Stopgap budget bad for pits but good for UPF, spokesperson and contractor say

WASHINGTON — The Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex would benefit from a continuing resolution, the site’s prime said, while plutonium pits could suffer under a short term budget extension, a spokesperson at the Department of Defense told the Exchange Monitor last week.

A House committee on Monday planned to consider a new short-term spending bill, or continuing resolution, that would keep federal budgets flat through most of December, which according to a spokesperson for U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) could delay the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) ability to deliver the fissile cores of new Air Force warheads.

“NNSA and the Labs believe that with carryover funding and FY24 funding levels during a [continuing resolution] they can maintain schedule for about two months,” a STRATCOM spokesperson told the Monitor in an email Friday. “With a [continuing resolution] longer than two months the schedule slip would be at least month-for-month.”

The spokesperson explained that funding up to present has focused on a first production unit W87-1 pit at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which the spokesperson said was “not impacted” by a continuing resolution since it’s in the “home stretch” to be completed by mid-October. That pit will eventually be used in Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile warheads, which sometime next decade will deploy using a different type of warhead with a different pit.

After the first production unit, Los Alamos personnel “need to shift to equipment installation and facility reconfiguration to support ‘rate production,’” the STRATCOM spokesperson said. “These are two distinctly different processes and you can’t just slow down during a CR and then make it up when funding comes through.”

The budget bill Congress is considering this week had no special exceptions for the NNSA to exceed its 2024 budget. NNSA had planned to produce 30 pits annually at Los Alamos beginning in 2028.

Meanwhile, Gene Sievers, site manager at Y-12 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said Thursday at an industry gathering in Washington that the Uranium Processing Facility being built at the site is “actually in great shape” under a continuing resolution. In 2024, the long-delayed project has a budget of $810 million, compared with the White House’s 2025 request of $800 million.

“That spending level would continue into [2025], so the continuing resolution is actually quite favorable for our ability to continue at the rate we’re at with the Uranium Processing Facility,” Sievers told the Monitor at a reception hosted by the non-government Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center at the Congress’ Rayburn House office building in Washington.

The Uranium Processing Facility is the NNSA’s next-generation factory for nuclear-weapons secondary stages.