The Los Alamos National Laboratory wrapped up equipment installation at the site’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility 10 months ahead of schedule, the weapons lab said this week in press release.
This now-completed phase, officially, Plutonium Facility Equipment Installation-Phase 1, is part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility (CMMR) project. Los Alamos turned the newly installed analytical equipment to PF-4 users in August, according to a lab press release.
The multi-billion-dollar, six-phase CMMR upgrade eventually will allow Los Alamos to produce war-ready intercontinental ballistic missile warhead-cores by 2024. This early phase was “several million dollars under budget,” the lab said Tuesday.
“I often tell people CMRR is the best-kept secret in the NNSA,” Robert Raines, NNSA’s associate administrator for acquisition and project management, said in a public meeting webcast on Thursday. “We have completed two nuclear projects there, and the other two nuclear projects that are coming close to completion have all been completed under budget and ahead of schedule. You could have never said this a decade ago.”
Overall, CMMR is budgeted to cost a little over $2 billion, Raines said in the webcast hosted by a pair of Washington-based non-government groups. “We broke this one up into six subprojects, two are complete, two are under construction and two are under design,” Raines said.
“[W]e kept the same project leadership during the [management and operations] contract transition, which also helped us stay consistent and on track,” Eric Chavez, the project management at Los Alamos, said in the lab’s press release about the milestone. Work on the Plutonium Facility Equipment Installation-Phase 1 started before Triad National Security took over as the lab prime in November 2018 from Los Alamos National Security.
A lab spokesperson said that Los Alamos officials were not available for comment this week.
Los Alamos plans to annually produce 10 war-ready nuclear weapon cores, or pits, at PF-4 in 2024, ramping up to 30 pits a year by 2026. By 2030, the agency hopes to bring another pit factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. online to produce 50 pits a year. The NNSA expects the facilities to combine for at least 80 pits annually starting in 2030: a Pentagon requirement. Either facility will be able to make 80 a year alone, NNSA has said.
The pits will initially be for the W87-1 warheads scheduled to tip Ground Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles some time after 2030. The planned missiles, to be built by Northrop Grumman, will replace Boeing-built Minuteman III missiles. The Air Force is buying more than 650 new missiles but will deploy about 400 at a time.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expects to finish construction of a warehouse related to the CMRR and a nearby construction support building in November.
