NEW CRS REPORT RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT LOS ALAMOS PU PLANS

Could Los Alamos National Laboratory’s latest plans for plutonium infrastructure be scaled back again? That’s one of the main questions raised by a new report from the Congressional Research Service, which suggests that existing facilities at Los Alamos—with some tweaks—could allow for the eventual production of between 50 and 80 pits. Such a move would amount to another change of course at the lab, which is currently pursuing a modular plan to maintain its plutonium infrastructure after the deferral of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility several years ago.

The CRS report, however, suggests that if the lab’s existing Radiological Laboratory Utility Office Building was upgraded to a Hazard Category 3 facility, the facility and its 19,500 square feet of lab space could conduct much of the analytical chemistry work needed at the lab while freeing up space in the lab’s Plutonium Facility. An upgrade to a Hazard Category 3 facility would allow RLUOB to hold 1,000 grams of weapons-grade plutonium, up from the 26 grams it is currently allowed to hold. If additional space in PF-4 was reconfigured or plutonium-238 operations were moved—perhaps to Idaho National Laboratory or the Savannah River Site, the report suggests—and plutonium operations were improved, there would be enough space to produce 80 pits per year and perform the necessary analytical chemistry at the lab.