The Department of Energy’s Environmental Assessments office is opening an investigation into the flooding of Los Alamos’ PF-4 plutonium facility earlier this year, an event precipitated by an untrained worker operating a wet vacuum.
DOE’s internal watchdog notified lab director Thomas Mason of the impending investigation in a Sept. 23 letter posted online recently.
In late August, a lab spokesperson told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing that the 280-gallon flood had caused about a three-week production delay at PF-4, which is buckling down to produce a first production unit plutonium pit for a W87-1 intercontinental ballistic missile warhead by fiscal year 2023, which begins in almost exactly one year.
By the end of August, “after three weeks the positive pressure circulating chilled water (PPCCW) system has been restored, with all affected processes being operational and available for production activities,” the lab spokesperson wrote.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has a legal obligation to make sure Los Alamos can produce at least 10 war-usable plutonium pits by 2024, at least 20 by 2025 and at least 30 by 2026. Internally, opinions differ as to whether the lab can hit all of these milestones, although Charles Verdon, the associate administrator for defense programs, told Congress this year that NNSA is confident Los Alamos will produce 30 pits in 2026.
Pits are the fissile cores of nuclear weapon primary stages. W87-1 is the second of two planned warheads for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrence intercontinental ballistic missile being built by Northrop Grumman to replace the Minuteman III fleet beginning in 2030 or so. The first test flight for the new missile is scheduled for December 2023. W87-1 is replacing the W78 warhead on Minuteman III. The first Ground Based Strategic Deterrent missiles will go into the ground with W87-0 warheads, which will be taken off Minuteman missiles and adapted for the successor rockets.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory owns the W87-0 and W87-1 programs.
