ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Judgements varied here Tuesday between two senior civilian nuclear-weapons leaders as to whether the National Nuclear Security Administration would meet some legally binding deadlines to produce new nuclear weapon cores this decade.
Questioned about the deadlines by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing during the Exchange Monitor’s annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit, the head of National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nuclear weapons programs in Washington hedged and the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory said the lab could meet the deadlines.
The semi-autonomous Department of Energy weapons agency is on the hook to produce at least 10 war-reserve plutonium pits annually in fiscal year 2024, at least 20 pits annually by 2025, at least 30 a year by 2026 and at least 80 annually by 2030.
Charles Verdon, NNSA’s deputy administrator for defense programs, testified to Congress this year that the agency will probably miss the 2030 deadline but is confident that it can produce 30 pits in 2026. At the Deterrence Summit, however, Verdon stopped short of saying that the agency would nail the interim production quotas for 2024 and 2026.
“That’s the goal,” Verdon said Tuesday morning in front of an audience of nuclear professionals here in response to a question from Morning Briefing about the looming deadlines in 2024 and 2025. Asked again if he thought the NNSA would meet those goals, Verdon said, “I believe we’re committed to giving it our all.”
In a short interview after a panel discussion Tuesday afternoon, Thomas Mason, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory said “yes” when Morning Briefing asked him whether he thought the lab could meet the 2024 and 2025 pit deadlines.
The NNSA plans a pair of pit production facilities, one at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and one at the Savannah River Site, to furnish the military with fresh plutonium pits throughout the second half of this century.
Assuming the Joe Biden administration’s nuclear posture review next year does not radically change the timeline for expanding NNSA’s pit complex, and assuming Congress appropriates the requested funding for the complex, the agency believes it can produce at least 80 pits a year by 2032 or 2035. That’s the throughput the military says is necessary for the ongoing nuclear arsenal modernization expected to continue into the 2040s.
The first pits NNSA plans to cast at its new complex will be for W87-1 warheads: one of the two kinds of warheads to be used on the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles the Air Force plans to deploy starting in 2030 to replace its fleet of Minuteman III missiles.
At Los Alamos National, personnel at the expanding PF-4 plutonium facility are preparing to cast the first production unit of the W87-1 pit in fiscal year 2023, Verdon and Mason said here Tuesday. The proof of concept pit will certify that NNSA’s design and manufacturing capabilities are ready for production runs.
