The fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorizes Congress to give the National Nuclear Security Administration even more money than President Donald Trump requested, while also bucking the commander in chief on a couple big nuclear programs.
The latest NDAA, which emerged from a bicameral conference committee Wednesday afternoon, would allow congressional appropriators to fund the Department of Energy’s semiautonomous nuclear stockpile steward at just over $14 billion. The White House sought just under that amount. The split is about $170 million.
The bill authorizes $58 million to research and develop capabilities that could allow the United States to acquire a new ground-launched cruise missile that could operate in the range prohibited by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty: a major nuclear-arms pact the U.S. says Russia has violated by testing and deploying a short-range cruise missile.
The White House did not request such funding as part of the 2018 budget request delivered to Capitol Hill in May, and objected to the missile measure in a statement of policy released over the summer.
In the nearly 2,500-page NDAA conference report released Thursday, lawmakers noted that the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty “prohibits testing and deployment of ground-launched intermediate-range missile systems, but it does not prohibit research and development.”
In another unasked-for authorization, this year’s NDAA supports development of a new “conventional road-mobile ground-launched cruise missile system,” according to the bill report.
Authorization bills are policy guidelines for congressional appropriations committees that actually set annual budgets for federal agencies, including the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. The dollar amounts in authorization bills are generally viewed as caps, not floors.
Meanwhile, the 2018 defense authorization also skirts the White House’s plan to cancel the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction by contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
The NDAA authorizes $340 million to construct MOX, which is $70 million more than the White House requested in May to start closing down the facility. The bill would allow the Department of Energy to cancel MOX under certain conditions.
The Trump administration, like its predecessor, wants to cancel the MOX plant, which is designed to turn 34 metric tons of surplus, weapon-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. Over the summer, when draft NDAA bills in the House and Senate authorized funding for MOX, the White House issued a statement of administration policy reiterating the president’s desire to pursue an alternative disposal method for the plutonium DOE says is both cheaper and faster.
The unified 2018 NDAA would permit MOX closure only if the Department of Energy:
- Removes all the plutonium from South Carolina that MOX was supposed to process.
- Certifies a “sustainable future” for the Savannah River Site.
- Certifies that an alternative to MOX exists.
- Certifies that any alternative would cost “less than approximately half of the estimated remaining lifecycle cost of the mixed-oxide fuel program.”
Two of those four conditions were unmet Friday at deadline for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
First, while DOE has proposed at least one alternative, it would take an act of Congress — and a lot of construction — to make it a reality.
In 2015, the Barack Obama administration said the agency could abandon MOX and instead dilute the plutonium MOX is supposed to treat at another Savannah River Site facility. The department would then mix the downblended material with concrete-like grout, and bury the mixture deep underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
However, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is not currently large enough to handle the entire volume of plutonium-contaminated waste from the so-called dilute-and-dispose approach. Congress would have to change federal law to allow for that expansion, and New Mexico’s senior U.S. senator, Tom Udall (D), has said publicly he is not yet ready to support any new nuclear-waste mission in his home state.
The Trump administration, so far, has gone along with its predecessor’s plan for MOX.
As for certifying that an alternative would cost less than half the remaining MOX bill, there is presently no apples-to-apples comparison of the expenses of either MOX or the Department of Energy’s proposed alternative.
The Department of Energy says MOX will cost $51 billion over its lifetime, or three times more than originally estimated when construction began in 2007. The agency has already spent $5 billion on the project and estimates the alternate dilute-and-dispose approach would cost $17 billion over its lifetime. On the other hand, a 2016 report commissioned by CB&I AREVA MOX Services claims MOX would cost about $20 billion while dilute-and-dispose would cost $40 billion.
Meanwhile, the 2018 NDAA would provide some relief for about 1,200 National Nuclear Security Administration employees in New Mexico. The bill would authorize Congress to appropriate $98 million for a new office building in Albuquerque. That is in line with the administration’s 2018 request.
The Department of Energy estimates the proposed three-story, 330,000 square-foot office space would cost between $100 million and $250 million. The $98-million figure the latest NDAA would authorize is a bit of a come-down from the $175 million the Senate’s version of this year’s NDAA proposed.
On the appropriations side, however, Congress is divided about the new Albuquerque office space.
A Department of Energy spending bill approved by the full House in July would provide only $18 million for the new Albuquerque building, and stipulates that “[n]one of the project funds may be available for construction until the NNSA can provide a design for new office space that will meet program mandates to reduce the footprint and achieve operating savings.”
The House and Senate must now vote to approve the reconciled NDAA. If approved, the measure would head to the president’s desk. The White House had not issued a statement of administration policy about the 2018 NDAA at press time for NS&D Monitor.
