Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Wednesday the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Plutonium Facility (PF-4) is improving its nuclear criticality safety program, amid reporting this week of ongoing safety issues at the New Mexico site.
Perry said during a Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee budget hearing that Los Alamos has “made significant progress with hiring new criticality safety analysts since that 2013 pause in operations.”
“The reviews were done, the readiness assessments were very deliberately and appropriately accomplished, and it’s been safely brought back online,” he said.
PF-4, the nation’s only fully capable plutonium research and processing facility, returned to full operations last October following a pause in fissile material operations beginning in 2013 due to weaknesses in the site’s criticality safety program.
The Center for Public Integrity is publishing a series of investigative reports on ongoing safety issues at PF-4, starting with a June 18 article that said the pause in operations prevented Los Alamos from conducting 29 plutonium core reliability tests and manufacturing new plutonium pits for the nuclear arsenal.
In a response Monday, NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz said LANL has made progress on the plutonium facility’s safety since the shutdown: “LANL has increased criticality safety staffing and demonstrated improvements in its performance of operational tasks.”
NNSA spokesman Al Stotts said by email Friday that the staffing target for the lab’s criticality safety program is 27 criticality safety analysts. Los Alamos currently has 24 full-time-equivalent staff on the program, which includes support from site contractor Los Alamos National Security and subcontractors.
“LANS continues with efforts to recruit additional criticality safety engineers to include partnering with Universities in Texas and New Mexico for recruiting pipelines,” Stotts said.
Klotz also noted that NNSA held the national laboratory accountable for those issues by withholding over $82 million in award fee payments to LANS between 2013 and last year, something Perry reiterated during the hearing.
The NNSA chief said the facility has resumed producing developmental pits and will ultimately make the cores for future nuclear weapons life-extension programs. Moreover, he said, “There has not been a nuclear criticality accident at a Department of Energy nuclear facility in nearly 40 years.”
Perry this week confirmed that the Energy Department remains on schedule to meet the Defense Department’s plutonium pit manufacturing requirements. Those include the production of 50 to 80 plutonium pits annually in the long term, starting with 10 per year by 2024 and up to 80 per year by 2030.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) asked Perry during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Thursday whether Los Alamos would maintain its central role in the U.S. plutonium mission “and that it’s your intent to stay on schedule and meet statutory requirements for requirement.”
“Yes,” Perry confirmed.
The Energy Department in February submitted a fiscal 2016 criticality safety program metrics report to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which found Los Alamos’ program “does not meet expectations” with regard to criticality safety infractions and program noncompliances – though most of the infractions fell under the least severe category.
The report also found that the laboratory’s nine contractor staff members and one federal staff member performing criticality safety work were insufficient at the time. Still, that report noted that a program improvement plan has been in place, monitored by the NNSA’s Los Alamos field office.
Los Alamos responded at the time that it has taken steps to address the problem, including implementing new criticality safety controls, providing management and staff training, and improving operating procedures for implementation of those controls.
