U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Congressional research reportFeb 21, 2014

Ask Donna

What actually matters in this document.

Text

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production

Options for Congress

(name redacted)

Specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy

February 21, 2014

Congressional Research Service

7-....

www.crs.gov

R43406

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Summary

A “pit” is the plutonium core of a nuclear weapon. Until 1989, the Rocky Flats Plant (CO) massproduced pits. Since then, the United States has made at most 11 pits per year (ppy). U.S. policy

is to maintain existing nuclear weapons. To do this, the Department of Defense states that it needs

the Department of Energy (DOE), which maintains U.S. nuclear weapons, to produce 50-80 ppy

by 2030. While some argue that few if any new pits are needed, at least for decades, this report

focuses on options to reach 80 ppy.

Pit production involves precisely forming plutonium—a hazardous, radioactive, physically quirky

metal. Production requires supporting tasks, such as analytical chemistry (AC), which monitors

the chemical composition of plutonium in each pit.

With Rocky Flats closed, DOE established a small-scale pit manufacturing capability at PF-4, a

building at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). DOE also proposed higher-capacity

facilities; none came to fruition. In 2005, Congress rejected the Modern Pit Facility, viewing as

excessive the capacity range DOE studied, 125-450 ppy. In 2012, the Administration “deferred”

construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRRNF) on grounds of availability of interim alternatives and affordability.

Nonetheless, options remain:

•

Build CMRR-NF. Congress mandated it in the FY2013 cycle, but provided no

funds for it then, and permitted consideration of an alternative in the FY2014

cycle.

•

Remove from PF-4 tasks not requiring high MAR and security. Casting pits

uses much plutonium that an accident might release (“Material At Risk,” MAR)

and requires high security. Making 80 ppy would require freeing more MAR and

floor space in PF-4 for casting.

•

Provide regulatory relief so RLUOB could hold 1,000 grams of plutonium

with few changes to the building. AC for 80 ppy needs much floor space but

not high MAR or high security. Several options involve LANL’s Radiological

Laboratory/Utility/Office Building (RLUOB). Regulations permit it to hold 26

grams of weapons-grade plutonium, the volume of two nickels; AC for 80 ppy

would require 500 to 1,000 grams and perhaps space elsewhere. Augmenting

RLUOB to hold the latter amounts within regulations would be costly even

though the radiation dose if the building collapsed would be very low. Regulatory

relief would save time and money, but would raise concerns about compliance

with regulations. A complementary option is to perform some AC at Lawrence

Livermore National Laboratory or Savannah River Site.

•

Move plutonium-238 work to Idaho National Laboratory or Savannah River

Site. Fabricating plutonium-238 into power sources for space probes entails high

MAR, but not high security because it is not used in pits. Moving it would free

MAR and floor space in PF-4. At issue is whether to conduct all plutonium work

at LANL, the plutonium “center of excellence.”

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

•

Build concrete “modules” connected to PF-4. This would enable high-MAR

work to move out of PF-4, so PF-4 and modules could do the needed pit work. At

issue: are modules needed, at what cost, and when.

Several options have the potential to produce 80 ppy and permit other plutonium activities at

relatively modest cost, in a relatively short time, with no new buildings, and with minimal

environmental impact. Determining their desirability and feasibility would require detailed study.

Observations include:

•

Differing time horizons between Congress and DOE, and between political and

technical imperatives, cause problems.

•

Doing nothing entails costs and risks. Keeping a 1950s-era building open while

options are explored exposes workers to a relatively high risk of death in an

earthquake.

•

Congress may wish to consider limiting a building’s permitted plutonium

quantity by estimated dose instead of MAR. A facility can be safe even if it is not

compliant with regulations.

•

The political system is more flexible than the regulatory system. Regulations

derive their authority from statutes. Regulators, bound by these statutes, cannot

make cost-benefit tradeoffs regarding compliance. In contrast, the political

system has the authority, ability, and culture to decide which tradeoffs are worth

making.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Contents

Introduction...................................................................................................................................... 1

Background ...................................................................................................................................... 2

Technical Aspects ...................................................................................................................... 2

Plutonium ............................................................................................................................ 2

Pits ....................................................................................................................................... 3

The Pit Production Process ................................................................................................. 4

Life Extension Programs ..................................................................................................... 5

Pit Production Capacity: How Much Is Needed?................................................................ 5

Plutonium-238 ................................................................................................................... 10

Key Regulatory Terms ............................................................................................................. 10

Facility Aspects: Buildings to Support Pit Production ............................................................ 14

Existing Buildings at Los Alamos for Plutonium Work .................................................... 14

A Sisyphean History: Failed Efforts to Construct a Building to Restore Pit

Production ...................................................................................................................... 18

Options for Congress ..................................................................................................................... 25

Analysis of Alternatives .......................................................................................................... 25

The Role of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) Process in an

Analysis of Alternatives ................................................................................................. 26

Potential Options ..................................................................................................................... 29

Option 1. Focus PF-4 on Pit Production; Move Other Tasks Elsewhere as Needed ......... 30

Option 2. Build CMRR-NF ............................................................................................... 31

Option 3. Build a New Building Combining PF-4 and CMRR-NF Functions at

LANL ............................................................................................................................. 32

Option 4. Build a Building Combining PF-4 and CMRR-NF Functions at Another

Site ................................................................................................................................. 33

Option 5. Refurbish the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) Facility ................. 33

Options 6-12 Overview: Matching Plutonium Tasks to Buildings.................................... 34

Option 6: Conduct Plutonium-238 Work at INL or SRS ................................................... 36

Option 7: Conduct Some or All Analytical Chemistry at LLNL or SRS........................... 39

Option 8. Use RLUOB As Is for Analytical Chemistry, with PF-4 Conducting the

Balance of Pit Work ....................................................................................................... 43

Option 9. Convert RLUOB to Hazard Category 3 for Analytical Chemistry.................... 43

Option 10. Use RLUOB, with Regulatory Relief, for Analytical Chemistry, with

PF-4 Conducting the Balance of Pit Work ..................................................................... 45

Option 11. Build a Copy of RLUOB Minus the Office, with Regulatory Relief,

for Analytical Chemistry, with PF-4 Conducting the Balance of Pit Work .................... 50

Option 12. Build Modules Connected to PF-4 for High-MAR Plutonium Work.............. 51

Making RLUOB/PF-4 Options Safer and More Efficient ....................................................... 53

Increasing Safety ............................................................................................................... 53

Increasing Efficiency......................................................................................................... 60

Gathering Information on Various Options.................................................................................... 61

Concluding Observations............................................................................................................... 62

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Figures

Figure 1. Relationship Between National Goals and Pit Production Infrastructure ........................ 1

Figure 2. Plutonium-238 ................................................................................................................ 10

Figure 3. Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building ............................................................... 15

Figure 4. PF-4 and TA-55 .............................................................................................................. 16

Figure 5. Radiological Laboratory/ Utility/Office Building .......................................................... 17

Figure 6. Air Filters in RLUOB ..................................................................................................... 18

Figure 7. Building CPP-1634......................................................................................................... 37

Figure 8. H Canyon and HB-Line .................................................................................................. 39

Figure 9. Building 332 ................................................................................................................... 41

Figure 10. F/H Laboratory ............................................................................................................. 42

Figure 11. Volume of Weapons-Grade Plutonium Allowed in RLUOB ........................................ 44

Figure 12. A Gas Gun in PF-4........................................................................................................ 45

Figure 13. Seismic Bracing of Office Buildings ............................................................................ 55

Figure 14. Notre Dame Cathedral .................................................................................................. 55

Figure 15. A Base-Isolation System ............................................................................................... 56

Figure 16. Progressive Strengthening of Gloveboxes and Open-Front Hoods .............................. 57

Tables

Table 1. Hazard Categories and Radiological Facilities ................................................................ 11

Table 2. Matching Plutonium Tasks to Buildings .......................................................................... 34

Table B-1. Sample Calculation for Deriving Dose Values for RLUOB ........................................ 68

Table B-2. Dose from a Plutonium Spill and Fire in RLUOB ....................................................... 70

Table C-1. Security and Hazard Categories for Plutonium ............................................................ 72

Table F-1. Space for Plutonium Analytical Chemistry in Three Scenarios ................................... 81

Appendixes

Appendix A. The Regulatory Structure.......................................................................................... 66

Appendix B. Calculation of Dose as a Function of Material At Risk ............................................ 68

Appendix C. Security and Hazard Categories for Plutonium ........................................................ 72

Appendix D. Preliminary Outline of Potential Tasks Required for RLUOB to Exceed

Hazard Category 3 Nuclear Facility Threshold Quantity ........................................................... 73

Appendix E. Comparison of Seismic Resiliency of CMR and RLUOB ....................................... 80

Appendix F. Space Requirements for Analytical Chemistry to Support Production of 80

Pits Per Year................................................................................................................................ 81

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Appendix G. Abbreviations ............................................................................................................ 82

Contacts

Author Contact Information........................................................................................................... 83

Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 83

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Introduction

Of all the problems facing the nuclear weapons program and nuclear weapons complex over the

past several decades, few, if any, have been as vexing as pit production. A “pit” is a hollow

plutonium shell that is imploded, creating an explosion that triggers the rest of the weapon. The

Rocky Flats Plant (CO) manufactured pits on a large scale during the Cold War until production

halted in 1989. It took until FY2007 for the United States to produce even a small quantity, 11

pits per year (ppy), for the stockpile.1 Yet the Department of Defense (DOD) calls for a capacity

to produce 30 ppy by 2021 as an interim goal and 50 to 80 ppy by around 2030. At issue is how to

reach the higher capacity.

This report is intended primarily for Members and staff with a direct interest in pit issues,

including Members who will be making decisions on pit projects that could total several billion

dollars. Since the issues are complicated, this report contains technical and regulatory details that

are needed to understand the advantages, drawbacks, and uncertainties of various options. It may

also be of value for Members and staff with an interest in nuclear weapons, stockpile stewardship,

and nuclear policy more broadly. This report begins with a description of plutonium, pits, and pit

factory problems. It next considers several pit production options. It notes studies that could

provide information to assist Congress in choosing among options, and concludes with several

observations. There are several Appendixes, including a list of abbreviations.

The pit issue is important because of the

Figure 1. Relationship Between National

relationship between pit production

Goals and Pit Production Infrastructure

infrastructure and national goals, as shown in

GOALS

Figure 1. National goals include minimizing

the risk of nuclear war and, for the longer

POLICIES

term, “the peace and security of a world

STRATEGIES

without nuclear weapons,” as President

Obama declared in his 2009 Prague speech.

DELIVERY SYSTEMS

The Nuclear Posture Review sets out policy

WEAPONS

objectives, such as “preventing nuclear

proliferation,” “reducing the role of U.S.

PITS

nuclear weapons in U.S. national security

INFRA

strategy,” “maintaining strategic deterrence

and stability at reduced nuclear force levels,”

Source: CRS.

“strengthening regional deterrence,” and

Note: “Infrastructure” is abbreviated as “infra.”

“sustaining a safe, secure, and effective

nuclear arsenal.”3 Various strategies, such as

deterrence, counterproliferation, and arms control, seek to implement policy. In turn, delivery

systems, such as heavy bombers and long-range ballistic missiles, are one means of implementing

strategy. Nuclear weapons (a term used in this report to refer to nuclear bombs and warheads) arm

delivery systems. The Nuclear Posture Review declares, “The United States will not develop new

Information provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, email, November 13, 2013.

U.S. White House. Office of the Press Secretary. Remarks by President Barack Obama, Hradcany Square, Prague,

Czech Republic, April 5, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-praguedelivered.

U.S. Department of Defense. Nuclear Posture Review Report, April 2010, p. iii, http://www.defense.gov/npr/docs/

2010%20nuclear%20posture%20review%20report.pdf.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

nuclear warheads.”4 Accordingly, the United States will retain the weapons in its arsenal for the

foreseeable future. Yet weapons deteriorate over time. Extending the service life of existing

weapons requires replacing or modifying some components. While “life extension programs”

(LEPs) for some weapons can use existing pits, DOD and the Department of Energy (DOE) state

that LEPs for other weapons will require newly manufactured pits. The current infrastructure

cannot produce pits at the capacity DOD requires, and many efforts stretching back to the late

1980s to produce pits have been canceled or have otherwise foundered. A concern is that if a type

of nuclear weapon could no longer perform satisfactorily, an inability to make new pits in the

quantities required so the weapons could be replaced could lead to that weapon type being

removed from service. That, in turn, would leave missiles and bombers without those weapons,

which would undermine strategies, the policies they seek to implement, and the ability to attain

national goals.

Background

This section begins by discussing plutonium, pits, pit production, programs to extend the service

life of nuclear weapons, and production capacity required. It next turns to current plutonium

facilities and provides a brief history of unsuccessful efforts to build a facility to produce pits on a

scale larger than about 10 per year. It concludes by presenting important regulatory terms.

Technical Aspects

Plutonium

Plutonium is a radioactive metal that is 1.75 times more dense than lead. It has several

undesirable characteristics, and is difficult to work with. According to Siegfried Hecker, a

plutonium metallurgist and a former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL),

Plutonium is an element at odds with itself—with little provocation, it can change its density

by as much as 25 percent; it can be as brittle as glass or as malleable as aluminum; it expands

when it solidifies; and its freshly-machined silvery surface will tarnish in minutes, producing

nearly every color in the rainbow. To make matters even more complex, plutonium ages

from the outside in and from the inside out. It reacts vigorously with its environment—

particularly with oxygen, hydrogen, and water—thereby, degrading its properties from the

surface to the interior over time. In addition, plutonium’s continuous radioactive decay

causes self-irradiation damage that can fundamentally change its properties over time.5

To make plutonium more stable, it is typically alloyed with other materials, such as gallium.6

Handling and safeguarding plutonium poses significant risks. Plutonium is hazardous: if minute

particles are inhaled and lodge in the lungs, their radiation (in the form of alpha particles) can

cause lung cancer. In addition, terrorists might be able to build an improvised nuclear device if

Ibid., p. 39.

Siegfried Hecker, “Plutonium and Its Alloys: From Atoms to Microstructure,” Los Alamos Science, vol. 26 (2000), p.

291, http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00818035.pdf. For additional information on plutonium, see

Argonne National Laboratory, Environmental Science Division, “Plutonium,” Human Health Fact Sheet, August 2005,

2 p., http://www.evs.anl.gov/pub/doc/Plutonium.pdf.

“The Plutonium Challenge,” Los Alamos Science, no. 26, 2000, p. 25.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

they were to obtain enough plutonium, so facilities holding more than a small quantity of certain

plutonium isotopes require extremely high security.

Plutonium does not occur in nature except in trace amounts. It is manufactured by exposing

uranium fuel rods to neutrons in nuclear reactors, and then using chemical processes to separate it

from other elements in the fuel rods. The result is a mix of plutonium isotopes. The isotope

desired for nuclear weapons is plutonium-239, which fissions readily when struck by slow or fast

neutrons. Weapons-grade plutonium (WGPu) consists mainly of plutonium-239 and a small

fraction of other plutonium isotopes. (Note: When an isotope of plutonium is mentioned, such as

plutonium-239, it is abbreviated using its chemical symbol, e.g., Pu-239.)

Pits

A pit is the trigger for detonating a thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb. It is a hollow shell

of plutonium and other materials surrounded by chemical explosives. When the explosives

detonate, they create an inward-moving pressure wave (an implosion wave) that compresses the

plutonium enough to make it supercritical. It undergoes a runaway fission chain reaction, that is,

an explosion. Various means are used to augment the explosion. This part of the weapon is called

the primary stage. The weapon is designed so that energy from the primary stage explosion

implodes the weapon’s secondary stage, in which nuclear fission and fusion release most of the

weapon’s total explosive force.

While some pits in older weapons were made of uranium and plutonium (“composite pits”),

modern pits use only plutonium because much less of that material is required to generate a given

explosive force, permitting nuclear weapons to be smaller and lighter. Reducing the size and

weight of weapons was important during the Cold War to maximize the number of weapons that

could be fitted on a missile and to maximize the explosive force of a weapon of given weight. All

nuclear weapons in the current U.S. nuclear stockpile were designed and tested during the Cold

War; all but a handful were built during that time.

Because plutonium decays radioactively, there was concern that pits could deteriorate in ways

that would cause them to fail. However, several studies have projected increased pit life. In 2003,

pit life was thought to be 45-60 years;7 a 2007 study placed life for most pits at over 100 years;8

and a 2012 Livermore study placed the figure at 150 years.9 A 2013 Los Alamos study raised

uncertainties on the latter claim:

Since 2006, plutonium aging work has continued at a low level. That research does not

indicate any [e]ffects that would preclude the possibility of pit reuse. However, additional

studies that had been planned were never undertaken, leaving some aging questions

unanswered for the range of plutonium alloys in the stockpile, and for the potential

applications of pit reuse now under consideration.10

U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration, Draft Supplemental Programmatic

Environmental Impact Statement on Stockpile Stewardship and Management for a Modern Pit Facility, Summary

volume, DOE/EIS-236-S2, Washington, DC, May 2003, pp. S-12, http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/EIS-0236-S2DEIS-Summary-2003_1.pdf.

R.J. Hemley et al., Pit Lifetime, The MITRE Corporation, JASON Program Office, JSR-06-335, McLean, VA,

January 11, 2007, p. 1, http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/pit.pdf.

Arnie Heller, “Plutonium at 150 Years: Going Strong and Aging Gracefully,” Science & Technology Review,

December 2012, pp. 12, 14, https://str.llnl.gov/Dec12/pdfs/12.12.2.pdf.

David Clark, “Summary Remarks on Plutonium Aging,” LA-UR-13-27541, September 2013, p. 1.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Penrose Albright, then Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, testified in 2013,

And there has been a pretty concerted effort at both Los Alamos and at Livermore over the

last decade or more that has been looking at plutonium aging, and we actually have samples

that we keep in our laboratory—and Los Alamos does the same—that are 40, 50, 60 years

old that so far show no—that support the conclusions that the last decade of study has

implied, which is that these pits are good for many, many more decades to come.11

Longer pit life means that a stockpile of given size can be maintained with a lower pit production

rate and opens the possibility of reusing retired pits.

The Pit Production Process

Pits must be made to exacting standards in order to function as designed. This requires precision

in fabricating them and in supporting tasks.

As plutonium decays, it produces other elements, such as americium. That radioactive element

increases the radiation dose to workers and is an impurity to weapons-grade plutonium.

Plutonium scrap, such as from old pits or from faulty castings, may pick up other impurities.

Accordingly, plutonium must be purified for use in new pits. This may involve nitric acid

processing, high-temperature processing, electrorefining, and other processes.12 Such processes

result in a substantial stream of waste contaminated with radioactive material, acid, and other

harmful substances. This waste must be processed and disposed of; waste processing requires a

substantial infrastructure.

Pits are fabricated as “hemishells” (half-pits) that are welded together. Rocky Flats Plant made

pits using a wrought process, in which sheets of plutonium were run through rollers to attain the

desired thickness, then punched into a die. LANL, where pits are currently made, uses a cast

process, in which plutonium is melted in crucibles in a foundry, poured into a mold, and finished.

The plutonium is analyzed chemically, and each hemishell is inspected through such techniques

as physical measurements and x-ray imaging to ensure that there are no flaws. Given the many

steps required, it typically takes three months to make a pit.

Various tasks support production. Materials characterization (MC) examines bulk properties of

plutonium samples, such as tensile strength, magnetic susceptibility, and surface characteristics.

Such properties must be determined to be correct to assure that a pit will, for example, implode

symmetrically. MC is generally used to qualify manufacturing processes and to troubleshoot

production problems. As such, it does not generate a large number of samples during production,

and that number is largely independent of the number of pits to be produced. Of relevance to

options considered below, MC does not require a large amount of laboratory floor space.

In contrast, analytical chemistry (AC) is performed across the entire manufacturing process, from

metal purification through waste processing.13 Samples are analyzed for isotopic composition of

U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Hearing to Receive

Testimony on National Nuclear Security Administration Management of Its National Security Laboratories in Review

of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2014 and the Future Years Defense Program, 113th Cong., 1st

sess., May 7, 2013, committee transcript, p. 14, http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/Transcripts/2013/05%20May/

13-36%20-%205-7-13.pdf.

David Clark et al., “Plutonium Processing at Los Alamos,” Actinide Research Quarterly, 3rd Quarter 2008, pp. 6-16.

Information in this paragraph and the next paragraph was provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, telephone

(continued...)

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

plutonium and for the type and amount of various impurities. AC is performed on an average of

22 samples per pit. Metal samples taken directly from hemishells are typically 5 grams each. In

preparing for AC, these samples are cut into smaller pieces. Most of the smaller pieces are

dissolved in acid because most AC instruments do not use samples in solid form. The resulting

plutonium-acid mixture is split into still smaller samples, many of which contain milligram or

microgram quantities of plutonium. Each sample must be prepared in a specific way, and

analyzed using specific equipment, depending on the type of analysis that it is to undergo. In

addition, before plutonium ingots are used for a hemishell, their purity must be assayed. This

involves taking a sample from a piece of the purified product as well as plutonium standard and

reference materials for comparison. In order to provide one assay result for the plutonium, the

assay process is typically run 10 times.

Pit fabrication generates waste, such as the plutonium-acid samples used in AC, the MC samples,

and any shavings or trimmings from finishing hemishells. Accordingly, pit production requires a

way to handle the waste. It is treated two ways at Los Alamos; in some cases by extracting

plutonium, and in other cases by solidifying it for burial at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

(NM).

Life Extension Programs

While pits may last for many decades, other weapon components do not. Weapons contain

organic components like explosives and adhesives that deteriorate under the influence of heat and

radiation given off by plutonium; they may change characteristics over time. Some components,

such as electronics, become hard to support after several decades, would be even harder to

support several decades from now, and would be difficult to make compatible with new delivery

systems like aircraft. Beyond that, some in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

and DOD want to increase the surety (safety, security, use control, and use denial) of weapons.

(NNSA is the semiautonomous DOE agency responsible for nuclear weapons maintenance,

several nuclear nonproliferation programs, and all naval nuclear propulsion work.) Accordingly,

the Nuclear Weapons Council, a joint DOD-NNSA body that oversees and coordinates nuclear

weapon programs, plans a life extension program (LEP) for each weapon type, including some

LEPs that may combine two or more weapon types. LEPs range in scope from replacing a few

components to a major overhaul that includes new pits, new electronics, and new surety features.

Some dispute the need for LEPs that do more than the minimum needed to keep a weapon in

service. They argue, for example, that features to further enhance surety are unnecessary given

the perfect safety record of U.S. nuclear weapons and that these features add greatly to cost and

may impair weapon performance. Nonetheless, LEPs are underway for the W76 warhead for the

Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile and the B61 bomb, and both Congress and the

Administration support them. Additional LEPs are being planned.

Pit Production Capacity: How Much Is Needed?

Some LEPs can use the original pit and replace other components, while other LEPs might reuse

pits from retired weapons if that proves feasible, and still other LEPs are expected to require

fabrication of new pits. U.S. policy, as stated in the Nuclear Posture Review, is specific on its

preference among these choices:

(...continued)

conversations, notes, and emails, June-August 2013.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

The United States will study options for ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of

nuclear warheads on a case-by-case basis, consistent with the congressionally mandated

Stockpile Management Program. The full range of LEP approaches will be considered:

refurbishment of existing warheads, reuse of nuclear components from different warheads,

and replacement of nuclear components.

In any decision to proceed to engineering development for warhead LEPs, the United States

will give strong preference to options for refurbishment or reuse. Replacement of nuclear

components would be undertaken only if critical Stockpile Management Program goals

could not otherwise be met, and if specifically authorized by the President and approved by

Congress.14

The need for new “nuclear components,” pits in this case, drives pit capacity requirements.

However, the pit production capacity considered has varied greatly, from 10 to 450 pits per year.

The Nuclear Weapons Council has decided that, to meet the likely demands of future LEPs, a

production capacity of 50 to 80 ppy is needed. Andrew Weber, Assistant Secretary of Defense for

Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs, testified in April 2013 that “there is no

daylight between the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense on the need for both a

near-term pit production capacity of 10 to 20 and then 30 by 2021, and then in the longer term for

a pit production capacity of 50 to 80 per year.”15

While this range of pit production drives the planning for the U.S. plutonium strategy, it is not a

precise range based on a careful analysis of military requirements. When asked to explain the

basis for this range, Linton Brooks, former Administrator of NNSA, and John Harvey, then

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense

Programs, responded:

MR. HARVEY: We established that requirement back in 2008 for a capability to produce in

the range of 50 to 80 per year. That evolved from a decision to basically not take the path

that we originally were taking with the Modern Pit Facility, but to go and be able to exploit

the existing infrastructure at Los Alamos to meet our pit operational requirements. The

capability at Los Alamos was assessed to be somewhere in the range of 50 to 80 per year that

they could get with the modernization program they anticipated. The Nuclear Weapons

Council looked at that number. It’s a capacity-based number, and said it’s probably good

enough. We’ll have to accept some risk, but it’s probably good enough.

MR. BROOKS: So you can’t tie it to a specific – you can’t tie it to a specific deployment

schedule or something. It’s a judgment that is a combined judgment on yeah, you can

probably do this, and yeah in the most reasonable world this will be enough.

MR. MEDALIA: But there’s a big difference in the facilities, between 50 and 80. Is it 80 or

is it 50 to 80?

MR. HARVEY: We understood that the capability to deliver, based on the anticipated

modernization at Los Alamos which would include the CMRR or equivalent, coupled with

the PF-4 production, appropriately reconfigured, could deliver in that range. So it was a

U.S. Department of Defense. Nuclear Posture Review Report, April 2010, p. 39.

Testimony of Andrew Weber, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense

Programs, in U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. Hearing to

Receive Testimony on Nuclear Forces and Policies in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year

2014 and the Future Years Defense Program, April 17, 2013, p. 15.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

range. I mean, it’s always been cited as single shift range. By going to double shifts you

could probably get the higher end of that range.

MR. BROOKS: But no person now living can tell you for sure the answer to that question. I

mean, you know, beware of spurious precision. … Fifty to 80 is probably as precise as the

facts will allow people to be, although people will say other things.16

NNSA was also imprecise as to required production capacity. It stated in a 2013 report,

“Preliminary plans call for pit production of potentially up to 80 pits per year starting as early as

FY 2030. NNSA continues to develop options to achieve a higher production rate as part of the

plutonium strategy.”17 John Harvey subsequently added, “The level of 50-80 ppy was consistent

with existing PF-4 production capacity plus the analytical chemistry capacity anticipated for the

planned CMRR-NF. However, NNSA officials in 2006 believed that a capacity in the range of

125 ppy was needed to respond to anticipated requirements and provide some resilience to

surprise. Thus the 50-80 ppy level, while the best that could be done, accepted significant risk in

their view.”18

It may be possible to reduce the capacity required below 80 ppy and still meet DOD’s

requirements. This might be done in several ways:

•

One option under serious study is reusing retired pits in LEPs. Whether this could

be done for a particular LEP depends on details of the LEP, whether there are

suitable pits available, and whether such pits are available in the quantity

required; decisions would have to be made on a case-by-case basis.

•

In some LEPs, it may be possible to simply reinstall a weapon’s original pit.

Neither that method nor reuse of retired pits from other weapons require AC or

foundry work. By producing new pits while another LEP is underway with

retired or original pits, LANL could use its otherwise-unused capacity to produce

pits ahead of schedule for a LEP requiring new pits. Stockpiling new pits would

enable lower rates of production and of AC to produce the aggregate number of

pits needed by the time they are needed, even if the maximum production rate

attainable is less than 80 ppy. In addition, keeping the pit production and support

line in continuous operation would be useful if not essential for maintaining

processes, equipment, and worker skills, and for training new workers. On the

other hand, LEPs require considerable planning and design work, and designs for

new pits would have to be certified. In the near term, it might not be possible to

do this work far enough in advance to permit continuous production.

•

Since the figure of 80 ppy was based on LANL’s presumed pit production

capacity using PF-4 and CMRR-NF (an existing building and one that has been

Reserve Officers Association, Air Force Association and National Defense Industrial Association Capitol Hill

Breakfast Forum with Linton Brooks, Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and John

Harvey, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs, on

“The Nuclear Infrastructure Challenge And Deterrence Implications,” June 13, 2013, http://secure.afa.org/HBS/

transcripts/2013/June%2013%20-%20Brooks.pdf. CMRR refers to the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research

Replacement Nuclear Facility, which has been deferred for at least five years, and PF-4 is the building in which pits are

currently manufactured; see ““Existing Buildings at Los Alamos for Plutonium Work.”

U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. Fiscal Year 2014 Stockpile Stewardship and

Management Plan, Report to Congress, June 2013, page 2-22.

Personal communication, January 19, 2014.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

deferred for at least five years), not on a strategic analysis of military needs, and

since the range cited is 50 to 80 ppy, a capacity of less than 80 ppy might suffice.

The Union of Concerned Scientists stated regarding required pit production capacity:

If pits last 150 years or more, there is no need to replace aging pits for the foreseeable future,

and no rationale for expanding production capacity beyond the existing 10 to 20 annually for

this purpose. Even if the NNSA finds that pits will last only 100 years and that all need to be

replaced by 2089, production capacity of 50 per year would be adequate.

The NNSA could replace all existing pits by 2089 if it started doing so in 2019, based on the

agency’s conservative assumption that the U.S. stockpile will remain at 3,500 warheads.

However, the United States is likely to reduce its arsenal in coming decades. In that case, the

NNSA could either wait longer to begin producing replacement pits … or reduce the annual

rate of production. …

Thus, even under the most conservative assumptions about pit lifetime and arsenal size, there

is no need to expand pit production capacity beyond 50 per year to replace aging pits.

Because both pit lifetime and the future size of the arsenal are uncertain, it makes no sense to

expand production capacity until it is needed.19

In contrast, John Harvey argues that there is risk in not providing margin to accommodate

unknowns:

Required pit production capacity cannot be based solely on known LEP requirements. We

must consider the possibly of surprise: either technical problems in the stockpile that arise

unexpectedly or geopolitical reversals. For example, we cannot anticipate at this point a need

to increase stockpile size based on renewed threats, but we should not rule out that

possibility in setting our pit production needs. Some reserve production capacity is required

above and beyond known LEP needs to ensure we have some ability to respond to surprise.

This is entirely consistent with the President’s NPR [Nuclear Posture Review] vision for a

responsive nuclear infrastructure. The longer we wait on achieving needed capacity, the

greater the risk we are accepting in not having responsive capabilities.20

It could be argued that an ability to meet the higher requirement—the most challenging case—

would enable the United States to meet lower requirements and would put this nation in a better

position to meet higher requirements should that be deemed necessary. Further, if 80 ppy proves

unattainable, an effort to reach that goal might increase the likelihood that this nation could reach

50 ppy, the lower end of the range.

On the other hand, it could be argued that it is not desirable to have a goal of 80 ppy if that is

excess to needs. According to Greg Mello, Executive Director of Los Alamos Study Group,

It is not clear that efforts to reach a larger pit production capacity will enable lesser pit

production capacities. History shows that efforts to acquire pit production capacity above

that which is clearly needed, have failed. Facilities to support a larger-than-needed pit

production capacity cost more for construction and operation than smaller facilities, and are

Lisbeth Gronlund et al., Making Smart Security Choices: The Future of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex, Union

of Concerned Scientists, October 2012, p. 12, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/nuclear-weaponscomplex-report.pdf.

Personal communication, January 19, 2014.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

more likely to encounter political objections. So trying for 80 pits per year may decrease the

probability of successfully acquiring 50 pits per year, and trying for 50 pits per year may

decrease the probability of achieving 30 pits per year. It may be far better to acquire the

minimum necessary pit production capacity, and include a contingency plan that can be

activated should conditions warrant.21

Because of concern over required pit production capacity, Section 3147 of the FY2013 National

Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 112-239, directed the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with

the Secretary of Energy and the Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, to “assess the

annual plutonium pit production requirement needed to sustain a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear

weapon arsenal.” The accompanying Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee of

Conference states that the assessment shall include “an assessment of cost and national security

implications for various smaller and larger pit production rates from the current 50-80 pit

requirement. The conferees note that rates including 10 to 20 pits per year, 20 to 30 pits per year,

30 to 50 pits per year, 50 to 80 pits per year, and larger should be included as part of the

analysis.”22 Note that reducing required capacity would reduce facility requirements and might

permit delaying facility construction.

The purpose of this report, however, is not to address contending arguments on the capacity

needed, but to discuss options for acquiring the maximum capacity DOD states that it needs, 80

ppy, by 2030. Even if in 16 years it turns out that a lower capacity would suffice, it is difficult at

best to know that so far in advance.

The difference between 50 and 80 ppy has consequences. As discussed above, the Nuclear

Weapons Council reasoned that a capacity to build 50 ppy in single-shift operations could be

scaled up to produce 80 ppy in double-shift operations, that is, double-shift operations can

produce 1.6 times as many pits as single-shift operations. But if the actual need is 50 ppy, then by

using the same ratio, a capacity to build approximately 30 ppy in single-shift operations could be

scaled up to 50 ppy by using two shifts. Deploying and operating a smaller capacity would be less

costly and easier to implement.

Personal communication, December 16, 2013.

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013.

Conference report to accompany H.R. 4310. 112th Congress, 2nd Session, H.Rept. 112-705, December 18, 2012, p. 991.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Plutonium-238

Figure 2. Plutonium-238

Pu-238 is an isotope of plutonium. While it is

not used in pits, it figures prominently in

several pit production options presented later

in this report. It has very different properties

and applications than Pu-239. Pu-238 has a

much shorter half-life than Pu-239 (87.7 years

vs. 24,110 years), so is 275 times more

radioactive. Because of its intense

radioactivity, it is so hot that a lump of it

glows, as Figure 2 shows. This radioactivity

makes it useful in applications requiring a

long-lived power source. It is used to provide

heat to generate electricity for deep space

probes and for defense purposes. At the same

time, according to Los Alamos,

Source: U.S. Department of Energy,

Pu-238 is not desirable for using in pits

because it has a relatively short half-life

(87.7 years) and the associated decay

generates large amounts of heat in the material. Pu-238 is listed in the [DOE] Safeguards

Table (DOE 474.2) as attractiveness level D (Low-Grade Materials) because its half-life and

associated properties would make it extremely difficult to fabricate into a pit, handle, and

may cause problems for surrounding materials [in a nuclear weapon] such as electronics,

plastics, etc.23

Note: This figure shows a Pu-238 source glowing

under its own light.

Key Regulatory Terms

Statutes, regulations, DOE orders, etc., as described in Appendix A, use many terms. While they

are often technical and complicated, understanding several of them is essential for understanding

facilities, presented next, and options. Selected terms are presented here; they provide a basis for

discussing constraints on plutonium buildings, various ways to comply with these constraints, and

how the constraints might be modified.

Dose: The amount of ionizing radiation a person receives, measured in rem.

Rem: This is a unit of measure of the biological effects of all types of ionizing radiation on

people. One expert lists a dose of between 0 and 25 rem as having “no detectable clinical effects;

small increase in risk of delayed cancer and genetic effects,” a dose of 25 to 100 rem as “serious

effects on average individual highly improbable,” and for 100-200 rem “minimal symptoms;

nausea and fatigue with possible vomiting.”24 Note that cancer risks in exposed populations

generally increase with dose and number of people exposed.

Information provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, email, November 4, 2013.

Dade Moeller, Environmental Health, revised edition, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 250. There is

debate on the biological effects of very low levels of radiation. See CRS Report R41890, “Dirty Bombs”: Technical

Background, Attack Prevention and Response, Issues for Congress, by (name redacted), Appendix A, Technical

Background; and Dr. Y, “Once More into the Breach,” November 5, 2013, which contains links to various documents

in the debate, http://blogs.fas.org/sciencewonk/2013/11/breach/.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Plutonium-239 equivalent: Weapons-grade plutonium (WGPu) consists mainly of Pu-239 but

includes small quantities of other plutonium isotopes. Some are much more radioactive than

Pu-239, and there are many other radioactive substances. It is convenient to convert all

radioactive materials to a single standard for purposes of assessing the radiological hazard from a

building in the event of an accident. That standard is “plutonium-239 equivalent,” abbreviated as

Pu-239E in this report. Because WGPu is more radioactive than pure Pu-239, 1 gram (g) of

WGPu has the radioactivity of 1.49 g of Pu-239. Similarly, Pu-238 is very much more radioactive

than Pu-239; 1 g of Pu-238 has the radioactivity of 275 g of Pu-239.

Hazard Categories (HCs) and Radiological Facilities: Nuclear facilities are categorized in

several ways. One is by the hazard they could pose in the event of a major accident. HCs are

based on “the consequences of unmitigated releases of hazardous radioactive and chemical

material.”25 10 CFR 830, “Nuclear Safety Management,” Appendix A, “General Statement of

Safety Basis Policy,” divides these consequences into three categories; Table 1 also includes a

related category.

Table 1. Hazard Categories and Radiological Facilities

As Applicable to Plutonium

Hazard

Category

(HC)

Pu-239 Equivalent (g) a

building of this Hazard

Category is designed to hold

Description in 10 CFR 830

Comment

Applies to nuclear reactors,

not applicable to pits

N/A

Potential for “significant off-site

consequences”

≥2,610 g

Potential for “significant on-site

consequences beyond localized

consequences”

Less than HC-2, but >38.6 g

Potential for “only local

significant consequences”

Radiological

Facility

Less than HC-3

Not part of the Hazard

Category System

Source: Hazard Categories are based on an NNSA document, “Guidance on Using Release Fraction and

Modern Dosimetric Information Consistently with DOE STD 1027-92, Hazard Categorization and Accident Analysis

Techniques for Compliance with DOE Order 5480.23, Nuclear Safety Analysis Reports, Change Notice No. 1,”

Supplemental Guidance, NA-1 SD G 1027, November 28, 2011, http://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/

inlinefiles/NNSA_Supp_Guide_1027.pdf. DOE STD 1027-92, Establishing Hazard Categories is required by 10

CFR 830 (Nuclear Safety Management), Subpart B (Safety Basis Requirements), Section 202(b)(3),

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title10-vol4/pdf/CFR-2011-title10-vol4-part830.pdf.

Notes: See Appendix C for additional details.

Hazard Categories are determined by the amount of Pu-239E a building is designed to hold; each

category has the potential for certain consequences in the event of a major accident. 10 CFR 830,

Appendix A, states that “the hazard categorization must be based on an inventory of all

radioactive materials within a nuclear facility.” The HC structure builds in a conservative feature:

“The final categorization is based on an ‘unmitigated release’ of available hazardous material. For

the purposes of hazard categorization, ‘unmitigated’ is meant to consider material quantity, form,

National Nuclear Security Administration, “Main Points of Draft Supplemental Directive: Alternative Hazard

Categorization Methodology for Compliance with 10 CFR 830, Nuclear Safety Management, Safety Basis

Requirements,” Rev. 0, 3/15/2010, p. 10.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

location, dispersibility and interaction with available energy sources, but not to consider safety

features (e.g., ventilation system, fire suppression, etc.) which will prevent or mitigate a

release.”26 Hazard Categories apply to the design and construction of a building, not to its

operation. For example, a building intended to hold 5,000 g of Pu-239E must be designed to

HC-2 standards, while a building intended to hold 1,000 g of Pu-239E must be designed to HC-3

standards, which are less stringent.

Closely related, and central to some options discussed later in this report, is the category

“Radiological Facility.” A Radiological Facility holds less Pu-239E than an HC-3 building. It is

not part of the HC system because the amount of material is so small as to pose little threat; a

hospital, for example, might be a Radiological Facility. The Radiological Laboratory/Utility/

Office Building (RLUOB) figures in several options below and is discussed in “Existing

Buildings at Los Alamos for Plutonium Work.” As a Radiological Facility, HC standards limit it

to 38.6 g of Pu-239E, or 26 g of WGPu, far less than enough to perform the AC needed to support

production of 80 ppy.

Design Basis Earthquake (DBE): The DBE is used to set standards for the resilience to

earthquakes that buildings in various HCs must have. LANL provided the following information:

The design basis earthquake is defined as the ground motion that has an annual frequency of

4 x 10-4 or [once in] 2,500 years. This is the ground motion that structures, systems, and

components (SSCs) are designed for using national consensus codes and standards. This

approach would lead to a failure probability of the SSCs for loads associated with the design

basis ground motion of 1-2%. Using this approach it is also expected that at ground motion

associated with an annual frequency of 1 x 10-4, or [once in] 10,000 years, the failure

probability of the SSCs would be about 50%.27

Design Basis Accident (DBA): This is the accident scenario against which a nuclear facility must

be designed and evaluated. Each HC building is required to be built to survive a DBA, the worstcase accident that could plausibly affect the building. Because each building will face different

threats, the DBA is necessarily building-specific. For one building, the DBA might be a flood; for

another, an explosion of a nearby gas main; for a third, a tornado; and for a fourth, an earthquake.

For the plutonium buildings at Los Alamos, described next, the main threat is an earthquake, so

the DBA involves (1) an earthquake more powerful than the DBE that (2) collapses a building

and (3) starts a fire that involves all material at risk in the facility and (4) releases a certain

fraction of the plutonium into the air as plutonium oxide particles. The fraction, in turn, is based

on (1) the Airborne Release Fraction (ARF), the fraction of the MAR that the postulated fire

could release into the air; (2) the Leak Path Factor (LPF), the fraction of ARF that actually

escapes from the building into the air; some of it would be trapped, such as by the collapse of the

building; and (3) the Respirable Fraction (RF), the fraction of the plutonium oxide particles

released into the atmosphere that are of a size (3 microns or less) that could readily be inhaled and

lodge in the lungs, where they would cause biological damage and, quite possibly, lung cancers;

larger particles would fall to the ground or would be trapped in the nose. Other variables enter as

well; Appendix B discusses them in detail.

U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. “Guidance on Using Release Fraction and

Modern Dosimetric Information Consistently with DOE STD 1027-92, Hazard Categorization and Accident Analysis

Techniques for Compliance with DOE Order 5480.23, Nuclear Safety Analysis Reports, Change Notice No. 1,”

Supplemental Guidance, NA-1 SD G 1027, November 28, 2011, Attachment 1, page 1-2.

Information provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, email, August 8, 2013.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

The frequency of the DBA is much less than the frequency of the DBE because several steps must

occur for the DBE to result in the DBA. NNSA commented on this difference:

There is also margin in the assumed accident frequencies (e.g., once in 5,000 years); these

were based on the structural failure probabilities and did not consider other conditional

probabilities, such as the conditional probability of a large fire starting and growing within

the facility and progressively effecting and engaging all of the assumed material at risk; this

refinement would reduce the frequency of the event from once in thousands of years to once

in hundreds of thousands of years.28

The difference between DBE and DBA is crucial because the path from the one to the other can

be interrupted at many places and in many ways in order to reduce the probability of the DBA, as

discussed in “Increasing Safety,” below.

Radiological Facilities like RLUOB do not have a DBA and do not have to be designed to survive

a DBA because they have so little radioactive material, though, as discussed in Appendix E,

RLUOB was built (but not certified) to HC-3 standards. If RLUOB were to be converted to an

HC-3 building, it would need a DBA and might need structural and other upgrades to be able to

survive it. Appendix D describes some of the tasks needed to convert RLUOB to HC-3.

Material At Risk (MAR): DOE defines this term as “the amount of radioactive materials (in

grams or curies of activity for each radionuclide) available to be acted on by a given physical

stress.”29 For purposes of this report, it is a measure of the amount of plutonium that might be

dispersed in a DBA. Molten plutonium or plutonium shavings in a crucible that topples over in an

earthquake, spilling plutonium onto the floor, would be MAR because a fire would create

plutonium oxide particles, while plutonium in specially designed containers that are fire-resistant

and rugged enough to survive a building collapse would not face this risk and thus would not be

counted as MAR.

Maximally-exposed Offsite Individual (MOI) and other exposure standards: An MOI is a

hypothetical person located at the spot—outside the site boundary but nearest to a specific

building—where a member of the public could reasonably be, such as a dwelling or a public road.

The guideline set by DOE is that the MOI should receive a dose of no more than 25 rem for an

exposure of 2 hours (or up to 8 hours in certain situations). “The value of 25 rem TEDE [total

effective dose equivalent] is not considered an acceptable public exposure either. It is, however,

generally accepted as a value indicative of no significant health effects (i.e., low risk of latent

health effects and virtually no risk of prompt health effects).”30 To avoid “challenging” the 25rem dose, another DOE document sets the dose at 5 rem, and sets a guideline of 100 rem TEDE

for nearby (“collocated”) workers.31

Letter from Donald Cook, Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, National Nuclear Security Administration, to

Peter Winokur, Chairman, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, January 30, 2012, Enclosure 1, pp. 3-4,

http://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/Board%20Activities/Letters/2012/ltr_2012130_18446_0.pdf.

U.S. Department of Energy. DOE Handbook: Airborne Release Fractions/Rates and Respirable Fractions for

Nonreactor Nuclear Facilities, Volume I - Analysis of Experimental Data, DOE-HDBK-3010-94, December 1994, p.

xix, http://www.orau.gov/ddsc/dose/doehandbook.pdf.

U.S. Department of Energy. DOE-STD-3009-94, July 1994, Change Notice No. 3, March 2006, “DOE Standard:

Preparation Guide for U.S. Department of Energy Nonreactor Nuclear Facility Documented Safety Analyses,”

Appendix A, “Evaluation Guideline,” p. A-2, http://www.hss.doe.gov/enforce/docs/std/DOE_STD_3009.pdf.

U.S. Department of Energy, DOE Standard: Integration of Safety into the Design Process, DOE-STD-1189-2008,

March 2008, pp. A-5, A-6.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Documented Safety Analysis (DSA): Once an HC-2 or HC-3 building is built, a DSA must be

prepared for it. A DSA is an agreement on how much MAR it can contain in order to stay within

the dose limits for a collocated worker (for an HC-3 building) or an MOI (for an HC-2 building).

The DSA MAR limit is typically less than the upper bound for an HC-3 building; for an HC-2

building, the DSA MAR limit is a specific figure because HC-2 sets no upper bound. For two

HC-2 buildings at LANL, CMR and PF-4, discussed below, the agreement is between NNSA and

Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the site contractor. The MAR permitted is building-specific

based on hazard analysis, including accident scenarios, and on multiple measures designed to

contain radioactive material in an accident. For CMR, the MAR permitted by the DSA is 9 kg of

Pu-239E; for the main floor of PF-4, the comparable figure is 2,600 kg.32 A DOE document

provides detailed standards for preparing a DSA.33 No DSA is required for a Radiological Facility

because MAR is so small that such facilities fall outside the Hazard Category system.

Security Category (SC): DOE places uranium and plutonium into SCs depending on their

attractiveness level, such as to terrorists. SC I and II pertain to facilities with Special Nuclear

Materials (SNM, mainly uranium highly enriched in the isotope 235 and plutonium) in quantities

or forms that would pose a severe threat if seized by terrorists. The highest level, SC-I, includes

assembled weapons and 2 kg or more of plutonium ingots. SC I and II require armed guards, a

special security fence, and similar measures. SC-IV requires much less security. It includes less

than 200 g of metallic plutonium and less than 3 kg of solutions of less than 25 g of plutonium

per liter. Table C-1 shows amounts of plutonium in various hazard and security categories.

Safety Class, Safety Significant: 10 CFR 830.3 defines safety class structures, systems, and

components (SSCs) as SSCs, “including portions of process systems, whose preventive and

mitigative function is necessary to limit radioactive hazardous material exposure to the public, as

determined from the safety analyses.” In contrast, safety significant SSCs “are not designated as

safety class structures, systems, and components, but whose preventive or mitigative function is a

major contributor to defense in depth and/or worker safety as determined from safety analyses.”

LANL added this explanation: “Safety-class systems must operate in conditions that otherwise

would result in an unacceptable risk (dose) to the public. Relative to the public, safety-significant

systems support safety-class systems with additional protections that might help in an accident,

but are not counted upon to do so.”34

Facility Aspects: Buildings to Support Pit Production

Existing Buildings at Los Alamos for Plutonium Work

The nuclear weapons complex (the “Complex”) consists of eight sites that maintain U.S. nuclear

weapons; during the Cold War, the Complex designed, developed, tested, and manufactured these

weapons. The Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies used to own and set

policy for the Complex. Beginning in 2000, the National Nuclear Security Administration

(NNSA), a semiautonomous agency within DOE, took over these functions. Contractors operate

Complex sites at the direction of NNSA. One of these sites, Los Alamos National Laboratory

(LANL), has three buildings relevant to pits:

Information provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, email, November 4, 2013.

U.S. Department of Energy. DOE-STD-3009-94, July 1994, Change Notice No. 3, March 2006, “DOE Standard:

Preparation Guide for U.S. Department of Energy Nonreactor Nuclear Facility Documented Safety Analyses.”

Information provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, email, January 22, 2014.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) Building

This building was designed beginning in the late 1940s; most of it was completed by 1952, with

another part completed in the early 1960s. It was used mainly for plutonium R&D, and at present

provides AC and some MC to support pit production and all other plutonium missions in PF-4.

CMR is showing signs of age. In 2009, a congressional commission found that it and a uranium

processing building at the Y-12 National Security Complex are “genuinely decrepit and are

maintained in a safe and secure manner only at high cost.”35 In 2010, the staff of the Defense

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), which monitors safety and health issues at the nuclear

weapons complex, “questioned CMR’s ability to detect promptly ventilation system failure, a

particularly important function given the system’s age and lack of local alarms to notify facility

workers.”36 In a 2010 report to Congress, DNFSB stated that CMR and Y-12 uranium processing

facilities “are structurally unsound and are unsuitable for protracted use.”37

CMR suffers from another problem. As Los

Alamos is on several seismic faults,

earthquakes pose the greatest threat to CMR.

It is not seismically robust. Its design, in the

late 1940s, gave little consideration to seismic

loads. Further, when it was constructed, there

was a steel shortage due to a steel strike and

the Korean War. To save on steel, each

concrete beam in CMR is reinforced with

only two steel reinforcing rods, which are of

different diameters, while the concrete floor

between the beams is 2 to 4 inches thick,

reinforced with chicken wire. A Los Alamos

Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

seismic expert calculates that, for CMR, “the

annual probability of failure [i.e., building collapse, is] somewhere between 1 in 370 years and 1

in 333 years.” This means that for ground motion that might be associated with an earthquake that

may occur approximately every 250 years, there is a 50% probability of collapse. This expert also

calculates that the probability that CMR would survive a Design Basis Earthquake, in this case

one occurring once in 2,500 years, is less than 0.2%.38 Another calculation using these data is that

CMR has a 1 in 36 chance of collapsing in 10 years. DNFSB arrived at a similar calculation:

Figure 3. Chemistry and Metallurgy

Research Building

Seismic fragility of building: There is a 1 in 55 chance of seismic collapse during a 10-year

timeframe, which would result in release of nuclear material and injury/death of facility

workers.

William Perry et al., America’s Strategic Posture, Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United

States, Washington, United States Institute for Peace Press, 2009, p. 50.

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Staff Issue Report, “Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Facility

Documented Safety Analysis,” memorandum from C. Shuffler to T.J. Dwyer, Technical Director, September 1, 2010,

pp. 4-5, http://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/Board%20Activities/Reports/Staff%20Issue%20Reports/

Los%20Alamos%20National%20Laboratory/2010/sir_2010127_4969_65.pdf.

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, “Summary of Significant Safety-Related Infrastructure Issues at Operating

Defense Nuclear Facilities,” letter report to the Congress, September 10, 2010, p. 1, http://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/

files/Board%20Activities/Reports/Reports%20to%20Congress/2010/sr_2010910_4673.pdf.

Emails, September 17, September 27, and October 1, 2, and 10, 2013.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

The Board is concerned that prolonged operations in the existing CMR facility pose a serious

safety risk to workers. In late 2010, the NNSA limited material-at-risk in the facility to

reduce the public dose consequence following an earthquake to a value below the Evaluation

Guideline of 25 rem.39

PF-4 (Plutonium Facility 4)

Figure 4. PF-4 and TA-55

Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Notes: Technical Area 55 (TA-55) is the main area at

Los Alamos National Laboratory for plutonium work,

such as pit manufacturing, R&D, stabilizing of waste

for disposition, and nuclear forensics. The photo

shows most of TA-55. TA-55 includes PF-4, RLUOB,

and the site for the proposed CMRR-NF.

PF-4 is the nation’s main building for

plutonium work. It manufactures pits and

supports many other plutonium projects. It

produces Pu-238 heat sources for deep space

probes and defense purposes. It houses the

Advanced Recovery and Integrated

Extraction System (ARIES), which converts

the plutonium in pits into plutonium oxide for

use in mixed oxide nuclear reactor fuel.40 It is

the venue for pit surveillance, in which pits

from deployed weapons are returned to Los

Alamos for detailed inspection to search for

actual or potential problems. It used to

recover americium, a decay product of

plutonium, for use in smoke detectors and

industrial gauges, and is reestablishing that

capability. It conducts plutonium R&D.

DNFSB expressed concern about PF-4’s

vulnerability to an earthquake:

PF-4 was designed and constructed in the

1970s and lacks the structural ductility and redundancy required by today’s building codes

and standards. In 2007, a DOE-required periodic reanalysis of the seismic threat present at

the Los Alamos site was completed. It indicated a greater than fourfold increase in the

predicted earthquake ground motion. Total facility collapse is now considered a credible

event. … In response to this increased seismic threat, LANL undertook a series of actions to

improve the safety posture of PF-4.41

Radiological Laboratory/ Utility/Office Building (RLUOB)

Design of this building was completed in 2006. The building was completed in FY2010,42 office

operations began in October 2011, and laboratory operations are expected to start in 2014.43 As a

U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. “Summary of Significant Safety-Related Aging Infrastructure Issues at

Operating Defense Nuclear Facilities.” Fourth Annual Report to Congress, Enclosure, p. E-2, emphasis in original;

http://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/Board%20Activities/Reports/Reports%20to%20Congress/2013/

ar_20131030_23051.pdf.

For further information on ARIES, see ”Aries Turns Ten,” full issue of Actinide Research Quarterly, Quarters 1 and

2, 2008, http://arq.lanl.gov/source/orgs/nmt/nmtdo/AQarchive/1st_2ndQuarter08/.

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, “Summary of Significant Safety-Related Infrastructure Issues at Operating

Defense Nuclear Facilities,” letter report to the Congress, September 10, 2010, p. 1, http://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/

files/Board%20Activities/Reports/Reports%20to%20Congress/2010/sr_2010910_4673.pdf

U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Chief Financial Officer. FY 2014 Congressional Budget Request, DOE/CF0084, April 2013, Volume 1, National Nuclear Security Administration, p. WA-267.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Radiological Facility, it is permitted to hold 26 grams (g) of WGPu. It has 19,500 square feet (sf)

of laboratory space, as compared to 22,500 sf of lab space planned for the Chemistry and

Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF), a building planned but not

built, as described in “A Sisyphean History: Failed Efforts to Construct a Building to Restore Pit

Production,” below. RLUOB (pronounced “rulob”) was intended to conduct unclassified R&D on

plutonium and some AC in support of pit production; the latter amount was to be very small

because CMRR-NF was intended for that purpose. Nonetheless, the design of RLUOB is suitable

for AC because it uses open hoods instead of gloveboxes as in PF-4;44 hoods are more efficient

for most AC because it is much easier to work with small samples in them, but they require a

powerful ventilation system, which RLUOB has, as shown in Figure 6. Indeed, a LANL report

stated that “RLUOB has effectively perfect alignment with analytical chemistry activities.”45

Figure 5. Radiological Laboratory/

Utility/Office Building

While RLUOB was intended to be a

Radiological Facility, it was constructed to a

much higher standard than was required:

RLUOB was built as a “radiological-plus”

or robust radiological facility. The

engineering controls associated with

worker radiation protection are on par with

those inside of PF-4 and well in excess of

those in the 1950s-era CMR Building.

Additionally, the RLUOB uses modern

HEPA filtration, which protects the

Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

environment from a release of

contamination, and contains a state-of-the-art operations center for managing facility

operations including ventilation. In an overarching sense, the RLUOB was built with a focus

on the Nuclear Quality Assurance (NQA)-1 standard, which technically is only required for

hazard category 3 facilities, but was constructed as such to provide lessons-learned to aid in

constructing the CMRR-NF. However, despite its inherent robustness, the RLUOB does not

meet the standards established for either a hazard category 2 or 3 nuclear facility because it

was by design intended to work in conjunction with a hazard category 2 nuclear facility (the

CMRR-NF).46

RLUOB was designed to withstand the design basis earthquake (DBE), in this case an earthquake

anticipated to strike RLUOB once in 2,500 years. The force of the DBE was based on seismic

calculations made in 1995. Accordingly, it is more resilient to earthquakes than PF-4 was as

originally built, since PF-4 was designed to an earlier, less energetic DBE. (Upgrades have

(...continued)

Information provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, email, December 11, 2013.

Hoods and gloveboxes are used to manipulate hazardous material, such as acid or plutonium. They contain

equipment, such as spectrometers for AC or crucibles for melting plutonium. They have negative air pressure so as to

prevent material from escaping into the lab room: air is drawn through the hood or glovebox and then exhausted

through a series of filters. A glovebox is a box with a transparent front panel and ports to which heavy gloves are

attached. It is supposed to be airtight. An open-front hood is open to the air; laboratory personnel manipulate material

using much thinner gloves than is the case for gloveboxes. It is more suitable for handling very small samples or

precise adjustment of equipment. Being open, a hood requires much more suction than does a glovebox to keep

material from leaking into the room. Figure 16 shows hoods and gloveboxes.

Brett Kniss and Drew Kornreich, “A Proposal for an Enduring Plutonium Infrastructure,” Los Alamos National

Laboratory, LA-CP-13-00728 (OUO), June 27, 2013, pp. 22-23. Note: While the report is Official Use Only, this

passage has been cleared for unlimited distribution.

Ibid. This passage has been cleared for unlimited distribution.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

increased PF-4’s resiliency.) As detailed in Appendix E, Los Alamos estimates that “collapsing

RLUOB would take an earthquake with 4 to 12 times more force than an earthquake that would

collapse CMR.” However, the current DBE is more energetic than the 1995 DBE; it is unclear

what measures, if any, would be needed to strengthen RLUOB to withstand the current DBE.

Figure 6. Air Filters in RLUOB

Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory, October

23, 2013.

Notes: This photo shows a two-stage system in the

basement of RLUOB that is used to filter air from the

hoods and lab rooms on the laboratory floor. (A

separate exhaust system handles air from

gloveboxes.) It is essential to maintain “negative

pressure” (air pressure lower than that of the room)

in the laboratory rooms, hoods, and gloveboxes to

prevent fumes and particles from escaping. Multiple

exhaust systems are used to maintain negative

pressure. Air is drawn from the lab room into the

hoods and gloveboxes, then through small HEPA

(high-efficiency particulate air) filters in the hoods and

gloveboxes; these filters remove at least 99.975% of

any particles. The air is then drawn into the ductwork

and through large filters in the basement. The system

shown here consists of a first stage with pre-filters

(over 95% efficiency), which provides cooldown and

moisture separation, and a second stage with certified

HEPA (at least 99.95% efficiency) filters. This filtered

air is exhausted through a stack equipped with a

radiation monitor to verify compliance with the

Radiation National Emissions Standards for

Hazardous Pollutants permitting process. The total

air-handling capacity of the hood and glovebox

exhaust systems in RLUOB is 32,000 cubic feet per

minute.

A Sisyphean History: Failed Efforts

to Construct a Building to Restore Pit

Production

Beginning in 1952, the United States made

pits on a large scale at the Rocky Flats Plant

(CO), sometimes over 1,000 ppy. Operations

there halted in 1989 as a result of an FBI raid

investigating safety and environmental

violations. At that point, Rocky Flats was

producing pits for the W88 warhead to be

carried by Trident II submarine-launched

ballistic missiles, but W88 production was not

complete. DOE initially considered restarting

operations at Rocky Flats, but ultimately

decided not to. The United States has not had

the capacity to make more than about 10 ppy

since 1989.47

The history of efforts to restore pit production

capacity on a larger scale is voluminous. The

key takeaways from the brief summary that

follows are: (1) many projects have been

proposed over the years; (2) none has been

successfully completed; and (3) key

parameters, such as cost, schedule, proposed

facility site, and capacity, have changed from

one proposal to the next.

Complex 21

As the Cold War was winding down,

Congress, in Section 3132 of the National

Defense Authorization Act for FY1988 and

1989 (P.L. 100-180, December 4, 1987),

directed the President to conduct a study on

nuclear weapons complex modernization and

to “formulate a plan … to modernize the nuclear weapons complex by achieving the necessary

In 2007, Los Alamos produced 17 pits, but only 11 were “war reserve” pits, that is, accepted for use in the stockpile.

Of the others, some were scrap, and some were used for engineering tests and did not need to be qualified as war

reserve. Los Alamos could have made 10 ppy in subsequent years, but there was no DOD requirement for so doing. As

a result, in no other year did the total number of pits exceed 10. Information provided by Los Alamos National

Laboratory, email, November 12, 2013.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

size and capacity determined under the study.” The report was submitted in January 1989, but as

Secretary of Energy James Watkins noted in January 1991,

dramatic world changes forced further reassessments of the future Nuclear Weapons

Complex.” A DOE report resulting from the reassessments “presents a plan to achieve a

reconfigured complex, called Complex-21. Complex-21 would be smaller, less diverse, and

less expensive to operate than the Complex of today. Complex-21 would be able to safely

and reliably support nuclear deterrent stockpile objectives set forth by the President and

funded by the Congress.48

In addition to a No Action alternative, the study proposed two Reconfiguration alternatives. One

would downsize existing sites and modernize them in place. “As an exception to the existing site

theme, the functions of the Rocky Flats Plant (RFP) would be relocated.” The second, “maximum

consolidation,” would

relocate RFP and at least one other NMP&M [Nuclear Materials Production and

Manufacturing] facility to a common location. The Pantex Plant and the Oak Ridge Y-12

Plant are candidates for collocation with the Rocky Flats functions, either singly or together.

… The probable outcome of this option would be an integrated site which could consolidate

much of the NMP&M elements at a single site.

As part of this effort, DOE would develop a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement “to

analyze the consequences of alternative configurations for the Complex,” with completion of that

statement expected in early FY1994. “Complex-21 should be fully operational early in the 21st

century and will sustain the nation’s nuclear deterrent until the middle of that century.”49

What emerged was a two-pronged approach to restore pit production. After conducting an

environmental impact statement (EIS) process, DOE issued a Record of Decision (ROD) on

Stockpile Stewardship and Management in December 1996 that included reestablishing pit

production capability at PF-4 while raising the prospect of a larger-capacity facility.50 Los Alamos

would build a small number of pits for W88s so DOE could replace W88 pits destroyed in an

ongoing surveillance program that monitored their condition. Producing these pits, and certifying

them as “war reserve,” that is, meeting standards for use in the nuclear stockpile, took many

years; PF-4 produced its first war reserve W88 pits, 11 of them, in 2007. This small capacity

would also serve as a pilot plant for developing production techniques for a larger plant. Since the

total number of additional W88 pits required was small, about 30, there was no need for PF-4 to

achieve high manufacturing rates. Producing these pits and certifying them as war reserve without

nuclear testing was a major early challenge for the stockpile stewardship program.

Modern Pit Facility

The second prong was to build a facility able to produce large numbers of pits. This was the

Modern Pit Facility (MPF). NNSA approved Critical Decision 0 (mission need) for MPF in

U.S. Department of Energy. Nuclear Weapons Complex Reconfiguration Study, DOE/DP-0083, January 1991, cover

letter by Secretary of Energy James D. Watkins, Admiral, U.S. Navy (Retired), January 24, 1991.

Ibid., pp. 4-5.

Department of Energy, “Record of Decision: Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Stockpile

Stewardship and Management,” 61 Federal Register 68015, December 26, 1996, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR1996-12-26/pdf/96-32759.pdf.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

FY2002. The capacity of MPF was left to be decided, for reasons a National Environmental

Policy Act (NEPA) document of May 2003 noted:

Classified studies have examined capacity requirements that would result from a wide range

of enduring stockpile sizes and compositions, pit lifetimes, emergency production needs

(referred to as “contingency” requirements), and facility full-production start dates. Although

the precise future capacity requirements are not known with certainty, enough clarity has

been obtained through these ongoing classified studies that the NNSA has identified a range

of pit production capacity requirements (125-450 ppy) that form the basis of the capacity

evaluations in this EIS. The EIS evaluates the impacts of a MPF designed to produce three

capacities: 125 ppy, 250 ppy, and 450 ppy. A pit lifetime range of 45-60 years is assumed.51

Congress initially supported MPF, but became increasingly concerned with the lack of study of

alternatives, a lack of clarity on the production capacity required, and uncertainty on pit aging and

pit life. Finally, Congress eliminated funds for MPF in the FY2006 budget cycle.

Consolidated Nuclear Production Center

Another effort to reconfigure the nuclear weapons complex began in 2004, when the House

Appropriations Committee sought to have DOE link the nuclear weapons stockpile with the

nuclear weapons complex that would support it:

During the fiscal year 2005 budget hearings, the Committee pressed the Secretary on the

need for a systematic review of requirements for the weapons complex over the next twentyfive years, and the Secretary committed to conducting such a review. The Secretary’s report

should assess the implications of the President’s decisions on the size and composition of the

stockpile, the cost and operational impacts of the new Design Basis Threat, and the

personnel, facilities, and budgetary resources required to support the smaller stockpile. The

report should evaluate opportunities for the consolidation of special nuclear materials,

facilities, and operations across the complex to minimize security requirements and the

environmental impact of continuing operations.52

The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) formed the Nuclear Weapons Complex

Infrastructure Task Force to carry out this study. The task force issued its report in July 2005. It

recommended immediate design of a Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). RRW was a

concept in which Cold War aspects of nuclear weapon design, notably maximizing the explosive

yield of the weapon per unit weight (the “yield-to-weight ratio”), would be traded off for design

features more suitable to the post-Cold War world, such as ease of manufacture, enhanced

confidence without nuclear testing, reduced use of hazardous materials, and enhanced surety

features.53 The task force envisioned RRW as a “family of weapons,” with RRWs ultimately

making up most if not all of the future stockpile. The task force also recommended a

Consolidated Nuclear Production Center (CNPC), “a modern set of production facilities with 21st

century cutting-edge nuclear component production, manufacturing, and assembly technologies,

U.S. Department of Energy. Draft Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on Stockpile

Stewardship and Management for a Modern Pit Facility, DOE/EIS-236-S2, summary volume, May 2003, p. S-27,

http://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/EIS-0236-S2-DEIS-Summary-2003.pdf.

U.S. Congress, House Committee on Appropriations, Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2005,

Report to accompany H.R. 4614, 108th Cong., 2nd sess., June 18, 2004, H.Rept. 108-554 (Washington: GPO, 2004), p.

111, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-108hrpt554/pdf/CRPT-108hrpt554.pdf.

For detailed information on the RRW program, see CRS Report RL33748, Nuclear Warheads: The Reliable

Replacement Warhead Program and the Life Extension Program, by (name redacted).

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

all at one location … When operational, the CNPC will produce and dismantle all RRW

weapons.”54 CNPC would have an SNM manufacturing facility, part of which would support

plutonium operations. “All of the functions currently identified in the proposed Modern Pit

Facility (MPF) will be located in this building” except for plutonium R&D.55 CNPC would not

manufacture non-nuclear components.56 Regarding capacity, the report stated:

A classified Supplement analyzes the issue of timing for the CNPC for a stockpile of 2200

active and 1000 reserve [weapons] and the expected pit manufacturing capacity of the future

Complex. The conclusion is that if the NNSA is required to: 1) protect a pit lifetime of 45

years, 2) support the above stockpile numbers, and 3) demonstrate production rates of 125

production pits to the stockpile per year, the CNPC must be functional by 2014. If one

accepts the uncertainty of pit lifetime of 60 years, the CNPC can be delayed to 2034. In

either case TA-55 is assumed to be producing 50 production pits to the stockpile per year.57

Complex 2030

The FY2007 National Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 109-364, directed the Secretary of Energy

to develop a plan for transforming the nuclear weapons complex to provide a responsive

infrastructure by 2030, and to submit this plan to Congress. The report was submitted in October

2006.58 The goal was to implement U.S. policy on strategic deterrence as called for in the 2001

Nuclear Posture Review, which recognized the need to transform U.S. nuclear forces from

deterring the U.S.S.R. to responding to emerging threats.59 Regarding the stockpile, NNSA

envisioned a smaller stockpile that, by 2030, would be composed mainly if not entirely of RRWs.

While the nuclear weapons complex of 2030, “Complex 2030,” would continue to have eight

sites, quantities of SNM requiring high levels of security would be “only present at production

and testing sites.”60 As to labs, in Complex 2030 “No laboratory operations require Category I/II

SNM levels of security. Laboratory facilities are not used for nuclear production missions.”61

Unlike the SEAB report, Complex 2030 would not have a Consolidated Nuclear Production

Complex but would have “full operations of a consolidated plutonium center at an existing

Category I/II SNM site in the early 2020s.”62 Further, “By 2022, LANL will not operate facilities

containing CAT I/II quantities of SNM. The location and operator of the consolidated plutonium

center will be determined following completion of appropriate National Environmental Policy

Act (NEPA) reviews.”63 NNSA would “Plan, construct, and startup a consolidated plutonium

center for long-term R&D, surveillance, and manufacturing operations. Plan the consolidated

U.S. Department of Energy. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task

Force. Recommendations for the Nuclear Weapons Complex of the Future, final report, July 13, 2005, p. vii,

http://www.doeal.gov/SWEIS/DOEDocuments/049%20SEAB%202005.pdf.

Ibid., p. 15.

Ibid., p. 14.

Ibid., p. 17.

U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. Office of Defense Programs. Complex 2030:

An Infrastructure Planning Scenario for a Nuclear Weapons Complex Able to Meet the Threats of the 21st Century.

DOE/NA-0013, October 2006, 21 p., http://fissilematerials.org/library/doe06e.pdf.

For an unclassified summary of the review, see U.S. Department of Defense. Nuclear Posture Review Report, 3 p.,

no date, http://www.defense.gov/news/jan2002/d20020109npr.pdf.

Department of Energy, Complex 2030, p. 3. Note that SNM quantities meeting the lower threshold of Category II are

different for safety and for security.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 7.

Ibid., p. 10.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

plutonium center for a baseline capacity of 125 units [i.e., pits] per year net to the stockpile by

2022.” NNSA would “Upgrade LANL plutonium facilities at Technical Area 55 to support an

interim production rate of 30 to 50 RRW war reserve pits per year net to the stockpile by 2012.”64

Regarding another building, NNSA would “Complete and operate the Chemistry and Metallurgy

Research Replacement (CMRR) as a CAT I/II facility up to 2022 (use as a CAT III/IV facility and

focal point and for material science thereafter) to support plutonium operations at LANL, closure

of existing LANL Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) facility, and the removal of CAT

I/II quantities of plutonium from LLNL [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory].”65

Importantly, the plan for Complex 21 shifted capacity from a range of 125 to 450 ppy examined

in the MPF EIS to a baseline of 125 ppy.

Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project

While nuclear weapons production was at issue, so was R&D on SNM, with a focus at LANL on

plutonium. The CMR building had significant problems due to aging and design. As described in

a Government Accountability Office report of 2013,

DOE’s and NNSA’s plans for replacing the CMR have changed over the past several

decades. In 1983, DOE first decided that the CMR was outdated and began making plans to

replace it. Over the next nearly 2 decades, several large replacement projects were proposed,

but none progressed beyond conceptual stages. … NNSA has taken a number of steps to

develop the CMRR nuclear facility or some facility to replace the CMR, but its plans have

continued to change over time.66

One such project was the Special Nuclear Materials Research and Development Laboratory

Replacement Project at LANL. It would have replaced CMR, and would have included a

laboratory and facilities for laboratory support, offices, utilities, and waste pretreatment.

According to a LANL document of 1990, funding was $10 million for FY1988 and $22 million

for FY1989. Anticipated milestones included completion of preliminary design in January 1990,

completion of an EIS in 1991, site work start in mid-1991, and construction completed in the fall

of 1994.67

This project did not happen. Instead, it eventually morphed into the Chemistry and Metallurgy

Research Replacement (CMRR) project. In 2002, NNSA reached Critical Decision 0, approve

mission need, for the project. In 2003, NNSA completed an environmental impact statement on

the project, and in 2004 NNSA issued a Record of Decision (ROD) on it.68 The preferred option

in the ROD included two buildings. The Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement

Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) was to be a laboratory building that would have provided support,

such as AC, for pit production. A separate building, RLUOB, would have provided offices,

utilities for both buildings, and laboratory space for R&D. Because the amount of plutonium

Ibid., p. 11.

Ibid., p. 12.

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise: Observations on NNSA’s

Options for Meeting Its Plutonium Research Needs, GAO-13-533, September 2013, p. 8.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, fact sheet: “Special Nuclear Materials Research and Development Laboratory

Replacement Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory, LANL-89-48, January 1990, p. 2.

Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, “Record of Decision: Final Environmental Impact

Statement for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building Replacement Project, Los Alamos National Laboratory,

Los Alamos, NM,” 69 Federal Register 6968-6969, February 12, 2004.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

RLUOB would have held under then-current regulations was so small, at most 6 grams of WGPu,

it was expected to do only a small amount of AC to support weapons production work. In 2005,

“NNSA authorized the preliminary design (Critical Decision 1 or CD-1) for the CMRR project.”69

In 2008, NNSA issued an ROD to keep plutonium manufacturing and R&D at Los Alamos and to

build CMRR-NF there to support these tasks.70 RLUOB was completed in FY2010, but CMRRNF was still in preliminary design at that time.

Congress initially approved the project, but concerns grew as the cost escalated and the schedule

slipped. Concurrently, the need to replace CMR became more urgent. Michael Anastasio, then

Director of LANL, testified that CMR “is at the end of its useful life,” that CMRR “is critical to

sustaining the nation’s nuclear deterrent” and to other missions, and that “to successfully deliver

this project, it will be important to have certainty in funding and consistency of requirements

throughout the project.”71 Also, as noted earlier, CMR was “decrepit” and not seismically robust.

In an effort to secure Senate approval of the New START Treaty, the Administration issued a

report in November 2010 stating that it “is committed to fully fund the construction of the

Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) and the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement

(CMRR)” and set out a 10-year funding profile for both facilities.72 The New START resolution

of ratification included provisions related to the nuclear weapons complex in general and to

CMRR and UPF in particular.73 The Administration requested the amount indicated in its

November 2010 report in the FY2012 budget. However, in the FY2013 request, the

Administration eliminated funding for CMRR-NF and “deferred” it “for at least five years” on

grounds that the CMRR facility, UPF, and a life extension project for the B61 bomb were

unaffordable concurrently and that there were alternative ways of accomplishing the tasks that

CMRR-NF was to perform.74 However, Section 3114 of the FY2013 National Defense

Authorization Act (P.L. 112-239) directed the Secretary of Energy to “construct at Los Alamos

National Laboratory, New Mexico, a building to replace the functions of the existing Chemistry

and Metallurgy Research Building at Los Alamos National Laboratory associated with

U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. “Chemistry and Metallurgy Research

Building Replacement Project,” May 2007 p. 3, http://www.doeal.gov/SWEIS/OtherDocuments/

427%20NNSA%202007%20CMR%20senate%20report.pdf

National Nuclear Security Administration, “Record of Decision for the Complex Transformation Supplemental

Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement—Operations Involving Plutonium, Uranium, and the Assembly and

Disassembly of Nuclear Weapons,” 73 Federal Register 77647, December 19, 2008.

“Prepared Statement of Dr. Michael R. Anastasio, Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM,” in

ibid., p. 405.

U.S. White House. November 2010 Update to the National Defense Authorization Act of FY2010 Section 1251

Report: New START Treaty Framework and Nuclear Force Structure Plans, pp. 5, 9, http://www.lasg.org/CMRR/

Sect1251_update_17Nov2010.pdf. The Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex (TN)

would replace Y-12’s 9212 complex, a uranium processing facility; its first buildings were built during World War II.

Note that 9212 is sometimes referred to as a building, and sometimes as a complex.

This resolution, “Treaty with Russia on Measures for Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms”

(Treaty Doc. 111–5), as agreed to by the Senate, is available at “Treaty with Russia on Measures for Further Reduction

and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms—continued,” Congressional Record, December 22, 2010, pp. S10982S10985, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2010-12-22/pdf/CREC-2010-12-22-pt1-PgS10982.pdf#page=1.

U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Chief Financial Officer, FY 2013 Congressional Budget Request, Volume 1,

National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE/CF-0071, February 2012, p. 185, http://www.mbe.doe.gov/budget/

13budget/Content/Volume1.pdf; and Statement of Donald Cook, Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, National

Nuclear Security Administration, in U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Strategic

Forces. Hearing to Receive Testimony on Strategic Forces Programs of the National Nuclear Security Administration

and the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management in Review of the Department of Energy Budget

Request for Fiscal Year 2013, March 14, 2012, pp. 29-30, http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/Transcripts/2012/

03%20March/12-12%20-%203-14-12.pdf.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Department of Energy Hazard Category 2 special nuclear material operations.” This provision

also barred any funds to be spent on a plutonium strategy for NNSA “that does not include

achieving full operational capability of the replacement project by December 31, 2026.”

However, Congress appropriated no funds for CMRR-NF for FY2013.

For FY2014, the Administration requested no funds for CMRR-NF, and Congress authorized and

appropriated no funds for it. However, Section 3117 of the FY2014 National Defense

Authorization Act (H.R. 3304, P.L. 113-66) included an exception to the plutonium strategy

provision just noted. It authorized NNSA to spend funds on a modular building strategy, that is,

“constructing a series of modular structures, each of which is fully useable, to complement the

function of the plutonium facility (PF–4) at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, in

accordance with all applicable safety and security standards of the Department of Energy.”

Option 12 describes the modular strategy.

Two Other Failed Attempts

As a further illustration of difficulties in building facilities to handle plutonium, this section

presents two facilities that were built, found to be unusable, and demolished.

Nuclear Materials Storage Facility (NMSF): This building was built at LANL. According to

the DOE FY1984 budget request, “This project provides for the construction of a repository for

long and intermediate storage of large quantities of source and special nuclear materials. It will be

designed to meet security, safety, and safeguards requirements for the storage and handling of

nuclear materials. The new 29,100-square-foot building will contain a vault area of approximately

13,000 square feet.”75 A 1997 report by the DOE Inspector General was scathing:

We found that the NMSF, which was originally completed in 1987, was so poorly designed

and constructed that it was never usable and that DOE officials were proposing to renovate

the entire facility. Departmental and contractor officials discovered numerous design,

construction and operational deficiencies after the facility was occupied in February 1987.

These deficiencies included: (1) the inability to control and balance the heating, ventilation

and air conditioning (HVAC) system to maintain acceptable negative pressures within the

facility; (2) the inability to dissipate the heat generated by radioactive decay of the materials

to be stored; (3) the inability to limit personnel radiation exposures to “as low as reasonably

achievable;” (4) a peeling of the “Placite” decontamination epoxy coating throughout the

facility; and (5) the inability to open and secure the Safe Secure Trailer (SST) doors due to

the inadequate width of the garage once the SSTs were parked in the garage.76

Because of these and other deficiencies, “This structure was never used for storage of nuclear

materials, and a decision was made in 2006 to demolish the structure.”77 Demolition was

completed by the end of FY2008.78

U.S. Department of Energy. Assistant Secretary for Management and Administration. Office of the Controller.

Congressional Budget Request, FY 1984, Volume 1: Atomic Energy Defense Activities, DOE/MA-0064/1, January

1983, p. 61

U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Inspector General. Report on Inspection of Alleged Design and Construction

Deficiencies in the Nuclear Materials Storage Facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, report. INS-O-97-01,

January 16, 1997, p. 3, http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/ins-9701.pdf. SSTs are DOE trucks specially outfitted to

transport nuclear weapons and related components and materials.

U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. Los Alamos Site Office. Final Site-Wide

Environmental Impact Statement for Continued Operation of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New

Mexico, Volume 3, Comment Response Document, Book 1, DOE/EIS-0380, May 2008, page 1-8, http://www.doe.gov/

(continued...)

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Building 371: A press report tells the story of a plutonium project at Rocky Flats:

One striking example of a construction project that turned out to be a failure was a $225

million plutonium processing building at the Rocky Flats Plant near Golden, Colo. The

processing plant, Building 371, was started in 1973, completed in 1981 and operated for a

month in 1982 before being shut because the new processing technology did not work. The

Energy Department has estimated that it will cost nearly $400 million and take eight years to

make the equipment in the building work.

“The fact of the matter is that Building 371 is a fiasco,” said Joseph F. Salgado, the Deputy

Secretary of Energy. “It’s a horror story. It’s unacceptable.”

Building 371 was intended to replace another, much older processing plant, Building 771. …

The Energy Department shut Building 771 on Oct. 8 after three employees were exposed to

plutonium dust, which can be extremely dangerous if it is inhaled. The closing of Building

771 was, [sic] the nation’s sole source of reprocessed plutonium, which is used in triggers for

thermonuclear bombs. The closing has brought most of the plant’s operations at the Rocky

Flats Plant to a halt.79

The building was never put into operation. Instead, the buildings at Rocky Flats Plant, including

Building 371, were torn down and the site was decontaminated.80

Options for Congress

Analysis of Alternatives

For many years, Congress has been concerned with cost growth and schedule delays in nuclear

weapons complex programs for facilities and weapons. One way to help resolve this problem may

be to have a thorough airing of alternatives before decisions are made. Most recently, in its work

on the FY2014 budget, Congress pressed NNSA to analyze alternatives:

•

The Senate Armed Services Committee noted that “NNSA spent about 10 years and more

than $350 million on the design of the CMRR Nuclear Facility” before it was deferred

and a larger amount on another project that was canceled. The committee stated that

“these decisions raise serious questions about how well NNSA scrutinizes the analyses of

alternatives prior to submitting them for review and approval.” Accordingly, it directed

GAO to study, among other things, NNSA’s process for analyzing alternatives.81

(...continued)

sites/prod/files/EIS-0380-FEIS-03-1-2008.pdf.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fiscal Year 2008 Institutional Commitments—Final Report, c. late 2008, p. 4.

Keith Schneider, “U.S. Spent Billions on Atom Projects That Have Failed,” New York Times, December 12, 1988,

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/12/us/us-spent-billions-on-atom-projects-that-have-failed.html?pagewanted=all&

src=pm.

U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Legacy Management. Rocky Flats Site. Colorado, “Fact Sheet,” p. 1, available

via http://www.lm.doe.gov/land/sites/co/rocky_flats/rocky.htm.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014.

Report to accompany S. 1197. S.Rept. 113-44, 113th Congress, 1st Session, June 20, 2013, p. 259.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

•

The House Armed Services Committee, in its report on H.R. 1960, the FY2014 defense

authorization bill, stated that Section 3113 would “require the Secretary of Energy, acting

through the [NNSA] Administrator, to request an independent review of each guidance

issued for the analysis of alternatives for each nuclear weapon system undergoing life

extension and each new nuclear facility of the nuclear security enterprise as well as the

results of such analysis of alternatives. The Secretary of Energy, acting through the

Administrator, would be required to submit the results of any such analysis to the Nuclear

Weapons Council and the congressional defense committees.” Section 3113 also “would

express the sense of Congress that Congress encourages the Administrator and the

Nuclear Weapons Council to follow the results of the analysis of alternatives of a life

extension program or a defense nuclear facility construction project when selecting a

final option.”82 This provision was included in H.R. 1960 as passed by the House. Section

3112 of the FY2014 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 3304, P.L. 113-66)

contained related language.

•

Section 311 of H.R. 2609, the FY2014 energy and water development appropriations bill

as passed by the House, directs the Secretary of Energy to submit “a report which

provides an analysis of alternatives for each major warhead refurbishment program that

reaches [a certain stage].”

•

The Senate Appropriations Committee expressed its concern “about NNSA’s ability to

assess alternatives, which may significantly reduce cost, at the preliminary planning

stages of a project.” It referred to the deferral of CMRR-NF and the cancellation of

another project, each incurring planning costs of hundreds of millions of dollars, and

noted, “The Committee believes this wasteful spending could have been avoided had

NNSA better assessed alternatives.” Accordingly, it directed NNSA to submit a plan on

how NNSA “will strengthen its ability to assess alternatives.”83

•

Section 312 of the FY2014 Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 3547, P.L. 113-76)

requires the Secretary of Energy to submit to Congress an analysis of alternatives for the

B61-12 LEP and certain other major warhead refurbishment programs.

The Role of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) Process in an

Analysis of Alternatives

Over the past several decades, many projects, including some in the nuclear weapons complex,

have been delayed or stopped by lawsuits brought by nongovernmental organizations under the

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, P.L. 91-140, as amended. These lawsuits

typically involve procedural issues of compliance with NEPA in preparing an environmental

impact statement (EIS). For example, plaintiffs might charge that an agency filed an inadequate

EIS or did not consider all reasonable alternatives adequately.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu stressed the importance for DOE of complying with NEPA:

U.S. Congress, House. Committee on Armed Services, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014,

Report on H.R. 1960 together with additional and dissenting views, 113th Cong., 1st sess., June 7, 2031, H.Rept. 113102 (Washington: GPO, 2013), p. 351.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2014.

Report to accompany S. 1245. S.Rept. 113-47, 113th Congress, 1st Session, June 27, 2013, p. 100.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a pre-requisite to

successful implementation of DOE programs and projects. Moreover, the NEPA process is a

valuable planning tool and provides an opportunity to improve the quality of DOE’s

decisions and build public trust. Hence, timely attention to NEPA compliance is critical to

accomplishing our missions. …

I cannot overstate the importance of integrating the NEPA compliance process with program

and project management and of applying best management practices to NEPA compliance in

DOE,” and pointed to the DOE NEPA Order as a “[tool] available to help improve the

efficiency of its NEPA compliance efforts.84

Several options discussed below involve increasing the amount of plutonium in RLUOB beyond

that permitted for a Radiological Facility so it could perform the AC needed to support production

of 80 ppy. Section 102 of NEPA would seem to require an EIS for those options because the

increase could raise the risk to the “human environment” in a major accident. Section 102 directs

all federal agencies to

Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, a detailed

statement by the responsible official on—

(i) the environmental impact of the proposed action,

(ii) any adverse environmental effects which cannot be avoided should the proposal be

implemented,

(iii) alternatives to the proposed action,

(iv) the relationship between local short-term uses of man’s environment and the

maintenance and enhancement of long-term productivity, and

(v) any irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources which would be

involved in the proposed action should it be implemented.

In 2008, NNSA prepared a broad (“site-wide”) EIS for LANL that included the plutonium

program there. Given the state of flux of the plutonium program, NNSA has not prepared an EIS

on it since then, though in 2011 it prepared a Supplemental EIS narrowly focused on the CMRRNF component of the CMRR project.

However, Greg Mello, Executive Director of Los Alamos Study Group, a nongovernmental

organization, argues that “an EIS must precede NNSA’s choice between post-CMRR-NF

plutonium sustainment alternatives.” He prepared the following analysis in August 2013 for this

report. Since the study group has filed four NEPA lawsuits against Los Alamos construction

projects over the past two decades, this analysis merits particular attention.85

“Memorandum for Heads of Departmental Elements,” from Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, subject: “Improved

Decision Making through the Integration of Program and Project Management with National Environmental Policy Act

Compliance,” June 12, 2012, http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/S1MemoIntegratingNEPA_with_Program_and_ProjectManagement_2012.pdf. The DOE Order referenced, DOE O

451.1B, “National Environmental Policy Act Compliance Program,” Change 3, January 19, 2012, is available at

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/DOEO4511B_011912.pdf.

For information on its most recent litigation, see Los Alamos Study Group, “CMRR Nuclear Facility: Litigation

under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA),” updated August 5, 2013, http://www.lasg.org/CMRR/

(continued...)

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

The main elements of the NEPA landscape are (1) a statute that elevates environmental

values to a major purpose of governance, establishes a procedural approach to integrating

those values in decisions, and creates a Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to oversee

this process; (2) CEQ regulations that are binding on agencies; (3) agency regulations,

harmonious with CEQ’s but tailored to each agency; (4) CEQ guidance that lacks the force

of law but is frequently cited by courts; and (5) a body of case law, based on thousands of

cases, that creates a sort of NEPA “common law”—some universally binding, some binding

in some federal districts, and some influential for such reasons as lucidity. Early NEPA case

law established some basic parameters of implementation, such as that citizens could sue

agencies to enforce NEPA compliance. Over time, a body of NEPA law has developed that

is relatively settled for most basic legal issues but contested in other areas, especially where

decisions depend on particular facts.

DOE requires an EIS and a Record of Decision (ROD) as early steps for all major projects

that may have significant impacts. In the case of CMRR-NF, a careful EIS that really

compared alternatives realistically would have noticed the earthquake-amplifying stratum of

volcanic ash beneath the site and incorporated the latest seismic information, problems that

later bedeviled the project. The underlying weaknesses in purpose and need could have been

vetted as well, and hundreds of millions of dollars in design costs and many years of delay in

acquiring safer plutonium capabilities could have been avoided. Sound EISs and formal

RODs would strengthen DOE’s project management.

I believe that an EIS must precede NNSA’s choice between post-CMRR-NF plutonium

sustainment alternatives. An EIS requires objective environmental analysis of all reasonable

alternatives prior to actions that irreversibly commit federal resources or bias the agency

toward an alternative, with an initial business-case analysis used to establish which

alternatives are reasonable. Because NNSA has proposed alternatives to CMRR-NF that are

major federal actions that could have significant effects on the human environment, and

since NNSA has no EIS that analyzes the impact of these alternatives, NNSA must initiate an

EIS to do so. Some proposed CMRR-NF alternatives encompass multiple states and sites and

may cost billions of dollars. All alternatives will have significant environmental impacts over

much of this century.

The relative environmental benignity of upgrading RLUOB to an HC-3 facility might tilt the

scales toward that choice but is not a reason not to do an EIS. Upgrading RLUOB may not

be the whole of the post-CMRR-NF redirection in plutonium programs. Other nuclear

weapons complex sites are under consideration for involvement, including [Lawrence

Livermore National Laboratory, Nevada National Security Site, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant],

and perhaps [Savannah River Site]. LANL is also considering building “modular” plutonium

facilities and is actively briefing this option to Congress. An EIS is definitely required for

choices of this magnitude. None of these alternatives, let alone “all reasonable alternatives”

as the law requires, have been weighed and their impacts compared in any EIS. Furthermore,

NEPA’s regulations and case law are clear that an agency cannot analyze one project’s

alternatives and build something quite different, or take one action today and significantly

add to that action later, or do so contemporaneously with separate but connected projects.

Congress has been anxious to see a formal plan for plutonium sustainment; the formality of

NEPA process would help provide that plan while also serving as a barrier to “scope creep”

and associated cost escalation.

It cannot be overemphasized that NEPA’s analysis of alternatives serves public purposes

beyond environmental ones. As John Immele, former director of LANL’s nuclear weapons

program, wrote in late 1999 regarding the NEPA process, “A ... lesson from the weapons

(...continued)

Litigation/CMRR-NF_litigation.html.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

program of the early and mid 1990s as well as the fissile materials disposition program is the

necessity for and (surprising) success of publicly vetting our strategies through

environmental impact statements.”

A thorough EIS analysis of plutonium program alternatives would be a way of complying with

NEPA, would be responsive to congressional desires to have NNSA analyze alternatives, would

reduce the likelihood that lawsuits filed to challenge the alternative chosen would succeed, and

would thus reduce the likelihood that such lawsuits would be filed.

Potential Options

Many options are possible. Ideally, all would meet multiple, and sometimes conflicting, goals,

such as:

•

Support production of 80 ppy.

•

Support all other necessary plutonium work, however “necessary” is defined.

Examples might include ARIES, producing plutonium-238 sources, conducting

plutonium R&D, and processing liquid waste containing plutonium in order to

reduce its volume for shipment to WIPP.

•

Reduce safety and security risks (building collapse in an earthquake or other

disaster, dose to workers and the public resulting from an accident, terrorist

attack leading to detonation of a nuclear device, etc.) to an acceptably low level.

•

Maximize cost-effectiveness and ensure affordability.

•

Complete the project on a schedule that supports needed work.

•

Halt program operations in CMR in approximately 2019.86

•

Provide a planning margin for the facility to meet, in the future, new or expanded

missions or more stringent regulatory requirements.

•

Maximize useful life of the facility or facilities.

•

Comply with all existing regulations.

Clearly, the more requirements that are levied on a project, the harder it is to comply with them

all. In this case, none of the options presented here could meet all these goals simultaneously, and

in some cases there is little or no data to evaluate how well an option would meet its goals. Thus

Congress is faced with a choice among imperfect options.

The following list includes a broad spectrum of options. The list is presented as a progression,

with a logical connection from one option to the next. Each connection is shown in italics.

As a start, consider options using existing buildings at Los Alamos, home to the only U.S. pit

manufacturing capability. Since RLUOB is permitted to hold only a few grams of plutonium and

CMR is at considerable seismic risk and due to be closed out, why not …

U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Chief Financial Officer. FY 2014 Congressional Budget Request, DOE/CF0084, April 2013, Volume 1, National Nuclear Security Administration, p. WA-168.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Option 1. Focus PF-4 on Pit Production; Move Other Tasks Elsewhere as

Needed

PF-4 has enough lab space, about 60,000 sf, to produce about 10 ppy with RLUOB supporting

some low-MAR AC. LANL estimates that PF-4 could be used to manufacture 30 ppy without

having to move out any ongoing programs. Attaining this higher capacity would require several

actions including reconfiguring existing space and “invest[ing] in new equipment (acquire/install)

to increase capacity to 30 pits per year.”87 As a hedge against inadequate plutonium processing

capacity, NNSA’s Plutonium Metal Processing subprogram would process plutonium alloy from

pits returned from Pantex so as to create an inventory of metal for pits before it is needed; doing

so “helps ease constraints on Analytical Chemistry (AC) capacity and reduce out-year risk to

achieve capacity targets.”88 Both of these activities serve to increase pit-manufacturing capacity

without requiring additional laboratory space.

Furthermore, NNSA’s plutonium strategy is considering ways to make better use of space in PF-4

and RLUOB to support the transition of AC and MC capabilities from CMR. Some space would

be made available for this transition by reclaiming or “repurposing” rooms in PF-4 that are no

longer in use (e.g., because the projects they housed have been completed), and some would

come from reconfiguration, that is, rearranging equipment to increase efficiency. The former

would add net space for AC/MC; the latter would not. AC equipment also would be added in

RLUOB. In total, these actions would affect 8,000 sf in PF-4.89 A Los Alamos study considered

using a facility at Livermore (see Option 7) and RLUOB for AC but did not consider having PF-4

perform all the AC work itself. In part this is because AC is space-intensive and PF-4 would not

have sufficient space for production of 30 ppy plus the AC needed to support that capacity.

AC would pose this problem because PF-4 is not configured for a large amount of AC. While

some AC operations that use gram quantities of plutonium can be performed in gloveboxes, most

AC operations use tiny samples, such as milligram or microgram quantities of plutonium

dissolved in acid and placed in very small containers. Manipulating them is much easier in openfront hoods using thin gloves; it would be much harder to manipulate these samples with the

multiple layers of gloves required for PF-4 glovebox work. However, hoods require a powerful

ventilation system to create negative pressure in the hoods (so no fumes or plutonium escape),

and multiple large HEPA filters. Gloveboxes require much less ventilation capacity since any air

that flows into them does so through small leaks. PF-4, which is mostly outfitted with

gloveboxes, does not have sufficient air handling capacity to support the hoods needed for 30

ppy.90 It would be difficult to replace gloveboxes with open-front hoods in PF-4 because the PF-4

ventilation system was not configured for the large airflow that hoods require.91 Upgrading PF-4

ventilation to support the large number of hoods needed to provide high AC capacity would at

best be extremely costly. Indeed, the ventilation system to support open-front hoods is so bulky,

as shown in Figure 6, that it might not be possible to retrofit it into PF-4 at any cost. By

U.S. Department of Energy. FY 2014 Congressional Budget Request, Volume 1, National Nuclear Security

Administration, p. WA-64.

Ibid., p. WA-68.

Figure provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, January 24, 2014.

Information provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, September 2013.

An open-front hood in normal operations draws 500 cubic feet per minute (cfm) of air, while a glovebox in an

accident condition (i.e., with a glove breach) draws about 33 cfm, and a glovebox in normal operations draws very little

air. Thus air handling equipment for a hood must have about 15 times the capacity of equipment for gloveboxes.

Information provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, email, October 16, 2013.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

extension, even if all of PF-4 were devoted to pit manufacture and supporting tasks, it appears

highly improbable that PF-4, by itself, could do all the work needed to produce 80 ppy. There

would also be the issue of where to house the tasks that would be moved out.

Given those problems, why not …

Option 2. Build CMRR-NF

Another option is to resume work on CMRR-NF. That building, after all, was not canceled—it

was merely “deferred” for “at least five years.” Los Alamos estimates that if construction were to

begin in FY2018, the building would be completed in 2029, with the five-year delay adding

another two years to construction time due to the need to assemble crews, let contracts, etc. Even

so, this completion date would be in time for CMRR-NF to contribute to reaching the goal of

producing 80 pits per year by 2030. CMRR-NF would provide HC-2 space for AC and MC in

support of weapons production. While it is not at all certain that the facility will be built, it could

be built if Congress chose to provide funding for it.

This option faces many difficulties. The conditions that led the Administration to defer CMRRNF in FY2013 remain in place, and in some cases have arguably become more salient since then.

•

In deferring CMRR-NF, the Administration argued that building UPF and CMRR-NF and

beginning the B61-12 LEP simultaneously would be unaffordable, and that available

options would enable the nuclear weapons complex to perform the tasks of CMRR-NF.

•

The cost of UPF has increased and its schedule has slipped, possibly necessitating a

scaled-back version of UPF.92 This adds weight to the Administration’s judgment about

the affordability of CMRR-NF, UPF, and the B61-12 LEP if done simultaneously.

•

Section 3114 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2013, P.L. 112-239,

required the Secretary of Energy to construct, at Los Alamos, “a building to replace the

functions of the existing Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building at Los Alamos

National Laboratory associated with Department of Energy Hazard Category 2 special

nuclear material operations.” However, NNSA requested no funds for CMRR-NF in

FY2013 or FY2014, and Congress appropriated no funds for it in those years.

•

As detailed in P.L. 113-66, FY2014 National Defense Authorization Act, Section 3117,

“Authorization of Modular Building Strategy as an Alternative to the Replacement

Project for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building, Los Alamos National

Laboratory, New Mexico,” Congress is willing to consider modules (see Option 12) as an

alternative to CMRR-NF. (Note that modules would perform high-MAR work while

CMRR-NF would have performed mainly AC, which involves much less MAR.)

•

A modified RLUOB that could “perform the functions of the existing Chemistry and

Metallurgy Research Building,” as discussed under Options 8-10, would meet most of the

functionality requirement of Section 3114 of P.L. 112-239, though not the requirement for

“A seismic shift on UPF? NNSA to develop alternative scenarios for getting out of 9212, replacing uranium

capabilities within ‘original cost range,’” Frank Munger’s Atomic City Underground (blog), January 15, 2014,

http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2014/01/15/shift-upf-nnsa-develop-alternative-scenarios-getting-9212-replacinguranium-capabilities-within-original-cost-range/#more-11019.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

a new building. (It would not provide vault space, as CMRR-NF would have, but it

appears that the PF-4 vault will suffice, as discussed in “Options 6-12 Overview:

Matching Plutonium Tasks to Buildings.”)

•

By the time construction could resume on CMRR-NF, other options, such as those the

Administration was considering, would presumably be well developed, reducing the

added value of CMRR-NF.

•

Congress expressed concern over the escalating cost and delays of CMRR-NF, going so

far as to impose cost and schedule caps on the project in Section 3114; would Congress

be confident that NNSA could bring CMRR-NF online on schedule and on budget?

But even building CMRR-NF would not address the fact that PF-4 would be over 50 years old

when CMRR-NF came online, leaving aging and seismic issues unresolved. It may be possible to

resolve them with another option …

Option 3. Build a New Building Combining PF-4 and CMRR-NF Functions at

LANL

A new building could combine the functions of PF-4 and CMRR-NF. The argument for this

option is that PF-4 will be 50 years old in 2028, about when CMRR-NF could be completed.

Combining the two buildings into one would presumably cost less than building two separate

buildings and would avoid the need to transfer material between buildings, increasing efficiency.

A new building would incorporate the most advanced techniques to minimize seismic risk.

This option encounters many difficulties. The building would be larger and more complex than

either of the two smaller buildings, and complexity in a major nuclear construction project could

be expected to drive up costs and stretch out the schedule. Whereas CMRR-NF design work is

nearly completed, the new building would have to be designed from scratch, adding time and

cost. Also at issue is the need for this facility. NNSA’s TA-55 Reinvestment Project (TRP) plans

to extend PF-4’s life to approximately 2039,93 so combining the two buildings would forgo a

decade of PF-4 useful life. TRP cannot be halted on the chance that the new building would be

built: given the immense difficulties that earlier large facilities have encountered, there is no

assurance that the new building would be built. Some key nuclear facilities, notably Building

9212 and CMR, have service lives of over 60 years.94 RLUOB, too, should have at least a 50-year

life, that is, to 2059, since it was built to much higher standards than CMR or Building 9212.

Upgrades could presumably extend its life. If RLUOB and PF-4 together can do the necessary

plutonium work for at least another quarter-century, it would seem premature to even start

planning a replacement facility now.

Despite advances in design and construction that reduce seismic risk, this building would still be

at some risk from an earthquake if sited at Los Alamos. A simple way to avoid this risk is to …

U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Chief Financial Officer, FY 2014 Congressional Budget Request, Volume 1,

National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE/CF-0084, April 2013, p. WA-211.

Building 9212 at Y-12 is a uranium processing facility; “9212” is sometimes referred to as a building, and sometimes

as a complex with its first buildings built during World War II.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Option 4. Build a Building Combining PF-4 and CMRR-NF Functions at

Another Site

Constructing this building at a nuclear weapons complex site other than LANL with low seismic

risk, such as Pantex, would solve seismic issues regarding LANL, although the Virginia

earthquake of 2011 raises doubts about the seismicity of any site. The difficulty lies in the

tradeoff. LANL has a large human and facility infrastructure for plutonium work; much of that

would have to be built from scratch at Pantex Plant (TX), the nuclear weapons complex site that

performs final assembly and initial disassembly of nuclear weapons, taking considerable time and

involving considerable expense. Savannah River Site has a plutonium waste infrastructure, but

not the equipment or personnel for weapons manufacture. Its seismicity is in the same range as

that of Los Alamos.95 Further, while the regulatory issues of dealing with plutonium buildings are

well known for LANL, they would have to be examined in detail at another site. Siting,

permitting, and preparing an EIS would be time-consuming. In addition, this option would not

resolve problems with design, construction, and cost of the building itself.

If building a new building at another site has problems, what about using another existing

building at LANL …

Option 5. Refurbish the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) Facility

CMR currently performs some AC for pit production in PF-4, as well as nuclear forensics. Given

that these are the only two facilities at Los Alamos contributing to pit production, and that it will

be many years before a new one could be built, CMR is being maintained at a minimal level in

order to keep it operational until approximately 2019, at which point NNSA plans to halt

plutonium work there. One option would go beyond currently planned maintenance and upgrades

so as to keep it in operation longer. Just as PF-4 is being upgraded on an ongoing basis to reduce

the risks of building collapse and fire, keeping it in operation until 2039, more substantial

upgrades to CMR might in theory keep it in service well beyond 2019. So doing would provide

AC and other capability until a new building could be built.

This option has many problems and uncertainties. As noted, a congressional commission called

CMR “genuinely decrepit” and a DNFSB study found it to be “structurally unsound.” Multiple

wings of the building have been stripped to bare walls and floors to reduce nuclear material and

prepare for decommissioning. A manager at Los Alamos indicated that CMR was built to the

standards of the 1950s and there is a “vast mismatch” between the safety requirements of then

and now. This individual pointed to problems with heating, electrical, and ventilation systems,

and stated that refurbishing the ductwork would be “cost-prohibitive.”96 A tour of the building in

September 2013 by the author revealed drains that had been concreted shut, gloveboxes with

plastic bags instead of drain connections, gloveboxes with little to no anchoring to the floor,

patches to pipes to keep them in operation, and water leaks in the ceiling. Laboratory staff stated

that utility panels behind walls were contaminated with radioactive material and that corrosion in

some piping had greatly reduced the inside diameter. Since NNSA plans to halt CMR operations

in approximately 2019, there have been no studies of how to extend its service life well beyond

that time, or what it would cost to do so.97 However, the fatal flaw in this option is that CMR

Mehmet Celebi and Robert Page, “Monitoring Earthquake Shaking in Federal Buildings,” U.S. Geological Survey

Fact Sheet 2005-3052, http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3052/.

Telephone interview, April 21, 2010.

Information provided to the author while on a site visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory, September 11-12, 2013.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

lacks seismic robustness. Given these problems, it appears that retrofitting CMR to provide

adequate utility and seismic robustness may not be possible at any reasonable cost.

Despite these problems, if no other facility is ready to do the work of CMR by 2019, there would

appear to be no other option than keeping CMR operational beyond that date, which would entail

additional costs, inefficiencies, and the risk of keeping workers in a seismically fragile structure.

Given problems with some obvious options, are other options available? A logical construct

matching tasks to buildings may help …

Options 6-12 Overview: Matching Plutonium Tasks to Buildings

Table 2. Matching Plutonium Tasks to Buildings

Hazard Category (HC)

Security Category (SC)

High (SC-I/II)

High (HC-2)

Task: Pit destruction (ARIES) and

casting

Low (HC-3)

null set (no plutonium tasks require

this combination of attributes)

Building: PF-4 or a module (new)

Low (SC-III/IV)

Task: Plutonium-238 work

Task: AC, some MC

Buildings: HB Line, H Canyon, PTPF

(new) at SRS; Building CPP-1634

(expanded) at INL; module at LANL

(new)

Buildings: RLUOB with 1 kg WGPu,

Building 332 at LLNL, F/H

Laboratory or Building 773-A at SRS

Source: CRS.

Notes: AC, analytical chemistry; MC, materials characterization; RLUOB, Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office

Building; WGPu, weapons-grade plutonium; LLNL, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, INL, Idaho

National Laboratory; SRS, Savannah River Site; PTPF, Plutonium Testing and Processing Facility; CPP, Chemical

Processing Plant (a historical name for the site in which the building is located).

As Table 2 shows, plutonium work may be divided into tasks requiring low or high security, and

tasks involving lower- or higher-hazard quantities of MAR. This overview discusses each cell.

High SC/High HC: Most work on pits, whether fabricating them using foundries, performing

such supporting tasks as sample prep and some MC, or destroying them using ARIES, involves

large amounts of WGPu in a form that could be immediately usable by terrorists. As such, this

work requires high security and high MAR. PF-4 is HC-2/SC-I, and has the necessary equipment

and supporting infrastructure for pit work. PF-4 is the only building in the nuclear weapons

complex with this combination of attributes. Therefore, the most efficient use of PF-4 is for tasks

requiring high MAR and high security. As a corollary, pit production capacity and efficiency can

be increased by moving tasks that do not require high MAR and high security out of PF-4.

Low SC/High HC: Producing 80 ppy would require casting more hemishells, increasing MAR

substantially. While LANL has not done a detailed analysis, this added MAR could raise PF-4

above the limit allowed by the Documented Safety Analysis unless countervailing steps are taken.

One approach, discussed in Option 12, would be to build a new module at LANL to hold the pit

foundry. A second approach, discussed in Options 6 and 12, is to move Pu-238 work out of PF-4

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

to a module at LANL or to another site. Pu-238 is an ideal “candidate” to be moved out of PF-4.

It is 275 times as radioactive as Pu-239, and even though it is a small fraction of plutonium by

weight in PF-4, it accounts for 40% of its MAR allowance.98 It is in a low security category

because it would be unattractive to terrorists. Moving Pu-238 out of PF-4 would also free up

8,000 sf of floor space, which could be made available for pit work.

Low SC/Low HC: Casting hemishells for 80 ppy would also require increasing floor space

dedicated to that task. AC is floor-space intensive. At the same time, it involves low MAR;

indeed, the MAR is so low, and the form of the material (typically tiny samples of plutonium

dissolved in acid) of so little value for use in a nuclear weapon if captured by terrorists, that much

less security is required than PF-4 provides. The same holds for MC using samples of several

grams of metallic plutonium. Accordingly, AC and some MC can be performed in SC-III/IV

buildings. Thus, floor space could be made available in PF-4 by performing AC and some MC

elsewhere. Manufacturing 10 ppy in PF-4 would have required 2,400 sf of floor space for AC in

PF-4, plus about 7,000 sf for AC in RLUOB. The amount in PF-4, 2,400 sf, is a small fraction of

that building’s space, but since AC for 80 ppy would require considerably more floor space and

ventilation capacity, the key value of conducting AC elsewhere would be in keeping additional

AC from moving into PF-4. Options for moving AC out of PF-4 are discussed in Options 7-11.

Moving the PF-4 gas gun (see Figure 12) out of that building and into a building for AC would

release 1,200 sf of floor space, and a small amount of MAR, from PF-4.

In sum, moving (and keeping) AC and some MC out of PF-4 would free up space but little MAR,

while moving Pu-238 out of PF-4 would free up substantial space and MAR. In combination,

these measures would free up much space and MAR in PF-4, making it more likely that it could

produce 80 ppy and conduct other plutonium work.

High SC/Low HC: This is a null set; no plutonium tasks require high security for low MAR.

A note on vault storage space: A vault for storing plutonium is an integral part of pit production.

It acts as a buffer to hold plutonium because one production task may not dovetail precisely with

another. For example, pit production requires a place to hold plutonium metal that has been

qualified for use in pits until it is needed, to hold hemishells until they can be joined into

completed pits, and to hold completed pits until they are shipped to Pantex for incorporation into

weapons. A vault is also needed to store pits from weapons that have been returned from

deployment sites for surveillance. PF-4 is the only building at Los Alamos with a vault qualified

to hold the large quantity of plutonium that such tasks require.

When CMRR-NF was being designed in the early 2000s, SNM vault space at PF-4 and other sites

was mostly filled and the final disposition of material from other sites was unknown.

Accordingly, NNSA decided to add vault space to CMRR-NF. RLUOB could not have a vault

because it was designed as a Radiological Facility. At issue is whether there is enough vault space

in PF-4 to support production of 80 ppy.

Over many years, the PF-4 vault has accumulated much material that is no longer needed for

programmatic operations. Some, in excess to current or foreseeable needs, can be deacquisitioned and shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for permanent disposal, to Savannah

River Site for other disposition, or to Y-12 for uranium items. Plutonium that might be needed for

future operations could be stored elsewhere, such as Pantex Plant, which stores thousands of pits,

Information provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, October 23, 2013.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

or the Device Assembly Facility at the Nevada National Security Site, an HC-2/SC-I facility that

has space available for storage of plutonium, or the K Reactor at Savannah River Site, which is

currently used to store plutonium. Thus there are many ways to reduce the amount of material

stored in the PF-4 vault, and NNSA accelerated vault cleanout as a mitigation effort associated

with the deferral of CMRR-NF. Cleaning out the vault at PF-4 will make more room available for

plutonium needed for production. LANL has not studied whether cleanout would provide enough

space to support production of 80 ppy, but it appears likely that an effort focused on this goal and

coordinated with other sites could do so. Since additional PF-4 vault space could readily be made

available and it is not known how much would be needed to support production of 80 ppy, this

report does not discuss increasing available vault space as a separate option.

As a first step in moving through the options presented in Table 2, perhaps NNSA could …

Option 6: Conduct Plutonium-238 Work at INL or SRS

Pu-238 accounts for 40% of the MAR allowance at PF-4. Increasing pit production to 80 pits per

year (ppy) would increase MAR, and the increased pit foundry work, combined with Pu-238

work and other work, could exceed the MAR limit permitted for PF-4. One option would be to

move Pu-238 work out of PF-4, whether to a module connected to PF-4 or to another site. While

LANL is DOE’s center of excellence for plutonium, Pu-238 work is readily separable from Pu239 work because the two isotopes have very different properties and applications. Pu-239 is used

in weapons and might be used as mixed oxide fuel (a mixture of oxides of Pu-239 and uranium

isotopes) for nuclear power reactors, while kilogram quantities of Pu-238 are used to generate

heat for conversion to electric power for defense and space missions.99

In a report of May 2013, DOE examined several options for processing Pu-238 for fabrication of

radioisotope power systems.100 One was to upgrade the existing line in PF-4; however, this would

not address the possibility of reducing Pu-238 MAR in order to release MAR for weapons work.

The report also considered performing Pu-238 work at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) or

Savannah River Site (SRS). It did not address the LANL proposal to build modules connected to

PF-4, one of which might perform Pu-238 work.101

INL currently conducts operations with clad heat sources of Pu-238. It operates the Space and

Security Power Systems Facility, which further encapsulates the Pu-238 heat sources produced by

LANL, mates them to the power systems that convert their heat to electric power, tests the

resulting system, and delivers them to users.

For example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Cassini mission, which used more Pu-238

than any other NASA mission, used a total of 23.8 kg of Pu-238 in three radioisotopic thermoelectric generators. Email

from NASA, November 12, 2013.

100

U.S. Department of Energy. Space and Defense Power Systems. Radioisotope Heat Source Infrastructure Review

Team. “Evaluation of Radioisotope Fuel Processing and Heat Source Fabrication Infrastructure Capabilities, Final

Report,” May 2013.

101

INL and SRS staff provided information on the possible use of their facilities for this option, personal

communications, October 24 and 31, 2013.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

INL states that all current LANL Pu-238

operations could be transferred to INL, such

as recovery, purification, and source

At Idaho National Laboratory

fabrication, and that INL would have a

capacity of processing 5 kg per year. The

option to bring Pu-238 source fabrication to

INL would use an existing building, CPP1634, that was built in 1993 as an HC-2

building and was since downgraded.102 It

would have to be upgraded back to HC-2 in

order to handle 5 kg of Pu-238 per year.103

INL would also build an addition to CPP1634 that would more than double its size.

The upgrade would require modifying the

safety analysis report and upgrading the

building’s safety systems (such as ventilation)

and equipment (such as gloveboxes) to be

consistent with the hazards and operations

Source: Idaho National Laboratory.

proposed.104 Pu-238 in quantities of up to 16

kg is SC-III because it is unattractive for use in making a nuclear weapon. CPP-1634 would have

more security than is needed to meet SC-III requirements because it would be within the INL

security perimeter.

Figure 7. Building CPP-1634

The DOE report noted several advantages of establishing this capability at INL, including a new

design that minimizes down time and maintenance cost, and process improvements that minimize

operational costs and worker exposure and improve product quality. Also, locating the program in

a facility owned by DOE’s Nuclear Energy program, which is responsible for plutonium-238,

would allow “more control and lower operational costs as compared to operating within TA-55

that seems to have large overhead costs resulting in high operational costs.” Drawbacks include

“inexperience with Pu-238 processing operations,” “loss of co-location and leveraging with

related NNSA program,” risk due to uncertainty in safety requirements because “no new Pu-238

processing facility has been constructed in many years,” and “risk of moving Pu-238 operations

away from DOE’s plutonium operations center of excellence,” that is, LANL.105

There is also an SRS option. From the mid-1960s to early 1980s, SRS produced Pu-238 in its

reactors by bombarding neptunium-237 target tubes with neutrons. It then dissolved the target

tubes, separated and purified Pu-238 in H Canyon, turned the Pu-238 into plutonium oxide in

HB-Line, pressed that material into heat sources, and clad them in iridium in the 235-F facility. In

1983, the last neptunium-237 targets were irradiated and in 1985-1986, Pu-238 operations were

102

“CPP” stands for Chemical Processing Plant, a historical name for the site.

103

Pu-238 is 275 times more radioactive than Pu-239, so 5 kg of the former has the same level of radioactivity as 1,375

kg of the latter.

104

Because Pu-238 is an intense emitter of neutrons and gamma rays, people working with it require shielding, so the

work could not be done in open-front hoods or standard gloveboxes.

105

Department of Energy, “Evaluation of Radioisotope Fuel Processing and Heat Source Fabrication Infrastructure

Capabilities, Final Report,” pp. 4-2, 4-3.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

moved to LANL. Subsequently, the last SRS reactor was shut down in 1993. Work is underway to

develop the capability to produce Pu-238 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (TN).106

SRS has two buildings that could be used for Pu-238. Its H Canyon is a large, highly shielded

concrete structure, approximately 1,000 feet long by 120 feet wide by 75 feet high, that began

operations in 1955. It was built to process irradiated targets and fuel rods from SRS reactors for

various nuclear materials. These targets and fuel rods had very high levels of radioactivity, so

they required processing in a facility that was heavily shielded and remotely operated. As such, it

is off limits to personnel, and all material is processed by moving it through pipes or handling it

with a remotely operated crane. It is the only remaining U.S. facility that is heavily shielded and

remotely operated and that can chemically process large quantities of radioactive material, such

as spent fuel rods. It is currently operational, processing irradiated fuel stored in an underwater

pool at SRS. SRS also has the HB-Line, which is built atop H Canyon to provide a work space

with heavily shielded gloveboxes for work on Pu-238. It became operational in the late 1980s. It

is currently operating, but its Pu-238 lines would have to be restarted, which could take three or

four years. A third building at SRS that was used in the Pu-238 program, Building 235-F,

contained a process line that fabricated heat sources from Pu-238 oxide. However, the facility has

not been operated since 1984 and is not part of the current proposal due to high levels of

contamination.

In the SRS plan, Pu-238 could arrive at the plant as irradiated target tubes of neptunium-237 from

a DOE reactor, as unpurified Pu-238 oxide from Russia, or as scrap Pu-238 oxide.107 These

oxides would be dissolved in nitric acid in the HB-Line. This solution would be transferred

through pipes to H Canyon, where it would be purified by removing other chemical elements.

The purified Pu-238 solution would be transferred back to HB-Line, where plutonium would be

precipitated out of solution and then turned into plutonium oxide, a solid. In an option in the SRS

plan, a new Plutonium Testing and Processing Facility (PTPF), consisting of prefabricated hot

cells (capable of handling highly radioactive material) and gloveboxes, would be installed in H

Canyon. This facility would press plutonium oxide into pellets, which would be fabricated into

heat sources, clad in iridium, and sent to INL, where they would be mated with power generating

equipment and then delivered to end users.

The DOE report noted several advantages and disadvantages of this option. H Canyon and

HB-Line can process a wide quantity range of Pu-238, from 1 to over 30 kg per year. These

facilities are built to high safety standards. Infrastructure requirements are well understood, such

as environment, safety, and health, material control and accountability, and waste management;

there is also an AC capability. On the other hand, the length of time that missions will support H

Canyon is not clear because “its mission length is defined by a campaign by campaign basis.”

Operations there are planned until 2018-2020, with operations beyond that time uncertain.

106

“ORNL’s plutonium-for-space project on pace,” Frank Munger’s Atomic City Underground (blog), December 26,

2013, http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2013/12/26/ornls-plutonium-space-project-pace/.

107

The United States has reportedly purchased Pu-238 (in oxide form) from Russia since the 1990s. See Geoffrey

Brumfiel, “Curiosity’s Dirty Little Secret,” Slate, August 20, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/

science/2012/08/mars_rover_curiosity_its_plutonium_power_comes_courtesy_of_soviet_nukes_.single.html.

However, this material still requires the plutonium-238 operations carried out in the United States, such as removing

impurities, fabricating plutonium oxide into ceramic pellets, and encapsulating the fuel in cladding.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

Figure 8. H Canyon and HB-Line

At Savannah River Site

Further, required production “[does] not

necessitate a large throughput capacity. Thus,

revitalization of the facilities may not be

justified.” And without a long-term mission,

there is no clear advantage to building

PTPF.108 At issue: There is value to the

weapons program in removing Pu-238 from

PF-4. Would processing Pu-238 be a longterm mission that would justify, and that

might contribute funding to, PTPF?

The DOE report compared cost and schedule

estimates for these two options, as follows.109

Source: Savannah River Site.

•

For the INL option, $12

million for technology

development taking three years, and $110 million to $260 million for generalpurpose heat source fabrication capability, taking five years.

Notes: The photo shows HB-Line atop H Canyon.

•

For the SRS option, $28 million to $45 million for plutonium purification

revitalization, taking 3½ to 4½ years, and $125 million to $170 million for PTPF,

taking four to five years.

•

Combining these figures, the INL option would cost $122 million to $272 million

and take eight years, and the SRS option would cost $153 million to $215 million

and take 7½ to 9½ years.

It must be emphasized that these estimates are preliminary and are not based on extensive

analysis.

DNFSB commented that “H-Canyon is exhibiting degradation of systems and structures that if

not addressed, could challenge safe operations and pose a risk to facility workers. … DOE

completed repairs to address some of the identified deficiencies … There are some safety-related

repairs that have not yet been completed.”110

Having addressed Pu-238, this report now turns to options to address analytical chemistry …

Option 7: Conduct Some or All Analytical Chemistry at LLNL or SRS

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has a large building, Building 332, that is part

of its “Superblock” complex.111 Building 332 was built for plutonium work. One wing

(“Increment 1”) was built in 1961; another wing (“Increment 3”) was built in 1975. Increments 1

108

Department of Energy, “Evaluation of Radioisotope Fuel Processing and Heat Source Fabrication Infrastructure

Capabilities, Final Report,” May 2013, p. 4-4.

109

Ibid., p. 3-6.

110

U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. “Summary of Significant Safety-Related Aging Infrastructure Issues

at Operating Defense Nuclear Facilities.” Fourth Annual Report to Congress, Enclosure, p. E-8, http://www.dnfsb.gov/

sites/default/files/Board%20Activities/Reports/Reports%20to%20Congress/2013/ar_20131030_23051.pdf.

111

This section is based on discussions with Livermore and Los Alamos staff, October 2013. For information on

Superblock, see Joseph Sefcik, “Inside the Superblock,” Science & Technology Review (a Lawrence Livermore

National Laboratory publication), March 2001, https://www.llnl.gov/str/March01/Sefcik.html.

Congressional Research Service

U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress

and 3 are laboratory buildings; Increment 2 is the control room, without laboratory space.

Building 332 was a Hazard Category 2/Security Category I facility, like PF-4, so it was used to

handle hundreds of kilograms of plutonium. Its ventilation systems (including fans and HEPA

filters) and electrical systems have been updated in the past decade. Even though Livermore is in

a seismically active area, Building 332 was designed to take into account seismicity, and an

analysis showed that it does not require an upgrade to make it more seismically robust. Its

gloveboxes (new and retrofitted) are reinforced so as not to fall over in an earthquake.

Building 332 remains an HC-2 building, but its plutonium quantity is limited by its Security

Category. It was SC-I. To reduce vulnerability and security costs, NNSA consolidated SNM to

fewer facilities at fewer sites. As part of that plan, LLNL removed all SC-I/II quantities of SNM

from the lab, a task completed in September 2012.112 Building 332 is now SC-III, which limits it,

as a first approximation, to 400 g of plutonium metal and 16,000 g of plutonium in solution.113

Plutonium in solution poses much less risk—is less attractive to terrorists—than metallic

plutonium, which is why much more plutonium is allowed in solution than in metal form.

Building 332 has ample space for AC work. It has 24,000 total sf of laboratory space, as

compared to 19,500 sf for RLUOB and 22,500 sf in the CMRR-NF design. Some space is being

used to fabricate plutonium samples for experiments that subject plutonium to impact (such as

from a gas gun projectile) and for material processing studies. LLNL is currently using 5,000 sf

for AC and MC, and could make another 6,000 sf available. Building 332 has a substantial excess

of air handling capacity, which would support the use of open-front hoods. LLNL believes that

Building 332 has sufficient air handling capacity to support AC for 80 ppy.114

Once analyzed, samples would be processed as waste. For final disposition, waste is shipped to

WIPP. Since WIPP does not accept liquids, liquid waste is solidified by mixing it with cement.

LANL and LLNL differ in how they would handle waste. LANL has the capability to recover

plutonium from liquid samples and to process the waste stream, solidifying it for shipment to

WIPP. LANL uses AC to support these operations. LANL also uses AC to send liquid waste to

LANL’s Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility because that facility places requirements

(such as the amount of mercury) in the waste it accepts for treatment. LLNL does not have these

capabilities, and would not perform AC on material (liquids and solids) to be disposed of as

waste. However, the liquid waste generated by the AC for 80 ppy would be very much less than

the waste that LANL generates for various other missions, so LLNL holds that simply cementing

the liquid waste would be a satisfactory way to prepare its liquid waste for shipping.

112

U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. “NNSA Completes Removal of All High

Security Special Nuclear Material from LLNL,” press release, September 21, 2012, http://nnsa.energy.gov/mediaroom/

pressreleases/snmremoval092112.

113

More precisely, the upper bound for SC-III is as follows: the sum of the weight of plutonium metal plus 1/3 the

weight of such other materials as plutonium oxide must be less than 400 grams and the weight of plutonium in solution

(of up to 25 grams of plutonium per liter) must be less than 16,000 grams. See U.S. Department of Energy. Office of

Security and Safety Programs Assurance. Nuclear Material Control and Accountability. Manual DOE M 470.4-6,

Change 1, August 14, 2006, Section A, pages I-8 throug

This text is long and has been trimmed here. Open the source document for the complete record.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.