For immediate release: July 2, 2025

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, expected to cost more than $22 billion when all costs are tallied, was to avoid recycling pits.

Contact: Greg Mello: 505-577-8563 cell

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Albuquerque, NM -- New facts regarding the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA's) plans to produce the plutonium-containing cores of nuclear warheads ("pits") have recently come to light, partly from the late June release of NNSA's detailed budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2026 and partly from other sources. Here, we summarize just one of the issues that have come to light. Others will follow after the Fourth.

Contrary to previous expectations, some of the proposed new warheads ("W87-1") for the Sentinel silo-based intercontinental ballistic missile are now to be made from recycled pits, because Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) pit production has been delayed several years.

The 400 currently-deployed silo-based Minuteman III (MMIII) missiles carry W78 and W87 warheads in approximately equal numbers, totaling 400 warheads in all. MMIII missiles can carry up to three W78 warheads, or one W87. If additional W78 warheads were uploaded on half the MMIII fleet, the number of deployed silo-based warheads could be doubled, with a range penalty ("United States Nuclear Weapons," Kristensen et. al., 2025).

The less-accurate, older W78 is to be retired -- as are the MMIII missiles themselves. As of this past January, Sentinel missiles were to begin replacing MMIIIs beginning in the late 2030s and continuing until circa 2052, when the last MMIII would be retired (Huser, slide 6; see also "Last Minuteman III decommissioned 2050 or later, W87 non-Sentinel test within year," Sarah Salem, Exchange Monitor, 1/31/25; and earlier, "Sentinel rumors," Los Alamos Study Group, 7/26/24).

All the W87s (of which there are about 534, see the sources at p. 19 and subtract an estimated one per year since then for destructive surveillance) are meanwhile to be upgraded with a new fuze. Some 655 new fuzes qualified to last 30 years are to be delivered, starting in May 2025 (Modernized Selected Acquisition Report, 2023).

Importantly, these are new "super-fuzes" that provide a much higher probability of destroying hardened targets (Kristensen op. cit.) with dangerous implications for crisis stability (Postol 2014; see also Kristensen, McKinzie, and Postol, 2017).

These W87s, now called W87-0s to avoid ambiguity, were produced in 1986-1988 (Chuck Hansen, U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History, 1988, p. 203) and therefore have a relatively young pit, which is also fire-resistant to protect against fuel fires. The W87-0 uses insensitive high explosive and has already undergone a Life Extension Program, completed in 2004.

We know of no reason why W87 pits would not be serviceable for at least 80 years, i.e. until the late 2060s.

These existing W87-0s are to be the first warheads deployed on Sentinel (pp. 140, 142; FY25 SSMP, p. 2-8).

Our overall point here is that there is nothing at all "obsolete" about the existing W87-0 warhead, of which there are more than enough to populate the entire Sentinel fleet if desired, with more than enough warheads left over for spares and annual surveillance, using one warhead per missile.

The yet-to-be built W87-1 variant would complement and eventually replace W87-0s on Sentinel missiles. These were going to be the first post-Cold-War U.S. warhead to be made entirely with all new parts (GAO-20-703, p. 2).

W87-1 production is still currently slated to begin in the early 2030s (p. 2-9), despite a several-year delay in the Sentinel program and the now-certain, several-year delay in the production of new pits for these warheads at LANL.

Only LANL is to make these pits. When the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF) begins production in 2035 or after it will make pits for the W93 warhead for the submarine-launched Trident missiles.

We have recently learned from a highly-reliable source we cannot divulge that some W87-1s are now to be made using recycled pits. This possibility (and its potential complications) was discussed five years ago by the GAO (GAO-20-703, p. 29-39).

After reviewing materials subsequently obtained by FOIA, we conclude these would be W87-0 pits. Other existing pits could be used to make ballistic missile warheads but the resulting warhead would not be a W87-1, and could be difficult to certify. There is no other warhead program for Sentinel missiles besides the W87-1. Such a program would be too big to hide.

In other words, in a significant change of plans, at least some highly-serviceable W87-0 warheads are now to be cannibalized for their pits, which are needed to make W87-1 warheads on NNSA's proposed schedule. Why? Because LANL pits in sufficient quantity will not be available soon enough.

In 2022, NNSA estimated that using recycled pits in the W87-1 would cost less than 1% as much as using new pits. This new-pit cost did not include acquisition of pit production capability, which NNSA assumed was justified separately.

Study Group director Greg Mello:

What is the rush to build W87-1 warheads, when NNSA already has so much to do? They aren't even needed. The several hundred existing W87-0s, whether on today's Minuteman III or tomorrow's hypothetical Sentinel missiles, are a horrific, world-ending technology. They are extremely accurate, about as safe to handle as a nuclear warhead can be, and will last for decades to come.

"If some W87-0 warheads can be used on Sentinel, why can't Sentinel be entirely equipped with them? We see no reason why W87-1 warheads are needed at all -- except for putting multiple independent warheads on Sentinel.

"We can now ask a further question: even if W87-1 warheads were made, why not make all of them using existing W87 pits, given that we now know that this will be done for some of them?

"The W87-1 program, and the hyper-expensive pit production that serves it, smack of digging one hole to fill in another. It is literally 'busy-work.' The mask of 'safety and reliability' has slipped. The imperative is instead to fund programs that cost tens of billions of dollars but which provide, in this case, no discernible difference in deterrence, so called.

"The truth is that Lawrence Livermore needed a new warhead program to keep busy as its other warhead programs wind down -- to "maintain skills" as they say. The New Mexico delegation meanwhile demanded that LANL have a pit production mission, despite NNSA's misgivings. The resulting W87-1 program will be the costliest warhead program in post-Cold-War history, not even counting the enormous cost of the pits for it or the cobbled-together infrastructure at LANL which is being built uniquely for this warhead.

"Most people think the Pentagon is wasteful, and it is, but the Pentagon is frugal compared to the nuclear weapons laboratories. What we see here is a kind of conspiracy to defraud taxpayers by convincing Congress that there is real value-added in having a smaller, secondary pit factory centered in LANL's old plutonium building. This facility was justified at one time, in many minds, by the rush to build a new warhead for a new missile. Well, the new missile is dramatically delayed, way over-budget, and may never be built. The new warhead isn't needed and even if it were, new pits for it aren't needed either."

Further information about pit production can be found at this web page.

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