The National Nuclear Security Administration on Thursday formalized a decision to make at least 50 nuclear-weapon cores a year at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., and environmental groups immediately raised the prospects of a lawsuit if the agency does not review the plan again.
The semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency made its long-expected move official in a record of decision published Thursday in the federal register. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plans to turn the cancelled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility into the Savannah River Plutonium Production Facility (SRPPF) which will then cast between 50 and 80 pits a year.
In a statement Thursday morning, the oft-allied groups Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Santa Few, N.M., Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, Livermore, Calif., and Savannah River Site Watch, Columbia, S.C., claimed that the NNSA legally has to do a separate programmatic environmental impact statement for the entire nationwide pit mission, and that failure to do so “could result in a lawsuit.”
The NNSA says its plan does consider the nationwide ramifications of SRPPF, and on Thursday, the agency formally asserted as much by also amending a 2008 decision about pit production that was based on a multi-state environmental review performed about a decade before the NNSA decided to cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and turn it into a pit factory. The agency says its current plan is not all that different, from an environmental perspective.
Democrats in Congress have tried to slow the expansion of the NNSA’s pit-production complex — and if Joe Biden wins the still-under-review presidential election, they may gain the means to do more than try — but for now, federal law requires the agency to make at least 80 pits a year by 2030. NNSA plans to start casting pits at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2024, ramp up to 30 a year there in 2026, then add 50 a year at SRPPF in 2030. NNSA has admitted it will be tough to hit that throughput on time at SRPPF.
Making their number would be tougher still if the NNSA had to begin a new programmatic environmental impact statement about the two-state pit plan, which is what the environmental coalition that spoke out Thursday morning want.
The first new war-ready pits from Los Alamos and Savannah River will be for W87-1 warheads intended for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles that will replace the 400-strong Minuteman III fleet the U.S. uses today.
The NNSA has yet to finalize the details of SRPPF’s design, which will happen some time after April, when the project is scheduled to reach its critical design 1 milestone. Likewise, a senior NNSA official said last week, the agency has yet to settle on an acquisition strategy.
Fluor’s Greenville, S.C., office is handling some SRPPF design work under Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ Savannah River Site prime contract. DOE has options on the deal that could take it out through fiscal year 2022, but the agency is scheduled to recompete the site-management pact after New Year’s.
By that time, “we will just have completed conceptual design” of SRPPF, Bob Raines, associate administrator for acquisition and project management, said during a virtual public meeting last week. “And so we have a wealth of abilities to determine what the final acquisition structure would be for the construction of the pit production facility there. No decisions have been made on that.”
