Senators Probe Acting NNSA Chief About Livermore Pits, Foreign Uranium

摘要

In a budget hearing that was mostly a best-of, a couple Senators asked the acting head of the National Nuclear SecurityAdministration about alternative means of meeting the mission objectives of the day, including by producing pits at theLawrence Livermore National Laboratory or buying, instead of enriching, uranium needed to produce weapons-tritium inthe 2040s.Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) asked Charles Verdon, the acting National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)administrator, “what kind of investments would have to be made” to produce plutonium pits at the Lawrence LivermoreNational Laboratory.