Los Alamos lab may face greater demand for plutonium pits
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(Tribune News Service) The plutonium pit factory at Savannah River Site in South Carolina will take years longer and cost billions of dollars more to ramp up than previously planned, which could push Los Alamos National Laboratory to make more nuclear bomb cores to fill the gap, watchdog groups say.
For the past three years, plans have called for the Los Alamos lab to produce 30 plutonium warhead triggers by 2026 and Savannah River to make 50 by 2030, but the latter is proving much more costly and nettlesome than anticipated.
Jill Hruby, the nominee to head the National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a U.S. Senate hearing last week that Savannah River might not fully operate until 2035.
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From left, Michael Messner, Bushrod Lake and Pam Gilchrist, all with Veterans For Peace, protest in April near a downtown building LANL plans to use for its expansion into Santa Fe. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)
Santa Fe’s relationship with Los Alamos National Laboratory has been rocky for years.
The City Council, with some regularity, has passed resolutions of concern about the nuclear weapons lab’s environmental impact and radioactive materials safety lapses, the production of weapons parts in Los Alamos and the proliferation of nuclear weapons in general.
A 2005 council resolution recognized as “immoral the notion that human security can ever be built upon instruments of mass destruction and the will to use them.” The City Council called for rejection of “all proposals to build new or expanded factories for nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons components.”