The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plans in fiscal 2020 to begin converting a canceled plutonium disposal facility in South Carolina into a plutonium pit factory while starting work on a replacement disposal facility.
At a total of about $2 billion, the agency’s requested 2020 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation budget “provides significant resources for strategic materials processing capabilities,” such as planned pit plants at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a senior DOE official said Monday on a conference call regarding the agency’s latest spending plan.
The pit plant at Los Alamos’ Plutonium Facility already exists. The NNSA has been expanding the facility under the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project, which is due to cost $2.5 billion to $3 billion over the eight years ending in fiscal 2024. Los Alamos is on the hook to make 30 pits a year by 2030, under the goals set in Donald Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.
The NNSA plans to build the Savannah River Site pit plant, which does not exist yet and is not authorized or funded by Congress, on the site of the canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). That facility will have to produce 50 pits a year by 2030, to meet the administration’s goals.
To that end, the NNSA’s 2020 budget “will also include Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation activity to continue the termination of the [Mixed Oxide Fuel] Fabrication Facility and to undertake our plans for the dilute and dispose program” that will replace it, the senior DOE official said.
Rather than converting 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium at the MFFF, the Energy Department now plans to process it at Savannah River and dipose of the diluted material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The senior DOE official would not Monday say how much the NNSA wants to spend on MFFF conversion or dilute and dispose in fiscal 2020. The agency could release those details as early as today or by next Monday.
The NNSA’s 2020 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation ask is about 3 percent higher than its current appropriation of roughly $1.9 billion. Overall, the agency seeks $16.5 billion for 2020: over 8 percent more than the 2019 appropriation of more than $15 billion.
