A recently leaked study that claims it would be cheaper to manufacture nuclear-weapon cores in South Carolina than New Mexico is full of holes, and an internal National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) document proves it, U.S. lawmakers from the Land of Enchantment wrote this week in letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
In a so-called analysis of alternatives that leaked to the press earlier this month, the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency concluded it could be up to $2 billion cheaper to manufacture plutonium pits at the still-under-construction Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina than it would be to make pits at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico as currently planned.
But the facility in South Carolina was not built to make pits, and the analysis did not include the cost of converting the plant for production duties, New Mexico lawmakers told Perry on Monday. Moreover, the analysis priced out production at Los Alamos using cost estimates for a canceled pit-manufacturing facility the lawmakers said would be more expensive than the series of upgrades now planned at the roughly 70-year-old weapons lab.
The analysis, the lawmakers wrote, “compared a long-ago abandoned facility plan at LANL and compared it to other NNSA locations as if they were prepared to produce pits today at no additional cost.” The legislators cited an unpublished study from the NNSA’s Cost Estimating and Program Evaluation (CEPE) office, which provides independent sanity checks to the agency’s administrator on major studies such as the leaked analysis of alternatives.
Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor obtained a copy of the letter, which was signed by Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (R-N.M.), whose district includes LANL. The lawmakers said they got their information about the flaws of the NNSA’s analysis from CEPE.
The Cost Estimating and Program Evaluation office has not published its evaluation about the leaked pit study, which is officially called the Plutonium Pit Production Analysis of Alternatives.
By 2030, DOE plans to produce between 50 and 80 plutonium pits per year to replenish the strength of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. According to the leaked NNSA analysis — the soundness of which the New Mexico delegation doubts — converting MOX is the quickest and cheapest way to get anywhere near the mark.
The NNSA declined to comment for this story. A spokesperson reiterated the agency’s plan to conduct “further engineering analysis” of possible pit production at Savannah River. That analysis is expected to be complete in February.
