WASHINGTON – The Pentagon danced around questions this week about whether the National Nuclear Security Administration can support the planned deployment of next-generation, nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles if Congress allows the civilian agency to build only a single plutonium pit-production plant.
But with lawmakers headed back to Washington next week to prepare bills that will either embrace or shoot down the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) favored production strategy, both that agency and the Defense Department were adamant the United States needs the pair of pit plants now planned.
The Donald Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review called on the NNSA to annually manufacture 80 pits — fissile nuclear-weapon cores — by 2030. The agency subsequently decided to make 30 pits a year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico starting in 2026, and the remaining 50 annually starting in 2030 at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
“Reducing the scope of the concept to a single site will increase risk to the overall nuclear modernization effort,” a Defense Department spokesperson said by email Thursday.
An NNSA spokesperson said that the agency “is focused on the two-site approach for plutonium pit production that was endorsed by the Nuclear Weapons Council in May 2018.”
The agencies delivered written statements to Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor after a senior Defense Department official on Wednesday declined to say whether the NNSA had assured the Pentagon that it can deliver nuclear warheads for planned Ground Based Strategic Deterrence (GBSD) missiles on time if Congress does not fund both plutonium-pit plants.
“I’m aware of the issue, but I wouldn’t want to sort of step on my colleagues’ toes by addressing the details,” David Trachtenberg, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, told NS&D Monitor in a question and answer session after a speech at the Brookings Institution. “I’ll defer on that one, for the time being, at least.”
The first pits NNSA plans to make at Los Alamos and Savannah River would be suitable for use in the planned W87-1 warhead: a warhead for GBSD missiles that would replace the W78 warhead now used on Minuteman III missiles. The Pentagon plans to acquire around 640 GBSD missiles and keep about 400 of them ready to launch from silos.
Key figures on both the House and Senate Armed Services committees, including Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), chair of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, have blanched at the estimated price of the NNSA’s proposed two-plant pit complex: $30 billion over the life-cycle of both sites, compared with $15 billion for an option the Los Alamos National Laboratory has endorsed to have it produce all the cores.
Those cost estimates come from an engineering analysis completed for the NNSA in 2018 by Parsons Government Services. The same analysis said the proposed Savannah River facility, to be built from the partially completed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, will not be able to produce war-ready pits until 2035. The NNSA is asking Congress for $410 million in fiscal 2020 to start designing this Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility. The Armed Services committees must authorize the planned pit facility before it receives any appropriations.
Two weeks ago, Charles Verdon, NNSA deputy administrator for defense programs, told NS&D Monitor that, despite the Parsons report, the agency believes it can get Savannah River pumping weapons-usable pits by 2030.
Meanwhile, the Senate has scheduled closed markups of its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for May, while the House is holding open markups in June. Lawmakers will reveal then whether they are willing to commit to the NNSA’s two-state pit complex. The Republican-controlled Senate has supported the plan with fewer questions than the Democrat-controlled House, but even Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has publicly alluded to internal NNSA estimates that show the agency might not hit 80 pits a year by 2030.
