By George Lobsenz
A congressionally chartered commission Wednesday backed the Obama administration’s emphasis on nuclear nonproliferation as increasingly critical to national security, but said the president also had to bolster U.S. nuclear weapons capability by proceeding with selected “modernization” of warheads and by restructuring and broadening the mission of the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its nuclear weapons labs.
The Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States largely endorsed President Obama’s view that greater U.S. leadership on nonproliferation was vital because the world was approaching a dangerous “tipping point” on nuclear terrorism threats and weapons development by North Korea, Iran and other hostile nations.
In particular, the panel–which was chaired by William Perry, defense secretary under President Clinton–said the United States had to work with other countries to ensure that the expansion of nuclear power does not lead to a “cascade of proliferation.” It specifically endorsed international efforts to guarantee nuclear fuel supply and disposal services to emerging nuclear countries to prevent them from establishing uranium enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing capabilities.
But while highlighting the importance of nonproliferation, the commission said Congress and the nation could not lose sight of the continuing need to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal to deter any geopolitical challenges by other countries and, in particular, to bolster central European nations that feel vulnerable to Russia’s substantial tactical nuclear forces.
In a report that is expected to influence the Obama administration’s ongoing review of the nation’s nuclear weapons, arms control and nonproliferation policies, the commission said that although the need for nuclear deterrence was not as big as during the Cold War, “an awareness of its critical role needs to be restored in the United States and this, too, must be emphasized by our national leaders.”
In that regard, the commission said there was a clear need to modernize the nation’s Cold War-era nuclear weapons arsenal and to overhaul and rejuvenate the weapons labs and decades-old warhead production facilities managed by the NNSA, the semi-autonomous weapons agency within DoE.
Among the many specific recommendations in the commission’s highly detailed and comprehensive report, Capitol Hill and the Obama administration are likely to closely scrutinize the commission’s views on warhead modernization, which was pursued by NNSA under the Bush administration through its “reliable replacement warhead” (RRW) initiative.
The RRW was shot down by Congress because of concerns by lawmakers that development of a new warhead by the United States would be destabilizing and undermine U.S. nonproliferation policy; they also said the Bush administration failed to make the strategic case for a new warhead. The Obama administration formally canceled the program in March.
However, the commission suggested the RRW fell victim to “confusion” about whether it constituted a new weapon–and to misunderstandings about the purpose of the RRW.
“In some senses, it would have been new,” the commission said of the RRW. “It would have incorporated some new design features to enhance safety and security and to increase performance margins.”
But in a key distinction, the commission added that the RRW “would not have been new insofar as it would not have provided any new military capabilities.”
The commission expressed concern about the “continuing confusion” about the nature of the RRW–“confusion that seems to be a barrier to making the next choices about how to proceed to ensure that the nuclear stockpile is safe, secure and reliable.”
Noting that other countries already were modernizing their warheads, the commission recommended Congress allow NNSA to carry out modernization on a warhead-by-warhead basis while also making clear that the agency was not to incorporate any new military capabilities.
“So long as modernization proceeds within the framework of existing U.S. policy, it should encounter minimum political difficulty,” the commission said.
“As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States does not produce fissile materials and does not conduct nuclear explosive tests. Also, the United States does not currently seek new weapons with new military characteristics. Within this framework, it should seek the possible benefits of improved safety, security, and reliability available to it.”
On another controversial matter, the commission generally backed the “reasonable plan” put out by NNSA in the waning days of the Bush administration for updating and consolidating DoE’s weapons complex. The plan has been criticized by some lawmakers for not closing any weapons sites and focusing only on shrinking the footprints of current sites and consolidating nuclear materials storage.
But the commission said closing sites would likely entail higher costs because needed weapons production activities would have to be moved. It also rejected suggestions that one of the weapons labs ought to be closed, saying Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore provided needed competition and peer review on key weapons initiatives.
The commission called on lawmakers to provide funding for NNSA’s complex “transformation” plan–and to understand that they should not expect savings, but rather a rationalized, safer and more effective complex.
At the same time, the commission acknowledged that NNSA’s plan was likely to cost more than projected–perhaps far more–and that some planned new facilities were likely to be very expensive. Of NNSA’s two highest priority projects, the commission said if lawmakers faced budget constraints, they should favor a new plutonium building at Los Alamos over a proposed uranium processing facility at the Y-12 plant in Tennessee.
Beyond the “decrepit” state of many weapons facilities, the commission expressed even stronger concern about a continuing brain drain at DoE’s nuclear weapons laboratories, saying the nation could not afford to lose that specialized scientific and technical expertise at a time when U.S. warheads may undergo unpredictable effects from aging and nuclear proliferation risks are growing overseas.
To rejuvenate the labs, the commission recommended they be redesignated by the president as “national security” laboratories and given a broader mission and more support from the Pentagon, the departments of State and Homeland Security and the intelligence agencies.
The commission also called for a restructuring of NNSA, saying its effectiveness had been greatly curtailed by its status as a semi-autonomous agency within DoE.
While not mentioning numerous safety, security and environmental lapses at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs in recent years, the commission said weapons complex contractors had become bogged down by “micromanagement” by DoE and NNSA bureaucrats and excessive requirements to meet department’s safety, environmental procurement regulations.
To remedy that, the commission said NNSA should be made an independent agency that reports to the president through the secretary of the Energy Department, as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission does. And, to ensure other national security agencies become more invested in NNSA, the commission recommended the president assign “formal responsibility” to the secretaries of the Energy, Defense, State and Homeland Security departments and the director of national intelligence to review and approve NNSA’s strategic plan and budget submissions to the White House Office of Management and Budget to assure “the programmatic and budgetary health” of the weapons labs.
In an echo of recommendations from past blue-ribbon study panels on NNSA, the commission said regulation of workplace safety in the weapons complex could be clarified and improved by handing those responsibilities over to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And, it said NNSA should be directed to develop a three-year transition plan to have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission take over nuclear safety regulation in the weapons complex, with current oversight provided by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board to be phased out.