ARLINGTON, VA – The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Los Alamos National Laboratory “exceeded all” objectives for producing the fissile cores of the nation’s nuclear weapons, the lab’s director Thom Mason told the Exchange Monitor Monday at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit.
NNSA produced a “diamond-stamped,” or war-reserve quality, first production unit of a W87-1 plutonium pit in October 2024. The diamond-stamped pit has since become a model for any W87-1 pits produced since then.
“I can’t tell you the exact number [of pits], because that’s classified,” Mason told the Monitor on the sidelines of the summit, adding, “if we told you how many pits we make every year, and you kept track, you would know how many W87-1s there are, and that’s a classified thing.”
However, Mason obliged this past year “has gone exceptionally well. We met or exceeded all our production objectives, and at the same time, we significantly ramped up the pace of infrastructure work to remove old equipment and install new state of the art equipment so that we can increase the production up to full rate production over the next couple of years.”
Section 3120 of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act put into law that NNSA produce 30 plutonium pits by 2026 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where plutonium pits were first produced during the Manhattan Project in 1945. Mason has said in the past, however, that the lab’s “plan we’re working to is 2028.”
Bob Webster, Deputy Laboratory Director for Weapons at Los Alamos, also confirmed in a panel at the summit Wednesday that “we are now ahead of schedule” to get 30 pits per year by 2028 at Los Alamos.
The U.S. Code on War and National Defense dictates that in 2030, NNSA must produce no fewer than 80 war-reserve pits. The remaining 50 pits would be made by the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, though that is not projected to come online until the mid-2030s.
Mason also added that “given the fact it’ll be a while before Savannah River’s online, we’re eager to do as much as we can to fill that gap.”
Los Alamos would initially make cores for the first stages of W87-1 warheads, which are to top the Air Force’s planned silo-based Sentinel missiles some time next decade. Savannah River will make cores for the W93 warheads, which would be used in the Navy.