The status of new plutonium “pit” production, for the cores of nuclear weapons, is the subject of negotiations in a conference committee between the U.S. House and Senate over their differing versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (NDAA). The Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP) proposed by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for SRS remains unfunded and unauthorized by Congress and should stay that way.
SRS Watch wrote on August 27, 2019 to key members of the Armed Services Committees requesting that the House version of the defense bill, which does not authorize or fund the Plutonium Bomb Plant, be adopted. SRSW letter: lettertoArmedServicesonpitsAugust272019.
The House language would eliminate the unjustified requirement from 2015 that NNSA pursue production of 80 or more plutonium pits per year, with 50 or more slated for production at SRS and 30 or more at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Additionally, SRS Watch called on Armed Services conferees to require a report on any need for the “W87-1-like” warhead, a new warhead for which new pits would be manufactured. And, SRS Watch requested that a “nuclear proliferation risk assessment” be required on the deployment of such a provocative, new warhead.
New pit production for new nuclear weapons will only fuel a new nuclear arms race with Russia and China, which will threaten U.S. national security, according to SRS Watch.
Photo: terminated MOX plant at SRS, by High Flyer – construction problems not revealed by DOE and DOE has made no case the facility could be converted into a Plutonium Bomb Pant (PBP)