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For immediate release: July 12, 2025 Gigantic Department of Energy program to make plutonium warhead cores ("pits") has overshot its budget and is being re-evaluated NNSA has no analysis of alternatives supportive of its present pit plans. Los Alamos Study Group: it needs one. Previously: Multi-year delays in plutonium "pit" production at Los Alamos now require the use of recycled pits for some new warheads...the purpose of the Los Alamos facility was to avoid recycling pits, Jul 2, 2025 Contact: Greg Mello: 505-577-8563 cell Permalink * Prior press releases Albuquerque, NM -- The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), that part of the Department of Energy (DOE) which is responsible for designing and building nuclear warheads and bombs, is quietly re-evaluating its gigantic program to build factories for plutonium nuclear warhead cores ("pits") at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
This giant program merits far more careful attention than it has received -- in the Administration, in Congress, and elsewhere.
We apologize for the technical detail in this missive. We are trying to provide background for thoughtful government and public review, with references provided at the included links, not merely opinion.
The latest (and since 2018, the only) NNSA cost estimate for acquiring the capability to produce plutonium pits is $28-$37 billion. This is a partial estimate because it only includes (most) construction costs and does not include the cost of the program itself, either costs up to now or costs in the future up to the completion of construction and the equipment installation necessary for reliable production.
Based on the latest available NNSA data from congressional budget requests and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), our best current estimates for the cost of acquiring reliable production of 80 pits per year (ppy) by FY2036 are as follows:
This estimate adds $15.5 B in program costs at LANL to NNSA's estimate of April 2024. Of this $15.5 B, $3.2 B comes from program expenses incurred over the 2005-2018 period ($226 million per year, following GAO-23-104661, p. 12), while $12.3 B is our best estimate of actual past and estimated future program costs over the 2019-2032 period, based on NNSA's own estimates in its most recent Future Years National Security Program (FYNSP), published in March 2024.
There will be other large line-item construction needed at LANL to maintain pit production once began, such as replacement of the crucial Sigma Building (p. 4-19, p. 6-19). In 1996, LANL believed the Sigma facility was structurally deficient (pp. 4-5). Since then, estimated seismic demand in the design basis earthquake has increased about threefold horizontally and about sixfold vertically. Acquisition of pit production is thus being pursued via two of the largest "gigaprojects" in the U.S. today.
By comparison, total expenses of the Manhattan Project through the end of 1945 were $1.890 B in December 1945 dollars ($33.376 B in May 2025 dollars). That is, the cost of acquiring pit production capability easily exceeds the constant-dollar cost of the entire Manhattan Project.
Total expenses at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project were $74.06 M in December 1945 dollars or $1.31 B in May 2025 dollars, about one-fourth of LANL's FY2025 costs ($5.2 B). Acquiring pit production at LANL will cost twenty times what was spent by the Manhattan Project at LANL.
Needless to say, the fiscal scale of this mission is unprecedented in NNSA's history.
We will return to the history of cost increases in this program at the two main sites in a future backgrounder. In a nutshell, LANL's acquisition costs have increased by a factor of 8 or 9 since 2017 (from $3 B [see slide 2] to $25-$27 B), while SRS's estimated construction-only costs have risen from $4.6 B to $18.3-25.4 B, a factor of 4 to 5.5.
The two biggest pit construction projects are both being re-evaluated this year.
At SRS the flagship project, encompassing nearly all of the construction necessary to acquire pit production capability, is called the "Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility" (SRPPF) (for the current DOE Project Data Sheet [PDS] including the latest cost estimates, see pp. 199-221; see also this comprehensive SRS pit production web page).
At LANL the flagship pit project is called the Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project (LAP4) (current PDS including latest cost estimates, pp. 168-186; comprehensive web page for LAP4 and pit production generally). LAP4 is a large project, but it comprises only a minority part -- about one-quarter -- of the total effort needed to realize pit production capability at LANL (by function, see GAO-23-104661, p. 70; by cost see Plutonium Pit Modernization Spending, Actual, Proposed, and Estimated, by Site and Fiscal Year, Sep 24, 2024).
Parts of both projects are now in the construction, while other parts remain in preliminary design.
At this point neither project has a high-quality cost estimate or schedule, which DOE calls a "baseline." And as congressional committees and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have pointed out on multiple occasions, neither does DOE have an "integrated master schedule" guiding its efforts at either main site, a tool which would allow NNSA to better predict and respond to delays. As far as the pit production facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) are concerned -- centered as they are around LANL's 50-year-old main plutonium building, PF-4 -- DOE cannot estimate life-cycle costs for pit production without an estimate of how much longer PF-4 will be able to support the mission.
The flagship projects at both sites now have estimated costs exceeding 150% of NNSA's top cost estimates when the project first received DOE's official go-ahead, a milestone called "Critical Decision 1" (CD-1). As a result, both projects are being reevaluated. Regarding SRPPF, NNSA writes (p. 200):
The M&O contractor submitted a cost and schedule estimate for all project scope through CD-4 in January 2024 based on 50 percent design complete. NNSA evaluated this estimate and determined that the top end of the original approved CD-1 cost range has grown by more than 50 percent. As such and in accordance with DOE O 413.3, NNSA acknowledged that it must reassess the alternative selection process to identify a new alternative or reaffirm the selected alternative. This analysis is commonly referred to as CD-1 Reaffirmation (CD-1R). NNSA began the CD-1R analysis in FY2025, to confirm the preferred alternative and that it was essential to national security, and is forecasting that CD-1R approval will be prior to or in conjunction with the CD-2/3 approval. Regarding LAP4, NNSA writes (p. 172):
Of interest, NNSA has also considerably increased the scope, cost, and duration of that portion of the CMRR project which is a) located in PF-4 and b) required to establish pit production (pp. 227, 278, 284, 285). This increased scope of work ($442 million) was not allocated to the LAP4 project, the more straightforward place to put it.
At present NNSA has no formal analysis of alternatives (AoA) supportive of its two-site pit production plan. Such an analysis is required by DOE Order 413.3B (see p. A-7, also pp. C-3 and C-4) prior to CD-1. The only AoA for pit production NNSA has completed explicitly rejected splitting production between two sites and explicitly rejected attempting to use PF-4 for enduring pit production (pp. 2, 45-48). The required trigger and process for project "reaffirmation" is at p. A-6:
Study Group director Greg Mello:
We have prepared much more analytic background on this issue than we have as yet shared with our membership and the press. Some has been presented to Congress and NNSA already. We will continue this series as soon as we can.
***ENDS***
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