Biden okays program to annually build 80 plutonium âpitâ H-bomb triggers Lucky once, we can't count on luck again... Itâs hard to believe Iâm writing this, but the Biden administration, while unwinding or reversing a good many rules, regulations and programs of the Trump administration, is forging ahead with one particularly outrageous one: the ramping up of production of so-called plutonium âpits.â These cores of the man-made radioactive element plutonium, each weighing a few pounds, serve as small atomic bombs on their own of the size used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and are also the fission triggers needed to ignite vastly more powerful hydrogen-based fusion-bomb weapons.