Pantex plant

Web posted Thursday, November 16, 2000

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By Brandon Haddock
Staff Writer

The various bits and pieces of nuclear weapons were manufactured at plants throughout the nation, in places such as Hanford, Wash.: Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and, closer to home, Aiken. But those parts became bombs in a small plant on the Texas panhandle.

Pantex Plant, 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, assembled many of the nation's atomic bombs for almost 40 years. Today, the plant is the only U.S. facility capable of building and dismantling such weapons of mass destruction.

Pantex was founded in early 1942 to build conventional ordnance for use during World War II, according to a history published by the plant. The facility was deactivated at war's end, and its 16,000 acres were assumed by nearby Texas Technological College - now Texas Tech University - for the purposes of agricultural research.

But by 1951, as the Cold War arms race began, the Army had reclaimed the land. Within months, Pantex was building bombs again - albeit bombs of an entirely different, and more sinister, sort.

Click on graphic for a larger image

By 1975, similar plants in Tennessee, Iowa and Texas had closed, leaving Pantex as the nation's only facility capable of assembling and disassembling nuclear weapons. In recent years, the plant's mission has focused squarely on the latter, with post-Cold War weapons cutbacks reducing the need for a large nuclear arsenal.

Besides disassembling bombs, Pantex stores thousands of ``pits,'' the radioactive cores of atomic weapons. The pits are stored in bunkers at the plant, under the watchful eye of an armed security force. The pits contain the bulk of more than 20 tons of plutonium stored at Pantex.

Under current plans, many of the pits would be shipped to Savannah River Site for disassembly. The plutonium inside would be used in fuels for commercial nuclear power plants or baked into ceramic pucks for eventual disposal.

Pantex is operated by Mason & Hanger Corp. under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy. The plant employs about 3,000 people.

Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409.

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