first stage of a nuclear bomb. Imploded by high explosives, it becomes compressed, resulting in a nuclear explosion that detonates the weapon’s main stage.
The 2015 defense spending bill’s language sets out the basic argument for increased pit production.
It says that “delaying creation of a modern, responsive nuclear infrastructure until the 2030s is an unacceptable risk to the nuclear deterrent and the national security of the United States” and that timelines for creating pit production capacity “must be driven by the requirement to hedge against technical and geopolitical risk, and not solely by the needs of life extension programs” for existing weapons.
A memo from then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sent to the Armed Services Committee chairman in January 2014 elaborates. It says a Nuclear Posture Review found need for “some modest capacity to surge the production (of pits) in response to significant geopolitical surprise,” a concept called “responsive infrastructure,” according to the memo. The 50 to 80 pits-per-year capacity is consistent with “the central limits of the New START Treaty (the arms control agreement Obama signed in 2011), and our commitments to Allies,” the document states. The nuclear arsenal modernization plan now underway was part of the Obama administration’s deal with Congress over ratification of New START.
Skeptics of increased pit production extend beyond anti-nuclear advocates in New Mexico.
U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, a California Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the NNSA, the lab’s parent organization within the Department of Energy, “hasn’t even told us why they feel the need to increase pit production when we already have an unused stockpile of 10,000 pits.”
The 2015 defense spending bill as approved mandated a schedule to building more pits, calling for a demonstrated capability to build 80 pits per year in 2027.
Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico notes that the wording of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act asserts that the need for new pits is not driven solely by “life extension programs” intended to keep current weapons in good shape.
“It’s about advancing weapons designs ... . I assert that that’s a blank check for them to do what they want to do.”
Greg Mello of the local Los Alamos Study Group research and advocacy organization, said that the 2006 study supporting the long life of existing pits has never been impugned. “What it all boils down to is that the generals are not happy that we don’t have a pit factory,” Mello said. “All the other details are unimportant.”
Despite the pit-longevity studies cited by critics of expanded pit production, Hagel’s DOD document refers to “aging concerns” and “the impacts of aging plutonium” in establishing requirements for new pits. It also says that “maintenance of critical pit manufacturing skills may be at risk” without increased capacity.
The memo states that the mandated larger pit-making capacity will require new building space at LANL. For the time being, that requirement would be met in the form of two proposed underground “modules” with an estimated cost of $2 billion.
The proposed pit capacity also would be sufficient to support a planned “interoperable warhead” — for use by both submarines and landbased missiles — according to the Hagel document. Proponents say the multi-use warhead would make the U.S. arsenal more flexible, but billions of dollars in projected costs have raised concerns in Congress.
An NNSA spokeswoman provided the Journal with a statement saying that “pit production is essential to NNSA’s programs to extend the life of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile so that the Nation’s deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective.” It pointed out that the current rate of production is a fraction of production capacity during the Cold War. Rocky Flats, closed in 1992 after a scandal over environmental problems, used to make 1,000 to 2,000 pits a year.
Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, a Democrat with a seat on the Appropriations Committee, on Thursday provided a statement saying he supports LANL’s mission of pit production.
“Our nation’s goal — which I strongly believe in — is to work toward a world with no nuclear weapons through negotiated international agreements,” said Udall. “But until that is realized, an important part of maintaining our deterrent is verifying the safety and security of the remaining weapons through the stockpile stewardship program.
“Ensuring the reliable supply of plutonium pits is an important part of this effort. Currently, the only place in the nation capable of doing that work is Los Alamos National Laboratory ... I will continue to support this important national security mission.”