Plutonium Pit Production

Pit production will continue to share space at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility with other missions for the foreseeable future, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration told a federal safety agency on Wednesday. The semi autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency is upgrading PF-4 to produce multiple war-ready pits some […]

Pit production will continue to share space at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility with other missions for the foreseeable future, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration told a federal safety agency on Wednesday. The semi autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency is upgrading PF-4 to produce multiple war-ready pits some […]

Starting after Thanksgiving, citizens of the city of Aiken, S.C., can give the city council their two cents about how to spend $25 million in federal settlement money the city got because of a federal lawsuit involving the Department of Energy’s canceled plutonium recycling plant at the Savannah River Site, local media reported Monday. Aiken […]

Engineers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory continue to upgrade the ventilation system at the plutonium pit production facility after two separate incidents where the system failed to blow contaminated air away from clean rooms where employees were working.  The most recent failure occurred on Aug. 22, when ventilation in the Plutonium Facility, called PF-4, […]

Critical-decision 2 for a new plutonium pit production plant at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is now expected in fiscal 2025, a state panel heard last week from the National Nuclear Security Administration. Also, site prime Savannah River Nuclear Solutions has contracted a local affiliate of Toronto-based Aecon to handle […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site prime in South Carolina has contracted a domestic affiliate of Toronto-based Aecon to handle $100-million worth of decommissioning to help pave the way for the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility. In an Oct. 26 press release, South Carolina-based Aecon-Wachs said it has landed two contracts with Fluor-led Savannah […]

Critical-decision 2 for a new plutonium pit production plant at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is now expected in fiscal 2025, a state panel heard last week from the National Nuclear Security Administration. Jason Armstrong, manager of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) field office at Savannah River, told the […]

The prime contractor at the Savannah River Site last week signed a project labor agreement with a consortium of 19 labor unions for construction of the larger of the National Nuclear Security Administration plutonium pit plants. The Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and the Augusta Building and Construction Trades Council inked the accord in Augusta, […]

The Pantex Plant could soon rid itself of plutonium sent to the Amarillo, Texas, nuclear weapons depot from the Savannah River Site, the government’s independent nuclear safety agency said recently. In late August, according to a report published this week by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Pantex prime contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) demonstrated […]

The prime contractor at the Savannah River Site last week signed a project labor agreement with a consortium of 19 labor unions for construction of the larger of the National Nuclear Security Administration plutonium pit plants. The Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and the Augusta Building and Construction Trades Council inked the accord in Augusta, […]

Subcontractors could begin building a planned plutonium pit factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by Dec. 31, the site’s prime contractor said Monday in a press release. “Construction is expected to begin before the end of this year,” the Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions wrote in the release. “Approximately 2,500 skilled craft […]

Subcontractors could begin building a planned plutonium pit factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by Dec. 31, the site’s prime contractor said Monday in a press release. “Construction is expected to begin before the end of this year,” the Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions wrote in the release. “Approximately 2,500 skilled craft […]

The House on Friday passed a stopgap budget that would hold the National Nuclear Security Administration to its fiscal year 2022 budget through Dec. 19 and allow work to continue on pit production plants, the B83 gravity bomb and a nuclear, sea-launched cruise-missile warhead. The continuing resolution will put a crunch on the semiautonomous Department […]

Due primarily to COVID-19, Los Alamos National  Laboratory believed it could take a year longer than expected for the the lab to casting 10 plutonium pits annually in New Mexico, according to an internal document. A redacted copy of the Los Alamos-authored document, dated September 2021 and released by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

Due primarily to COVID-19, Los Alamos National  Laboratory believed it could take a year longer than expected for the the lab to casting 10 plutonium pits annually in New Mexico, according to an internal document. A redacted copy of the Los Alamos-authored document, dated September 2021 and released by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration removed a tranche of weapon useable plutonium from the Nevada National Security Site after a roughly three-year layover, Nevada’s senior U.S. Senator said Friday. The nuclear weapons agency moved the plutonium to the test site in 2018 after the state of South Carolina successfully sued the government for keeping the […]

ARLINGTON, VA — Talks about the contractual future of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, ongoing for years between the Office of Environmental Management and the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, could bear fruit within three months, the head of the cleanup office said here Thursday. William (Ike) White made the remark Thursday during […]

ARLINGTON, VA — Talks about the contractual future of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, ongoing for years between the Office of Environmental Management and the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, could bear fruit within three months, the head of the cleanup office said here Thursday. William (Ike) White made the remark Thursday during […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration removed a tranche of weapon useable plutonium from the Nevada National Security Site after a roughly three-year layover, Nevada’s senior U.S. Senator said Friday. The nuclear weapons agency moved the plutonium to the test site in 2018 after the state of South Carolina successfully sued the government for keeping the […]

A draft site-wide environmental impact statement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory should appear in the summer or fall of 2023, the National Nuclear Security Administration said this week during public scoping meetings about the extensive environmental review of the nuclear weapons lab. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency took public comment on Tuesday […]

A draft site-wide environmental impact statement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory should appear in the summer or fall of 2023, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Tuesday in the first of two scheduled public scoping meetings about the extensive environmental review of the nuclear weapons lab. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency planned […]

In one of its first public field hearings since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board will review operations at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico this November. During a Nov. 16 session in Santa Fe, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) will look into both […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to conduct a major environmental review of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is set to become a nerve center and manufacturing satellite for nuclear weapon cores this decade. The semiautonomous nuclear-weapons agency announced the impending site-wide environmental impact statement in a Federal Register notice set to be published […]

U.S. District Judge Julianna Michelle Childs, who presided over a number of Department of Energy nuclear cases in South Carolina, and who was publicly discussed as a contender for a U.S. Supreme vacancy, has won confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Childs was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in a […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments said it will investigate the radioactive contamination in January of some Triad National Security employees at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility. The facility is in the early stages of an overhaul and expansion necessary for the lab to annually produce 30 war-ready plutonium pits […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee this week released all the unclassified details of its fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, showing lawmakers in that chamber disagree with their House counterparts on little except by how much to exceed the White House’s request for construction of a new plutonium pit factory in South Carolina. The […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee on Monday released all the unclassified details of its fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, showing lawmakers in that chamber disagree with their House counterparts on little except by how much to exceed the White House’s request for construction of a new plutonium pit factory in South Carolina.  The […]

Repeated changes in the the National Nuclear Security Administration’s strategy for producing new plutonium pits, plus the agency’s admission in 2021 that it cannot make a legal production deadline, is grounds for forcing the government to conduct an extensive environmental review of its two planned pit factories and other sites, a coalition of environmental groups […]

House appropriators want to provide the National Nuclear Security Administration with all the funding it requested in 2023 to build plutonium pit factories in New Mexico and South Carolina and fund a megaton-capable bomb the White House wanted to kill. The 2023 energy and water development appropriations act, slated for a vote in the House […]

An amendment approved in committee this week to the House’s 2023 National Defense Authorization Act would let Australian submarine officers attend naval nuclear reactors school in the U.S. and be stationed aboard U.S. submarines. The full House must still pass the bill. The amendment is similar to the bipartisan Australia-U.S. Submarine Officer Pipeline Act legislation […]