BREAKING news: nnsa preparing to announce Pit Production at SRS to replace MOX

After the announcement by Senator Heinrich earlier today that NNSA will make the Pit Production announcement today - ECA has learned that NNSA will announce today that it will plan to produce pits at both LANL and SRS.  The former MOX facility would be reconfigured under the plan to produce up to 50 pits by 2030 and LANL will continue to be used to produce up to 30 pits (to meet DOD's 80 pit goal). The MOX Facility at SRS will be discontinued.   No budget estimate is available at this time for the project.

NNSA still must comply with Section 3141 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 which requires the Chairman of the Nuclear Weapons Council to certify to the congressional defense committees that the recommended alternative proposed by NNSA meets the requirements of the Secretary of Defense for plutonium pit production capacity as well as certain other requirements. If the Chairman has not done so by mid-May 2018, section 3141(d) requires NNSA to carry out the modular building strategy as defined in section 3114(c)(3) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 and supported by the CAPE business case analysis.

From the Senate Armed Services Question to a NNSA Nominee on Pit Production also released today:

The entire pit production capacity in the United States currently resides at Plutonium Facility 4 (PF-4) at Los Alamos National Laboratory.   Over the last 20 years, NNSA has started and stopped multiple projects intended to recapitalize this capacity, including the Modern Pit Facility and the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) project. After CMRR-NF was cancelled in 2014 following more than $400 million of design work, the Defense Department’s Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) conducted a business case analysis that pointed to modular buildings as a promising way forward for pit production. Yet the Plutonium Modular Approach Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) conducted by NNSA over the last two years did not give full consideration to modules as an alternative. The AoA also indicated that none of the options considered were likely to meet the 2030 milestone set by the Nuclear Weapons Council and Congress.