U.S. Department of Energy Admits Design Problems with Controversial New Plutonium Bomb Plant at Savannah River Site as Cost Surges to a Stunning $25 Billion, Likely Most Expensive Building in U.S. History
Anticipated DOE Funding Requests for SRS Plutonium Pit Plant, Key to New Nuclear Warheads, to Hit $9 Billion Over the Next 5 Years
Columbia, South Carolina – On the heels of releasing information that the design of proposed plutonium bomb facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina “continued to trend negative,” the Department of Energy has admitted in budget documents released this week that the cost could hit a staggering $25 billion.
The massive cost increase, rising from an estimated $11.1 billion in June 2021, was reflected in DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Fiscal Year 2025 budget request to Congress, posted on March 11. Like all complex DOE projects, such as the plutonium fuel (MOX) project canceled at SRS in 2018, significant delays and large cost overruns related to design and technical problems are standard and, as congressional oversight is minimal, tend to get worse over time. The abandoned MOX building, now being stripped of all costly installations, is proposed to be converted into the pit plant.
If it ever operates, the SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant – which DOE calls the more innocuous “SRS Plutonium Processing Facility” – would be key in fabricating the plutonium pits, or cores, for both new and existing U.S. nuclear warheads. The weight of a spherical, hollow pit is classified but it’s around a few kilograms of plutonium (much of which was made in nuclear reactors that operated at SRS until the late 1980s).
“The pit facility is central to a brewing nuclear arms race and thus should be unwelcome in South Carolina but contractor profits are driving its location here,” said Tom Clements, director of the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch, based in Columbia, SC. “Given the massive cost overrun projected for the SRS pit plant and the growing threat of the unconstrained pursuit of new nuclear weapons, it’s time for cooler heads to prevail and for the government to hit the pause button on this misguided and unnecessary project,” added Clements.
full SRS Watch news release posted here: SRSW news SRS pit plant $25 billion March 15 2024