By George Lobsenz
Citing the Obama administration’s intention to sharply reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal, a coalition of antinuclear groups last week proposed shrinking the Energy Department’s weapons production complex from eight to three sites by 2025 to support a stockpile of 500 warheads.
The Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network–which includes the Natural Resources Defense Council and five other antinuclear and government watchdog groups–said all weapons production, dismantlement and special nuclear materials storage operations could be consolidated at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories in New Mexico and the Pantex plant in Texas.
And in what would be a major policy change, the groups called on U.S. policymakers to end DoE warhead research and life extension programs aimed at enhancing weapon capabilities, pointing to changes they said were now being made to the submarine-launched W76 missile to make it more effective against buried targets, such as underground bunkers.
Instead, the groups urged a new “curatorship” approach to nuclear weapons under which Congress would lay out new restrictions to ensure that any modifications made to warheads were necessary to preserve reliability, security or safety.
In that regard, the coalition specifically warned the Obama administration against making a deal with DoE’s nuclear weapons labs under which they would get more freedom to modify or upgrade warheads in exchange for their support for Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which President Obama has pledged to seek.
“Increasing U.S. R&D spending on nuclear weapons technology or improving nuclear weapons would send the wrong message to the world regarding the continuing importance of these weapons in U.S. security policy, open the U.S. to charges of nuclear hypocrisy, and undercut many of the political benefits of ratifying the CTBT,” the coalition said in a detailed report issued April 8.
And in a particularly provocative terms, the groups questioned statements by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), DoE’s semi-autonomous weapons agency, that it needed to further refine computer simulations and analyses of warhead explosions to maintain the existing arsenal.
“The NNSA’s claim that it needs better computer codes to maintain existing warheads is tantamount to Iran’s claim that it needs domestic uranium enrichment capability for nuclear power,” the coalition said. “Both claims may provide fig leaves for thinly veiled nuclear weapons development programs.”
The coalition’s recommendations are designed to leverage President Obama’s recent move to open new talks with Russia on further nuclear arms reductions–and his pledge to seek the long-term elimination of nuclear weapons.
The report also comes amid new indications that Congress may pressure the NNSA to do more to reduce the size of the department’s nuclear weapons complex.
In the waning days of the Bush administration, NNSA issued a final plan for weapons complex consolidation that called for significantly shrinking the operational footprint of its eight production sites–but not closing any of them. The blueprint also called for reducing the number of sites storing weapons-usable plutonium and high-enriched uranium (HEU), thus cutting security costs that have skyrocketed since the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon.
However, NNSA’s plan has drawn critical comment from key Democratic lawmakers as insufficiently aggressive given the fast-dwindling size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
President Bush’s White House Office of Management and Budget also appeared to prod NNSA on more cost-cutting, at one point ordering NNSA to reconsider the idea of closing the Y-12 uranium processing site in Tennessee and shifting those operations to another plant.
More recently, several former top weapons lab and NNSA officials told the House energy and water appropriations subcommittee last month that NNSA needed to scale back plans for multiple new plutonium and HEU processing facilities, saying they clearly would provide more production capacity than was needed to support the smaller U.S. stockpile of the future.
NNSA officials say they are re-evaluating their new facility plans in light of Obama’s plans to seek more arms cuts and his firm opposition to development of the reliable replacement warhead (RRW), a new weapon that NNSA contends is needed to replace the country’s Cold War-era warheads. The agency maintains those aging warheads raise increasing reliability problems, and could even force the nation to resume nuclear testing in the worst case.
However, the antinuclear coalition in its report said that the RRW, as a new weapon, would clearly raise more reliability questions than simply maintaining existing warheads. Further, the coalition said NNSA’s continuing modifications to existing warheads under current life extension programs are equally worrisome because they are becoming increasingly different from the warheads that were extensively tested decades ago, thus verifying their performance and reliability.
“We recommend that NNSA suspend the current life extension programs and that the Obama administration adopt the curatorship approach to maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile,” the coalition’s report said. “President Obama should issue a presidential decision directive prohibiting any major change in the military characteristics…of any nuclear weapon unless the change is essential for maintaining the safety or reliability of the existing warhead.
“To further that end, we recommend that Congress establish a stringent change control process for nuclear weapons, in legislation, including a requirement for outside review of all changes.”
As for shrinking the size of the complex, the report recommended that NNSA cancel or defer virtually all of its planned new facilities, including the Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12; a new manufacturing plant for non-nuclear warhead components planned to replace the Kansas City Plant; the nuclear facility for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building Replacement project at Los Alamos; the Weapons Engineering Science and Technology facility scheduled for construction in 2010 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California; and the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility, Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and Waste Solidification Building planned for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
In regard to existing weapons operations, the report called for:
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Transferring tritium production now carried out at Savannah River to Los Alamos’ Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility, allowing weapons operations at Savannah River to end in 2020.
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Moving HEU and warhead secondary operations from Y-12 to Los Alamos, allowing weapons operations at Y-12 to end by 2025. Los Alamos would remain the sole plutonium production facility.
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Shifting responsibility for producing or procuring non-nuclear warhead components from the Kansas City Plant to Sandia, allowing weapons activities at the Kansas City Plant to end by 2015.
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Ending subcritical testing at the Nevada Test Site and shifting remaining operations out of that site by 2012.
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Moving most weapons R&D and testing programs out of Livermore lab by 2012, with the lab retaining some weapons research and analysis programs as a peer review check on warhead issues.
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Giving Pantex all responsibility for chemical high explosives operations and warhead assembly/dismantlement operations.