U.S. decision nears on nuclear warhead production

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The federal agency that oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile is expected this week to release a report on the best site option for the United States as it looks to ramp up production of the plutonium cores that trigger nuclear warheads.

At stake are hundreds of jobs and billions of dollars in federal funding that would be needed to either revamp existing buildings or construct new factories to support the work.

New Mexico’s U.S. senators have been pushing to keep the work at Los Alamos National Laboratory — the once-secret city in northern New Mexico where the atomic bomb was developed decades ago as part of the Manhattan Project. The other option would be to move it to the U.S. Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which formerly produced components for the nation’s nuclear weapons cache.

The mission of producing the cores has been based at Los Alamos for years, but none have been produced since 2011 as the lab has been dogged by a string of safety lapses and concerns about a lack of accountability.

A team of engineering experts from within the National Nuclear Security Administration and outside professionals has been considering the two sites, which were identified as part of an earlier review that looked at the most efficient and cost effective means for making the plutonium cores.

The federal government has been tight-lipped about the findings but a summary obtained last year by a watchdog group suggests that it would be most costly — possibly as much as $7.5 billion — to continue making plutonium cores at Los Alamos and that the lab might not be able to meet production goals until 2038.

The Energy Department wants to ramp up production to 80 plutonium cores a year by 2030.