Navy Vice Adm. Charles Richard, the Donald Trump administration’s nominee to lead U.S. Strategic Command, on Thursday told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there are “issues” with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) plan to produce 80 new nuclear weapon cores a year by 2030.
“That requirement is sound,” Richard said, but “there are issues in terms of [the Department of Energy’s] ability to meet that, and I would pledge to look very closely at that, if I was confirmed.”
U.S. Strategic Command is in charge of deployed nuclear weapons. The commander also sits on the Nuclear Weapons Council, a joint DOE-Pentagon body that sets nuclear-weapons acquisition strategy.
Richard was drawn into a brief exchange about plutonium pits during his confirmation hearing by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.): the ranking member of the SASC strategic forces subcommittee and a stalwart ally of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in his state.
Richard did not actually answer the question Heinrich asked him: “How confident are you that the NNSA will meet that [80-pits-a-year] requirement?”
The Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plans to make 80 pits annually by 2030, 30 of those each year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the other 50 at the planned Plutonium Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The NNSA plans to start with 10 pits a year at Los Alamos in 2024, once the lab’s Plutonium Facility is expanded and upgraded with new equipment to handle the work, according to the agency’s current plans.
The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, which would be built from the partially completed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, would nominally come online in 2030. However, the NNSA has spent all year reminding lawmakers of the challenges in hitting that level of throughput in just 11 years.
For example, Congress still has to approve funding for the Savannah River pit mission. The Senate this summer produced authorization and appropriations bills that would provide the $720 million the NNSA says it needs for the current fiscal 2020 to start crucial pre-construction work on the new pit plant. However, House bills have provided only about two-thirds of the funding sought for proposed South Carolina pit work.
The House and Senate are in the middle of final negotiations for the authorization bills, but the appropriations process is currently stuck. The House has passed a DOE spending bill, but the Senate has not followed suit. The upper chamber will try next week to get a package of DOE and Pentagon appropriations bills to the floor for a vote.
Independent reports funded by the NNSA itself have concluded that Los Alamos, even with upgrades, might not be able to produce 30 pits a year until after 2030. PF-4 has other missions, including plutonium disposal and plutonium-239 analysis, and may not be able to accommodate all the staff and nuclear materials needed to keep each mission on schedule.
In Thursday’s confirmation hearing, Heinrich called producing 80 pits a year a “secondary goal.” It was not clear what he meant, and his office did not reply to a request for clarification by deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. The NNSA has framed 80 pits a year, a number hashed out by the Nuclear Weapons Council, as its one and only goal.
An NNSA spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment Friday. The agency’s initial batch of pits after 2024 will be for W87-1-style nuclear warheads, which will be suitable for use on future Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Meanwhile, Richard’s confirmation hearing went more or less smoothly. Lawmakers have not said when they might advance his nomination to the full Senate for final approval, but Armed Services Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said at the end of Thursday’s hearing that he looked forward to working with Richard in his new capacity.
If confirmed, Richard would replace Air Force Gen. John Hyten, who was confirmed in September but has not yet been sworn in as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Before his current assignment as Navy Submarine Forces commander, Richard was deputy commander of Strategic Command, led Submarine Group 10, directed Undersea Warfare (OPNAV N97), and served as a member of the Chief of Naval Operations’ Strategic Studies Group XXVIII.
