Noted nuclear non-proliferation expert Dr. Frank von Hippel speaks up against the proposed, unjustified SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant:
“Why a decision on a second US plutonium-pit-production factory should be delayed”
Conclusions in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist’s article:
“The decision on the second pit production facility can wait. NNSA could announce its decision to move forward on building a pit-production facility in South Carolina as early as September. Based on the above context, this decision should be delayed for a number of reasons:
1. Since the Savannah River Site staff has no experience with pit production, the facility would have to be designed and the staff trained by the Los Alamos group. But the Los Alamos group has not yet demonstrated that that it can design and staff its own pit production facility.
2. Within a decade, we should have a new lower limit on the functional lives of the legacy pits. If they will indeed last for at least 150 years, as the Livermore experts concluded, then there will be no need for a large production facility to replace them anytime soon. The Los Alamos facility, if it can be made operational, should be sufficient for some decades.
3. The argument for producing additional warheads with insensitive high explosive for the Minuteman III replacement is very weak, and the debate over the need to produce new pits for a warhead to replace the W-76, the most numerous warhead in the US operational stock cannot be made until NNSA and Defense Department are ready to discuss what pit they would use in the W93.
We can wait for another decade before we decide on whether the United States requires two pit production facilities.”
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, June 12, 2020: https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/why-a-decision-on-a-second-us-plutonium-pit-production-factory-should-be-delayed/
This well-reasoned argument, leagues beyond the self-serving comments of pit plant boosters (who are out after tax payer money), will up the ante in the discussion in Congress about the SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant. It might not get cut this year but stand by for heated action in 2021!
Dr. von Hippel’s bio in the BAS: “Frank von Hippel is one of the United States’ most prominent scientists in the nuclear policy arena. He co-founded Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and the International Panel on Fissile Materials, and is a member of the Bulletin‘s Board of Sponsors. A former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology, von Hippel’s policy research currently focuses on reducing global stocks of weapon-usable fissile materials and the number of locations where they can be found.”
Comments of Dr. von Hippel and others on the draft EIS on the proposed SRS pit plant: https://srswatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/SRS-Watch-news-on-plutonium-pit-comments-June-3-2020.pdf