Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
12/5/2014
The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation is moving forward with a reorganization that would consolidate its sub-programs into four offices to reduce overlap between the programs and better align its efforts, NNSA nonproliferation chief Anne Harrington said at an all-hands meeting Dec. 2. Under the reorganization, the program’s work would be broken up into four offices: an Office of Global Material Security, an Office of Material Management and Minimization, an Office of DNN Research and Development, and an Office of Nonproliferation and Arms Control.
The offices of Nonproliferation Research and Development and Nonproliferation and Arms Control have been around for decades and are largely unchanged in the reorganization, but the offices of Global Material Security and Material Management and Minimization, dubbed M3 or M-cubed, represent a major shift in how the agency’s nonproliferation work is aligned. “By organizing DNN functionally and creating synergy among like sub-programs, the DNN management team is confident that the realignment will better position DNN to meet current, enduring, and evolving threats, and allow DNN to allocate resources more effectively to address the full spectrum of nuclear security challenges,” Harrington said in a Dec. 1 message to employees obtained by NS&D Monitor.
Harrington said she has been asked by NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz to implement the reorganization by Jan. 1. At the same time, the NNSA’s nonproliferation work is also planning to change offices, moving its physical location from its current L’Enfant Plaza digs to a new home at The Portals, a new office building nearby in Southwest Washington, D.C.
NNSA Nonproliferation Office ‘Grew Up Really Piecemeal’
NNSA nonproliferation work is at a crossroads, with the President’s four-year goal to lockdown vulnerable nuclear material around the world ending, the scope of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program changing, and the Office of Fissile Materials Disposition undergoing a review of alternatives to the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. Though funding for the program has decreased in recent years, the agency is still expecting to play a major role in the Obama Administration’s nuclear security agenda. But because the nonproliferation account grew quickly as the importance of its mission increased over the last two decades, there was never a broad strategy for how the office could be organized in the most effective and efficient manner, Harrington said. “This organization grew up really piecemeal,” Harrington told NS&D Monitor late this week, noting that multiple offices had aspects of HEU downblending and physical protection work.
For instance, three separate offices were given some level of responsibility over physical protection upgrades as the nonproliferation mission grew, with the Global Threat Reduction Initiative in charge of upgrading civilian research reactor sites, the Office of International Materials Protection and Cooperation oversees upgrades at sites holding nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear material, and the Office of Nonproliferation and International Security carries out audits of physical protection work. “We had multiple offices doing very similar things,” Harrington said. “We really tore down the organization component by component to see where we could increase our efficiency and increase the synergy among the members of our incredibly talented staff.”
The Office of Global Material Security will be headed up by Assistant Deputy Administrator Art Atkins and will include international nuclear security, radiological security and nuclear smuggling detection and deterrence, while Assistant Deputy Administrator Pete Hanlon will head up the Office of Material Management and Minimization. Hanlon previously headed up the Office of Fissile Materials Disposition, which included the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, but the new office will include nonproliferation construction/program analysis, HEU reactor conversion, nuclear material removal, and material disposition.
The two new offices encompass parts of one of the agency’s most successful programs, the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which was a major part of the President’s four-year effort to lockdown vulnerable material around the globe. The HEU reactor conversion portion of GTRI work will reside in the Office of Material Management and Minimization, while the nuclear and radiological material removal and protection portion of its work will be overseen by the Office of Global Material Security.
Rhys Williams will remain the assistant deputy administrator for Nonproliferation Research & Development, while Kasia Mendelsohn will be the assistant deputy administrator for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, the program’s policy arm. “While we have had many major successes, the nature of threats and those who threaten us is changing and this realignment will allow us to keep pace with those changes,” Harrington said in the message to employees.
