The U.S. Has Produced Its First Plutonium Pit Since 1989. The Goal: Refurbishing All Its Nuclear Warheads

The U.S. arsenal currently holds 5,044 nuclear warheads, most of which were produced during the Cold War. The Department of Energy hadn’t manufactured a nuclear weapon core since 1989, until now.

Ready for the military. On Oct. 1, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) completed the fabrication of a plutonium pit for the first time in 35 years. A pit is a hollow sphere acting as the core in an implosion nuclear weapon.

This pit, marked as a “war reserve,” is now ready for deployment in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The Defense Department plans to use it in the W87-1 warhead, which will replace the older W87 on the Air Force’s Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

Improved technology. When a chemical charge is detonated around the pits, the plutonium is rapidly compressed, triggering a fission reaction. This reaction releases an enormous amount of energy in the form of a nuclear explosion.

Over eight years, the NNSA worked to develop and refine the manufacturing processes for new pits. They upgraded equipment and facilities to make production more reliable and consistent than in the 1980s.

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80 pits a year. By the mid-2030s, the NNSA aims to produce at least 80 plutonium pits annually, with 30 being produced at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was built in the 1940s. Meanwhile, 50 pits will be produced at the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility in South Carolina.

During the Cold War, the U.S. manufactured hundreds of plutonium pits each year. However, production stopped in 1989 when the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado was closed following the conviction of its operators for a series of environmental crimes.

A deterrence strategy. Paradoxically, the U.S. is planning to resume the production of plutonium for weapons of mass destruction as part of its nuclear deterrence strategy.

The Pentagon aims to replace all existing nuclear warheads with modern versions to effectively deter potential adversaries like Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China.

Image | Department of Defense

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