Plutonium Futures 2003 conference speakers set

Nuclear Materials Technology (NMT) Division is key to the national mission of reestablishing " of ensuring the reliability and safety of the nation's nuclear stockpile, said Rich Mah, associate director for Weapons Engineering and Manufacturing (WEM). Mah made the remarks at the opening session of the annual NMT Division Review.

NMT Division received an overall rating of outstanding/excellent from the external review committee, which met with members of NMT Division and upper management at Los Alamos May 14­16.

Areas under review were rated on four criteria: quality of science and engineering, relevance to national needs and agency mission, operation of major facilities, and performance of programs.

Three of the categories received outstanding/excellent ratings. The review committee rated a fourth category, relevance to national needs and agency mission, outstanding.

Steve Yarbro (left), Tim George (center), and Rich Mah listen to a speaker during the opening session of the annual NMT Division review.

The review, required under the Department of Energy's (DOE) contract with the University of California, assesses the quality of the divisionıs science and technology programs. Because all science and technology activities conducted by the division must be covered by the review within a three-year cycle, historically, about one-third of NMT Divisionıs programmatic activities have been looked at each year.

In a break with previous practice, this year's review focused on facility management, material control and accountability, information management, and waste management.

Because these critical activities are essential to the success of so many of NMT's programmatic missions, the entire NMT management team felt they should be submitted for external review.

'Excellent progress'

In giving NMT Division its outstanding/excellent rating, the external review committee praised division management for making extensive changes and developing a more focused approach. In particular, the committee cited the division's making better use of statistical tools and numerical data to track programmatic performance and learn new approaches to operational excellence. "The committee felt very strongly that the integrated approach to research, production, and facilities operation is demonstrably critical to programmatic success," the review committee members wrote in their report.

"Among its wide range of programmatic activities, the division's evidently successful commitment to pit production means that its contributions to national needs are self-evident," said the report. "Again, however, the integrated approach will continue to be critical because NMT has essential contributions to make to the [pit] certification process."

The committee cited the "excellent progress" made by NMT Division in the pit manufacturing area since the last review. Thirteen pits have been fabricated, including one early development pit, seven of nine developments, and five standard pits. The seventh development pit was fabricated fourteen months ahead of schedule.

Pit certification is running ahead of schedule, and the deadline has moved up two years from 2009 to 2007. Meeting the milestone two years early will save $450 million in the certification process, Mah told the opening session audience. The pit-manufacturing project also is on track to meet a major milestone in April 2003 with the completion of the Qual-1 pit.

While citing improvements in management, scientific excellence, and the success of the pit-manufacturing program, the committee recommended that the division place more emphasis on the development of a comprehensive strategic plan. "This is both urgent and important as programmatic success in the pit production area, for example, will likely mean that new responsibilities will be assigned to NMT in the near future," said the report.

Consequently, the report recommends that NMT and ADWEM develop a strategic plan that will address issues of "how major programs are expected to develop, space allocation within the limited amount of nuclear facility space, quality-of-life for the staff, and promotion of basic science and engineering to underpin the programs."

As a result of these suggestions, NMT managers, scientists, facility managers, and programmatic leaders will be meeting over the next two months to develop a comprehensive strategic plan for the division.

Aging facilities a major topic

Facility infrastructure and management were main topics of this year's review and discussion naturally focused on the Lab's nuclear facilities: the TA-55 Plutonium Facility (PF-4) and the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) Building.

At 40,000 square feet in four wings, things are getting tight in PF-4. "The lack of space drives what we can do in that facility,²" said Mah. "We require guns, gates, guards, and other special capabilities to work with actinide materials; at a $10,000 per square foot replacement cost, these are expensive operations."

NMT Division Director Tim George also emphasized the importance of the Laboratory's actinide research facilities to the nation's nuclear mission. "PF-4 and CMR remain the nation's only facilities capable of handling all isotopes and chemical forms of plutonium, as well as other actinides," George told review committee members. "I would say that operation of these two facilities, in the context of their age, and the scope and significance of activities conducted within them, may be one of the most challenging tasks in the Department of Energy complex."

George called the successful operation of these two nuclear facilities a major accomplishment of the division for the past year. While PF-4 is the nation's newest plutonium research and development facility, it is more than twenty years old and is reaching the end of its design life. And at fifty years old, the CMR Building must be replaced within a decade.

Critical missions and a milestone

George told the review committee that while the pilot production of pits is the division's top priority, in the final analysis "stockpile surveillance and enhanced surveillance, or accelerated aging, may be the NMT missions most critical to the nationıs security."

George emphasized the point by announcing a major milestone in enhanced surveillance that occurred the day before the review began: Researchers at Los Alamos have successfully developed a way to replicate how the stockpile ages by producing a "spiked" plutonium alloy that will age at an accelerated rate. This first-of-its-kind feat will allow researchers to observe the effects of plutonium aging in years instead of decades. (See cover story.)

Mah and George both stressed to the review committee the importance of Los Alamos maintaining a skilled work force. "We have the largest pool of nuclear scientists in the world," said George, "and we have to maintain that pool."

To meet that priority, critical skills have been identified and strategic hiring is under way in the division. One hundred new employees have been hired and at least another 100 are needed. One hitch is the lack of office space. "We want to hire additional staff," said George, "but it's very challenging; there's no place to put them."

In discussing the future, George talked about a two-year division initiative focusing on advanced nuclear fuels research to support a DOE-sponsored endeavor called the Generation IV Roadmap.

Generation IV, a DOE collaboration with nine other countries, will set out to identify nuclear power concepts and systems that can reach commercial viability by 2030.

Generation IV will require extensive research in advance fuels in the form of oxides, nitrides, metals, and salts, and NMT's capabilities at the CMR Building and PF-4 will play a key role in research into these new fuel forms.

In its report, the review committee agreed that the advanced fuels trial program is an important priority for the division but recommended that the trial be lengthened to three years.

Labwide assessment due in August

The NMT Division report, as well as the individual reports of all other technical divisions at Los Alamos, will be rolled up into a Laboratory-wide report called the Science and Technology Assessment, which will be sent to the UC president's office in August. The Science and Technology Panel of the UC President's Council on the National Laboratories also assesses Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.

Anthony (Tony) Rollet chaired the external review committee for the second year. Rollet, of Carnegie Mellon University, is a former deputy leader of Los Alamos' Materials Science and Technology (MST) Division.

Other members of the review committee included Richard Bartsch, Texas Tech University; Darleane Hoffman, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and former head of Los Alamos' Isotope and Nuclear Chemistry (INC) Division; Alexandra Navrotsky, University of California, Davis; Lee Peddicord, Texas A&M University; George Werkema, retired, DOE; and William Weston, Boeing Co., Rocketdyne Division. Steve Yarbro, NMT deputy division leader for plutonium research and technology, was coordinator of this yearıs review.

‹Meredith S. Coonley

NMT | LANL | DOE
Phone Book | Search | Help/Info

L O S  A L A M O S  N A T I O N A L   L A B O R A T O R Y
Operated by the University of California for the US Department of Energy