Clarification appended

Los Alamos National Laboratory received only a brief mention in the Biden administration’s much-awaited update of the country’s nuclear strategy, but it’s clear the Pentagon views the lab’s future bomb-core production as vital in deterring adversaries from attacking the U.S. and its allies.

The Defense Department on Thursday released an unclassified version of the Nuclear Posture Review, combined for the first time with the National Defense Strategy and Missile Defense Review in one document, a move that military officials said makes for a more cohesive plan.

Every presidential administration formulates its own nuclear plan, typically carrying over some policies from the previous president while adding new strategies based in part on changing circumstances and threats.

The review’s second-to-last page mentions the importance of a two-site strategy involving Los Alamos lab and Savannah River Site in South Carolina to produce plutonium warhead triggers, known as pits, to help fill the gap left after Rocky Flats, a Colorado pit factory, shut down 30 years ago.

Having two pit plants ensures one will continue to operate if the other falters, and it will allow more flexibility in meeting production goals to modernize the country’s aging nuclear arsenal, the report said.

However, the document doesn’t give the number of pits that the two sites should produce or a timeline for meeting the goals, in contrast to the Trump administration’s 2018 nuclear review, which stated “no fewer than 80 pits per year by 2030.”

Officials decided the lab would make 30 pits per year by 2026 and Savannah River would produce 50 by 2030.

The current review’s omission made some anti-nuclear activists curious. At the least, it reinforces the doubts that military and nuclear security leaders have voiced about hitting the previous administration’s targets, they said.

“Biden administration officials have recognized the infeasibility of reaching 80 pits per year by 2030 and have not yet set a new timeline, at least not publicly,” Monica Montgomery, policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, wrote in an email. “If this omission was intentional in that regard, it is a positive sign of [the National Nuclear Security Administration] accepting the reality and its limitations.”

Montgomery cautioned against viewing the omission as a major shift in the agency’s plans for manufacturing pits.

The nuclear review still gives a high priority to pit production and endorses the two-site strategy, indicating the White House’s belief that it should be ramped up on a large scale, Montgomery wrote, calling that position debatable.

“We don’t need to expand plutonium pit production to maintain the safety or reliability of our existing nuclear stockpile,” she wrote. “Increasing pit production can feed an arms race at a volatile time. Until it’s proven that our current pits are unsuitable, the United States should delay expansion plans.”

Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said given the reported problems the lab and Savannah River are grappling with, the review might be trying to add “wiggle room” to production goals.

“It’s interesting how vague the Nuclear Posture Review is on both the rate and timing of pit production,” Coghlan said.

U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, added a clause in a military spending bill requiring the 80-pit target be met, Coghlan said, noting the mandate still stands.

Jill Hruby, who heads the agency, said during a 2021 congressional hearing that Savannah River was unlikely to produce 50 pits by 2030 and that it could take five years longer.

During a Senate Armed Services Committee in May, Hruby said the agency was committed to “reaching the 2030 goal as close as possible.”

In March, Gen. Chas Richard, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, gave a more blunt assessment to congressional leaders.

“We have crossed one of those points of no return that I referred to previously, in that we now know we will not get 80 pits per year by 2030, as is statutorily required, and even unlimited money at this point will not buy that back,” Richard told lawmakers.

The review talks of the need to upgrade the arsenal to discourage nations such as Russia and China as well as rogue players from even considering a nuclear attack, either on an international scale or with limited warfare on a battlefield.

Modernizing the stockpile also assures allies the U.S. will protect them against adversaries that might act rashly, the review said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats to unleash nuclear weapons on countries that intervene have raised the stakes and underscored the need for strong deterrence, senior Pentagon officials said during a Thursday briefing.

Russia’s degraded conventional forces have increased the chance of it resorting to nuclear warfare, one defense official said. There’s also growing concern about the alliance Russia has formed with China, he added.

At the same time, the military is retiring the 1.2 megaton B83 bomb, which was deemed outdated, and canceling the sea-launched cruise missile program that was established under former President Donald Trump as a response to Russia’s growing arsenal of battlefield nuclear bombs. U.S. submarines will continue to have ballistic missile capability.

In an email, Greg Mello, executive director of Los Alamos Study Group, said the review was more hawkish than President Joe Biden’s previous statements about curbing nuclear weapons.

Biden has said the U.S. should adhere to a “sole purpose” policy of employing nuclear weapons only to deter or retaliate if under nuclear attack, but the review gives much wider latitude for their use, Mello said.

Coghlan said one change in this review is some language addressing the need for arms control and nonproliferation, but it was a minor part of the overall document.

“It’s paying lip service,” Coghlan said.

Clarification: A previous version of this story suggested anti-nuclear activist Greg Mello supports President Joe Biden's policy of using nuclear weapons to deter aggression or retaliate if under attack, based on Mello's emailed statements. Mello said he doesn't support that policy and was merely describing how the nuclear review deviates from it.

Greg Mello comment:

The big news in this document is that this administration is officially prepared to use nuclear weapons to win wars on other continents and in the event of non-nuclear strategic attacks on the U.S., its allies and partners, where "vital interests" are at stake.

It's silly to think that the Nuclear Posture Review would dive into the specifics of pit production, beyond endorsing the Trump-Biden strategy of two pit plants. There's no news in the fact that NNSA can't meet the arbitrary schedule set by Trump, then Congress, based on a prior arbitrary schedule set by Obama administration and the Bush administration before that. That schedule won't be met at either site, as far as can be discerned from this distance. Reality is revising that schedule.

Where the big error in Ms. Montgomery's thinking lies, as in so many others, is to say that pit production should not be "expanded." That language tacitly accepts -- as an existing reality and as policy -- an industrial pit mission at LANL. LANL has no pit production capacity. It's zero. NNSA is in the process of spending at least $14 billion to create such a capacity. A few years ago LANL haltingly made a few pits before PF-4 was shut down for 3 years for safety problems, but that's not what we are talking about. Actual reliable production capacity -- the ability to play in the nationwide "production orchestra," doesn't exist and may never exist at LANL. There's also something else, called safety, which LANL, admittedly, doesn't really have yet and may never have. All those who talk about "not expanding pit production" are endorsing a lower standard for safety in New Mexico than exists and/or is planned in CA and SC. They would quietly grandfather in LANL's lower safety standards, for as long as the comprehensive, structural nature of those problems can be hidden from public view.

Ms. Montgomery, like so many ideologically-based "analysts" in DC, does not understand the technical issues involved and so ends up repeating talking points that have already been rejected by every governmental body that has looked at the situation. LANL alone just can't pull the train. If the U.S. is going to have nuclear weapons -- not our choice but the only politically realistic possibility -- NNSA is going to invest, right now, in a larger pit facility than LANL and the LANL site are capable of hosting.

Current LANL facilities are too old and too small, so much so that they are incapable of supporting essentially any U.S. nuclear arsenal bigger than a small fraction of current one, even with pit reuse. LANL and NNSA are therefore hiding their plans to replace many of the current facilities. That's right -- the giant expansion now underway is just the first phase of a larger plan, but even that will only at best hold the line against decay, and be inadequate to boot. It's simply a plan for endless waste -- a self-licking ice cream cone.

The proper question for those who don't want a new arms race is why is there such a rush to make pits right now in such patently inadequate and unsafe facilities, when the pits we have don't need replacing quite yet. They will, but that day is not yet here. The NPR answers that question, saying, we need new-design weapons, i.e. an arms race, which by definition is not something for the 2030s. The Bidenites want an arms race right now.

"A dollar spent on pit production at LANL, beyond R&D and training, is a dollar wasted" said someone at the Joint Chiefs. We agree. It should be embarrassing when voices in the military end up on the political "left" of arms controllers.