GAO: Lab faces four-year delay, cost growth for making nuclear bomb cores
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/gao-lab-faces-four-year-delay-cost-growth-for-making-nuclear-bomb-cores/article_92f2ad84-3dd4-11ee-b677-b76ab4ca1b91.html
Federal officials estimate Los Alamos National Laboratory won’t produce 30 nuclear bomb cores until 2030 — four years after the legally required deadline.
The additional time needed to produce 30 bowling-ball-sized warhead triggers, known as pits, will cost the lab significantly more than originally estimated, a government watchdog said in a newly released report.
I am shocked, shocked.
2 comments:
Meanwhile, the emperor has no clothes. This exact story has repeated itself at least a dozen times in my lifetime. The ability to use plutonium for anything is a complete joke in these United States. Among the factors contributing to this extremely negative outcome is the DNFSB.
Back in the Trump years another government body did a report on how to reform the dysfunctional culture within DNFSB:
https://napawash.org/academy-studies/defense-nuclear-facilities-safety-board-organizational-assessment
https://napawash.org/academy-studies/defense-nuclear-facilities-safety-board-phase-ii
The whole story behind this isn't entirely clear, but it also seems he tried to limit their oversight powers, and there was even an attempt to abolish it entirely:
https://www.propublica.org/article/nuclear-safety-board-information-access-trump-administration
https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2019-02-27/controversy-over-nuclear-safety-board-scope-size
This was not the first time a critical change to the board’s structure had been proposed. The board’s previous chairman, Sean Sullivan, had proposed abolishing the DNFSB completely, in early 2018. This was rejected by the board and led to Sullivan’s resignation, leaving the normally five-person board down a member for most of the year.
Right now the five member board is missing two members for some reason:
https://www.dnfsb.gov/about/board-members
It sounds like one criticism of this board (I think noted in the report) is that their judgements related to what is safe and what is not, are somewhat arbitrary, and subjective.
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