The National Nuclear Security Administration confirmed Monday it is evaluating whether it can manufacture plutonium pits at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina instead of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as currently planned.
The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency settled on Savannah River after ruling out the Idaho National Laboratory as part of a congressionally mandated analysis of alternatives to producing nuclear-warhead cores at a new Los Alamos plant.
“The Analysis of Alternatives identified two options — one at Los Alamos National Laboratory and one at the Savannah River Site — for further engineering analysis, which will be conducted by a team of external and internal experts,” a spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) wrote in an email Monday evening.
The Department of Energy has yet to release the full analysis, but a heavily redacted, one-page summary of the document leaked to the press Friday.
Los Alamos’ existing Plutonium Facility can produce pits now and, with Rocky Flats near Denver, Colo., shut down, is the only pit-production facility left in the Department of Energy’s weapons complex.
According to the leaked one-pager, the NNSA is considering whether the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) under construction at Savannah River could be turned into a pit-production plant. MFFF, being built for the agency by CB&I AREVA MOX Services, is designed to convert weapon-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.
The Donald Trump administration wants to cancel MFFF.
Converting the Savannah River facility into a pit-production site would cost between $1.4 billion and $5.4 billion, according to the leaked document. New facilities at Los Alamos would cost between $1.9 billion and $7.5 billion, according to the summary.
In a joint statement, Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, along with Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (all D-N.M.), said the NNSA’s evaluation process was “deeply flawed” and that they were “deeply skeptical of any alternative” to producing pits at Los Alamos.
By 2030, the NNSA aims to produce between 50 and 80 plutonium pits a year to replenish the strength of U.S. nuclear warheads. The fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which Trump is expected to sign, would make it harder to move pit production from Los Alamos.
