The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Stockpile Stewardship Program received a strong vote of confidence from the National Academy of Sciences panel analyzing technical issues facing the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, but committee members continued to register concern about the future of the program. Speaking at a report briefing Friday, study chair Ellen Williams suggested that political considerations could endanger the program, and Senate ratification of the treaty. “The ability to basically reset the timeclock on these nuclear weapons classes has been demonstrated under the Stockpile Stewardship Program and that demonstrates the technical capabilities that have been accomplished,” Williams said. “However, the technical advances that have been demonstrated under the Stockpile Stewardship Program can only be maintained if there is political will to provide the support and continuity needed in order to maintain our technical capabilities.”
Because the committee’s report has been in security review for nearly a year (the classified version of the study was completed 12 months ago), the panel went no further in defining the ‘political will’ or budget support needed for the NNSA’s weapons program, but it’s not likely that the lesser-than-previously-projected Fiscal Year 2013 budget request would have been warmly received by the committee. In particular, the committee specified in its report that the U.S. maintain a plutonium “science and production facility,” but the Administration earlier this year deferred construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility because of budgetary pressure. “When you cut resources you do fewer things and therefore you accept more risk,” former NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks, a member of the study panel, acknowledged.
