Greg Mello's comments on "The US government's dangerous rush to produce new plutonium pits"  

This article published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists yesterday, October 22, raises many terrific questions and provides some excellent background. Its headline conclusion is sound as far as it goes, but vague. What exactly is being rushed, and what should be restrained? The article does not unambiguously answer these questions. Speak clearly and boldly, please!

There are few errors that I see. The article fails however to connect the dots provided, and perhaps that is in part due to these seemingly small errors.

First, the article refers to LANL's "lack of commitment to maintaining previously authorized capabilities following the forced closure of Rocky Flats after an FBI raid in 1989," citing the 1996 DOE Record of Decision following the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (SSM PEIS). I was deeply involved in that process and played a significant role in successfully litigating the result in order to limit pit production.

LANL never had the capabilities in question, and LANL never acquired them at any point afterward -- at least so far. Some of us worked very hard for decades at making sure of that. NNSA admits to three attempts and three failures; we count four. There is a persistent idea, faintly echoed here, that LANL did have the capability to reliably make certified pits for the stockpile. I thought so too at one time, but subsequent events have proven otherwise. The one time stockpile production was attempted, as a demonstration in 2007-2011, LANL made 30 pits -- and that "capability" subsequently collapsed. From 2011 to 2024, LANL again had no production capability. Theoretically it did. But actually it didn't. It took years to rebuild the program after the fiascos of those years.

You say, "the current pit production strategy represents a full-speed-ahead approach—even as it may pose more risk to itself than it does to perceived adversaries." This is OK as far as it goes, but where is that "full-speed-ahead approach" being manifested? Only at LANL. At SRS, last week's new baseline schedule tells us there will be no pits made there for the stockpile until the early 2040s, given the 3-5 years needed for facility startup and certification. That is not "full speed ahead." That is slow, and slow is good. You agree, right?

You say, "The research, design, and development lab [at LANL] was never a mass-production facility, not even during the Cold War." That is quite true but understates. LANL was no kind of production facility at all! LANL processed plutonium for Rocky Flats in the 1980s, but we know of no public record of any stockpile pit production at LANL between the summer of 1949 and 2007.

Most important, you erroneously say that "The Savannah River facility faces a long, challenging, and exceedingly expensive path to completion, and" -- true so far -- "it provides dubious redundancy." That's the problem. SRS does not provide any kind of "redundancy" because LANL -- given what you have just said about its facilities and much more you do not say -- can't make enough pits over a long enough period, with confidence, to sustain the arsenal.

The U.S. government is not going to rely on a small, 50-year-old facility with a long history of problems, in a very challenging location, for the survival of its nuclear arsenal. The people -- including both of you and notably also Frank von Hippel -- who have argued in the past that LANL can make all the pits are in effect asking for two factories for pits. Because if LANL is a factory, it won't be enough, either in confident duration or in confident capacity.

Finally, you say that the recent JASON report "does not support a requirement to manufacture 80, much less 205 pits per year." That is quite true -- if the adjectival phrase "near-term" is added to "requirement." We do not know what is required post-2040 or post-2050, and 80 ppy might be required. Also, building a pit production facility involves tremendous economies of scale. There is very little difference between a facility capable of 50 ppy and one capable of 80 ppy either in square footage or in cost, as NNSA wrote in 2017.

Your main conclusion is sound and important. It is also vague! "In reality, this apparently unbounded acceleration is a choice rather than a necessity. New pit production is not yet required for the existing US nuclear arsenal, only for its expansion or replacement with new designs."

WHAT acceleration?

What would have been helpful is a clear exposition of what this means. SRPPF is not what is being "accelerated." It is going to take more than 20 years from start to finish to complete and bring it on line. What is being accelerated, what is "early-to-need," is pit production at LANL. Acceleration is the main raison d'etre of the $32 billion effort at LANL. PIt production at LANL is the truly redundant effort given the lack of pit-aging-related need and the fact that the SRPPF, which will have internal redundancy, will be capable of sustaining whatever stockpile (large or small) the U.S. has in the 2040s and beyond. By the time pit aging becomes an issue, aging of the LANL facility will already be a major, possibly fatal, issue.