When Congress returns to work next week, lawmakers will once again find themselves barreling toward another fiscal cliff with federal funding set to expire in just a matter of days without some kind of compromise.
The federal government is operating on its fourth short-term budget since fiscal 2018 started on Oct. 1 of last year. Reports Thursday suggested Congress is eyeing another stopgap measure to keep the lights on into March.
Under the current continuing resolution, and any other to come, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) can continue many projects, including some $1 billion worth of life-extension programs: updates that will allow four aging nuclear weapons deployed during the Cold War to function beyond their original service lives.
Other programs across the complex are not as fortunate. While stopgap budgets can crimp ongoing work by doling out appropriations in monthly rather than quarterly increments, they outright prohibit new projects from starting up.
The NNSA’s fiscal 2018 budget request included four such new starts, which owing to Congress’ failure to reach an accord on a permanent budget are stuck in limbo, for the time being.
The budget request released in May 2017 includes new starts at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.; and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The NNSA planned to build a new fire station at Y-12 to replace one that dates back almost to World War II.
At Savannah River, the agency planned to start designing upgrades for its tritium facilities at the H-Canyon chemical separation facility, and for a new capability at the K-Basin facility. K-Basin would become the hub of a massive plutonium nonproliferation program if Congress flips its current position and allows the administration to cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility being built at the site by CB&I AREVA MOX Services.
At Livermore, the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency planned infrastructure upgrades to support future supercomputers that could help simulate nuclear-weapon tests more accurately.
An NNSA spokesperson in Washington confirmed new starts are prohibited under a continuing resolution but declined further comment. A breakdown of the proposed new starts for 2018 follows, in descending order according to requested funding for fiscal 2018.
Fire Station, Y-12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The NNSA requested $29 million for fiscal 2018: $5 million for design, $23 million for construction, and $1 million for other project costs, excluding demolition of any existing facilities. The project was scheduled to hit the CD-3 project management milestone by March 31. In Department of Energy (DOE) project-management parlance, that is the milestone that directly precedes construction.
Tritium Production Capability Project, Savannah River Site, Aiken, S.C.
DOE requested $9.8 million for fiscal 2018: $6.8 million for design and $3 million for other project costs excluding demolition.
In the aggregate, the Tritium Production Capability Project “will construct two new facilities to relocate tritium and deuterium processes currently in H-Area Old Manufacturing into safe, reliable, modern buildings,” according to DOE’s 2018 budget request. The work would cost between $260 million and $500 million and was estimated to be completed by Sept. 30, 2027, the NNSA said.
The 2018 appropriation would have been used “to acquire design services,” the budget request says. The cost of the facility would not be set in stone until Sept. 30, 2022, the request reads.
The latest U.S. Nuclear Posture Review to be published today anointed a stable tritium supply as a top national need. Tritium increases the potency of nuclear detonations.
Surplus Plutonium Disposition (SPD), Savannah River Site, Aiken, S.C.
DOE requested $9 million for fiscal 2018: $5 million for design and $4 million for other project costs excluding demolition. Funds requested this year “will be used to begin preliminary design” for what will eventually be a $250 million to $500 million capital investment to support the dilute-and-dispose method of eliminating 34 metric tons of plutonium the U.S. pledged to deweaponize as part of an arms control pact negotiated with Russia during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
In the budget request, the NNSA said it would use the 2018 appropriations to get the SPD Project to CD-1: the DOE milestone in which the agency examines several alternatives to fit an identified need and selects one. Clearing CD-1 by the end of last year would have set up the agency to procure new glove boxes and other hardware in fiscal 2019. The 2018 budget request claimed the dilute-and-dispose upgrades would be finished by Sept. 30, 2027.
DOE and Congress are at loggerheads over canceling the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, which is supposed to turn the 34 metric tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel. Under dillute-and-dispose, the NNSA would mix downblended plutonium with concrete-like grout and dispose of the mixture at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
Exascale Computing Facility Modernization (ECFM), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.
The NNSA requested $5 million for fiscal 2018: $3 million for design and $2 million for other project costs excluding demolition. The request said the NNSA would use 2018 funding to get this project, a series of structural and electric infrastructure upgrades, to the CD-1 project milestone by Dec. 31, 2017. In the 2018 budget, the NNSA said the project would be finished by June 30, 2021, assuming the appropriation came in at the requested level.
