Stopgap budget bad for pits but good for UPF, spokesperson and contractor say

WASHINGTON — The Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex would benefit from a continuing resolution, the site’s prime said, while plutonium pits could suffer under a short term budget extension, a spokesperson at the Department of Defense told the Exchange Monitor recently.

The bill, voted on Wednesday as Congress prepared to leave town until November, passed 341-82 in the House, with unanimous Democratic approval, 132 Republicans for it and 82 Republican holdouts. 

On the Senate floor shortly after passing the House, the bill passed 78-18 with unanimous Democratic support and 18 Republican holdouts including Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), all of whom have significant nuclear weapons constituencies in their states. 

President Joe Biden (D) had not signed the continuing resolution at deadline for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, though the White House this week said in a statement of administration policy that he would.

Absent a full-year spending bill, which Congress failed to produce due to political gridlock spurred by the right wing of the House’s Republican majority, the bill keeps federal budgets flat through most of December.

According to a spokesperson for U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), that could delay the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) ability to deliver the fissile cores of new Air Force warheads.

“NNSA and the Labs believe that with carryover funding and FY24 funding levels during a [continuing resolution] they can maintain schedule for about two months,” a STRATCOM spokesperson told the Monitor in an email Friday. “With a [continuing resolution] longer than two months the schedule slip would be at least month-for-month.”

The spokesperson explained that funding up to present has focused on a first production unit W87-1 pit at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which the spokesperson said was “not impacted” by a continuing resolution since it’s in the “home stretch” to be completed by mid-October. That pit will eventually be used in Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile warheads, which sometime next decade will deploy using a different type of warhead with a different pit.

After the first production unit, Los Alamos personnel “need to shift to equipment installation and facility reconfiguration to support ‘rate production,’” the STRATCOM spokesperson said. “These are two distinctly different processes and you can’t just slow down during a CR and then make it up when funding comes through.”

Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez’s (D-N.M.) office told the Monitor that National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratories, specifically Los Alamos National Laboratory in Fernandez’s district, would receive “level funding” under the stopgap.

The budget band-aid enacted this week had no special exceptions for the NNSA to exceed its 2024 budget. NNSA had planned to produce 30 pits annually at Los Alamos beginning in 2028.

Meanwhile, Gene Sievers, site manager at Y-12 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said Thursday at an industry gathering in Washington that the Uranium Processing Facility being built at the site is “actually in great shape” under a continuing resolution. In 2024, the long-delayed project has a budget of $810 million, compared with the White House’s 2025 request of $800 million.

“That spending level would continue into [2025], so the continuing resolution is actually quite favorable for our ability to continue at the rate we’re at with the Uranium Processing Facility,” Sievers told the Monitor at a reception hosted by the non-government Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center at the Congress’ Rayburn House office building in Washington.

The Uranium Processing Facility is the NNSA’s next-generation factory for nuclear-weapons secondary stages.

While lawmakers with DOE nuclear sites in their districts mostly supported the continuing resolution, some expressed concern about a stopgap.

“CRs are not great for any of those kinds of projects, same as the Department of Defense,” Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) told the Monitor at the Capitol, while adding that at least since it was a shorter-term continuing resolution, “if you can get the [appropriations] process done before the end of the year, that’ll be a good thing.”

The House rolled out the three-month spending bill Monday after the six-month version of the stopgap, which included stricter voter ID laws and had permissions to raise funding for some security purposes at DOE nuclear sites, was struck down on the House floor.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) on Wednesday  told the Monitor that a short-term continuing resolution was preferable to a longer one.

“A CR is not ideal, I will always prefer to have a real appropriations process,” Heinrich said. “But at least it buys us some certainty and we’ll be able to get to where we can hopefully negotiate full appropriations bills for DOE and NNSA and really everybody else too.”

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats, separately told the Monitor that while he did not view continuing resolutions favorable, specifically for DOE and NNSA programs, he would not shut the government down.

A continuing resolution is “not good for any departments because they can’t embark on new programs, it slows down the planning process, it’s a terrible way to do business,” King said. “But it’s better than a shutdown.”

King chairs the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which helps set policy and spending limits for DOE’s defense nuclear programs in the annual National Defense Authorization Act. 

When Congress returns to Washington after the presidential election, lawmakers will engage in another debate over funding before a new president is sworn in Jan. 20.

“A little bit more time to finish things up is unfortunately where we are,” Newhouse said. “But I think it’s important to do that so that we can start a new year, a new administration, and we’ll know which one. And then we’ll be closer to being on schedule.”