Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Wednesday the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Plutonium Facility (PF-4) is improving its nuclear criticality safety program, amid reporting this week of ongoing safety issues at the New Mexico site.
Perry said during a Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee budget hearing that Los Alamos has “made significant progress with hiring new criticality safety analysts since that 2013 pause in operations.”
“The reviews were done, the readiness assessments were very deliberately and appropriately accomplished, and it’s been safely brought back online,” he told lawmakers.
PF-4, the nation’s only fully capable plutonium research and processing facility, returned to full operations last October following a pause in fissile material operations beginning in 2013 due to weaknesses in the site’s criticality safety program.
The Center for Public Integrity is publishing a series of investigative reports on ongoing safety issues at PF-4, starting with a June 18 article that said the pause in operations prevented Los Alamos from conducting 29 plutonium core reliability tests and manufacturing new plutonium pits for the nuclear arsenal.
In a response Monday, National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Frank Klotz said LANL has made progress on the plutonium facility’s safety since the 2013 shutdown, in part by increasing criticality safety staffing. He added that the facility has resumed producing developmental pits and will ultimately make pits for future nuclear weapons life-extension programs.
Perry confirmed that the Energy Department remains on schedule to meet the Defense Department’s plutonium pit manufacturing requirements. Those include the production of 50 to 80 plutonium pits per year in the long term, starting with 10 per year by 2024 and up to 80 per year by 2030.
The Energy Department in February submitted a fiscal 2016 criticality safety program metrics report to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which found Los Alamos’ program “does not meet expectations” with regard to criticality safety infractions and program noncompliances.
The report also found that the laboratory’s nine contractor staff members and one federal staff member performing criticality safety work were insufficient. Still, that report noted that a program improvement plan is in place and being monitored by the NNSA’s Los Alamos field office.
