Secretary of Energy Chris Wright confirmed Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has “just begun” pit production in testimony Wednesday to the House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee on the fiscal 2027 budget request for the Department of Energy.
Wright was responding to a question by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), ranking member of the subcommittee, on reforms to project management at DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and when Congress will receive a “complete life cycle cost estimate” for pit production, wherein plutonium metal is processed into a sphere that constitutes the fissile core of a nuclear weapon.
“GAO [the Government Accountability Office] reported in February that cost overruns on NNSA’s 28 major construction projects have doubled, more than doubled, rising to $4.8 billion,” Kaptur said. She added “the plutonium pit production program is split across two sites, will likely cost well over $20 billion and still does not have a comprehensive life cycle cost estimate.”
Wright agreed the “management track record over the last decade or two” at NNSA has “not been good.” He said the department has “realigned incentives” and “responsibilities.”
“I’m happy to say, I think we’re seeing rapid progress there,” Wright replied. “The pit production at Los Alamos has ramped up rapidly. We are both moving out old legacy equipment while actually manufacturing pits.”
In accordance with federal law, NNSA must be able to produce 80 or more pits yearly to replenish the nuclear stockpile. The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF) in South Carolina will eventually work in tandem with Los Alamos to produce plutonium pits, or the fissile cores of a nuclear weapon, for the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
“Our goal is to get 100 pits produced cumulatively during this administration, and then get to that rate of 80 a year as soon as 2030 as possible,” Wright said. “And we’ll still have just the Los Alamos facility, you know, through that time period. But it is to your point, it’s critical that we ramp this up as quickly as possible so we can maintain and modernize our stockpile and our weapons.”