The fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act contained few surprises for Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs, but final negotiations between the House and Senate this week did settle a few Capitol Hill disputes over more granular matters at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
First, the final NDAA does not gate any travel funds for the NNSA administrator. The House proposed limiting the administrator’s travel budget until the NNSA turned in a briefing required by the 2023 NDAA and a report required by the 2022 NDAA.
The report on the 2024 bill says the NNSA “has submitted the necessary material referred to in the House provision. However, the conferees remain concerned that NNSA’s management and operating contract construct is not optimized” in the way the agency itself proposed in a 2022 report, Evolving the Nuclear Security Enterprise.
The conferees also said they “expect the Administration for Nuclear Security to keep the congressional defense committees fully informed about the Pantex Plant [management and operations] contract,” competition for which is ongoing. There were once four reported bidders, sources have told Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, though with Amentum and Jacobs set to move, the field was effectively winnowed to three.
Meanwhile, the compromise NDAA unveiled this week also killed a Senate proposal that would have required the NNSA “to establish a supply chain reliability assurance program” with the Defense Department and industry.
The unified bill also dispenses with a House proposal to require another NNSA-chartered independent report about plutonium pit aging. Instead, the final 2024 NDAA urges the agency to hire the JASON group of scientists, which is now funded by the NNSA, to complete a pit-aging report by 2030, as required by last year’s defense authorization act.
