Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
4/10/2015
The Obama Administration should increase spending on the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation work to help the program prepare to address evolving threats, a Secretary of Energy Advisory Board task force said in a recent report. Funding for the NNSA’s nonproliferation account has dipped in recent years, dropping from $2.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2013 to $1.6 billion in FY 2015. Even though the Administration requested $1.9 billion for the program in FY 2016, the actual increase is only about $65 million because the Administration shifted the NNSA’s Nuclear Counterterrorism Incident Response and Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation Programs from the agency’s weapons program to the nonproliferation account. “It appears to us that the need to counter current and likely future challenges to nonproliferation justifies increased, rather than reduced, investment in this area,” said the task force, which was chaired by former UCLA Chancellor and Harvard Provost Albert Carnesale.
The task force specifically called for the NNSA to expand efforts to establish global nuclear security norms, standards and best practices as well as rebuild nuclear security cooperation with Russia while strengthening nuclear security cooperation with other countries. In Russia, where most nuclear security work has been curtailed due to tensions between Washington and Moscow, the task force said maintaining communication between technical experts “is important even if the United States will no longer be involved in major technical improvements at Russian nuclear facilities. At the same time, working with the rest of the U.S. Government, DOE should seek to develop and propose approaches to nuclear security cooperation that appear to put both countries in equal roles and may be more attractive to Russia. Such approaches are not likely to be accepted in the current political environment. But if the parties make progress in resolving the crisis in Ukraine, such steps should be an early focus of efforts to rebuild the nuclear relationship.”
Task Force Suggests Focus on ‘High-Risk, High-Reward’ R&D Work
The task force the NNSA should expand its work to limit the availability of nuclear weapons and weapons-grade materials around the world and beef up efforts to reduce cyber vulnerabilities in nuclear systems around the globe. It also said the NNSA should enhance research and development efforts on technologies and procedures for verifying future nuclear arms reductions while intensifying R&D work on “high-risk, high-reward” nonproliferation innovations. The task force noted that DOE had focused nonproliferation R&D money on a select group of large-scale efforts, but said more could be done. “We have heard concerns, however, that it may still be difficult for high-risk, ‘out of the box’ ideas to get funded,” the task force said. “DOE should consider setting aside a modest portion of the available nonproliferation R&D funds for competitively awarded grants for high-risk, high-reward ideas.”
The task force also weighed in on the plutonium disposition program, urging the Department of Energy to look at alternatives to the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, which DOE is currently doing. “The more than $30 billion projected cost of the U.S. MOX program provides sufficient incentive to explore alternative approaches to plutonium disposition that would be less costly and might overcome any domestic, diplomatic, or technological barriers to change,” the task force said. “Alternatives worthy of consideration include long-term storage, as well as immobilization or other processing for disposal in a future nuclear waste repository or in deep boreholes. … DOE should pursue international cooperation on such alternatives as appropriate. All of these alternatives have their own uncertainties and issues.”
