Garamendi says if Los Alamos makes 100 pits under Trump, ‘what’s Savannah River for?’

May 15, 2025

By Sarah Salem

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), a vocal nuclear critic and member of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, told the Exchange Monitor Los Alamos National Laboratory “ought to be able to produce” 100 pits in four years.

Garamendi spoke to the Monitor last week in the halls of the Capitol about Secretary of Energy Chris Wright’s comments in late March that “we’ve built one [plutonium pit] in the last 25 years, and we’ll build more than 100” during the Donald Trump administration.

“The production capability at Los Alamos is supposed to be… 20 or so, maybe 30 a year, when they get up to operating,” Garamendi said. Based on a recent meeting with acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Teresa Robbins, that “they seem to be ready to produce,” the lawmaker said. 

“In which case, [Los Alamos] ought to be able to produce 100 in four years if my math is correct and they are correct about the production capability,” Garamendi added. “So then that begs the question: what’s Savannah River for?”

The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility in South Carolina is not scheduled to open until at least the early 2030s, NNSA has said. A smaller companion plant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was to start making pits this year and ramp up to 30 a year by 2028, but Robbins said at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit in January that the goal was now to have the “capability” to make 30 pits at Los Alamos “in or near 2028.” 

Los Alamos would initially make cores for the first stages of W87-1 warheads, which are to top the Air Force’s planned silo-based Sentinel missiles some time next decade. Savannah River will make cores for the W93 warheads, which would top the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile. NNSA produced a “diamond-stamped,” or war-reserve quality, first production unit of a W87-1 plutonium pit in October, but has not publicized how many pits have been produced since then.

When the Exchange Monitor asked the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) and Gen. Anthony Cotton, STRATCOM Commander, for their thoughts on Wright’s comments, a STRATCOM spokesperson responded, “STRATCOM has been advocating for an increase in plutonium pit production for years. Faster modernization of our nuclear assets allows us to maintain nuclear deterrence, which is foundational for our national security and a top priority for the Department of Defense.”

Section 3120 of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act put into law that NNSA produce 30 plutonium pits by 2026 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where plutonium pits were first produced during the Manhattan Project in 1945.

Additionally, the NNSA announced plans last week for a detailed review of environmental impacts of planned plutonium pit production as part of a federal judge’s ruling last fall. NNSA will hold public hearings and meetings as part of the process.