“The Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) defined requirements for the revised Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) project to provide plutonium analysis equipment at its Los Alamos site but did not specify the capacity for analyzing plutonium that the project should provide, making it possible that the project would not meet plutonium analysis needs. NNSA policy states that project requirements should include key performance parameters, which describe how well a project will perform its functions, expressed in terms such as processing rate or capacity. However, NNSA did not identify a key parameter that addresses a primary function of the project’s analysis equipment—to analyze plutonium in support of producing an essential part of a nuclear weapon, known as a pit. NNSA has determined that it needs sufficient analysis capacity to support producing pits, including at planned rates of 10 pits per year in 2024 and 50 to 80 pits per year by 2030, but an NNSA analysis shows that the revised CMRR project may not support these rates. NNSA officials said the project’s requirements do not include a pit production-related parameter because NNSA only tasked the CMRR project with replacing analysis equipment used in an aging facility, regardless of analysis capacity. Not identifying this parameter likely contributed to the project potentially not providing sufficient analysis capacity to support planned pit production and may have contributed to different understandings among senior agency officials about how well the project will support pit production. By identifying a pit production-related parameter that describes the analysis capacity that the revised CMRR project is to provide, NNSA could clarify the extent to which the project will support such pit production.”