The Los Alamos National Laboratory would be barred from expanding equipment needed to dispose of surplus plutonium until the lab certifies it can produce at least 30 nuclear weapon cores annually, under a bill passed last week.
The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress passed Thursday, would prohibit expansion of the Advanced Recovery and Integrated Extraction System (ARIES) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility, where personnel process surplus plutonium as part of a multi-site mission that leads to permanent underground disposal.
This mission, the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program, shares space in PF-4 with the Department of Energy’s top nuclear-weapons mission: construction of new weapon cores called pits. Already this year, the agency’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has delayed a construction project that would have expanded the disposal mission’s capabilities.
Now, with the passage of an NDAA that President Joe Biden (D) has said he will sign, the ARIES build-out could be on hold until the NNSA certifies that PF-4 can achieve the congressionally mandated annual output of 30 pits. The agency is trying to reach that level of production this decade but has also said it might not get there until 2030 or later.
The prohibition on ARIES expansion originated in the Senate. During negotiations in November to create a unified NDAA, lawmakers relaxed the Senate’s ban to allow for minor improvements to ARIES that do not take up extra space at PF-4. The final bill also allows the NNSA to consider expanding, or transferring, ARIES to locations other than PF-4.
It was not clear on Wednesday what effect the mounting disposal delays might have on the DOE’s legal obligation to clear plutonium out of South Carolina. None of the members of the congressional delegations representing Los Alamos or Savannah River replied to requests for comment.
Aside from ARIES, the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program also has facilities at the Savannah River Site’s K-Area. The program is part of a drive to permanently de-weaponize and dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium. The NNSA has already disposed of some plutonium treated by ARIES and K-Area at the agency’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the only permanent disposal site for material categorized as transuranic waste.
