Pantex Plant, Texas

Originally the final assembly facility for the nation's nuclear weapons, Pantex is currently the nation's only nuclear weapons disassembly and plutonium storage site. An old WWII Army munitions plant, the facility was converted to nuclear device assembly in 1951, when it was taken over by the Atomic Energy Commission. The plant grew into a complex of assembly and manufacturing facilities, where high explosives for the bombs were manufactured and joined with the plutonium "pits," the explosive core of the nuclear weapons, to form a completed warhead. In the present disassembly operation, the same thing is done in reverse. The Department of Energy would like to store as many of the expected 20,000 plutonium pits at Pantex as they are allowed to. The plant employs around 3,000 people at its 16,000 acre site, and is managed and operated by Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC (CNS), on behalf of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).