Department of Energy Budget Roll-Out Bungled, Request for Fiscal Year 2022 Reveals Savannah River Site Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP) Cost Soars to Staggering $11.1 Billion; SRS Plutonium Pit Project Requests $603 Million in FY22, with $475 Million for Conversion of MOX Plant to Pit Production – Funding Requests are Far Under Annual Levels Needed to Pull Off the Controversial Project
Columbia, SC – The U.S. Department of Energy budget request to Congress for Fiscal Year 2022 holds some startling surprises related to fabrication of plutonium “pits” for nuclear warheads at the DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The biggest shock in the budget request by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration is that the total estimated cost of the SRS pit plant has soared to $11.1 billion, more than double the previous cost estimate of $4.6 billion (in the FY 21 budget request).
Thus, in a one-week period, the cost estimate of the SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP) has more than doubled in cost and the schedule for the facility’s initial operation has slipped up to five years. These troubling and potentially debilitating developments foreshadow problems to come to the challenging pit-production project, according to the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch.
full SRS Watch news release, with links to DOE budget request: News SRS Watch on NNSA budget FY 22 request on plutonium pits May 29 2021