President Joe Biden's newly confirmed secretary of defense at a hearing this week did not decisively back the National Nuclear Security Administration’s proposed two-site plutonium pit production mission, which, if executed, would dramatically elevate the profile of the Savannah River Site.
Lloyd Austin, a retired Army general who at one point ran U.S. Central Command, responsible for military operations in the Middle East, instead promised a review of the nation’s nuclear modernization programs, "including the country's capacity to produce plutonium pits" and other components.
In providing that answer, he did not mention SRS or Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the NNSA and the Defense Department suggested the nuclear weapon cores be made. The response, said Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, suggests Austin is "unwilling to endorse it at this stage."
"Austin wisely chose to deflect the leading questions put to him by Republican senators about continuing the Trump administration's excessive and unsustainable nuclear weapons modernization effort," Reif said in a longer exchange with the Aiken Standard. "That this displeased these senators was a good sign in my view. Austin rightly said he would reserve judgement about the best path forward until he has a chance to assess the need and affordability of the effort."
Asked by a New Mexico senator for his thoughts on producing 30 pits per year at Los Alamos by 2026, Austin played it safe.
"Maintaining a credible, reliable, safe and sustainable nuclear capability is of utmost importance, of the highest importance," he told Martin Heinrich, a Democrat. "And so this is a component of that, and certainly, if we've laid out those goals and objectives for ourselves, I'm very much interested in making sure that they are the appropriate goals – and I have no reason to doubt that they are."
The Jan. 19 nomination hearing, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, showed "the secretary of defense does not seem to have a lot of strongly held views on nuclear questions, or if he does, he did not share them," said Stephen Young, a Washington representative for the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"When asked explicitly about the nuclear triad, he said he 'personally' supports it but did not elaborate," Young recounted. Staking that position – tempered by "personally" – leaves room to wiggle.
An aerial view of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site. The site is about 30 minutes south of Aiken.
In a bid to refresh the U.S. nuclear stockpile, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Defense Department in 2018 recommended crafting plutonium pits, triggers at the heart of modern nuclear weapons, in two states: South Carolina and New Mexico. The U.S. currently lacks a robust means to forge pits; the last place to make them en masse, the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado, was scuttled following a raid.
Jumpstarting pit production, energy and defense officials acknowledge, is challenging. The schedule is aggressive, and there are plenty of regulatory hurdles to clear. Critics – Savannah River Site Watch among them – have long warned of failure. An independent analysis published in May 2019 all but foresees it.
"To believe it is possible is to ignore everything we know about the history of the NNSA," Young said. "The Biden team should follow the plan that the House passed in 2019, focusing on limited pit production at Los Alamos. The U.S. can maintain a very robust nuclear force without producing new pits."
Reif believes the two-state approach to plutonium pit production – utilizing a repurposed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and a buttressed Los Alamos – "will certainly face greater scrutiny" under Biden's watch. It's more than just a changing of presidents.
"The 80-pits-per-year-by-2030 goal is almost certainly not achievable and will need to be adjusted," Reif said. "How that impacts the plans at SRS, in particular, remains to be seen."
Not having plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site would likely be a blow to the region; local officials have salivated over the prospective influx of jobs and long-term investments.
In answering other questions this week, Austin said the nation's nuclear weapons have "been extended far beyond their original service lives, and the tipping point, where we must simultaneously overhaul these forces, is now here."
Such a sense of immediacy was often relayed by officials when Donald Trump held the White House. The Defense Department's Ellen Lord, for example, in 2019 told Congress delaying and deferring modernization was "no longer an option." She also described pit production as a "lynchpin." Former NNSA chief Lisa Gordon-Hagerty thought similarly.
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