will evaluate key leadership and management processes critical to delivery of pit production mission commitments, including establishment of clear lines of authority and accountability;  identification and management of project risks; facility infrastructure improvement initiatives; use of contractual mechanisms to hold contractors accountable for mission delivery; and leadership engagement to resolve technical, human capital, regulatory, and other challenges impeding progress.

"Stark realities are beginning to dawn on the new Secretary of Energy. He and his team already understand that present NNSA management structures are unable to deliver pit production capability on any reasonable cost and schedule. Acquisition of pit production is an out-of-control program. 

"Trump himself created the problem during his first term, when he and his team approved the two-site production plan over NNSA's initial objections in 2018, in response to pressure from the Senate. Then, when the fiscal needs of the two-site plan began to explode in 2019 and Trump was under threat of impeachment in the Senate, he buckled again, this time providing far more money to NNSA than his Office of Management and Budget and DOE itself recommended. The head of NNSA was put under surveillance after that caper.

"Then, Team Biden and Congress passed the buck for four more years. As a result, the budget of 2020 is nothing compared to what NNSA now "needs." And what NNSA "needs" is substantially driven by pit production, NNSA's largest program. 

"Sooner or later, DOE is going to recognize that it can't build and operate two pit factories at once. That two-site plan costs 4 to 6 times more than was thought when the plan was first approved. That approval had no technical basis -- it was made to satisfy the strategically-placed New Mexico delegation and their allies on the Armed Services committees. 

"NNSA already knows that LANL can't make enough pits and can't go the distance, so SRS has to be ready to make all of the required pits. This is a big reason the SRS project budget has mushroomed beyond its original estimate. 

"LANL is way behind schedule. SRS, amazingly, is not -- not yet. Both sites are way over budget. When LANL's pit-related overhead, euphemistically called "program costs" is included, both sites will cost roughly the same. SRS is more expensive to build, while LANL is more expensive to operate. 

"Funds spent on pit production at LANL, beyond demonstration and training, are wasted. Building a pit factory at LANL just makes the SRS facility more expensive and take longer. Glove boxes are scarce and hard to make; the people who design these processes are also scarce. NNSA is competing with itself, driving up costs and slowing schedule, by trying to make a few pits at LANL in the interim before the necessary SRS facility is completed. 

"People who think the Congress and the Pentagon are going to be satisfied with LANL's old, lame pit production facilities, or with recycling plutonium pits forever, probably also believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. The U.S. is not going to commit to unilateral nuclear disarmament.