Operations, including work supporting plutonium pit manufacturing, are back on at Los Alamos’ PF-4 plutonium facility following a 200-gallon flood precipitated by an untrained worker operating a wet van system in the future pit factory.
“After three weeks the positive pressure circulating chilled water (PPCCW) system has been restored, with all affected processes being operational and available for production activities,” a Los Alamos spokesperson wrote in an email this week. The lab disclosed the flooding in a review of the incident published online this week. Los Alamos is gunning to produce at least 30 pits annually at PF-4 in fiscal year 2026. The lab has legal deadlines to produce at least 10 pits annually by fiscal year 2024, and opinions differ about whether the lab can hit that milestone. Pits are the fissile triggers of nuclear-weapon primary stages.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) estimates it will finish a final life cycle cost estimate for the new Lithium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on May 31, 2026, the semi-autonomous DOE nuclear-weapons recently told the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Then-Acting NNSA Administrator Charles Verdon disclosed the date in comments appended to GAO’s Aug. 12 report, Actions Needed to Improve Management of NNSA’s Lithium Activities. The report tracked increases in NNSA’s cost estimate for the facility from 2015, when the range was $300 million to $631 million, to 2019, when it clocked in at somewhere between $955 million and $1.65 billion after a Critical Decision-1 review. NNSA estimates it will start construction in fiscal year 2025. The factory is supposed to be built on the site of the old Mouse House, officially known as the Biology Complex.
The Joe Biden administration appointed Gordon Trowbridge, a former communications aide on the Hill and at a couple federal agencies, as the director of public affairs at the NNSA.
Gordon has previously worked in communications or speechwriting roles for Sen. Carl Levin (D-N.M.) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and at the Pentagon and the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, DOE wrote in a press release.
The NNSA rolled out a new web portal to help the government and the nuclear industry connect and keep nuclear exports safe, the agency announced this week in a press release.
The new Nuclear Nexus website is “designed to foster timely connections between NNSA and the U.S. nuclear industry on the global deployment of advanced nuclear technology,” the agency said. “Nexus will act as a single point of access for NNSA and DOE National Laboratory recommendations, training, tools, and other relevant technical expertise and guidance on nonproliferation.”
Effective Friday, the state of New Mexico reinstated a mandate for citizens aged two or older to wear masks in most indoor settings, unless they have a doctor’s excuse, according to a new order from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D).
DOE and NNSA facilities in the state, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Sandia National Laboratories, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, had already reinstated indoor mask mandates as of late July.
