Defense Committees Open Door For Warhead Changes

By George Lobsenz

Conferees from the House and Senate armed services committees have approved a new “stockpile management program” that opens the doors for modernization of U.S. nuclear warheads and at the same time gives the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration new authority to advocate for increased funding to upgrade the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons complex.

The legislative changes were included in a compromise defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2010 recently issued by the conferees that appears to significantly strengthen the hand of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), DoE’s semi-autonomous weapons agency, in pushing controversial initiatives to retool decades-old warheads and update its weapons production facilities.

The conferees also included a provision calling for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to scrutinize projects selected by DoE’s Office of Environmental Management to receive $6 billion in additional cleanup money provided under the Obama administration’s economic stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The GAO review comes amid particular controversy over use of stimulus money by the cleanup program at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

Overall, the defense authorization bill, which was approved last week by the Senate, would provide $16.5 billion for DoE’s atomic energy defense programs. That includes $10.1 billion for NNSA–$200 million above its fiscal 2010 budget request–and $5.5 billion for cleanup of DoE’s heavily contaminated nuclear weapons sites, the amount requested by the department.

NNSA received $6.4 billion for its weapons operations, $48.7 million more than it requested, and $2.2 billion for nonproliferation activities, a $39.7 million increase above its request.

In the most politically sensitive provisions of the defense authorization bill dealing with NNSA, the armed services conferees established the new stockpile management program as part of the existing stockpile stewardship program, under which NNSA uses advanced computer analyses and science-based experiments to monitor the nation’s aging nuclear warheads to assure they remain safe and reliable in the absence of underground testing.

While DoE’s nuclear weapons laboratories have continued to certify the stockpile as a credible deterrent, NNSA and some elements in the Obama administration–including Defense Secretary Robert Gates–say some warhead modernization is desirable to improve the reliability and security of the aging U.S. arsenal, much of which is decades old. They say improving existing U.S. warheads could enable the nation to make even deeper cuts in its arsenal than are now being contemplated by the administration.

However, modernization of U.S. warheads could be politically difficult for the Obama administration in light of the president’s much–publicized long-term goal of eliminating nuclear warheads–a proposal that helped win him the Nobel Peace Prize

In addition, congressional Democrats rejected the Bush administration’s warhead modernization initiative–the development of a new reliable replacement warhead (RRW)–as unacceptably provocative at a time when U.S. policy is aimed at accelerating nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation efforts around the world. Democrats also feared the Bush administration would use the RRW as a cover to develop new types of weapons, such as low-yield warheads that could be used for surgical strikes against terrorists.

Despite those concerns, the defense authorization bill would make changes in NNSA’s existing life extension program for warheads that would allow greater modernization of warheads, but only to achieve specific goals with limited design changes.

Under the new stockpile management program, the bill states that “any changes made to the stockpile” must “remain consistent with basic design parameters by including, to the maximum extent feasible, components that are well understood or are certifiable without the need to resume underground nuclear weapons testing.”

In addition, changes can only be made to “increase the reliability, safety and security of the nuclear weapons stockpile…further reduce the likelihood of the resumption of underground nuclear weapons testing; achieve reductions in the future size of the… stockpile; reduce the risk of an accidental detonation of an element of the stockpile; [and] reduce the risk of an element of the stockpile being used by a person or entity hostile to the United States, its vital interests, or its allies.”

The bill also calls for the DoE secretary to develop a long-term stockpile management plan to “extend the effective life” of the nation’s warheads, including all necessary programs for the “manufacture, maintenance and modernization of each weapon design in the nuclear stockpile.”

Further, the plan must specify roles and responsibilities of NNSA’s weapons labs and production plants to ensure “the carrying out of appropriate modernization activities.”

In that regard, the bill takes steps to answer predominantly Republican concerns that the Obama administration may not provide enough money to NNSA to update its weapons production complex, including the construction of new plutonium and uranium processing facilities and the replacement and refurbishment of other decades-old Cold War-era facilities.

The bill would direct the administrator of the NNSA starting in 2011 to submit to Congress every two years a plan for modernization of the weapons complex.

The administrator also would be required to include an assessment of whether NNSA’s budget for each fiscal year and future-year budgets are adequate to support the modernization plan–effectively giving NNSA a platform to lobby for funding increases.

“If the administrator determines that the budget request is insufficient for the modernization and refurbishment of the nuclear security complex as provided in the plan, the administrator shall include with the budget materials for that fiscal year a further assessment that describes and discusses the risks and implications associated with the ability of the nuclear security complex to support the annual certification of the nuclear stockpile,” the conferees said in their statement of explanation on their compromise defense authorization bill. “This assessment is to be coordinated with the secretary of [the Defense Department] and the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command.”

Other provisions of the bill:

• Direct the GAO to review the criteria used by DoE’s environmental management office in selecting projects to receive stimulus funding. The review comes amid anonymous allegations that House Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) has been exerting political influence to direct stimulus funding at Savannah River to projects not directly related to cleanup of the site.

• Give the NNSA administrator authority to conduct dual validation of warhead certification, meaning two weapons labs would review warhead reliability rather than just the lab responsible for the design of the weapon being certified. The conferees said they wanted to require dual validation, but agreed to await cost reviews of such a change.

• Order the National Academy of Sciences to evaluate operations at DoE’s three weapons labs, Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia. The conferees cited “growing concern about the ability of the Department of Energy to maintain the overall quality of scientific research and engineering capability at the three laboratories.” The conferees particularly called for review of “the relationship between the quality of work and the contract for managing and operating [each] laboratory.”