House Democrats opted not to fall on their swords this week to slow the ongoing nuclear arsenal modernization program, when they overwhelmingly supported passage of a National Defense Authorization Act that approves just about all the Department of Energy weapons spending requests for fiscal 2020.
That means that through the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year, at least, DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is authorized to spend as spend as planned on a bevy of infrastructure upgrades and weapons refurbishments — provided Congress next appropriates the authorized funds.
Notably, the congressional compromise NDAA authorizes the requested funding for the agency’s two-state plutonium-pit production complex, the early stages of a program to build W87-1 warheads for planned intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the under-construction Uranium Processing Facility.
What concessions House Democrats did win from Republicans were unrelated to civilian defense-nuclear programs, unless it could be said Democrats were willing to trade preferred nuclear policies for parental leave for military personnel — the biggest policy pearl they pried out of the negotiations — and a chance to get the NDAA out of Congress before the House sends articles of impeachment on President Donald Trump to the Senate.
So, on Wednesday, the House approved the NDAA by a vote of 377-48. “No” votes came from 41 Democrats, six Republicans, and independent Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.). The $738 billion bill authorizes $16.5 billion in spending for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as requested for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. That compares to the roughly $15.8 billion the House authorized in July in its version of the annual military policy and spending limits bill. The Senate passed its NDAA, authorizing requested funding, in May.
Despite some points of contention, the House and Senate NDAAs were more similar than not. For example, the compromise NDAA, like the individual chambers’ bills, authorizes the NNSA to continue shutting down construction of the canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., and begin work to transition the site into a plant for production of fissile nuclear-weapon cores.
The bill also would clear the NNSA to continue working on the MFFF’s replacement, the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project: an effort to chemically weaken and permanently bury underground 34 metric tons of surplus defense plutonium that was once slated to be turned into commercial reactor fuel in the canceled facility.
Among the NNSA spending the 2020 NDAA would authorize:
- More than $710 million in spending for Plutonium Sustainment at Savannah River and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico: the same amount requested, and about $240 million above what House Democrats wanted to authorize. Democrats wanted to deny funding for the South Carolina pit plant.
- More than $110 million for the early stages of the W87-1 warhead life extension program, rather than the $50 million or so the House wanted to authorize. Democrats, seeking to cut military spending, had targeted the intercontinental ballistic missile leg of the nuclear triad for broad reductions. The W87-1 is planned to tip the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent missiles intended to replace the current Minuteman III fleet.
- $745 million for the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The House and Senate NDAAs agreed on the authorization, but House appropriators have proposed keeping funds for the Bechtel-built, next-generation uranium hub flat at about $700 million in 2020.
- $220 million to continue closing down construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, plus $79 million for its replacement, Surplus Plutonium Disposition.
The compromise bill also makes it the law for the NNSA’s planned pit complex, however it ultimately comes together, to produce 80 pits a year by 2030.
The NNSA wants to upgrade Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Plutonium Facility to make 10 pits per year in 2024, ramping up to 30 pits annually by 2030. The planned Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, to be built from the remains of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, would provide the other 50 a year by 2030: a goal the NNSA has said it will be “challenged” to meet, and which an NNSA-funded assessment last year said was unlikely.
Media reported Friday that congressional appropriators were close to a deal that would fund the government for the remainder of fiscal 2020, without merely extending 2019 budgets as Congress and the White House have done under two short-term continuing resolutions. The current stopgap measure runs out Dec. 20.
House Democrats, in their version of the 2020 DOE-funding Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, proposed the same levels of funding for Plutonium Sustainment, the Uranium Processing Facility, and the W87-1 warhead that they proposed in their version of the NDAA. The Senate bill provided more than the requested, and now authorized, funding for these programs. If the NDAA becomes law, the Senate will be neogitating for the requested level of funding.
The GOP-led Senate has signaled it will vote on the 2020 NDAA on Monday. President Donald Trump has said he will sign the bill.
