Nearly three years after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch (SRSW) has finally received the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) congressionally-required Research Program Plan for Plutonium and Pit Aging. (Note: Tri-Valley CAREs also requested the document via FOIA, but has yet to receive its own copy). The version produced to SRSW is 40% blacked out, including references and acronyms. Plutonium “pits” are the radioactive cores of all U.S. nuclear weapons. The NNSA claims that potential aging effects are justification for a ~$60 billion program to expand production. However, the Plan fails to show that aging is a current problem. To the contrary, it demonstrates that NNSA is delaying urgently needed updated plutonium pit aging research.
NNSA’s heavily redacted “Research Program Plan for Plutonium and Pit Aging” is available at https://nukewatch.org/nnsa-2021-research-program-plan-for-plutonium/
This press release is available at https://trivalleycares.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Plutonium-Aging-PR.pdf
