Smith in his Monday missive warned a bevy of NNSA endeavors, like pit production and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility before it, “have seen massive cost increases, schedule delays, and cancellations of billion-dollar programs. This must end.” Two things, Smith wrote, are vital to the successful modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons: affordability and executability.
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The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on Monday urged President Joe Biden to include an audit of plutonium pit production plans and costs in his administration’s broader assessment of U.S. nuclear policy and capabilities.
Writing about the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review, Rep. Adam Smith pressed the president to closely examine pit production — the crafting of nuclear weapon cores, namely in South Carolina and New Mexico — and to “ensure it is both necessary and achievable within the announced cost and schedule.”
“As we near the budgetary heights of the ‘nuclear modernization mountain’ we can ill afford further delays and cost overruns,” wrote the Washington Democrat, who time and again has expressed reservations about pit production in the Palmetto State. He continued: “It is simply acknowledging reality that we must make hard choices.”
Federal law mandates production of 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030 — a rate and date motivated by military demand.
But while National Nuclear Security Administration officials believe production benchmarks in 2024, 2025 and 2026 can be met in New Mexico, at Los Alamos National Laboratory, they do not think a 2030 production target in South Carolina, at the Savannah River Site, is achievable.
A need for specialized equipment and supply chain constraints have complicated things, according to the NNSA’s Michael Thompson.
The pit factory planned for the Savannah River Site — the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility — could become a reality as late as 2035, documents show. And it could cost some $11 billion, more than double the initial estimates.
Smith in his Monday missive warned a bevy of NNSA endeavors, like pit production and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility before it, “have seen massive cost increases, schedule delays, and cancellations of billion-dollar programs. This must end.” Two things, Smith wrote, are vital to the successful modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons: affordability and executability.
Copies of the letter were sent to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, both of whom Smith wants a pledge of “rigorous” oversight from. The secretaries have expressed support for the two-pronged pit production strategy.
“We have to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal,” Granholm said at the White House in early April. “We have to keep and maintain the stockpile to make sure that it is safe and effective, and we will continue to do that to ensure that we can deter nuclear aggression from other countries.”