The announcement by the Trump administration is expected by Friday, in response to the Defense Department’s recent review of America’s nuclear weapons policy, according to Public Radio International.
Engineering experts from within the National Nuclear Security Administration, along with outside professionals have been looking at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where plutonium parts have historically been assembled, although the last time plutonium cores were produced was in 2011.
The other site under consideration is the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where other nuclear materials for America’s bombs have been made since in the 1950s. The two sites were identified in an earlier review as being the most efficient and cost-effective means for making the plutonium cores.
Further Reading: Safety inside and outside Los Alamos Nuclear Lab questioned
Serious safety issues plague both sites
It appears the Trump administration has managed to keep the findings on the two sites quiet, at least until a watchdog group obtained a summary late last year. Besides the persistent safety violations occurring at both sites, which the federal government insists have actually improved, the documents also revealed the cost of making those plutonium cores – possibly as much as $7.5 billion.
Consider this -In the last quarter century, the US has produced a total of less than 30 plutonium pits. But in a Nuclear Posture Review, a major policy document released in February, it was recommended that at least 80 pits annually should be produced by 2030.
General John E. Hyten, commander of US Strategic Command, in testimony before Congress in March, said, “If we’re going to be a nuclear nation, we have to have plutonium pit production,” Hyten said. “And so I’m concerned that we’ve now pushed that, just like everything else — everything will deliver just in time. Any time we have something that delivers just in time, I get very nervous.”
Further Reading: Los Alamos Nuclear lab’s ability to operate safely questioned
And he should be nervous. Neither site has had a good safety record. Greg Mello with the Los Alamos Study Group said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that Los Alamos’ track record should give the Trump administration pause as it considers how to move forward.
“In terms of safety, Los Alamos is the worst site in the complex for its arrogance and scofflaw attitude,” Mello said. Work has been stalled at Los Alamos following a series of mistakes, and criticism has mounted following mishandling of nuclear materials.
In January 2015, workers at the Savannah River site came dangerously close to having a lethal nuclear accident when the stirring mechanism for a tank that held plutonium solution failed. Flecks of plutonium sank to the bottom of the tank, close enough for their neutrons to interact in a way that threatened to kick off a nuclear chain reaction — known as a criticality. It would have killed everyone in the room.
Since that incident, nuclear materials operations have been conducted under special oversight by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an Energy Department component that produces warheads for the military. In a report issued in March this year, Energy Department engineers and physicists concluded that while the arrangement had brought some improvements, it hasn’t fixed key problems.
Interestingly, there are about 14,000 plutonium pits that technicians have removed from retired nuclear weapons and stored at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas. Linton Brooks, a former NNSA chief from 2002-2007 who serves as a consultant to several nuclear weapon sites, says “their reuse could be a fallback option if meeting the new pit production goal proves to be impossible.”
