Editor’s note, 11/10/2021, 1:44 p.m. Eastern time. The story was corrected to show that Los Alamos is scheduled to complete the PF-4 decontamination and demolition subproject in fiscal year 2025.
A major subproject to clear out space for new pit-manufacturing equipment at the Los Alamos National Laboratory will cost about $530 million and finish ripping up old glove boxes and equipment by 2025 or so, a lab spokesperson said.
In the decontamination and decommissioning of Los Alamos’ PF-4 Plutonium Facility, which is being expanded to manufacture at least 30 nuclear-weapon primary cores by fiscal year 2026, the lab will remove some 80 items from 12 rooms, according to the memo to Jill Hruby, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) administrator, from the agency’s office of project management.
Weapons Complex Morning Briefing viewed the text of the memo, which recommended the March 2027 critical decision-4 target and the $529 million total project cost with 85% confidence.
“We will begin [decontamination and deactivation] now, with a project management baseline completion date of September 2025, and a CD-4 date, inclusive of schedule reserve and contingency, of March 2027,” a Los Alamos spokesperson wrote in an email Wednesday.
The Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project, as the effort to convert PF-4 into a pit shop is now called, could cost up to $3.9 billion to finish by 2027 or 2028, the NNSA forecast in April. Los Alamos aims to annually produce at least 30 of the 80 or more pits the military requires by 2030. The balance would be made by the larger, more expensive, Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, which NNSA has said will not be ready by 2030 — 2032 or 2035 is more like it, agency officials said over the spring and summer.
