
The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has the technical and safety chops both to manufacture plutonium pits and to lead new research on the nuclear-weapon cores, the head of the lab’s weapons program said Wednesday amid an intensifying turf war over the Department of Energy’s plutonium mission.“Something that I’ve heard a lot talking with folks is a concern about whether you can really do the scientific R&D that is necessary at Los Alamos and balance that with the pit production…