DOE deputy secretary ‘concerned,’ orders plutonium special study in letter to NNSA

In a letter to Teresa Robbins, acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Deputy Secretary of Energy James Danly said he is ordering a special study to evaluate key leadership and processes on pit production.

“I have become increasingly concerned about the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) ability to consistently deliver on nuclear weapons production capabilities needed to support the national defense of the United States,” Danly said in the letter, obtained Monday by the Exchange Monitor. “For nearly three decades, the United States has not had the ability to produce plutonium pits in the quantities required for the nuclear weapons stockpile and to maintain nuclear deterrence.”

Danly is ordering the Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments to conduct the study on pit production and any associated projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Savannah River Site, the two NNSA sites that would produce the fissile cores of nuclear weapons. The special study should be completed within 120 days, Danly said.

The study will require briefings, interviews, site visits, and program documentation from NNSA managers and contractors.

Los Alamos in New Mexico was to start producing pits this year, and verified its first production unit of a pit for the W87-1 to top the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile last October. Savannah River in South Carolina is not to open its plutonium processing facility until the 2030s, and cannot introduce or process nuclear material at the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility until it completes its Environmental Impact Study as a result of a lawsuit.