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United States: Los Alamos Makes First Plutonium Pit Meeting New Standards Following a 14-year U.S. hiatus in producing plutonium “pits” — the cores of nuclear weapons — the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory has manufactured a pit that meets all modernized production standards, a first step toward reconstituting a nuclear warhead production program (see GSN, March 10). Pits are hollow spheres of plutonium that initiate the fission that leads to a nuclear explosion. The laboratory plans to certify the performance of the pit through a variety of experiments that will include subcritical testing at the Nevada Test Site (see GSN, Sept. 27, 2002). That process is expected to be completed by 2007. To date, Los Alamos has spent $350 million to modernize the pit production process that had been suspended since 1989, and the laboratory expects to spend a total of $1.5 billion by the time it completes the certification process. At that time, Los Alamos plans to be able to manufacture 10 pits per year that could be added to the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile. Officials intend to sustain that production capacity until a larger pit production facility can be built at a still-undetermined site by 2018 (Los Alamos release, April 22). The latest development “is a sign that after a long period of decline, the weapons complex is back and growing,” said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Energy Department weapons expert (Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times, April 23). Los Alamos Management Woes The Los Alamos facility has been under the direction of the University of California for more than 60 years, but the school’s financial management capabilities came under fire by New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici yesterday after he announced his support for the Energy Department’s plan to seek bids for a new management contract for the laboratory, according to Energy Daily (see GSN, March 11). “I have been proud of the University of California under whose management the laboratory has largely flourished for 60 years,” Domenici said. “But, we all know that the present manner in which the laboratory is managed must change in ways that are inevitable, just as changes in other major institutions — from government to industry — in our nation occurred,” he continued (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, April 23).
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