Congress approves new warhead program, directs NNSA toward pit production at LANL

Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:51:53 -0700
Subject: Congress approves new warhead program, directs NNSA toward pit production at LANL Message from: Greg Mello gmello@lasg.org

Dear colleagues --

There is more to say on this, but on Monday congressional conferees approved a nuclear weapons budget for U.S. fiscal year (FY) 2006 that includes a new weapons development program, the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, the purpose of which is to eventually replace all the nuclear warheads in a future ( ~ 6,000 weapon) U.S. arsenal with newly-designed and newly-built warheads, which are supposed to be more easily built and maintained than the existing weapons and more reliable to boot. The idea is to do this without nuclear testing.

Additionally, Congress is nudging the U.S. weapons program towards plutonium pit production at LANL. It is good that the Modern Pit Facility (MPF) was not funded, as the Robust Nuclear Penetrator (RNEP, which was withdrawn in favor of RRW) also was not.

It looks to me as if weapons activities are down 2.3% in current dollars overall over FY05 and thus down somewhat over 7% in constant dollars. (This is not what these articles say, and we'll get this cleared up shortly.) Los Alamos and Sandia appear to have made out like bandits, but the coherence of the overall program is quite weak and it is riddled with what appear to be hundreds of special earmarks.

Three excepts and a link are below, after two news articles.

We will try our best to defeat these proposals, as we have done before.

Best to all,

greg
Greg Mello gmello@lasg.org

URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/north/406206north_news11-09-05.htm
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Lab Expected to Get New Plutonium Unit
By John Arnold and John Fleck
Journal Staff Writers

A project to replace one of Los Alamos National Laboratory's largest and oldest buildings -- an aging nuclear research facility with a history of safety problems -- would receive its largest chunk of funding to date under a new Department of Energy spending plan.
A $30.5 billion Energy and Water Appropriations bill hammered out by House and Senate negotiators Monday includes $55 million for construction of a new Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Facility.
The existing 550,000-square-foot building, located in the lab's Technical Area-3, dates back to the early 1950s and is used to test and analyze plutonium and other nuclear materials. But safety problems, including a 1996 explosion, have plagued the facility over the last decade, and lab officials say it's been expensive to upgrade and maintain.
Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said the new building will be more efficient, more secure and much smaller -- about half the size of the current building.
"Really, the driver (for the new facility) was we don't need as much space. We need a facility that's cheaper to maintain, and we need a facility that's located inside an existing security perimeter," Roark said.
The new facility, to be located with other plutonium facilities in Technical Area-55, will cost an estimated $838 million, according to Sen. Pete Domenici's office. In addition to this year's pending appropriation, Domenici, R-N.M., helped secure $40 million for the project last year and $10 million the previous year.
The project is moving forward over objections from lab watchdogs, who contend the new building is not needed and that it's part of a larger strategy to increase weapons manufacturing at the laboratory.
"We shouldn't build more plutonium space," said Los Alamos Study Group executive director Greg Mello. "The additional floor space is only needed because of the desire to design new weapons, to manufacture new weapons and probably also to do research and development of novel nuclear fuels (for civilian nuclear power). We're opposed to all three of those missions. If you take away those missions you take away the need for the facility."
In addition to CMR facility funding, the DOE spending measure also includes language likely to expand nuclear weapons plutonium manufacturing at Los Alamos.
The lab is currently working on a production line to manufacture small numbers of plutonium "pits" -- the radioactive cores of nuclear weapons. Current plans call for production of 10 such pits per year in 2008. The budget approved by negotiators Monday includes several directives that could expand that work substantially in the future.
The United States has not had a large-scale plutonium factory since the Rocky Flats Plant outside Denver shut down in 1989. Los Alamos has long been seen as an interim manufacturing site while DOE develops plans for a large new factory. But the 2006 budget approved by House and Senate negotiators this week cuts all money for that new factory, while directing the National Nuclear Security Administration "to undertake a review of the pit program to focus on improving the manufacturing capability at TA-55."
Domenici said that the CMR project is not directly tied to pit manufacturing.
"However, as long as the pit manufacturing mission remains at LANL, the more important the (CMR) facility is. It performs the analytical experiments on pits and other special nuclear material," he said in a written statement.
Work will begin on the CMR building's first phase -- a radiological laboratory -- early next year, Roark said.
The Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, which funds DOE, includes $6.43 billion for nuclear weapons spending. That's a 1.6 percent increase for the coming fiscal year.
The House approved the measure Tuesday. It now requires Senate approval and the president's signature.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005
DOE funding hammered out
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

House and Senate conferees split the $1.5 billion difference between their respective energy and water appropriations bills, they reported Monday. The House went up $748 million to reach agreement on the $30.5 billion measure; the Senate came down $750 million.

"There were significant differences between the House and Senate on this bill, but I believe we have come up with a package that will maintain key lab missions without personnel or facility disruptions," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM, chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee.

"I want to be clear that our increased investments in science, nonproliferation, nuclear energy and the like will keep our labs strong. And when you consider the Homeland Security funding going to our labs, we are in good shape," he said.

The House-passed cuts and Senate-approved increases revealed fundamental differences in the two bodies' approaches to funding the Department of Energy, which was cut by $179 million overall to reach the $24.3 billion recommended.

The two houses of Congress must now endorse the agreement, before it is forwarded to the President for approval.

"I am very pleased with the energy and water conference bill," said Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Robert Kuckuck in a prepared statement. "Sen. Domenici has once again helped secure the laboratory's position as a world leader in national security, science and technology."

Key projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory met with mixed results.

One winner, as expected: Environmental Cleanup at the laboratory will increase significantly, from about $80 million last year to $142.2 million in FY2006.

Noting its importance to maintaining scientific integrity at the national laboratories, Domenici said the conferees had agreed to his effort to raise the Lab Directed Research and Development level from 6 percent up to 8 percent. This key item supports a variety of independent scientific projects, fosters recruitment and enables collaborations with many other institutions.

Another installment in developing the proposed Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility was fully funded at $55 million.

"It is obvious that as federal budgets continue to constrict, that we will be faced with more difficult choices on the direction of the labs and some projects related to ensuring the safety, reliability and future of our stockpile," Domenici said. "In that light, we've built in a number of reforms and directives to force DOE to take a critical look at projects like Yucca Mountain, DARHT, pit production and other ongoing projects."

While the bill denies funding once again for construction of a modern pit facility, it instructs NNSA to improve the existing manufacturing capability at LANL, a move that nudges the laboratory closer to assuming a major long-term responsibility in that area.

LANL's Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility won its budget request of $27 million, but the bill calls for an independent study by the JASONS research group, to see if the unfinished second axis is on budget and capable of providing its expected function.

Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, said he believes the hard decisions have been postponed for next year.

"Sen. Domenici has succeeded in getting money to Los Alamos, but a price has been paid in overall coherence," he said. "Horsetrading has resulted in a fragmented approach to the program."

In the broader weapons community, the bill restores full funding for Lawrence Livermore's National Ignition Facility, which Domenici had tried to cut. Domenici expressed his continuing doubts that the facility would meet future milestones.

The bill also continued the declining fortunes of Yucca Mountain, now dipping to $500 million for the year, but including a $50 million fund to reduce the spent fuel bound for the repository by setting up a recycling plan and campaign to find local governmental entities who want to volunteer to accept a reprocessing facility.

Despite the apparent resolution of budget uncertainties, LANL will continue to scrutinize its hiring activities through the current contract, which expires May 31.

"The council will closely review and consider each proposed hiring action to insure that priority is given to hiring positions that are crucial to mission and science capabilities, safety and compliance needs and internal efficiencies," said James Rickman, a laboratory spokesman. "The hiring council will help insure that the lab maintains a stable workforce and a sound fiscal profile from now through the transition to a new prime contract."

Also included in the bill, another $5 million will go to Los Alamos County to stabilize the airport landfill and $500,000 has been earmarked for Manhattan Project site preservation.

From the Energy and Water Conference Report approved Monday November 7, 2005, at http://www.rules.house.gov/109/specialrules/109rulehr2419confrept.htm --

Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).--The conferees have provided $25,000,000 for the RRW program. The conferees expect that the laboratories and plants will also utilize the existing resources in the Directed Stockpile, Campaigns, and Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities accounts where applicable to further the RRW design options to support a Nuclear Weapons Council determination in November 2006. The conferees reiterate the direction provided in fiscal year 2005 that any weapon design work done under the RRW program must stay within the military requirements of the existing deployed stockpile and any new weapon design must stay within the design parameters validated by past nuclear tests. The conferees expect the NNSA to build on the success of science-based stockpile stewardship to improve manufacturing practices, lower costs and increase performance margins, to support the Administration's decision to significantly reduce the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

------

For the pit manufacturing and certification campaign, the conference agreement provides $241,074,000. The conference agreement provides $120,926,000 for W88 pit manufacturing and $61,895,000 for W88 pit certification, the same as the budget request. The conference agreement provides $23,071,000 for Pit Manufacturing Capability and $35,182,000 for Pit campaign support at the Nevada Test Site. The conference agreement provides no funding for the modern pit facility. The conferees direct the Administrator of the NNSA to undertake a review of the pit program to focus on improving the manufacturing capability at TA-55. The conferees also direct the Department to develop a report as to how the NNSA intends to address the radiological mission and security needs of category III/IV material currently housed at TA-18 at Los Alamos. This report shall be provided to the Committees on Appropriations by February 1, 2006.

..........

The conferees provide $39,700,000 for Space and Defense Infrastructure. This includes the requested amounts to operate radioisotope power systems at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), maintain iridium capabilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and maintain and operate the Pu-238 mission at Los Alamos. The conferees recognize the need to free up floor space in TA-55 for pit production, and direct the Department to develop a strategy to relocate expeditiously the mission for Pu-238 processing from Los Alamos to INL. The conferees provide an increase of $8,500,000 for INL to plan and build the capability to assume the Pu-238 mission, so there is no gap in capability during the mission transfer. The conferees direct the Department to provide a mid-year report by March 31, 2006, on the transfer strategy and associated costs.

-- 
Greg Mello
Los Alamos Study Group
2901 Summit Place NE
Albuquerque, NM 87106
505-265-1200 voice
505-265-1207 fax
505-577-8563 cell 
    (signal very weak in the office; messages
    on cell phone may not be received promptly)
gmello@lasg.org
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