Feds greenlight plutonium pit factory at Savannah River Site

• By Colin Demarest cdemarest@aikenstandard.com
• June 28, 2021

The National Nuclear Security Administration announced on Monday its massive plutonium pit production project at the Savannah River Site had received the green light, teeing up South Carolina for a continued long-term role in the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility – where dozens of nuclear weapon cores, known as pits, are expected to be produced – will cost between $6.9 billion and $11.1 billion and will likely be realized between 2032 and 2035.

In terms of cost, $11.1 billion is more than double the figures previously floated. Members of Congress have already questioned the ballpark price tag, which was teased in President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget blueprint. In terms of schedule, the 2032-2035 window is years late, hamstringing the National Nuclear Security Administration’s efforts to produce a mandated amount of the plutonium triggers by 2030.

More concrete baselines are expected in fiscal year 2024, the NNSA said, as designs mature and information congeals. The details published Monday stem from a major project milestone known as Critical Decision-1. A project is effectively finished a Critical Decision-4.

“NNSA and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions” – the top contractor at the Savannah River Site and the team spearheading the local plutonium pit endeavor – “will continue to review this project to improve the fidelity of the current price estimate and schedule,” the weapons-and-nonproliferation agency said in its evening announcement.

A video shared by SRS showed three men, including SRNS President and CEO Stuart MacVean, removing a “Proposed” sticker from the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility sign.

“SR Pu Processing Facility design is approved to proceed!” reads a tweet from the SRS Twitter account.

The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility will be constructed using the bones of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, a nuclear fuel plant that was axed in late 2018 after billions of dollars and years of work had been expended. Leveraging an existing footprint – and not a greenfield – offers a leg up, officials have said.

“It’s a massive infrastructure program,” then-National Nuclear Security Administration boss Lisa Gordon-Hagerty said in a 2019 interview. “These are major capital construction projects, and so we decided that it would be in best use of taxpayer dollars if we would repurpose that facility."

The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, and the broader SRS, generally represent one-half of the nation’s plutonium pit push. In 2018, the NNSA and the Department of Defense recommended a two-site strategy for reborn production: 50 plutonium cores would be made per year in South Carolina, they counseled, and 30 more would be made per year in New Mexico, at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The Los Alamos venture was given the go-ahead months ago, at a roughly estimated cost of $2.7 billion to $3.9 billion. The production of 30 pits there is on track for 2026, officials believe.

The acting leader of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Dr. Charles Verdon, in congressional testimony this month said the tandem strategy is the most cost- and time-efficient, despite pricier projections and a schedule slide.