“Stumbling plutonium pit project reveals DOE’s uphill climb of nuclear modernization”
Opinion piece in The Hill, by Tom Clements, Director of SRS Watch
The inability of SRS to pull off the MOX project now haunts plutonium pit plans – for unneeded nuclear weapons -so adored by boo$ters and contractor$
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is mounting a full-court press for the “modernization” of the nuclear weapons production complex, an effort packed with capital-intensive projects on which contractors thrive. A cornerstone of modernization, a new plant to make the plutonium “pits” for new nuclear weapons already faces problems. Yet, Congress and the Biden administration are moving ahead despite gathering storm clouds.
“Pits” are the hollow plutonium spheres that cause the initial nuclear explosion in all U.S. nuclear weapons. New pits would first go into the new W87-1 warhead for a new missile, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), meant to replace the U.S.’s current ICBMs. Second in the queue is a submarine launched missile. Both weapons have their detractors, but pits could prove to be their ultimate stumbling block.
The new pit plant will be at DOE’s sprawling Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. Already SRS’s plans face massive cost increases and schedule delays, causing skepticism in Congress.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, knows all of this. He highlighted the agency’s chronic inability to carry out modernization projects earlier this year saying, “in nearly every instance, NNSA programs have seen massive cost increases, schedule delays, and cancellations of billion-dollar programs. This must end.”
On Aug. 31, when speaking about pit production in a Brookings Institution virtual event, Smith went further saying that “Savannah River sort of gives me an involuntary twitch after the whole MOX disaster. I don’t trust them.”
Photo of terminated MOX plant at SRS – proposed to be transformed into a Plutonium Bomb Plant – is by High Flyer