Lab directors assure Congress that warhead program will work

Despite the concerns voiced by 10 of their predecessors, the directors of the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories assured lawmakers last week that they are comfortable with the Obama administration’s policy to refurbish and reuse old warhead components wherever possible—and to avoid building replacement components—as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) continues to extend the lifetimes of the weapons that will remain in the diminishing stockpile.

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) director Michael Anastasio told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on 15 July that lab managers have “both the authority and the responsibility” to replace aging weapons components “on a case-by-case basis” if that is judged to be the best approach. While admitting he would prefer having no restrictions put on the labs’ options for extending warhead lifetimes, Anastasio said language in the administration’s April Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) provides “an adequate level of flexibility to carry out our mission.”

In a May letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, the 10 former directors said the NPR “imposes unnecessary constraints on our engineers and scientists when it states that ‘the United States will give strong preference to options for refurbishment or reuse’ and that the replacement of nuclear components ‘would be undertaken only if critical Stockpile Management Program (SMP) goals could not otherwise be met, and if specifically authorized by the President and approved by Congress’.”

The lab directors warned that the “higher bar” set by the NPR for replacement of components will “stifle the creative and imaginative thinking that typifies the excellent history of progress and development at the national laboratories, and indeed will inhibit the NPR’s goal of honing the specialized skills needed to sustain the current deterrent.” They added that the NPR restrictions will add to the risk that the country has taken on by not testing its nuclear weapons.

Saying that he shared the concerns contained in the letter, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director George Miller nonetheless pronounced the NPR restriction “workable,” and said it would permit his weapons designers to bring forward all the options for consideration. But Roy Schwitters, a physics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told senators he disagreed with the former directors’ statements, arguing that there are enough technical and scientific challenges within the scope of the NPR to provide opportunities for staffs to grow professionally. Schwitters chaired a subpanel of JASON, the self-perpetuating scientific advisory committee, that last year reviewed the NNSA’s technical plan for extending the life of the stockpile. That review found no evidence that an accumulation of changes incurred from aging or from earlier life extension programs has increased the risk that deployed warheads won’t work as they’re supposed to. It also advised that the lifetimes of the weapons could be extended for decades with no loss in confidence. But Schwitters noted how one life extension program currently underway, the W-76 warhead for Trident missiles, actually employs a combination of refurbishment, reuse, and replacement.

In their letter, the former directors also fretted that science, engineering, nonnuclear testing, and other laboratory programs will be starved to pay for cost overruns that have become inevitable during the construction of the facilities needed to clean up the Department of Energy’s cold war weapons production complex. And they warned that the administration’s budget projections for the construction of a multibillion-dollar plutonium research and pit production facility at LANL, and for a new uranium processing facility at Oak Ridge, TN, are inadequate.

“While we are encouraged by your commitments, we are deeply concerned that most of the significant investments promised are not available until the outyears of the plan,” the directors wrote. “We are concerned, having received commitments of support before, that Congress and the President will once again promise a great deal today, and then quickly forget about the nuclear weapons enterprise until something breaks.”

Signing the letter were former LANL directors Harold Agnew, Siegfried Hecker, John Browne, Pete Nanos, and Donald Kerr; former LLNL directors John Nuckolls, John Foster, Michael May, and Robert Kuckuck; and former Sandia National Laboratories director C. Paul Robinson.

David Kramer