As always, complex nuclear projects for DOE are always delayed and run far over budget. Now we see that happening with the proposed SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant and the missile for which new pits would be supplied (for the W87-1 warhead).
The cost of the SRS pit plant of up to $11.2 billion was from May 2018 – see CD-1 cost decision – and we won’t get a new official estimate until around April 2025. During that time watch the cost soar and delays past a 2036 start date.
Representative Garamendi, commenting at House Armed Services hearing on March 28, 2023, on how DOE’s projects, like pit production and new nuclear missile (with new pits) always go off the rails:
“I’m just trying to get my head around all the happy talk that I’ve heard. The fact of the matter is every single one of these systems are behind schedule and over budget, every single one of them,” he said emphatically.
See article in Breaking Defense news, March 28, 2023:
“DoD rejiggers $96 billion Sentinel ICBM program to minimize delay”
As officials described how they’ll spend billions on America’s nuclear arsenal and presented rosy outlooks, California’s Rep. John Garamendi retorted, “The fact of the matter is every single one of these systems are behind schedule and over budget, every single one of them.”
However, a number of lawmakers raised serious concerns about the pace of both DoD and NNSA nuclear weapon activities, including subcommittee ranking member Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif.
Moulton fretted that the NNSA’s uranium processing facility is “$2 billion over cost” and delayed by “up to two years.” Further, he added, plans for plutonium pit production “at the rate DoD requires have been delayed again by years until the mid- to late-2030s. And we won’t know how much it will realistically cost until 2025.”