For immediate release: April 2, 2025

DOE Secretary Wright says LANL will make "more than 100" pits by January 2029.
Is this realistic? What purpose does it serve?
Secretary Wright would do well to hearken to Senator Domenici's advice

Related: DOE Secretary Wright visits Los Alamos and Sandia, where he is getting the "company line", Feb 24, 2025

Contact: Greg Mello: 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell, Bex Hampton, 505-545-9578 cell

Permalink * Prior press releases

Albuquerque, NM -- In an interview last week, Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright reiterated previous concerns that "we’ve got to restore the production of plutonium pits in our complex."

Then he said, "We’ve built one in the last 25 years, and we'll build more than 100 during the Trump administration." 

How realistic is this?

First off, Secretary Wright erred somewhat as to the recent history of pit production. At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), DOE's subsidiary agency the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) built 30 pits for the U.S. nuclear stockpile over the years 2007-2012. Mismanagement shuttered LANL's plutonium facility for operations involving larger amounts of plutonium for years after that, and LANL's management and operations contractor was fired. 

Only one new pit has been certified ("diamond-stamped") for the stockpile since those years. That occurred on October 1, 2024.

So Secretary Wright was way off on the numbers but he is broadly correct in saying there has been almost no production. Needless to say, if there was any significant production capacity, production would be occurring.

By way of background, in 2018 NNSA announced its preference for building pits in two separate facilities, one at LANL and another at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, where NNSA is now building the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF). Between now and approximately 2035, the estimated date when SRPPF is to commence production, all pit production will occur at LANL. (A short update on SRPFF was provided to the South Carolina Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council by NNSA's SRS contractor on March 31. It can be seen in this video, from 23:19 to 26:40.)

In the meantime NNSA has a number of statutory obligations regarding pit production, including requirements to produce at least 10 certified ("war reserve," WR) pits in 2024, at least 20 WR pits in 2025, at least 30 WR pits in 2026, and at least 80 WR pits in 2030.

If NNSA were able to meet these obligations at LANL, Secretary Wright's pledge to produce "more than 100" pits by the end of this administration (January 20, 2029) would be reasonable.

How is NNSA doing?

Instead of the required 10 or more WR pits in 2024, LANL produced just one. Against a requirement of 20 this year, LANL has not to our knowledge produced a single pit so far.

We do not know how many pits LANL will be able to make this year, or in the following three years. We do however have an upper limit on what NNSA believes LANL can produce in those years. 

NNSA expects to have an initial 30 WR pit per year (ppy) "capability" installed at LANL -- not this year, 2025, which would be necessary if NNSA expected to be able to produce the required 30 pits next year per statute -- but by Sept. 30, 2028. That work is part of NNSA's Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project (LAP4) (p. 117; pp. 231-257). 

Thus NNSA and LANL are two years late on their initial 30 ppy capability.

It gets worse. Equipment to support an average production of 30 WR ppy is expected to be installed only by Sept. 30, 2030, two years later (in the "30 Base" subproject, pp. 233, 236). 

And worse. Equipment to reliably produce 30 ppy is not expected to be installed for another two years, i.e. by Sept. 30, 2032 (in the "30 Reliable" subproject, Ibid.)

Given these projections -- likely to be optimistic -- it will be nearly impossible for NNSA to make good on Wright's pledge. To do so would require an average production of 25 ppy over the entire Trump presidency.

Study Group director Greg Mello comments:

"We do not know how fast, or even whether, LANL will be able to ramp up pit production from its present baseline of zero. In many ways, LANL pit production is a "Jenga tower" of concatenated risks -- management risks, infrastructure risks, worker risks, and purely geographic risks. LANL is in the wrong place for this mission.

"What we do know is, first of all, that these LANL pits are for a new warhead, the W87-1, which is not actually needed for any current or planned nuclear weapon system.

"This new warhead is for the Sentinel ICBM but there are already more than enough modern, accurate, long-lasting [W87-0] warheads to equip all the planned Sentinel missiles. LANL has no other pit production mission.

"Second, we know that these pits will be extremely expensive, because making them requires rebuilding old LANL facilities and employing what NNSA estimates will be more than 4,000 people. Acquiring pit production at LANL is a $22 billion endeavor, of which about $9 billion has been spent so far.

"We also know that LANL's core pit production facility, Building PF-4, is already 50 years old. PF-4 also has a half-dozen other NNSA missions, besides pit production. The Savannah River Site facilities, which when complete will be able to do the whole pit production mission, will sooner or later do just that. PF-4 can then 'return to the research and development mission for which it was built," as NNSA put it, back in better days.
"The Sentinel silo-based nuclear weapons system has been greatly delayed and is greatly over-budget. Very few Minuteman silos will be reusable for Sentinel [see also here], and it is now public information that the first Sentinel deployments will not occur until the late 2030s. Without going into more details, it is reasonable to ask if the Sentinel system will ever be deployed, and if so in what numbers.

"Even if all 400 or 450 Sentinel missile are deployed, there are enough W87-0 warheads to equip all of them with one warhead per missile. The W87-1 warhead, made with LANL pits, is not even necessary for this system. But the system itself may or may not end up being deployed, or may not be deployed in the expected numbers.

"So why, again, is LANL being turned inside out to make these pits? LANL's pit mission should be limited to research, technology demonstration, and training. Every dollar spent on more than this is a dollar wasted."

Secretary Wright would do well to hearken to Senator Domenici's advice -- or for that matter, to the advice of NNSA early in the first Trump Administration

New Mexico's previous senators, and previous representatives from LANL's congressional district, were not supporters of LANL becoming a permanent pit production facility -- see this web page. 

Even Senator Domenici, a champion of Los Alamos missions and a major force in creating NNSA, did not want industrial-scale pit manufacturing at LANL (E.g. "LANL on Plutonium Plant List, Domenici: Lab Not Right Fit, Albuquerque Journal, Sep 21, 2002, p. 79 in pdf).

Neither did Senator Bingaman -- consistently, over many years, as can be seen. Neither, "back in the day," did then-Congressman Tom Udall. Bill Richardson didn't think LANL was the right place for expanded pit production. Neither did NNSA Administrator Tom D'Agostino. LANL and University of California (UC) spokespersons repeatedly said it would not and should not ever happen. LANL Director Sig Hecker, himself a plutonium scientist, said production activities all but wore out LANL's main plutonium facility, which was built for research, not production.

The record shows that LANL's attempts to expand its pit production mission have failed four times so far. The Los Alamos Study Group believes a fifth failure is in progress ("LANL pit production: fifth failure in progress," Jul 16, 2021).

In late 2017, NNSA concluded that PF-4 should not be used for enduring pit production, and NNSA should build only one pit production facility. In 2018, NNSA changed its mind.

More comments

Study Group director Mello: 

"Secretary Wright would do well to hearken to Senator Domenici's advice on this subject. Subsequent events have proven him right. Senator Bingaman was right as well, even more consistently. In fact there was a bipartisan consensus among the New Mexico delegation, not to mention many others, that LANL was a "bad fit" for the pit mission.

"Since then we have learned that pits last longer than was previously thought. Yet the perceived "need for speed" is greater than ever. That urgency is not coming from a rational place."

"The New Mexico delegation appears to have given up representing the people of the state. Representing the labs and military bases is good enough for them.

"So where is DOGE when we need them? The case against duplicative, "early-to-need" LANL pit production is strong.

"Secretary Wright is misinformed on a number of topics. Pit production is one of them."

Local opposition to pit production remains strong

Northern New Mexico governments have expressed doubts on more than 20 occasions about LANL's weapons mission, its environmental impact, and the pit production mission.

In that regard, Santa Fe County is likely to approve a letter to NNSA expressing opposition to LANL expansion on April 8 (cf. "Santa Fe County commissioners raise concerns about LANL expansion possibilities," Santa Fe New Mexican, Mar 11, 2025; "Santa Fe commissioners leery of LANL expansion into Northern New Mexico," Exchange Monitor Morning Briefing, 3/19/25).

In one campaign conducted by this organization some 329 New Mexico businesses, 118 organizations, plus the New Mexico Council of Churches and other churches, stepped forward in opposition to the pit production mission at LANL and in favor of nuclear disarmament. In a subsequent campaign begun during the covid pandemic, the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Disarmament," some 254 businesses and organizations (in New Mexico, 158) and 1,177 individuals, have so far expressed their opposition to pit production at LANL.

A partial archive of news articles documenting earlier northern New Mexico opposition to pit production, from 1992 through 2006 can be found here.

In four recent hearings in three cities concerning NNSA's draft Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for the continued operation of LANL, not a single person among the hundreds of people present spoke in favor of LANL's pit production mission. Most who spoke explicitly condemned the mission ("Public rails against plutonium pit production during LANL meeting, New Mexico Political Report, Feb 12, 2025; "Critics at hearing speak out against expansion plan, pit production at LANL, Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 11, 2025).

Today, a pit factory -- tomorrow, much, much more.

NNSA believes it needs to be cost-conscious but not cost-constrained (p. 3). LANL is its costliest site, but apparently the sky's the limit. NNSA's latest planning document for LANL, the draft SWEIS, lists three alternative futures for LANL. The smallest reasonable alternative, according to NNSA, is the so-called "No Action Alternative",  which includes all preparations for potential "surge" production up to 80 pits per year (ppy). It also includes 88 as-yet-unbuilt facilities totaling 1.47 million (M) square feet in combined size, plus more than 34 utility and facility upgrades that cover some 216 acres of land (pp. 3-7 to 3-10).

That's the smallest option. The preferred "Expanded Operations Alternative" involves constructing 219 new facilities with a total floor area of 5.83 million sq. ft. (By comparison, the Pentagon has 6.5 million sq. ft. of interior space.) The EOA includes 219 new facilities, plus more than 100 facility upgrades, plus utility and infrastructure projects totaling 1,190 acres (1.86 sq. miles). It also includes 13,935 acres (21.8 sq. miles) of forest thinning, including habitat for the endangered Mexican Spotted Owl and the near-threatened, endemic Jemez Salamander.

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