For immediate release April 30, 2018

Leaked Summary of Nuclear Warhead Plutonium "Pit" Production Analysis Identifies Serious Problems with Los Alamos Manufacturing Plan

Document directly contradicts statements by Heinrich, Udall, Lujan

Litigation to obtain full analysis proceeds as deadline looms for federal siting decision

Contact: Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group, 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell

Permanent link (tomorrow) * Previous press releases

Albuquerque, NM – A leaked executive summary of the Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) for producing plutonium warhead cores ("pits") completed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in October of 2017 reveals that NNSA has discovered serious problems with plans to manufacture pits at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

The AoA was first briefed to congressional defense committees on November 30, 2017. A redacted 9-page briefing summary of its findings was subsequently made available to the Study Group. The Study Group immediately filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the AoA and on March 14 filed a lawsuit to obtain a redacted version of the unclassified AoA.

On December 18, 2017, senators Heinrich and Udall, with Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, wrote to Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Rick Perry expressing their "very serious concern" with findings of the AoA, claiming that LANL's proposed "modular" strategy for small underground factory workshops "was conspicuously absent in the AoA."

As the summary shows, LANL's "modular" strategy was carefully evaluated in the AoA, which among other findings concluded that seven modules, each with 5,000 sq. ft. of working space, would be needed, not the two originally proposed.

The AoA examined the modular strategy, which it found to be "not viable."

The New Mexico congressional letter also claims that NNSA's analysis focused on a "110" pit per year (ppy) production strategy, a "significant increase" beyond the Department's [the Department of Defense's, DoD's] stated requirements.

The leaked summary shows this is also not true.

Previous members of the New Mexico congressional delegation in both parties unanimously argued that LANL was not a good place for larger-scale pit production.  Local government resolutions have opposed it.

Plutonium pits are the fissile component in atomic bombs and comprise the cores of the first explosive stage of all thermonuclear explosives ("H-bombs").

Pits are difficult and dangerous to manufacture. Until 1992, this was the mission of the former Rocky Flats Plant near Denver. At Rocky Flats, these activities resulted in extensive worker illnesses and widespread environmental contamination. Production ceased with a joint FBI-EPA raid on the plant in June, 1989.

Outstanding historical photographs of Rocky Flats facilities were collected by the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER).

Resuming continuous pit production, assuming it is possible, would require billions of dollars in new construction and in operational and waste management costs and impacts.

NNSA's fiscal year 2019 budget request shows pit production expenses (not including waste management and other supporting costs) ramping up from less than $200 million today to $1.2 billion per year by 2023.

The AoA process winnowed pit production alternatives from 41 to five and then to two, one at LANL and the other at the Savannah River Site (SRS).

LANL and SRS were also the main alternatives in two previous siting analyses, in 1996 and 2008. LANL was selected as the interim site for low-level pit production in 1996 on the basis of the theory that no further plutonium-related facilities would be needed at LANL for production of up to 50 ppy. Since then LANL has spent more than a billion dollars on new facilities, with an additional two billion in construction projects underway, aimed at achieving a 30 ppy production capacity by 2026, thirty years later.

NNSA found that attempting to renovate LANL's main plutonium facility (Building PF-4) to meet DoD's requirement of 80 ppy with high confidence would make NNSA's interim production mandate of 30 ppy by 2026 "unattainable," in addition to jeopardizing NNSA's other plutonium missions at LANL.

None of NNSA's viable options, according to the AoA, include retaining pit production in PF-4 beyond its current interim role. "[A]fter a new 80 WR [War Reserve] ppy capability is established, PF-4 can return to the research and development mission for which it was built."

A key finding of the study was that all pit production alternatives are fraught with risk and complexity, and that schedule risks would delay achievement of an 80 ppy capability "to 2033 at the earliest for any alternative."

In the months since the AoA was completed NNSA has also completed an Engineering Analysis and Workforce Analysis for the two viable alternatives, neither of which are in the public domain.

Neither alternative -- a new 80 ppy production facility at LANL, or a repurposed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at SRS -- is specified in any detail in the AoA executive summary or briefing.

NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty as well as Assistant Secretary of Defense Guy Roberts have both stated in congressional testimony that a final recommendation for reestablishing industrial pit production would be provided to the armed services committees by May 11, a deadline added to the fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. NNSA's recommendation will be made in concert with Ellen Lord, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, and Undersecretary of Energy Dan Brouillete.

Pit production will be debated in the scheduled May 9 hearing of the full House Armed Services Committee (8 am MDT, webcast).

For the past 29 years, all Department of Energy (DOE) and NNSA plans to acquire larger-scale pit production have failed, in part because no new pits have been or are needed.

The US possesses roughly usable 12,000 pits, including those already in warheads and bombs as well as other pits which could be used to make more of today's nuclear weapons. Approximately 11,000 additional pits have been declared surplus and are being stored pending final disposition. Today's deployed and stockpiled pits were made no earlier than 1978. They will last until at least 2063 and possibly much longer, according to a joint report by DOE and the Department of Defense (DoD). (For more, see here and extensively here.) The Trump Administration's Nuclear Posture Review eliminated the only proposed warhead that would require new pits (Nuclear Posture Review Calls for Continuing Weapons Modernization, Feb 2, 2018). NNSA also has other options for maintaining pits, including (but not limited to) rebuilding the non-nuclear components of pits, a much simpler and cheaper option than building wholly new pits. (For more background, see for example this recent blog post.)

The Study Group has provided an initial set of pit production recommendations and considerations to NNSA, DoD, the White House, and congressional committees, which anticipated some of the themes in the leaked executive summary.

NNSA has issued a draft Environmental Assessment (EA) for two essential elements in LANL's pit production capability -- additional upgrades to PF-4, and the transformation of a partially-completed analytical laboratory into a more capable low-level nuclear facility for plutonium, which would liberate space in PF-4 for industrial missions, including pit production. Recent Study Group comments on the draft EA point out some of the dangers of this approach and suggest that it may be legally deficient.

Further information and news accounts of this developing story can be found on our pit production web page.

Study Group director Greg Mello: "Los Alamos' latest scheme to attract billions of dollars by building one "modular" underground factory after another for years to come has now fallen through, as did previous schemes. When will DOE, NNSA, and DoD learn? The modular strategy wasn't viable or cost-effective, as has been clear for a long time to many parties in government. Its obvious problems, and the lack of any objective analysis of alternatives, were why NNSA conducted this AoA in the first place.

"The complete misrepresentation of this big study by our congressional delegation raises the question of whether they ever read it prior to criticizing it so strenuously. Who wrote that letter for them? LANL? Or did they knowingly mischaracterize NNSA's study? There's a lot of money involved.

"Pit production is not needed at all -- not in New Mexico and not in South Carolina. New pits are not needed for two human generations, even assuming nuclear weapons were somehow "needed" in the first place -- which they are not.

"By any lights, building a new pit factory is wasteful, provocative, and it will also be very difficult -- as NNSA is beginning to understand. It's driven by ideology, not real need. The faster NNSA tries to go, the greater chance of another fiasco. Serious reflection, not repetition of the same old mistakes, is called for. Our country and world face many serious crises. A lack of plutonium pits is not one of them."

***ENDS***