To support a manufacturing effort crucial to future U.S. nuclear arms-modernization programs, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) still plans to drastically increase the amount of plutonium permitted inside a building at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to a recently completed environmental review.
In a final environmental assessment dated July 18 and posted online last week, the NNSA said it will still shift much, but not all, planned analysis of future plutonium pits produced at Los Alamos to the lab’s Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building (RLUOB) from its Plutonium Facility (PF-4).
To support the higher workload at the building, the NNSA plans to increase the amount of plutonium-equivalent material allowed in RLUOB by roughly tenfold, to 400 grams from just under 40 grams. That would allow the Department of Energy agency to install new analytical chemistry and materials characterization equipment in that newer, relatively cleaner facility, rather than PF-4.
Modifying the RLUOB to handle more plutonium would involve installing “additional enclosures and equipment,” the NNSA said. That would take eight to 10 years. In its fiscal 2019 budget request, the agency estimated recategorizing the facility would cost roughly between $210 million and $340 million.
Besides the investment and the time required, the NNSA’s plan requires reclassifying RLUOB as a Hazard Category 3 nuclear facility from its current designation as a radiological facility. Before it could do that, the agency was required under federal law to examine the environmental affects of the reclassification. That Energy-led effort resulted in the just-published environmental assessment, as a result of which the agency was able to issue what is known officially as a finding of no significant impact: a Department of Energy declaration that expanding RLUOB’s plutonium storage capacity would have no great effect on the environment, and that the agency does not have to do any more environmental reviews of its plan.
As recently as 2015, the NNSA contemplated doing much of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) plutonium analysis at PF-4. The facility is supposed to become the lab’s production hub for plutonium pits in 2026, when it is slated to begin cranking out 30 of the fissile warhead cores each year.
