Senate Appropriators Suggest Hard Decisions Await NNSA Budget Request
Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
3/13/2015
National Nuclear Security Administration chief Frank Klotz told Senate appropriators this week that the Uranium Processing Facility planned for the Y-12 National Security Complex was on track to be completed by 2025 within a $6.5 billion budget cap. Testifying before the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, Klotz was pressed about UPF—and NNSA’s two other major capital projects, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and a project to maintain Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium capabilities—from two of the most concerned appropriators: committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “It’s still our intent to be on track to have this work done and be out of Building 9212, which as you know is the oldest facility that we have there, by 2025 at a cap of $6.5 billion,” Klotz said.
Klotz said the NNSA will reach the 90 percent design completion point in Fiscal Year 2017, and won’t begin construction until that point. Before it changed course on the design of the project, the agency expected to reach the 90 percent design point in October of 2015. The NNSA celebrated the completion of site preparation work today, and a project to establish site infrastructure and services is expected to begin soon and wrap up in the spring of 2018, Klotz said.
Alexander Applauds Accountability
Alexander said he was pleased with the NNSA’s progress on the project, which includes a significant change last year to a modular approach to the project. Under the new plan, three facilities will be built rather than one “big box” building. The NNSA has also put into place a new Uranium Program Manager to consolidate responsibility for uranium matters across the complex, including UPF. “I like the idea that there seems to be now a clear accountability—someone is on the flagpole for meeting the goals we have,” Alexander said, later adding: “I’m encouraged based on where we were two to three years ago in terms of big projects.”
Feinstein applauded the NNSA’s move away from larger facilities and efforts to strengthen project management across the complex, but she said she was still concerned about the project. “I view these all as very positive steps but a lot of uncertainty remains,” she said, noting that the costs for the UPF project and the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement project at Los Alamos haven’t been determined. “I hope we can have some meetings when these costs are known so we can take a look at them and see how we are going to handle them in future years,” she said.
Hard Decisions Await Appropriators on NNSA Budget
Alexander, however, acknowledged that NNSA’s overall budget request, which represented a $1.2 billion increase from FY 2015 levels, could face heavy scrutiny given the threat that sequestration could return in FY 2016. The Obama Administration ignored budget caps when submitting its FY 2016 budget, requesting about $38 billion more for defense activities. “Governing is about setting priorities, and we are going to have to make some hard decisions this year to make sure the highest priorities are funded,” Alexander said in his prepared remarks, citing major infrastructure projects like UPF, warhead life extension work, and the Naval Reactors account as his top three priorities.
Feinstein said she was concerned that the massive increase for the agency “really portends some danger for the nuclear program,” citing Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost to maintain and modernize U.S. nuclear forces from FY 2015 to FY 2024 would be $348 billion. Nuclear Weapons Council Chairman Frank Kendall, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, also said last week at a Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing, that starting in 2021 the cost of modernizing the nuclear forces would begin to become difficult to afford. “We have to come to grips with that and as a team hopefully be able to make some decisions which can understand that we don’t know where we’re going to be financially at that time,” Feinstein said.
‘Why Do We Need a New Nuclear Cruise Missile?’
Feinstein was most concerned about the Administration’s plans to move forward with a replacement for the air-launched cruise missile. The plan, known as the Long-Range Standoff weapon, would use a refurbished W80 warhead, and the NNSA requested $195 million for the program in FY 2016, a $186 million increase over FY 2015 enacted levels. “Why do we need a new nuclear cruise missile?” Feinstein asked. “… The total cost runs $7 to $10 billion and I know of no compelling case.” When Feinstein was the chairman of the panel last year, it sought to zero out the $9 million request for a study on the cruise missile warhead, though that funding was restored in the final FY 2015 omnibus appropriations act.
Klotz noted that military leaders have said the existing air-launched cruise missile is beginning to show its age. He also said air defenses around the world have become increasingly sophisticated, and the LRSO would help the B52 bomber remain a useful part of the nation’s nuclear deterrent.
MOX Gets Attention of Feinstein
The Administration requested $430 million in FY 2016 for work on UPF, and $345 million as a placeholder for the controversial MOX project while a pair of reviews of alternatives are conducted. MOX, which the Administration tried to put in cold standby last year before Congress demanded construction would continue, got the attention of Feinstein, who said plutonium disposition was a worthy effort but worried about the “enormous” cost of the project. “I don’t want to see us look back on this as we have looked back on other projects and say $600 million has been wasted,” she said. “I think it’s really a hard problem for you all.”
Congress directed the NNSA to prepare the two reports on alternatives to MOX, and Klotz said the first report, which will analyze two options—continuing with MOX and diluting the plutonium and disposing of it—is expected to be completed in mid-April. A second report is expected in September, he said. “As we build the budget request for Fiscal Year 2017, we will continue the process of dialoguing with Congress on the way forward and we’ll have greater fidelity in terms of the out-year funding as it relates to MOX,” Klotz said.
While the $345 million requested for the project is not widely viewed as the optimal funding level for the project—Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told Congress last month that $200 million more a year would be the ideal funding for the project—NNSA nonproliferation chief Anne Harrington said the $345 million would allow consistency for the project. “The up and down cycles of funding are very disruptive to these types of projects,” Harrington said. “They make them very difficult to manage. They make them almost impossible to plan in a rationale way, which is why we chose the $345 million number. It would provide consistency across several years, predictability in terms of the scope of construction that could be achieved during that period.”
