The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nuclear weapons dismantlement activities may offer additional benefits – in addition to nonproliferation and arms control – that involve the nuclear enterprise workforce, according to NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz. The NNSA’s fiscal 2017 budget request includes $69 million to meet Secretary of State John Kerry’s commitment announced last year that the U.S. would accelerate retired nuclear warhead dismantlement operations by 20 percent. Under the current plan, the U.S. aims to dismantle weapons retired before fiscal 2009 by fiscal 2022. However, the increased fiscal 2017 budget request seeks to increase dismantlement quantities to meet its goal one year earlier, in fiscal 2021. This request, $17 million above the fiscal 2016 enacted amount, will allow NNSA sites that host dismantlement work to hire more staff, Klotz said at a House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee hearing Tuesday on his agency’s budget.
“We estimate that we will need to hire between 35 to 40 people at Pantex to do this increased workload. We’ll also need to hire an additional 10 people, we estimate, at Y-12 to do this work,” Klotz said, referring to the Pantex Plant in Texas and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee. Once recruited, “if the need arises elsewhere at Pantex or at Y-12 for other work that we do . . . then those individuals would be ideally suited,” Klotz said. He noted that boosting the workforce to meet weapons dismantlement goals would also serve the purpose of “starting to build that next generation of workforce” at both sites.
