Atomic Histories & Nuclear Testing
LANL’s Central Mission: Los Alamos Lab officials have recently claimed that LANL has moved away from primarily nuclear weapons to “national security”, but what truly remains as the Labs central mission? Here’s the answer from one of its own documents:
LANL’s “Central Mission”- Presented at: RPI Nuclear Data 2011 Symposium for Criticality Safety and Reactor Applications (PDF) 4/27/11
NNSA Delays Urgent Research on Plutonium “Pit” Aging While Spending Tens of Billions on Nuclear Weapons Bomb Core Production
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, April 17, 2024
Tom Clements, SRS Watch – 803.240.7268 | Email
Scott Yundt, TVC – 415.990.2070 | Email
Jay Coghlan – 505.989.7342 | Email
Nearly three years after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch has finally received the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) congressionally-required “Research Program Plan for Plutonium and Pit Aging.” However, the document is 40% blacked out, including references and acronyms. Plutonium “pits” are the radioactive cores of all U.S. nuclear weapons. The NNSA claims that potential aging effects are justification for a ~$60 billion program to expand production. However, the Plan fails to show that aging is a current problem. To the contrary, it demonstrates that NNSA is delaying urgently needed updated plutonium pit aging research.
In 2006 independent scientific experts known as the JASONs concluded that plutonium pits last at least 85 years without specifying an end date [i] (the average pit age is now around 40 years). A 2012 follow-on study by the Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab concluded:
“This continuing work shows that no unexpected aging issues are appearing in plutonium that has been accelerated to an equivalent of ~ 150 years of age. The results of this work are consistent with, and further reinforce, the Department of Energy Record of Decision to pursue a limited pit manufacturing capability in existing and planned facilities at Los Alamos instead of constructing a new, very large pit manufacturing facility…” [ii]
Since then NNSA has reversed itself. In 2018 the agency decided to pursue the simultaneous production of at least 30 pits per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in northern New Mexico and at least 50 pits per year at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. Upgrades to plutonium facilities at LANL are slated to cost $8 billion over the next 5 years. The redundant Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility in South Carolina will cost up to $25 billion, making it the second most expensive building in human history.
NukeWatch Compilation of the DOE/NNSA FY 2020 Budget Request – VIEW
LANL FY 2020 Budget Request – VIEW
Sandia FY 2020 Budget Request – VIEW
Livermore Lab FY 2020 Budget Chart – Courtesy TriValley CAREs – VIEW
UPF Lawsuit Documents & Resources
Memo from David Jackson on Seismic Risks at UPF
"I have reviewed the relevant documents associated with NNSA’s analysis of seismic risks at the Y-12 National Security Complex, and I find the agency’s analysis to be badly lacking. In my expert opinion, NNSA’s review is not a scientifically based review of seismic risks." Memo from Robert Alvarez on Inadequacy of Existing DOE/NNSA UPF & Y-12 Site Analyses "In my expert opinion, the NNSA's current methodology for reviewing the environmental impacts of its modernization of the Y -12 National Security Complex falls far short of what is logically or legally required, in large part because the NNSA is failing to consider its actions as a unified whole." 2019 November 12, 2019
Ruling of Judge Pamela Reeves in legal challenge to UPF bomb plant
Response to Government Motion for Summary Judgement and Reply
|
2017
September 2017 September 28, 2017 September 28. 2017 September 28. 2017 |
[embeddoc url="https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/UPF-Fact-sheet-6.17.pdf" download="all" viewer="google"]
Declarations