Non-Nuclear Production

LANL's non-nuclear production mission serves a unique role in ensuring the national security of the Nation. We support NNSA in several critical programs on which we must deliver successfully, and our institutional strategy must anticipate and prepare for future national needs in deterrence.

This Critical Outcome supports three of the Strategic Objectives in accomplishing the Laboratory mission: Nuclear Deterrence, Trustworthy Operations, and Technical Leadership. This Critical Outcome also leverages the Signature Institutional Commitments in advanced manufacturing and production mission maturation.

In FY23, we increased staffing in key technical and production roles to meet stockpile modernization programs requirements; improved disciplined operations associated with high explosives (HE), unique materials, and across production lines; focused attention on delivering to the next level assembly, meeting partner site lead times while keeping open communications with federal program offices and the local NNSA field office; and deployed unique manufacturing and inspection platforms.

For FY24, we will build on these successes through four Supporting Initiatives.

Supporting Initiatives

1. Assess and document current and future NSE and DOE needs that will require LANL execution; develop a strategy to obtain necessary infrastructure and personnel to meet these needs.
2. Improve and document production facility planning and execution of mission/program-assigned scopes of work.
3. Assess and document personnel, facility, and equipment capability needed to execute technology maturation.
4. Inform and obtain stakeholder support for the strategy.

Within these initiatives, we have several priorities, including engaging NA-121, NA-194, and NA-193 for opportunities to share or shoulder NSE workload activities; formalizing future planning with the Infrastructure Program & Planning Office for the SM-39 and Beryllium Technology Facility next generation capability/capacity; actively identifying necessary facilities as part of the Two Mile Mesa Campus plan, including multiple manufacturing and metrology facilities for inert components and high explosive components (e.g., staging/storage facilities associated with detonator production); evaluating a distributed model of non-nuclear manufacturing/machining facilities off main campus to bridge to the Two Mile Mesa Campus plan realization before FY2033 to meet program of record demand signals; and actively updating capacity modeling for Detonator Production and Surveillance.