Lab directors, lawmakers worry about delays to weapons program

The directors of the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories and the commander of the US Strategic Command expressed uneasiness with what they see as the Obama administration’s lack of a long-range plan for the nuclear arsenal. In hearings held mid-April by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, several lawmakers accused the administration of reneging on its promises to modernize nuclear weapons facilities and aging warheads in exchange for the Senate’s ratification in late 2010 of the New START treaty with Russia.

Of particular concern was the administration’s decision to defer for five years the construction of a $3.7 billion Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement–Nuclear Facility (CMRR–NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In addition to providing upgraded analytical and characterization capabilities, the CMRR–NF was to have the capacity to fabricate up to 80 plutonium pits annually. Representative Michael Turner (R-OH), chairman of the Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, said that the postponement of CMRR–NF and the slowdown of weapon refurbishments proposed in Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget called into question the conditions under which the Senate had ratified the New START accord. “There can be no doubt that reductions proposed by the New START treaty are only in our national interest if we complete the modernization of our nuclear deterrent—warheads, delivery systems, and infrastructure,” Turner said.

“We have a lot of options”

But Thomas D’Agostino, administrator of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, surprised Turner by announcing that a “brand new” radiation laboratory capable of performing plutonium surveillance work has become available at LANL. Using modern dose conversion factors, he explained, NNSA had recalculated that LANL’s new radiation laboratory utility office building could safely handle up to 34 grams of plutonium at a time—compared with the 4-gram limit that it had previously documented as the building’s safety base. D’Agostino also said the agency has been evaluating the reuse of plutonium pits from dismantled weapons to extend the life of warheads that will remain in the stockpile. “We have a lot of options. We are not hampered by saying the nation has to have the capacity to build 60 or 80 pits per year in order to take care of the stockpile,” he said.

A more worrisome tone was expressed a day later by LANL director Charles McMillan, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the lab’s 60-year-old plutonium facility sits on a seismic fault and is already well beyond the end of its planned life. The plant is unable to perform the high-volume analysis of plutonium necessary to meet the Department of Defense’s requirements, he said, and is due to be permanently closed in 2019.

“The decision to defer construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement–Nuclear Facility (CMRR–NF) leaves the United States with no known capability to make 50 to 80 newly-produced pits on the timescales planned for stockpile modernization,” McMillan said. The delay will slow the program to extend the life of the W-78 warhead for Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles. “Because of changes in budget and policy priorities, I am concerned that we do not yet have a clear path forward for meeting all of our commitments to the stockpile,” he said.

Unresolved issues

McMillan warned of unresolved issues with the reuse of pits, including whether recycled pits from warheads that used conventional high explosives will work in weapon systems that employ modern insensitive high explosives. He said an additional $50 million a year for 5–10 years will be needed to resolve that issue.

Sandia National Laboratories director Paul Hommert fretted that the administration’s decision to push back the production phase of refurbishing the B-61 bomb from 2017 to 2019 leaves no room for the schedule to slip. Further delays can’t be tolerated, he said, for technical reasons that are classified, he said. The B-61 LEP represents the largest nuclear weapon product development effort that the nuclear weapons complex has undertaken since the 1970s, Hommert said, and the number of Sandia staff assigned to the B-61 program has grown from 80 in 2010 to 500 last fall, he said.

Air Force General C. Robert Kehler, head of the US Strategic Command, told the House hearing that he is “concerned about what happens beyond fiscal year 2013. Do we have a comprehensive and definitive plan? We do not.” Kehler noted that “some tough choices were made in 2013,” and he added, “I believe we can manage the risks that are associated with those choices.”

Madelyn Creedon, assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs, said the decisions to delay CMRR and the B-61 life extension programs were driven by the escalating costs of each program.

“My real concern is what happens five to 10 years from now,” said Penrose Albright, director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Without sustained funding for the overall weapons program, particularly the understanding of the science of nuclear weapons, “we run a huge risk in our ability to do assessment and conduct future [life extension programs],” Albright warned. Future life extension programs will be accomplished by individuals who will be trained by people who have never been involved in a nuclear test or designed a weapon from scratch, he noted.