House appropriators have finally signed off on the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plutonium reprogramming request, but the agency isn’t getting all of the money it wanted. In a letter sent to Department of Energy Deputy Chief Financial Officer Alison Doone late last week, Reps. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio)—the chairman and ranking member on the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee—approved $43.3 million of the NNSA’s request to reprogram $120 million from the deferred Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility to other work at Los Alamos National Laboratory on establishing an alternate plutonium capability.
But while the Sept. 18 letter, which was sent to DOE late on Sept. 19, ends a year-long wait for Congressional approval of the reprogramming request, it’s unclear how much Los Alamos can do with the funds. Frelinghuysen and Kaptur said the money can be used for planning and pre-conceptual design work on an alternate plutonium strategy as well as to relocate equipment from the existing Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility and to achieve operational readiness of LANL’s Radiological Laboratory Utility Office Building. The appropriators said the money can’t be used to “perform construction activities, including reconfiguring PF-4 to meet enduring plutonium infrastructure requirements.” Frelinghuysen and Kaptur said NNSA should request work needed to upgrade the lab’s Plutonium Facility as a new line-item construction project.
