NNSA Could Publish Final Environmental Study on Savannah River Pit Plant Soon

The National Nuclear Security Administration finished an environmental review that will could the civilian nuclear-weapons agency to formalize a decision to make plutonium pits in South Carolina within about a month.

The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency approved the final site-specific environmental impact statement this week and published it Friday. A formal record of decision would nominally follow that document within 30 days.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) released a draft environmental impact statement about the proposed Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF) in April. The plant, to be built from the remains of the cancelled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, is supposed to annually produce at least 50 plutonium pits — fissile nuclear weapon cores — by 2030.

The pits, or triggers, would be for planned W87-1 warheads, which would tip the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent fleet of next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Air Force wants to start deploying those missiles early next decade. Another planned pit plant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory would make the initial pits for W87-1 warheads.

According to a recently declassified report, the NNSA estimates it will cost some $3 billion over five years to finish the Los Alamos pit plant — this consists of upgrades to the existing PF-4 Plutonium Facility at the lab’s Technical Area 55 — and about $4.6 billion to finish the SRPPF. The agency estimates these facilities will cost more than $30 billion to operate over a lifetime of several decades.

To meet Pentagon requirements for the planned fleet of 400 Ground Based Strategic Deterrent Missiles, the NNSA has said it has to produce 80 war-ready W87-1 pits a year by 2030. The Los Alamos pit plant would come online in 2024 and hit 30 pits a year in 2026, and SRPPF would come online in 2030, notionally casting 50 pits a year.

Since publicly debuting the two-state pit plan, the NNSA has acknowledged it will be challenged to hit 8o pits a year by the start of the next decade.