Two pits, the plutonium components at the heart of nuclear weapons, were taken apart during the first activity in the demonstration.
The ARIES Demonstration Line -- Advanced Recovery and Integrated Extraction System -- integrates the technologies needed to remove plutonium from the cores of surplus nuclear weapons and convert the plutonium into an unclassified form for international inspection. The plutonium is packaged for long-term storage and disposition.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who dedicated the ARIES facility in September, said, "This is a significant step that, when completed, will provide the United States with the means to assure that surplus plutonium is never again used to make nuclear weapons."
"This demonstration is the culmination of several years of work by Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, our sister lab," said Randy Erickson, program manager for nuclear materials management. "We designed and installed the equipment, developed all the operating protocol and safety procedures and now are in a position to get the key data needed to design a full-scale facility for conversion of plutonium from pits to an unclassified form for disposition."
The ARIES demonstration, which involves dismantling pits over a two- to three-year period, will provide important information for designing and operating a full-scale Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility.
In June, the Energy Department announced that its Savannah River Site and its Pantex Plant are equally preferred locations for this facility, which would be designed and constructed in the 1999-2004 time frame, with production operations beginning in 2005. Construction and operation of the full-scale facility is contingent on reaching agreement with Russia on plutonium disposition.
-Key components of the ARIES prototype were proven in earlier experiments. The current demonstration uses an integrated system to perform all of the necessary tasks -- cutting the pits apart, separating the plutonium from other components with gas, converting the plutonium to an oxide form, packaging it in sealed containers, decontaminating and determining the characteristics of the resulting product.
ARIES uses hydrogen and/or oxygen gas to recover the plutonium from the pits that are at the heart of nuclear weapons. The plutonium pit falls apart in flakes, which are collected and formed into plutonium oxide. The plutonium oxide will either be blended with other materials to make a mixed oxide, which will be burned in existing domestic reactors as fuel and disposed of as spent fuel, or it will be disposed of by being immobilized and surrounded by vitrified high level waste. Both of these technologies form the basis for the United States' hybrid plutonium disposition strategy aimed at making the plutonium no longer useable for nuclear weapons.
In addition to Los Alamos and Livermore, DOE's Sandia National Laboratories is developing some of the robotics for the system.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and the Washington Division of URS for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.