Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant (PX) Information

Pantex Plant (PX) located approximately 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, Texas, on 15,997 acres.

Pantex, the principal facility in the U. S. Nuclear Weapons Complex that handles complete nuclear weapons:

• assembles high explosive (HE), nuclear, and non-nuclear components into complete nuclear weapons
• fabricates the HE components that surround the nuclear components of nuclear weapons
• performs HE research and development (R&D)
• works on and modifies nuclear weapons
• performs non-intrusive plutonium pit modification
• performs surveillance of nuclear weapons
• performs work in support of the life extension programs
• dismantles nuclear weapons being retired from the stockpile
• Demilitarizes components from dismantled nuclear weapons

Pantex maintains Category I/II quantities of Special Nuclear Material (SNM) for the U. S. nuclear weapons program and stores SNM in the form of surplus plutonium pits pending transfer to Savannah River Site (SRS) for disposition. Weapons activities involve the handling (but not processing) of uranium, plutonium, and tritium components, as well as a variety of nonradioactive hazardous or toxic chemicals.

Pantex is authorized to assemble, disassemble, and modify weapons in accordance with the ROD for the Continued Operation of the Pantex Plant and Associated Storage of Nuclear Weapons Components (62 FR 3880, January 27, 1997). Although the specifics of nuclear weapons operations at Pantex are classified, approximately one-half of the current and future Pantex workload involves dismantling nuclear weapons.

Future Environmental Liabilities at the Pantex Plant include: (according to the FY 2006 Pantex “Ten-Year Comprehensive Site Plan”)

•      “Long-Term Stewardship” (LTS, $210 million), comprised of “surveillance, maintenance, monitoring and records management.” LTS will be implemented under the National Nuclear Security Administration beginning this October 1, ending cleanup by the DOE’s Environmental Management division. LTS activities account for most of the estimated costs after 2025, and have no planned end date. Other than “pump and treat” of groundwater, which is unlikely to remove all contaminants, it’s not clear what other “cleanup” activities will take place.

•      “D&D [demolition and decontamination] of excess facilities” ($36M).

•      “Contaminated Media - Disposition of contaminated media may include soil, sediment, surface water and groundwater” ($20M).

•      “Excess Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Materials – Includes disposition costs of excess materials (components, trainers, tooling, etc.) associated with retired weapons programs. For active weapon programs, the respective weapon program will fund disposition costs” ($130M; parentheses in the original). In response to Congressional pressure NNSA is now claiming that it has accelerated dismantlements rates, and hence these costs are likely to substantially increase. At the same time, Pantex stores an estimated ~15,000 plutonium pit “triggers,” potentially a huge environmental liability.

•      “Other liabilities” ($4.5M), “e.g. potential Natural Resources Damage Assessment.” Such an assessment could allow the State of Texas to recover funding for remediation of environmental damages at the Plant.

Relevant pages of the FY 2006 Pantex Plant Ten-Year Comprehensive Site Plan are available at http://www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/Pantex06-TYCSP_Excerpts.pdf

Sandia National Laboratories Weapons Evaluation Test Laboratory (WETL) is also located at the Pantex Plant. WETL, operated by Sandia for the NNSA, is programmatically associated with NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship program. Its mission is to support the evaluation of the U.S. stockpile through subsystem level testing in a laboratory environment.