MOX Archives - NukeWatch NM

Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: May 2026

Sophia MerynMay 9, 2026June 8, 2026Kansas City Plant, Modernization, MOX, Nuclear Weapons, Plutonium Pit Production, Savannah River Site

Nuclear Weapons:

https://www.twz.com/nuclear/new-nuclear-bunker-buster-bomb-plans-revealed
New Nuclear Bunker Buster Bomb Plans Revealed The Department of Energy is seeking millions of dollars for work in part on a new bunker-busting nuclear weapon called the Nuclear Deterrent System-Air-delivered (NDS-A) in its latest budget request… Beyond that it will be air-delivered, there are also no details currently available publicly about the weapon’s design, including whether it will be based on something already in the stockpile.

See the graph below found on the Kansas City National Security Complex website. There are three future new-design nuclear weapons on the right above the W93 (“F” is all 3 cases means “Future”). These new-design nuclear weapons presumably will have new-design pits like the W93.

Independent Government Accountability Office Releases Scathing Report on Expanding Plutonium Pit Production; Pressure Mounts on Los Alamos Lab to Increase Production

Sophia MerynJanuary 12, 2023July 10, 2023GAO, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., MOX, NNSA, Pit Production at LANL, Pit Production at SRS, Plutonium Pit Production, Savannah River Site

Santa Fe, NM – Today, the independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a scathing report entitled NNSA Does Not Have a Comprehensive Schedule or Cost Estimate for Pit Production Capability. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its parent Department of Energy have been on the GAO’s High Risk List for project mismanagement since 1991.

Plutonium pits are the essential radioactive cores of nuclear weapons. There has been only limited production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) since 1989 when a FBI raid investigating environmental crimes abruptly shut down production at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver. NNSA now plans to spend $2.9 billion in FY 2023 alone to establish production of at least 30 pits per year at LANL and 50 pits per year at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.

The two main findings of GAO’s report are:

NNSA’s Plutonium Pit Production Scope of Work Includes Dozens of Programs, Projects, and Other Activities Managed by Multiple NNSA Offices at Multiple Sites (p 19)

FULL PRESS RELEASE [PDF]

RE: The Santa Fe New Mexican “GAO: Cost, time estimates for making nuclear bomb cores flawed” – Underneath it All is the Nuclear Elephant in the Room: Future Pit Production is Actually Unnecessary.

Sophia MerynJanuary 12, 2023January 19, 2023GAO, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., MOX, NNSA, Pit Production at LANL, Pit Production at SRS, Plutonium Pit Production, Savannah River Site

BY JAY COGHLAN

Good article indeed. Kudos to Scott Wyland.

But to add to it:

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) cannot do, or rather will not do, good governance 101 for its largest program ever (i.e., expanded plutonium pit production), which is credible cost estimates and schedules. Why won’t NNSA do that? Because of PR and political concerns when their flaky cost estimates (such as they are) get blown up by inevitable escalating costs. NNSA knows that if it gave accurate projected costs Congress and the public would balk. Thus, the agency goes in lowballing costs, which always inevitably rise. I could rattle off a dozen NNSA projects over the last 15 years in which costs have exploded, wasting tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars.

But get this, future pit production is also unnecessary and may actually degrade national security. To begin with, independent experts have found that pits have serviceable lifetimes of at least a century (their average age is now around 40). And we already have at least 15,000 existing pits stored at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX.