Workers have begun laying the groundwork for the first production later this year of plutonium “pits” — hollow spheres the size of a half grapefruit, made from the rare chemical element.

For two decades, the Pentagon and Congress have been increasingly concerned that the United States does not have a reliable capability to produce plutonium “pits,” the cores of US thermonuclear ...

F or the first time in 35 years, the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has manufactured a plutonium pit for use in a nuclear weapon.Functioning as a radioactive core for nuclear ...

A newly released report from the Union of Concerned Scientists argues for reusing existing nuclear weapon cores from ...

Newly designed plutonium pits will serve as “triggers” for the next generation of nuclear warheads mounted atop Sentinel, the next generation of intercontinental ballistic missile, and for new ...

The independent General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a scathing report last week about the plan underway to refurbish plutonium pit triggers for nuclear weapons decades into the future.

South Carolina’s federal nuclear site is part of a plan to replace the plutonium cores of bombs in the country’s nuclear arsenal. But now the federal government is taking a ...

PF-4 is being transformed from an experimental laboratory that focuses mostly on research into a facility that mass-produces plutonium “pits,” the grapefruit-sized cores inside every nuclear ...

In modern weapons, plutonium fission ignites a second, more powerful stage in which hydrogen atoms undergo nuclear fusion, releasing even more energy. The U.S. hasn't made these pits in a ...

The U.S. is modernizing its nuclear arsenal—but, given the Russian and Chinese threats, production of plutonium pits for nuclear warheads is unacceptably delayed. If America’s adversaries ...