Kim Budil will become the 13th director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California on March 2, the younger of the two U.S. nuclear-weapons design laboratories announced Thursday.
Budil was mostly recently Livermore’s director of weapons complex and integration, responsible for the lab’s major weapon refurbishments, including the W80-4 air-launched cruise-missile warhead and the W87-1 intercontinental ballistic missile warhead.
Budil, who will be the first woman to run Livermore in the lab’s nearly 70-year history, will replace William Goldstein, who last year announced he would retire after six years as director and 36 years at the Bay Area lab.
The board of directors for Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS), the lab’s management and operations contractor, conducted a roughly six-month, nationwide job search that winnowed a field of 100 or so candidates down to five finalists — one of whom declined to interview for the job — before unanimously settling on Budil, said Charlene Zettel, chair of Lawrence Livermore National Security, and a University of California regent.
“We reached out to a number of diverse organizations as well because we wanted to make a statement about diversity and inclusion and our determination to make sure that we were reaching out to everyone and providing opportunity,” Zettel said during a media availability Thursday. “We spent two full mornings on video conferencing with all elements of the lab, managers and workforce, the scientists, early scientists, late scientists, support personnel, to make sure we had developed a profile of all the requisite characteristics of an excellent director.”
Budil rejoined Livermore in 2019, filling the post vacated by Charles Verdon, who left the lab in 2018 to become deputy administrator for defense programs at National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) headquarters in Washington. Verdon is now the acting NNSA administrator and the sole Donald Trump appointee left at the semi-autonomous DOE nuclear-weapons agency.
Before her most recent stint at Livermore, Budil had been vice president for national laboratories in the University of California’s office of the president since 2014. University of California has run both Livermore and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in some fashion practically since the labs’ inceptions. Before the University of California president’s office, Budil had been program manager of the nuclear counterterrorism program in Livermore’s Global Security Directorate.
Budil’s first stint at the California lab started in 1987 in Laser Programs. She has a Ph.D. in engineering/applied science from the University of California.
Lawrence Livermore National Security, a partnership led by the University of California and Bechtel National, manages the Livermore lab under a roughly $2-billion-a-year contract awarded in 2007. The NNSA has one more option on the pact, which if exercised next year would stretch the deal out through fiscal year 2026, which runs through Sept. 30, 2025.
That’s the same year Livermore is supposed to finish the proof-of-concept first production unit of the W80-4, the warhead for the Long Range Standoff Weapon cruise missile Raytheon is building for the Air Force.
With Budil at the tiller and the lab operations contractor a lock at least through that milestone, Livermore finds itself on relatively stable footing at a time when its biggest contributions so far to the 30-year nuclear modernization cycle started by the Barack Obama administration are less than a decade from the NNSA’s production pipeline.
The Long Range Standoff Weapon is supposed to be ready for military use around 2030, as is the next-generation land-based intercontinental ballistic missile, the Northrop-built Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD).
Livermore’s W87-0, one of the warheads from the legacy Minuteman III missiles GBSD will replace, “will be the initial operational capability on the new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent,” Budil said. That warhead will be adapted for GBSD during flight tests that could begin in 2023 or so, the Air Force has said.
Later GBSD missiles will use the Livermore-designed W87-1, essentially a freshly built copy of the existing W87 design, but with brand new pits and some new components. The W87-1 and pit schedules are tight at the NNSA, which estimates a 2030 first production unit for the warhead. The Los Alamos National Laboratory, meanwhile, expects to start casting pits suitable for the weapon in 2024.
All three of these intimately intertwined programs will want an advocate in Washington, D.C., where after the tumult of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment and the building of President Joe Biden’s cabinet, a united Democratic government will turn its eye to the 2022 budget — which may again include debate about slowing down the modernization of the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile fleet.
Budil will be one of the chief defenders of Livermore’s role in those programs, when and if the debate begins again.
“It’s very important with new people coming in, the new administration, new staff appearing, new folks in the Congress to offer them the opportunity to learn what we do and the kind of capabilities we have and help answer their questions,” Budil said.
Editor’s note: Budil spokes to media over video chat Thursday, along with other senior members of Lawrence Livermore National Security and the University of California System. Below are transcribed remarks, edited for brevity, from that media availability.
Kim Budil, incoming director for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
On Livermore’s nuclear-weapons work.
[LLNL has the B-83 megaton-capable gravity bomb, the W80-1 air-launched cruise missile warhead and the W87-0 intercontinental ballistic missile warhead] W87-0 … flies on the Minuteman III. It will be the initial operational capability on the new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent. We’re hard at work with our partners on the Air Force preparing for that transition and getting integrated into their programs.
Air Force platform acquisitions and NNSA warhead programs are going in parallel. We haven’t had this much activity or this kind of integrated responsibility for three decades really, and so it’s been a very existing time.
The 80-4 and the 87-1, we feel this is an incredible opportunity not just for Lawrence Livermore, where we’re the design agent for the nuclear explosive package, but for the whole enterprise. The enterprise is hard at work trying to stand up modern and efficient production capabilities and we are using these modernization programs to help bring these capabilities online.
On working with Los Alamos National Laboratory on plutonium pits.
I look at the partnership that we forge with Los Alamos in pit production as one of the great successes of the recent period. We have a product realization team. As the design agency, we chair that. We have to oversee and assess the quality and effectiveness of the processes they’re using.
Los Alamos has done really quite an extraordinary job keeping PF4 up and operating during the pandemic. All of us have been deeply challenged during this period and the workforce has just been incredibly resilient in the face of these challenges. They’re making really good progress. We have reimagined how to get from concept through to first production unit in really important ways to keep that program on track.
By far the most important responsibility we have is the development and advancement of our workforce and the incredible science, technology and engineering capabilities here at the lab.
On the role of basic science at Livermore.
When I look at Livermore I see really two twin pillars, where we really not only have a leadership role, but in some sense invented the field. So in inertial confinement fusion, in high energy density science, we have the National Ignition Facility, the largest, most powerful laser in the world, and that gives us the opportunity to do work from understanding the interiors of giant planets, understanding the mechanisms that drive supernova explosions and testing our knowledge of the operating conditions of nuclear weapons. It’s an extraordinary experimental facility, providing really incredible game changing science and direct support to our core missions.
Computing is the other pillar, and when we were founded in 1952 the very first thing this lab bought was a computer, so this is not a new endeavor for us, this is really in our DNA, deeply in our DNA. And over the course of the stockpile stewardship era, Livermore researchers in that area really led the revolution in computing that has been wrought here. Technically, with our partners across the NNSA lab complex, Sandia and Los Alamos, but also in coming up with innovative ways to help make sure we can take best advantages of the advances that are made in industry and make sure we always have the kind of capabilities we need to do our important work. Most recently, those computers have been turned to studying COVID, both to understand the virus, but also to help develop therapeutics and responses to the virus.
Many people don’t know, but another area where Livermore excels is global climate modeling. The very first global circulation models were developed here, at Lawrence Livermore, building off expertise, actually, that came off the weapons program. So that relationship between basic science and mission-oriented science is critical. That’s how we stay at the leading edge, that’s how we attract the very best people, that’s how we demonstrate to the world that we really are capable of responding to whatever challenges the nation brings our way.
On going to Washington, D.C., virtually or in person.
Our strategy is all of the above. I’ve been in Washington, D.C., not frequently, but a couple of times for important meetings, I’ve done a number of WebEx’s and classified video teleconferences with our colleagues on the Hill. It’s very important with new people coming in, the new administration, new staff appearing, new folks in the Congress to offer them the opportunity to learn what we do and the kind of capabilities we have and help answer their questions.
We’re very lucky this year [fiscal year 2021] that we have our budget, we’re very excited about that, so we’ve been going great guns on site, but it’s going to be critically important to engage with the new teams coming in and help them be successful.
Charlene Zettel, chair of Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS), and a University of California regent
On the search for a new director that ended with Budil.
It was a very broad search. It began about six months ago when director Goldstein announced his retirement and we reached out to publications throughout the nation, we reached out to other labs, we reached out to scientific communities and we reached out to a number of diverse organizations as well because we wanted to make a statement about diversity and inclusion and our determination to make sure that we were reaching out to everyone and providing opportunity.
I think over 100 different names were considered, and there were many nominations. But ultimately, our screening task force … reviewed through at least 38 different resumes and backgrounds, biological backgrounds and research on these candidates. But they settled on 11 people that they wanted the search committee to focus on. And we did that.
Prior to all that, we spent two full mornings on video conferencing with all elements of the lab, managers and workforce, the scientists, early [career] scientists, late [career] scientists, support personnel, to make sure we had developed a profile of all the requisite characteristics of an excellent director to take this lab into fulfilling its mission into the future for national security.
So we eventually interviewed four people, we extended five invitations, and we reached a unanimous decision on Dr. Budil who, as I said, is the first woman to be a leader of this national laboratory, the 13th director.
