Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) pressed David Beck, deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), on whether the agency’s fiscal 2027 budget reflects a shifting strategy on plutonium pit production.
During a Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development hearing last week, the ranking member of both the subcommittee and full committee pointed to a recent memo from Beck outlining “transformation objectives,” including a reassessment of major production projects across the nuclear security enterprise. The memo called for a list of “achievable” objectives by the end of calendar year 2028, including for Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Plutonium Facility 4 to “enable production of 100 pits and achieve a sustained production rate of at least 60 pits per year and begin production.”
Murray said the long-delayed integrated master schedule for pit production — expected to detail construction timelines for the two-sites — has yet to be released. Murray also asked whether the budget is based on the current plan or incorporates potential changes as the agency reevaluates some of its most expensive infrastructure efforts.
Beck said the effort to rethink pit production is driven in part by frustration with the high cost and slow pace of building nuclear facilities, arguing the agency is seeking to inject “greater urgency” into its mission. He described a shift toward a more integrated, systems approach that aligns capabilities across sites, particularly Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site.
While NNSA has developed an integrated plan for work at Los Alamos, Beck acknowledged that a full master schedule incorporating the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility is not yet complete. Updated cost and schedule estimates for Savannah River are expected later this summer. As a result, it remains unclear to what extent the fiscal 2027 request reflects a finalized production roadmap.
Still, Beck emphasized that the agency is already moving to accelerate output. “This is not the NNSA of two years ago,” he said. “We are moving fast to make more pits. The number of pits we plan to make this year at Los Alamos, we got that done in the first half of the year, and we’ll make three times that number by the end of the year.”