At a Monday meeting of the South Carolina governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council, the Savannah River Site’s prime contractor discussed starting plutonium pit production in the early 2030s and an antinuclear activist from New Mexico said the state should take on the government’s entire pit mission.
“We have put a stake in the ground that we will deliver a facility to hot operations by 2032,” and turn out the first production units by 2035, Dennis Carr, president and CEO of prime contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions told the South Carolina governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council.
Later in the same meeting, Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group and frequent DOE critic, said there are many challenges to overcome in order for Los Alamos National Laboratory to meet the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) goal of turning out 30 pits per year by 2030.
“We don’t really love pit production,” Mello told the advisory council. “We don’t really like it. We don’t really want it. But if pit production needs to happen, we think it should happen at the Savannah River Site,” Mello said.
Los Alamos is a much smaller site, Mello said. While Savannah River is a 310-square-mile site, Los Alamos in the northern New Mexico desert is only 40 square miles. Los Alamos also suffers from traffic jams and housing shortages. The national laboratory is also surrounded by culturally significant tribal lands, he said.
Mello’s analysis appeared to resonate with advisory board member James Little, a former Atkins nuclear executive.
“This is not a surprise to me,” Little said, adding Los Alamos is a research facility. “There are really brilliant people who work there … but it is not a production facility. It never will be …. There is no way in hell 30 pits a year will ever be made at LANL.”
