May 29, 2014

LOS ALAMOS DIRECTOR LAYS OUT NEEDS FOR PLUTONIUM STRATEGY

By ExchangeMonitor

With a 2019 deadline to get out of the aged Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility looming five years from now, Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan yesterday outlined key requirements for the lab’s plutonium strategy. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, McMillan said the lab needed a steady funding stream and a smoothed-out project management process to ensure that it can modernize its plutonium capabilities. After the deferral of the multi-billion-dollar Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility, the lab is pursuing a plan that would involve using existing facilities and building small modular facilities to maintain its plutonium work, but that plan remains in its infancy.

McMillan said the lab needs $90 million in Fiscal Year 2014, $38 million in FY 2015, and then a steady funding profile of about $85 million a year to 2019 for the plutonium strategy. “We need to get the money in that kind of sequence and we need to work very closely with NNSA so we don’t have the process getting in the way,” McMillan told NS&D Monitor on the sidelines of the hearing. “If we can do those things I have high confidence we can meet a 2019 date. If we hiccup anywhere along that it’s now a very tightly wound system, and then I can’t say what I just said. We’re going to be in a position where success is not nearly as likely.”

Comments are closed.