The cost of the plutonium bomb facility at the Savannah site will rise to $ 11 billion. DOE’s atomic bomb facility shakes fiscal year 22 funding

Although plutonium pits have a lifespan of over 100 years, proponents of new pits for new nuclear weapons have proposed the unnecessary $ 11 billion SRS plutonium bomb facility to build pits for old and new nuclear weapons, starting with pits for the W87-1 warhead for the new GBSD ICBM

Partially completed mixed oxide fuel (MFFF) manufacturing facility at DOE’s Savannah River site in South Carolina; Boosters want to convert the MOX plant to the SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP) – Photo by High Flyer

SRS Watch, Columbia, SC, is a not for profit that works on solid policies and projects from the US Department of Energy at SRS. We are against the new nuclear arms race, new nuclear weapons and new mines would spur and support the international disarmament negotiations.

The NNSA’s $ 475 million request for an unneeded nuclear warhead pit production facility is well below the annual level needed for a controversial project, Magic Problems

DOE’s plans to toss huge sums of money into the provocative plutonium bomb facility are consistent with the classic DOE formula for technical and financial failure. Congress should fund and terminate the project. “

– Tom Clements, director of SRS Watch

COLUMBIA, SC, U.S., May 29, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ – The U.S. Department of Energy’s motion to Congress for fiscal year 2022 contains some surprising surprises related to the creation of plutonium pits for nuclear warheads on the Savannah River of the DOE site in South Carolina. The biggest shock in the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget request is that the total estimated cost of the SRS mine has increased to $ 11.1 billion, more than double the previous cost estimate of $ 4.6 billion (in the budget request for fiscal year 21).

In a one week period, the cost estimate for the SRS plutonium bomb (PBP) facility has more than doubled, and the facility’s start-up schedule has dropped to five years. These worrying and potentially debilitating developments are creating issues important to the challenging mine production project, according to the Savannah River Site Watch public interest group.

The staggering $ 11.1 billion cost comes weeks before an important facility planning decision, called Critical Decision 1, is made. That decision point will include a cost range for the PBP, and the budget says the $ 11.1 billion value “is not the CD-1 approved high-end of the range.” (Pages 220 and 225) Therefore, an even higher value can be expected for mid-June. DOE claims better cost estimates will come with “CD-2/3 Fiscal Year 23-24 Approval”. (Page 211)

Given DOE’s extremely poor track record of managing complex and costly construction projects, as witnessed in the MOX debacle, it is expected that the cost of the pit facility will increase over time and the project timeline will continue to decrease. The high cost of building and operating the SRS pit facility will put extreme pressure on both the pit project and the new W87-1 nuclear warhead – on the new proposed ground-based strategic deterrent missile – which the first pits would be built for, according to SRS Watch .

While pressure on the unneeded GBSD mounts, the DOE and DOD have so far refused to reassess the alleged need for the expensive weapon system and the need for new plutonium pits on their warhead. Over 15,000 pits are stored at DOE’s Pantex Texas facility, and experts have stated that they “have a credible minimum lifespan of more than 100 years with respect to plutonium aging.” (JASON report “Pit Lifetime” to the NNSA, January 2007)

The DOE budget request comprises US $ 603 million for the “Savannah River Plutonium Modernization”, including US $ 475 million for the conversion of the partially built plutonium fuel plant (MOX) into the SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant, the DOE as the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility designated. (Page 171) The mine would receive $ 233 million more than it did in Fiscal Year 22. However, these funding levels are well below what the DOE deems necessary annually.

According to the budget proposal, $ 9.6 billion remains to reach the PBP’s $ 11.1 billion if $ 475 million is approved for fiscal 2022 spending on the SRS mine. (Page 220) This means that the construction project alone will cost around $ 800 to 900 million a year. “The staggering sums of money the DOE claims will be needed annually to build and support SRS mining facilities over the next decade shows the fragility of the project and that it could fail on cost grounds alone,” said Clements of SRS Watch . The budget request for Fiscal Year 22 falls far short of the annual expenditure required and DOE has failed to explain how much larger amounts of funding will be obtained. “Given the challenges of converting the MOX facility to pit production and the technical hurdles involved in making pits, a mission SRS never embarked on could also cause the project to fail,” added Clements.

The budget request confirms a delay in the SRS pit system compared to the stated goal of producing 50 pits per year by 2030. The filing states, “It is unlikely that“ by 2030 the required production rate of 50 war reserves per year will be achieved at the Savannah River site. ”(Page 211) During a testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee on May 26, 2021, Jill Hruby, the candidate for the NNSA administration, announced that the project had been postponed from 2030 to 2030-2035. (See the archived SASC hearing link, with Hruby comments after 55 minutes.) This delay will only increase cost pressures on the project, according to SRS Watch.

“Plans to dump huge sums of our money into an unjustified, hasty plutonium bombing facility, which is central to a new nuclear arms race, is a DOE formula for failure and, like the ill-managed MOX project, is guaranteed to be way above that Going out of budget and falling way behind schedule, ”said Tom Clements, director of SRS Watch. “Congress should reject the extravagant spending the DOE is proposing to produce plutonium mines and stop considering SRS for this dangerous and costly mission,” added Clements. “Production of 80 mines a year in Los Alamos and Savannah River should cease and efforts to increase national security by opening international negotiations on nuclear disarmament,” said Clements.

The DOE budget clearance was very botched, and the NNSA budget volume wasn’t released until Friday, May 28th, around 7pm. Because of this embarrassing stumble, reports and members of the public got caught on how DOE suggested spending taxpayers’ money. Key budget documents for the DOE’s environmental and nuclear programs had inexplicably not been released until 12:00 noon on Saturday, May 29th.

The South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) is representing SRS Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri-Valley CAREs in a potential lawsuit against DOE in late June for non-compliance with NEPA environmental law in planning to expand plutonium mine production. See the “Box Page” of SCELP, including the April 21, 2021 press release and the letter to DOE.

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The full press release can be found on the SRS Watch website (https://srswatch.org/): https://srswatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/News-SRS-Watch-on-NNSA- budget- FY-22-request-on-plutonium-pits-May-29-2021.pdf

Tom Clements
Savannah River Site Watch
+1 803-834-3084
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May 29, 2021 at 5:55 pm GMT

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