WASHINGTON — National Nuclear Security Administration Chief of Staff William "Ike" White on Tuesday said refurbishing the "former" Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility for a plutonium pit production mission is a serious infrastructure undertaking with a pretty aggressive schedule to match.
"These are major nuclear facility recapitalization efforts," White said, in part, at the annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit outside of Washington D.C. The chief of staff later suggested ventures of this magnitude can cost billions of dollars and can take years to complete.
Repurposing the Savannah River Site-located MOX facility for pit production could cost between $1.4 billion and $5.4 billion, according to a NNSA analysis dated November 2017.
The money comes from the NNSA's plutonium sustainment program in the fiscal year 2019 budget.
A new-construction pit production facility at SRS – not what has been recommended – could cost between $1.8 billion and $6.7 billion, according to the same analysis.
Plutonium pits are nuclear weapon cores. Eighty every year are required by 2030, according to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which is now about a year old.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Defense and the NNSA jointly recommended producing 50 pits per year at a repurposed MOX and the remaining 30 per year at a refreshed Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
White on Tuesday said the recommendation and related effort is "ambitious" and represents a system jumpstart; it would establish a "modern, flexible" production capability at both locations, he continued.
That language echoes language used by both the NNSA and the DOD in a public rollout last year: The tandem approach "improves the resiliency, flexibility, and redundancy" of the nuclear security complex, a May 10, 2018 statement reads.
The next significant pit production milestone will come when the deputy secretary of energy, currently Dan Brouillette, signs off on a preferred approach.
White on Tuesday said that move, plus more, must be made briskly. A "sense of urgency" is felt across the nuclear security enterprise, he said. The 2030 deadline is 11 years away, after all.
NNSA Chief of Staff William "Ike" White says success boils down to three things: people, infrastructure, money @aikenstandard #nuclear
— Colin Demarest (@demarest_colin) February 12, 2019
The NNSA expects to use $95 million for conceptual pit production design at SRS, an agency senior spokesperson told the Aiken Standard last week. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the SRS management and operations contractor, is leading the effort and has since mobilized teams for that reason.
The NNSA on Oct. 10, 2018 terminated the incomplete MOX project. MOX – designed to turn weapons-grade plutonium into reactor fuel – was over-budget and more than a decade in the making.
The NNSA provided SRNS a separate $40 million to support the termination and transition of MOX, according to the same senior spokesperson.