**[Testimony of Siegfried S. Hecker,]{.smallcaps}**

**[Director]{.smallcaps}**

**[Los Alamos National Laboratory]{.smallcaps}**

**[Hearing]{.smallcaps}**

**of the**

**[Subcommittee]{.smallcaps}**

**on**

**[Strategic Forces]{.smallcaps}**

**[Committee on Armed Services]{.smallcaps}**

**[United States Senate]{.smallcaps}**

**May 16, 1995**

**[Contents]{.smallcaps}**

Page

**I. A Compelling Mission 5**

Stockpile Stewardship and Management 5

Tritium Supply 7

Los Alamos' Role 8

Nuclear Materials Management and Disposition 13

Proliferation Challenges 15

Russian Nuclear Weapons 15

Verification and Control Technology 17

Counterproliferation 18

The Environmental Legacy 19

People and Facilities 20

People 21

Capabilities 22

Facilities 22

Conventional Defense 24

Conventional Weapons Technology 24

Biological Warfare Agent Detection 25

Modeling and Simulation 25

Beams and Sensors 26

Advanced Concepts 26

Summary 27

Defense Mission Summary 27

**II. Civilian Science and Technology 29**

Basic Research 29

Energy and Environment 31

Work for Other Federal Agencies and Industry 34

Ties to Industry 36

**III. The Galvin Task Force Report 39**

**IV. Summary 43**

**Appendix:** Nuclear Weapons Stewardship at Los Alamos National
Laboratory

**[Testimony of Siegfried S. Hecker, Director]{.smallcaps}**

**[Los Alamos National Laboratory]{.smallcaps}**

**[May 16, 1995]{.smallcaps}**

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify before this
committee. Los Alamos takes very seriously its role in both defense and
in science and technology for the future of our nation, and we stand
ready to work with this committee in ensuring United States leadership
in both of these areas. There are four points that I would like to make
today.

1\. *Our nuclear weapons role has changed but not diminished.* Stockpile
stewardship---keeping the nuclear weapons in the enduring stockpile
safe, secure, and reliable---is our central focus today. This challenge
differs from our experience base of 50 years because of the moratorium
on nuclear testing and lack of new systems requirements that had
typically replaced the weapons in stockpile with improved or new
weapons. Hence, we are effecting a transition from a nuclear weapons
complex that was based on the large capacities of the nuclear weapons
production complex to one that relies heavily on the capabilities
resident in the Department of Energy (DOE) defense laboratories. At Los
Alamos, we are stepping up our weapons surveillance activities,
developing the capabilities for limited component manufacturing,
archiving historical test data, and enhancing our computational
capabilities and laboratory experiments to offset the loss of testing.
Stewardship is also key to what we consider our broader challenge for
the next decade or two---*reducing the global nuclear danger---*which
includes how to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons and how to
deal with the legacy of nuclear materials, nuclear waste, and
environmental cleanup.

2\. *The FY 1996 budget at the laboratories is crucial to retaining the
competencies and ability to accomplish this transition.* While the
President's FY 1996 budget does arrest the drop in weapons program
funding, we are not investing in maintaining the key facilities at Los
Alamos that the nation is increasingly relying upon for a safe, secure,
reliable, and affordable stockpile for the future. The escalating costs
of our operations, especially our nuclear facilities, aggravated by a
historical lack of adequate maintenance and investment in
infrastructure, are draining our programmatic funds to the point where
we will not be able to stem the loss of crucial talent.

3\. *We desperately need the management and oversight changes called for
in Appendix B of the Galvin report.* These changes would restore the
intent of the government-owned, contractor-operated system that has been
eroded by incremental increases in oversight. The changes will be
instrumental in allowing us to control the skyrocketing costs of our
facilities and operations. We are encouraged by the steps the Department
has taken to date to initiate the changes called for in Appendix B of
the report.

4\. *Today, nonnuclear defense research and civilian basic research and
technology done in partnership with universities and industry are
crucial to our nuclear defense mission.* Selected programs allow us to
use our core technical competencies in the broader national interest to
leverage nuclear weapons funding and help to provide a stimulating
research environment that allows us to attract and retain world-class
research talent to serve the nation.

**I. A Compelling Mission**

Our central mission evolved from developing the first atomic bomb during
the Manhattan Project to developing nuclear weapons for deterrence
during the Cold War. We accomplished both successfully. Today, the Cold
War cycle of nuclear weapons development and deployment has ended, and
so our central mission must reflect the incredible global events of the
past five years. In conjunction with the Department of Energy we define
our primary mission as providing the technical foundation to *reduce the
global nuclear danger* to ensure a more secure future for our nation.

***[Stockpile Stewardship and Management]{.smallcaps}***

A central and vital component of *reducing the global nuclear danger* is
nuclear weapons *stockpile stewardship---*keeping those weapons that the
nation needs safe, secure, and reliable. Stockpile stewardship also
requires that the nation retains the capability to respond to a variety
of uncertain futures. *Reducing the nuclear danger* will also require
*stockpile management---*providing the capabilities ranging from
dismantlement to reconstituting manufacturing if some weapons need to be
remanufactured in the future. Much of the stockpile surveillance,
dismantlement, and manufacturing technological expertise will eventually
reside only at the laboratories. An overview of our vision of nuclear
weapons stewardship is attached to this testimony as an appendix.

Los Alamos has historically been a major contributor to national
security through its role in developing and assuring the United States
nuclear deterrent. We continue that role today, through active
stewardship of the weapons systems that will remain in the enduring
stockpile and those that are in the process of dismantlement. We are
performing pit surveillance for the stockpile. We are developing boost
gas technology for implementation on the Trident I warhead and as the
tritium storage technology of choice for much of the enduring stockpile.
We are on track for our nonnuclear manufacturing responsibilities in
neutron tube target loading and detonator production and surveillance
and are working toward a demonstrated remanufacturing capability for a
limited number of stockpile pits. Finally, we are archiving existing
design, engineering, and test data on enduring weapons systems. Each of
these activities is a part of our overall role in the Department\'s
stockpile stewardship and management programs.

The stockpile is now being drawn down, but the recently completed
Nuclear Posture Review concluded that nuclear deterrence remains central
to the security of the United States and that we must hedge by
maintaining capability. With the many changes of the last several years,
the weapons laboratories\' role has evolved to a new and in many ways
more technically demanding challenge. They must provide for stewardship
of the stockpile without nuclear testing as weapons age beyond their
design lifetime, and they must provide a smaller, more economical, and
environmentally responsible capability for fabrication and replacement
of weapon components. We have been pleased to work jointly with the
Department and Dr. Reis in developing a vision of how such an enterprise
could look in the year 2010, and in beginning to turn it into a rational
plan for the evolution of the nation\'s nuclear complex. This vision
joins a capability-based deterrence with a right-sized capacity for
weapon component manufacture and replacement, at an ultimate real saving
to the taxpayer compared to continued reliance on remnants of the Cold
War infrastructure.

This enterprise centers on the stockpile stewardship and stockpile
management programs. We must have the intellectual capital and technical
tools that we will rely on to accurately evaluate and revalidate the
performance, safety, and reliability of stockpile weapons, and when
necessary judge that an aging weapon or weapon component needs to be
repaired or replaced. This same set of expertise and tools must be able
to certify that such a repaired or replacement weapon will itself be
safe and provide the expected performance. This is the challenge facing
the science-based stockpile stewardship program, which provides the
science and technology for evaluation and judgments on the efficacy of
the enduring stockpile. Under a comprehensive test ban and stringent
international nonproliferation regime, these judgments and evaluations
must in the future be based on science-based understanding rather than
the dramatic and clear validation obtained from a nuclear test. We have,
of course, always relied on science and excellence in our scientific
expertise as the foundation of our nuclear weapons activities. To answer
the challenge now posed to us, however, we must improve our
understanding and modeling, and this requires improvements in both our
computational and experimental science capabilities. This in turn
requires the funding and institutional vitality necessary to keep
excellent, experienced people.

The stockpile management component of the enterprise is the fabrication,
maintenance, and materials management counterpart of the Stockpile
Stewardship Program. This program has responsibility for the many
limited-life components that must be periodically replaced, for the
management and production of tritium, and for fabrication of the
components, as necessary, of nuclear weapons. A key part of these
responsibilities is the technology for processing and fabrication of
plutonium parts for weapon primaries, which historically had been
manufactured at Rocky Flats.

Together, science-based stockpile stewardship and stockpile management
will link science, materials, and manufacturing, and the surveillance of
stockpile weapons to provide for assurance in the safety and capability
of our deterrent. Science-based stewardship will develop the capability
for confidence in the stockpile in the absence of a nuclear testing
program. Stockpile management will assure the physical capability to
maintain and replenish weapon components and systems. The Department has
undertaken to prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement on
stockpile stewardship and management.

The United States\' nuclear stockpile is presently judged to be safe and
reliable. However, problems with safety, performance, or reliability
have historically been observed and will continue to occur. Weapons
change due to material degradation, corrosion, and other factors. Cracks
and voids can develop in components. Helium impurities from radioactive
decay will build up in plutonium. To illustrate why proper stockpile
stewardship and stockpile management are such an important issue for
national security, we can look to some of our historical experience. Of
the weapon types introduced since 1970, nearly one-half used
post-development nuclear testing to verify, resolve, or fix problems.
Also since 1970, several thousand stockpile weapons underwent major
modifications or were hastened toward retirement because of safety or
performance concerns. These kinds of problems have been observed in
weapons designed by both design laboratories. A particularly clear
example, because it involved an unexpected aging phenomenon, was the
now-retired warhead for the Poseidon SLBM. The high-explosive in this
warhead was discovered to be decomposing prematurely and had to be
replaced lest the weapon become inoperable. Because certain materials
had become commercially unavailable since the original development
program, other modifications were required in addition to changing the
high-explosive formulation. Nuclear tests helped ensure that these
modifications did not compromise the weapon's performance. This
experience also illustrates the concern that identical remanufacturing
cannot necessarily be assured and that expert evaluation is needed. In
the absence of nuclear testing, the certification of such changes will
indeed be a technical challenge requiring a strong base of scientific
expertise.

**Tritium Supply**

Tritium supply is a critical issue for the nuclear weapon stockpile
because it decays at 5.5% per year and is required for our weapons to
operate. The DOE has been in the process of developing a replacement
capability since the tritium production reactors at Savannah River were
shut down in 1988. To support the projected stockpile level called for
in the Nuclear Posture Review, the DOE must have a new operational
tritium supply by the year 2011. The requirement date could be moved to
as early as 2005 if DoD requirements change. Although new production
reactors have been considered, another option, accelerator production of
tritium (APT) is under study. The APT option proposed by Los Alamos has
become very attractive because of its flexibility to meet reduced
tritium requirements at a low capital cost and at the same time maintain
the option of increased production, should that be necessary. In
addition, APT can be on-line in the year 2005, if required.

The APT project is a national effort begun in FY 1992 with Los Alamos,
Brookhaven, and Sandia. Industrial participation from FY 1992-1995 was
obtained by competitive bid selection of Bechtel, Grumman, General
Atomics, Maxwell Balboa, Babcock and Wilcox, Westinghouse, and Merrick.
The design developed and documented by the Laboratories and industry has
undergone extensive examination by top scientific and engineering panels
over the past few months. APT is, in words taken from the 1995 JASON
Review \"\... a viable option for meeting US needs for tritium
production.\" Principal advantages of the APT system include its high
flexibility to meet demand; very low environmental safety and health
impact, because there is no fissile material in the system; and greater
public acceptance compared to a reactor.

On March 1, 1995, the DOE released a draft Programmatic Environmental
Impact Statement on Tritium Supply and Recycle, and will issue a Record
of Decision on the technology of choice by November, 1995. There are
five potential sites for tritium production: Savannah River, Oak Ridge,
Pantex, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, and the Nevada Test Site.
Site selection will be made later in the context of the DOE plan for the
entire weapons complex.

**Los Alamos\' Role**

Los Alamos is ready to serve the nation as a key part of the Department
of Energy's vision of capability-based deterrence. *Of the seven systems
that will remain in the U.S. nuclear arsenal after the turn of the
century, Los Alamos designed and engineered five.* Continuing
responsibility for these nuclear weapon systems is a core responsibility
of the Laboratory. In addition, many of the key capabilities required
for both stockpile stewardship and stockpile management are either
principally or uniquely located at Los Alamos.

The absence of the large, capacity-based enterprise in the future places
challenging new requirements on the Laboratories, especially Los Alamos,
to assure the availability of components needed to maintain that
stockpile. One of the responsibilities related to this goal is to
demonstrate the ability to produce small quantities of war-reserve
components for the existing stockpile. The importance of this
demonstration is underlined by the reality that capabilities to produce
certain nuclear and nonnuclear components have been shut down or are in
the process of planned consolidation. Los Alamos will apply the
strengths of its research and development to many of the requirements
for the manufacture of materials and components for the enduring
stockpile. Manufacturing and certification of components at Los Alamos
will be done differently than previously in the complex, but will
maintain the same exacting quality standards found in components
produced earlier. The difference in Los Alamos' approach to
manufacturing lies primarily in three areas: First, manufacturing and
research and development activities will be integrated in a seamless
fashion that will promote the manufacturing of high-quality, certified
components in a cost-effective manner. Second, this integration will
provide the means to maintain critical Laboratory skills and expertise
while conserving existing resources. Third, manufacturing activities
will build on our experiences and partnerships with industry.

These differences are illustrated by a recent manufacturing activity in
Los Alamos' Detonation Systems Group. This group received the mission of
detonator manufacturing in the DOE's Non-Nuclear Reconfiguration
initiative and is tasked with demonstrating manufacturing capability in
January 1996. Recently, though, this group was assigned responsibility
for producing actuator simulants, not detonators but related electrical
devices used to verify aspects of weapon reliability. The simulants were
required and produced on an accelerated schedule with only four weeks
for fabrication, and with limited funds, yet they were manufactured with
the formality and demonstrable quality of a level appropriate for a DOE
"diamond-stamped" product. This success confirms the key elements
mentioned above---seamless integration of research and development and
manufacturing using crucial skills available in the Laboratory.

This integration of research and development and manufacturing
capability at Los Alamos is a tribute to effective partnerships formed
within the Laboratory and with the DOE's Albuquerque Field Office. This
partnership enabled Los Alamos to use quality methods and techniques
learned from private-sector companies, Motorola and Milliken, to produce
these components with controls appropriate to stockpile items, but at a
dramatically reduced cost. It is precisely this type of effort that will
allow Los Alamos to help maintain the stockpile and retain critical
expertise, all at reduced cost to the taxpayer.

Integrating manufacturing capability with R&D tools and expertise is a
powerful concept that extends beyond \"diamond-stamped\" detonator
production. Today the R&D and fabrication capabilities of the
laboratories are in some cases the only operational means for
manufacturing replacement components or supporting any needed stockpile
reliability or surety improvements. The details of future manufacturing
configurations will be determined in late 1996, following the Stockpile
Stewardship and Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement.
Los Alamos has plutonium component fabrication capabilities, the
nation's only full-service plutonium facility, which can support limited
remanufacturing for a smaller stockpile. Our detonator production,
tritium processing, and beryllium fabrication facilities assignments
support non-nuclear consolidation. Los Alamos\' uranium, salt, and high
explosive R&D facilities and infrastructure could, with modest added
facility investment, meet many of the future component needs of the
stockpile As part of the Advanced Design and Production Technologies
(ADaPT) initiative, Los Alamos will also be developing technologies and
manufacturing processes to reduce costs and waste and enhance the
efficiency of future fabrication of many of these components.

The extensive plutonium research and fabrication capabilities of Los
Alamos are essentially unique in the United States. In recent years, Los
Alamos has taken on the critical responsibility of surveillance of the
plutonium \"pits\" from stockpiled weapons primaries, and we are pleased
to report that these surveillance operations are proceeding
successfully. Recently we have begun to recognize that
stockpile-focused, science-based stewardship calls for a new and more
integrated relationship between fundamental science, computational
simulation, and surveillance. In this new relationship, science and
simulation will teach us to be more insightful and clever in our
surveillance measurements to detect and anticipate problems, as well as
being used to interpret surveillance results to evaluate the current and
future status of a weapon system. This enhanced surveillance paradigm is
essential if we are to determine the proper and sufficient means by
which to repair, or otherwise respond to, stockpile issues that could
compromise safety, reliability, or performance. This is a lot like the
close relationship between clinical medicine and biomedical research.
The combination of Los Alamos\' research capabilities with its many
specialized facilities for plutonium, uranium, high-explosives, and
other weapons materials provides an excellent opportunity to grow this
kind of synergistic relationship. In fact there is a close parallel
between integrated manufacturing that takes advantage of a close
interaction between component manufacture and R&D, and enhanced
surveillance that creates a close coupling between the scientific base
and individual stockpile weapons.

One of the most important challenges in science-based stockpile
stewardship is that of developing the computational methods and tools
that we will need to accurately evaluate whether the aging stockpile
needs repair and to certify any remanufactured or replacement weapons.
Los Alamos has been a leader in the development of high-performance
computing and in exploiting massively-parallel computer technology for
three-dimensional weapons safety analysis and other complex
applications. In addition to the core computational activities
supporting our stewardship responsibilities, our participation in the
Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) will ensure that the
needs of these crucial applications are met by enabling a significant
enhancement of the physical and numerical models and by accelerating the
development of the relevant technologies to be delivered by the vendor
community.

Computational simulations are only as good as the science and physical
models that they apply. Validation of modern computer codes against the
underground test data archive is essential but far from sufficient. The
understanding that we will need for accurate evaluation in the absence
of nuclear testing will also require data from a suite of experimental
facilities such as the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrotest Facility
(DARHT), the Los Alamos Manuel Lujan Jr. Neutron Science Center
(LANSCE), and the Atlas pulsed-power facility, each of which addresses
important issues in stockpile performance and reliability.

Hydrodynamic tests---high-explosive-driven experiments for studying
primary implosions---constitute the most important aboveground,
nonnuclear testing capability for nuclear weapons. They allow an
integral test of our prediction of these implosions and address the most
important issues for the stockpile, the functionality and safety of the
primary. The current X-ray radiographic facilities in the United States
are insufficient for the kinds of evaluation we will have to make in the
absence of nuclear testing. DARHT was initiated to provide the necessary
capability in radiographic quality together with a second, simultaneous
view from another direction, which will enable three-dimensional imaging
so necessary to predictions of nuclear safety and reliability. The
construction of DARHT has been halted by court action pending completion
by the DOE of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) including
consideration of alternatives, and the issuance of a Record of Decision.
We believe that the enhanced hydrotest capabilities DARHT is designed to
provide remain a vital component of the suite of tools necessary to
maintain confidence in the nuclear stockpile.

LANSCE, for its part, will provide an opportunity to employ the unique
penetrating capability of neutrons to study various materials science
issues, including many related to aging. Materials issues can be
exceedingly important for predicting compression in supercritical weapon
assemblies and for inferring nuclear reactivity in the absence of direct
nuclear testing. Neutron resonance radiography will also shed light on
high-explosive behavior. Neutron radiography of weapon components,
including primaries and secondaries, is an important emerging capability
in our long-term plans to assess the effects of aging in the enduring
stockpile.

LANSCE will also provide critical data in the area of applied nuclear
physics. Recertifications of designs will depend on careful analysis of
past data in order to properly attribute performance effects to
constituent physical processes. Finally, LANSCE will offer the
opportunity to refine our detailed models of the fission process itself.
These effects may prove significant in explaining performance-related
phenomenology, details that are required in building truly predictive
simulation tools.

Much of weapon science depends on detailed study of hydrodynamic or
radiation physics, often at higher energy densities than can be readily
obtained in high-explosive experiments. The proposed Atlas facility is a
twenty-five-million ampere pulsed-power capacitor bank that will enable
us to study phenomena associated with both weapon primaries and
secondaries with centimeter-scale experimental configurations, at
temperatures and pressures high enough to partially ionize the
materials. Its unique capabilities will be important for our evaluation
of a number of issues related to the aging stockpile, such as the effect
of narrow cracks on the implosion and performance of weapon components.
We have demonstrated the extremely precise hydrodynamic implosions
necessary on the smaller Pegasus facility which is already in use for
weapons science experiments within its operational parameters.

Atlas, DARHT, and LANSCE were endorsed by the recent JASON report on
science-based stockpile stewardship, and the Department has proposed
Atlas for a FY 1996 start. DARHT, LANSCE, and continued experimentation
were also explicitly recognized by the Galvin Task Force as needed for
stockpile stewardship.

These three critical facilities represent the capital improvements
needed for science-based stockpile stewardship. Costs for these
facilities and projects, as proposed to the Department, are as follows:

**Facility Total (Project) Cost Comments**

DARHT \$124 million (includes first Partially completed. Pending outcome
of EIS,\
axis, initiated in 1988, \$85.6 M, earliest completion of first axis in
CY 1998.\
and projected second axis, Record of Decision may affect costs.\
\$38.2 M).

LANSCE \$35 million upgrade to Annual operating funds of \$25M from
Defense\
existing facility has been Programs will be leveraged by funds from the\
appropriated and is under way. Office of Energy Research. Additional
operating\
funds will be required.

Atlas \$48 million FY 1996 start with completion in FY 1999.

The upgrade to LANSCE, now under way, will also benefit the weapons
program directly through its contribution to APT. Los Alamos has been
chosen by the DOE to lead the national effort in APT design and
development, and LANSCE will play an important role in demonstrating APT
technology. If APT is selected as the technology of choice, industry
will be brought into the project by competitive bid as early as possible
in FY 1996 to participate in the technology demonstrations and to lead
the plant design and subsequent construction efforts.

Los Alamos is ideally positioned to lead the national APT effort, having
high-power accelerator design and operating experience, high-power beam
target design expertise, and a strong nuclear physics and engineering
base. In addition, specialized facilities exist in which to assemble and
test APT components without costly and time-consuming civil
construction. Although the APT design is based on existing technology
and well established principles, some technology development to
determine the most cost-effective, reliable system is needed. Work to be
conducted at Los Alamos over the next four years includes effort in
three main areas: 1) construction and operation of an engineering model
of the first sections of the APT accelerator to demonstrate performance,
reliability and operability; 2) demonstration of the tritium production
efficiency at LANSCE using the existing accelerator facilities; and 3)
further studies of the materials that will be used to construct APT
target systems at equivalent beam power densities using the 800-kilowatt
beam from LANSCE. I urge the Committee\'s support for this important
technology demonstration effort.

***[Nuclear Materials Management and Disposition]{.smallcaps}***

*Reducing the nuclear danger* will require *nuclear materials
management---*assuring the availability or safe disposition of
plutonium, highly-enriched uranium and tritium. It is currently
projected that a new supply of tritium will be needed by the year 2011.
This issue was discussed above under stockpile management. No need for
new plutonium or uranium is anticipated in the foreseeable future. The
principal concern is one of safe disposition. Currently, many hundreds
of tons of these materials exist not only in returned warheads, but also
as production scrap, residues, or nuclear waste. We are particularly
concerned about the disposition of these materials in the former Soviet
Union where these weapons-grade materials represent a significant
proliferation danger.

A major challenge lies with the responsible management of nuclear
materials, especially plutonium. Reduction of the nuclear weapon
stockpile, together with the subsequent dismantlement of weapons and the
facilities that formerly produced them, has left the nation with growing
and degrading inventories and decreasing capability to address the
problem. At Los Alamos, we have the expertise, facilities, and most
importantly, the broad global perspective needed to effectively address
this issue.

The driver for nuclear materials management in the United States comes
primarily from concern for public and worker health and safety and risk
to the environment. The Department of Energy has recently completed a
study of the vulnerabilities associated with the deteriorating
conditions of plutonium storage across its facilities and has undertaken
a program to address shortcomings and assure safe and secure storage
pending decisions on ultimate disposition. This important vulnerability
study was initiated in part as a result of early efforts by Los Alamos
to identify and analyze problems involving plutonium storage containers.
Los Alamos researchers were then called upon to train the vulnerability
assessment team in relevant material properties and hazards related to
plutonium processing and storage. Los Alamos has also taken the lead in
stabilizing its own inventories as well as in developing and
demonstrating technologies that can be applied to remediate nuclear
material vulnerabilities across the complex.

At the Rocky Flats Plant that formerly produced all of the plutonium
pits for the nuclear arsenal but is now destined for closure and
restoration, 12.9 metric tons of plutonium inventories exist in a
spectrum of undesirable material forms that have been largely untouched
since production operations were suspended at the site in June 1989.
Because of its weapons stewardship role, Los Alamos has the personnel
and facilities to help stabilize and secure the plutonium residues at
Rocky Flats. The capabilities that we maintain for our weapons
stewardship role are also available to DOE to characterize and stabilize
plutonium-containing materials at other sites. We consider this effort
to be one of the most urgent in the entire DOE complex. In fact, our
people have advised and aided Rocky Flats management for a number of
years. In the past couple of years, the direct involvement of Laboratory
personnel has greatly enhanced assay, examination, and stabilization
capabilities that will allow for rapid analysis and reduction of
potential hazards at the site.

For example, portable radiography equipment from Los Alamos was used to
interrogate a drum of high-plutonium-assay residues that had been
mislabeled at the time it was placed in storage. This drum could not be
moved because of a suspicion that the material in the drum was so highly
pyrophoric that it could ignite and burn spontaneously. The radiography
equipment demonstrated that this was not the case and the drum could be
moved. Los Alamos employees are currently working with the site
contractor personnel to design and assemble real-time radiography
equipment of their own.

Some of these materials are in solutions that are starting to leak out
of their containment and present a significant risk that needs to be
addressed at Rocky Flats. In recent experiments, Los Alamos has used its
expertise and facilities to demonstrate that the liquid stabilization
approach first proposed would not meet the established criteria and has
developed and experimentally demonstrated an alternate approach that
meets all the criteria and has been embraced by Rocky Flats. The
procedures are being developed and the personnel are being trained at
Los Alamos to expedite implementation of this liquid stabilization
process at Rocky Flats.

The nation can further leverage its investment in Los Alamos plutonium
processing capabilities for the solution of DOE\'s pressing plutonium
problems, including stabilization and storage of plutonium-bearing
materials. Los Alamos has recently demonstrated several technologies
that purify and efficiently partition nuclear materials from other waste
thereby reducing radioactive waste generation, cost, and risk. For
example, we have demonstrated technologies for separating
plutonium-containing salts, a big concern at Rocky Flats, from bulk
waste. This technology can save hundreds of millions of dollars compared
to planned direct disposal in repositories and can have wide
applicability across the complex.

In another example, we are examining the possibility of fabricating
processing lines in mobile or transportable assemblies. If successful,
this approach could minimize transportation risk by moving laboratories
for stabilizing residues to sites within the weapons complex,
eliminating the need for expensive construction of processing facilities
and personnel training at other sites. This approach would provide an
optimum method for exporting stabilization technologies to Russia.

Los Alamos is enthusiastic about applying its extensive expertise and
special facilities to other key tasks at Rocky Flats and around the DOE
complex. At Rocky Flats we are also working on nuclear criticality
safety, safe storage standards for metals and oxides, stabilization of
other residues, and in support of the environmental restoration program
at the site.

The types of plutonium problems we face in the United States at Rocky
Flats, Hanford, and Savannah River sites are compounded in Russia by
additional concern for the security of the nuclear materials. I will
discuss below what Los Alamos is doing to help combat the proliferation
concerns in the states of the former Soviet Union by introducing western
nuclear materials protection, control, and accountability standards and
practices.

In addition to concerns over military plutonium, the amount of civilian
plutonium from nuclear reactors around the world is already several
times greater than the military stockpiles of the United States and
Russia---and it continues to grow. Most nations view this plutonium as
an energy source for their future generations, and they are not about to
dispose of it without extracting useful energy. This places an
additional burden on the United States to work with the international
community to find a long-term solution to the plutonium problem. First,
we must stabilize materials such as those at Rocky Flats and similar
materials in Russia. Then, we must secure these materials, store them
under an international safeguard regime, and develop suitable techniques
for disposing of the materials and their waste.

Los Alamos is also investigating new technologies for ultimate
disposition of plutonium, such as the development of mixed oxide fuels
for partial burning in reactors, and accelerator based transmutation
technologies for complete destruction of plutonium. Several of these
technologies may also address the larger problem of plutonium in
commercial power reactor spent fuel. This is the kind of challenge that
laboratories like Los Alamos can help to tackle.

***[Proliferation Challenges]{.smallcaps}***

*Reducing the nuclear danger* will require *the development of effective
nonproliferation and counter-proliferation technologies*. We must keep
nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and nuclear weapons knowledge out of
the wrong hands. The threat of proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction poses the most significant risk to our national security
today. The defense laboratories are applying their skills to develop
technologies for nonproliferation (keeping the materials out of the
wrong hands) and counterproliferation (responding to the proliferation
threat), and we are working with our former adversaries in Russia to
prevent diffusion of nuclear materials and expertise.

**Russian Nuclear Weapons**

One of the principal proliferation challenges is that related to the
nuclear weapons and weapons expertise of the former Soviet Union. The
national laboratories are actively engaged with our counterparts in
Russia to prevent the diffusion of weapons, materials, and scientists to
countries that would represent a proliferation risk. Our interactions
with the Russian institutes have two objectives:

• Stabilization of weapons expertise. Russian weapons scientists are an
extremely valuable asset to a potential proliferator. By working with
these scientists and directing their attention to peaceful, yet
scientifically challenging problems, we reduce the likelihood of their
emigration or their working for a rogue nation.

• Stabilization of weapons and weapons-capable materials. The shortest
routes to proliferation are to obtain a complete weapon, critical weapon
components, or materials. We are assisting the Russians to develop and
apply technologies and systems to help prevent such a diversion.

Los Alamos is engaged in what are called laboratory-to-laboratory
collaborations with Russian nuclear weapons and nuclear energy
institutes. These collaborations are aimed at jump-starting work on the
two above-mentioned objectives. These collaborations are able to advance
productively while more formal government-to-government deliberations
are proceeding.

We see these laboratory-to-laboratory efforts complementing those of our
governments. The scientific relationships that have been developed with
our Russian counterparts have allowed us to make significant and rapid
progress. Let me highlight just two examples.

*Scientific Exchanges:* The first joint scientific experiment involving
the nuclear weapons laboratories of the United States and Russia (Los
Alamos and Arzamas-16) was performed in September, 1993. This has been
followed by five others in several areas of basic science. Many
publications have resulted, and the interaction receives broad and
frequent coverage in the Russian press, helping to blunt concerns over
U.S. motives for working in Russia. A number of Russia's core weapons
people are now working almost full time on these projects, with the
expectation that they will soon be supported to do scientific work,
rather than weapons design, by the Russian government.

*Materials Protection, Control, and Accountability:* Trust developed
during the scientific exchanges enabled Los Alamos to put into place and
lead a program in nuclear materials control that now involves five other
U.S. laboratories and ten key Russian nuclear institutes. Contracts were
signed within four weeks of funding, and the first major demonstrations
occurred within six months. The Russians now want to move faster and
further than our funding will allow, a contrast to other programs in
this area.

Recently, at Arzamas-16, a demonstration of equipment and methods for
safeguarding nuclear materials was completed. The demonstration was
designed for Russian facilities such as those for nuclear weapons
disassembly and storage of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. The
best of United States and Russian equipment, methods, and concepts were
employed in this work. The demonstration was also designed to give the
operators and managers of Russian facilities hands-on experience and
familiarity with improved materials protection, control, and
accountability methods, which would then be introduced into their
operating facilities. These methods are now to be deployed throughout
the Russian nuclear weapons complex.

The DOE nonproliferation and arms control program is funded at \$76.8M
in FY 1995. In FY 1996 the DOE request of \$162M represents an \$85M
increase to capitalize on major opportunities created by the lab-to-lab
programs for control of Russian nuclear materials and scientific
exchanges. Based on the success of the laboratory-to-laboratory program
in the last two years, we are now poised to make a major contribution to
the safety and stability of Russian weapons, materials, and expertise.
This is exciting and important work that I hope will receive the support
of this Committee.

**Verification and Control Technology**

*Technology:* With negotiations underway on a comprehensive nuclear test
ban treaty, we face new challenges in verification technology. Our
concerns with nuclear testing are no longer focused solely toward the
former Soviet Union, but toward the much more complex threat of nuclear
tests that could occur in any medium and in any part of the world. The
challenge of discriminating among signals that could arise from natural
phenomena as well as from nuclear tests of unidentified origin is an
extremely difficult one. We are responding to it by studying a suite of
monitoring technologies---seismic, acoustic, radiochemical, and
electromagnetic as well as satellite-based observation. Meanwhile, to
deter proliferation at an even earlier stage, Los Alamos and other
laboratories cooperate in the DOE\'s proliferation detection technology
program. This program supports advanced technologies such as laser
monitoring of atmospheric emissions, multispectral thermal imaging of
suspect areas, and effluent monitoring (soil, water, and air) to detect
the presence of potential proliferation activity. Still other
contributions to nonproliferation and anti-terrorist efforts come from
programs in emergency response, export control, and intelligence
analysis. With increasingly huge amounts of proliferation-related data,
the unparalleled Los Alamos computing capability will be increasingly
important for information integration and management.

*Analysis:* The intelligence program element provides a mechanism to
engage the DOE laboratories in the analysis of foreign nuclear weapon
capabilities and trends. For example, estimates of the Chinese nuclear
program have been most helpful to national-level decision makers. An
evolving activity that has received recent notoriety is the illicit
transfers of special nuclear materials. The DOE intelligence unit is
engaging the national laboratories in helping to assess potential
sources, suppliers, recipients and networks. In this era of widespread
information regarding nuclear technologies, including weapons, the
laboratories also help in assessing potential proliferation pathways and
interdiction options.

For over thirty years the DOE national laboratory and United States Air
Force joint effort has produced a highly successful and cost-effective,
satellite-based verification program. Another example is technical
support to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); Los Alamos has
been the most consistent and productive supplier of new safeguards
technology to IAEA safeguards inspectors monitoring nuclear power
facilities for the past twenty-five years. The weapons laboratories
provided experts and technology during the Iraq and North Korea
crises---to the UN Special Commission in the case of Iraq and to the
State Department during the confrontation with North Korea over its
nuclear weapon program. Because they draw on the same suite of technical
skills, the strong synergism between stewardship and nonproliferation
activities must be continued at Los Alamos.

*Satellites:* Our small satellite program has been very successful in
demonstrating the viability of a new approach that allows the design,
construction, and launch of satellites using advanced technologies for
arms control and verification activities on very short time schedules
compared to conventional satellite launch schedules. This program is
another good example of how we approach our work. The design and purpose
of the program is verification, but the satellites produce information
of interest to the astrophysics research community as well.

**Counterproliferation**

Counterproliferation efforts in the 1990s must focus on threats posed by
chemical and biological weapons as well as nuclear weapons.
Counterproliferation activities include detecting the spread of such
weapons; deterring it through incentives and force; responding with
appropriate military and diplomatic tools; and protecting U.S. citizens,
property, and interests worldwide. The Department of Defense is defining
the scope of counterproliferation efforts and is integrating its efforts
with those of other agencies. Los Alamos has responded to the new
counterproliferation initiative by establishing a dedicated
counterproliferation office and by expanding its participation in a
number of emergency response programs. The new effort at Los Alamos is
built around the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) and Accident
Response Group (ARG) programs, both of which are funded by DOE. These
teams address the potential need to find and secure nuclear weapons and
nuclear materials in unusual circumstances. NEST/ARG-related skills will
be expanded to address chemical and biological threats. Thus, the
expanded counterproliferation program at Los Alamos will be closely
coupled to the existing nonproliferation program.

In support of counterforce options in counterproliferation, we are
applying modeling capabilities and techniques developed in our
conventional munitions programs to analyze the lethality of
fragmentation and hit-to-kill warheads against various threats,
including canister munitions that may contain chemical or biological
agents. The demonstration of multimode warhead munitions to drastically
reduce logistics and strike-planning burdens is also being pursued.
These lethal mechanisms are optimized for a wide spectrum of targets
from a single warhead package.

***[The Environmental Legacy]{.smallcaps}***

*Reducing the nuclear danger* also will require that we *clean up the
legacy of 50 years of weapons production.* As the global military threat
recedes, it is imperative that we turn our attention and technical
talents to remediating the environmental problems in the defense
complexes of the United States and the former Soviet Union.

Los Alamos is applying its multidisciplinary staff and dedicated
resources to areas of concern including waste minimization,
characterization and remediation (including treatment, disposal, and
storage), environmental restoration, waste management, and pollution
prevention. DOE possesses a number of legacy wastes (hazardous, high-
and low-level radioactive, transuranic, and mixed) that are complicated
and often heterogeneous in nature. These waste types pose a significant
treatment and management challenge. Industry faces similar problems. For
example, waste from nuclear medical procedures shares many of the
characteristics of mixed waste.

The Galvin Task Force pointed out the opportunity to apply new science
and technology to applications in environmental remediation. A larger
fraction of the environmental restoration program budget should be
allocated to research and development activities. There are many new
areas of technology which, if developed further, could yield benefits
both in cost and in reduced hazards to the public and the environment
compared to current technologies.

Waste management science must evolve to bring under control the large
volume of waste and contaminated material that come from restoration and
decontamination and decommissioning activities. The following table
shows just three areas in which Los Alamos is developing technologies
that have application to a number of sites in the DOE complex.

  ---------------------- ------------ ----------------- -----------------
  **DOE Needs**          **Los Alamos **Applicable      **Industry
                         Technology   Sites**           Partners**
                         Areas**                        

  ---------------------- ------------ ----------------- -----------------

  ---------------------- ------------ ----------------- -----------------
  Low-level radioactive  Magnetic     Savannah River,   AWC Lockheed
  contamination from     separation   Nevada Test Site, CRADA established
  soils                               Rocky Flats       with Los Alamos
                                      Plant, Hanford,   
                                      Idaho National    
                                      Engineering       
                                      Laboratory, and   
                                      military armor    
                                      penetrator firing 
                                      ranges.           

  ---------------------- ------------ ----------------- -----------------

  -------------------------------- ------------ ----------------- -----------------
  Effluent wastes, volatile        Silent       Savannah River,   EG&G, General
  organic compounds (VOCs),        discharge    Rocky Flats       Electric, and
  nonarid site VOCs,               plasmas      Plant, Hanford,   Westinghouse
  hazardous-solvent-contaminated                Los Alamos        
  machining oils,                               National          
  incinerator/thermal unit                      Laboratory,       
  off-gas, arid site VOCs,                      Department of     
  vapor-plume VOCs, solvents,                   Defense, Electric 
  explosives/munitions secondary                Power Research    
  treatment                                     Institute (EPRI)  

  -------------------------------- ------------ ----------------- -----------------

  ---------------------- ------------- ----------------- -----------------
  Separation of          Chemical      Savannah River,   Grumman, General
  radioactive            separations   Hanford, Rocky    Electric, TRW,
  constituents and                     Flats Plant, and  IBM, General
  organics from                        Los Alamos        Atomics,
  high-level defense                   National          McDonnell
  waste                                Laboratory        Douglas, and
                                                         Westinghouse

  ---------------------- ------------- ----------------- -----------------

***[ People and Facilities]{.smallcaps}***

To accomplish the mission outlined above, we need outstanding people and
the right facilities. Being embedded in a major research university, the
University of California, has helped us attract the best talent
available. However, the steady decline in nuclear weapons funding since
1987 has jeopardized our ability to keep the best people in the nuclear
weapons program and has severely hampered our ability to attract bright
young people to work in the program. The precipitous drop in full time
equivalent employees in the core nuclear weapons research, development,
and test program by a factor of two over that time span has sent a
strong and negative message to our staff.

Ensuring that the enduring stockpile will remain safe, secure, and
reliable depends on our ability to turn around the grim picture of the
past few years. After all, our confidence in nuclear weapons rests not
so much on the final product, but in the people. I view it as imperative
that the turnaround in the President's FY 1996 budget is preserved and
that within this budget we can spend more of it supporting people doing
real technical work and in investing in the upkeep of key facilities. We
must turn around the inordinate burden of government oversight that has
sapped our strength and morale. The DOE has started some initiatives to
make the oversight process more efficient, but we still have a very long
way to go.

In addition, we must leverage the nuclear weapons work with other
programs to which we can make significant contributions that will
simultaneously reinforce the core competencies required for the nuclear
weapons program.

**People**

Of three negative trends in our workforce discussed in testimony last
year---the aging of the workforce, a high level of unanticipated early
retirements, and the resultant downsizing of the workforce driven by the
inability to hire replacements due to shrinking budgets---only the
second has stabilized. The Galvin Task Force rightly identified the need
to attract and keep skilled people in the program as the most important
priority for the management of science-based stewardship of the
stockpile.

However, in spite of the continued decline in the workforce due to
retirements and budget shortfalls, a recently completed assessment of
the skill capabilities at the Laboratory pertinent to supporting
science-based stockpile stewardship does hold some good news. Because of
the multiprogram nature of the Laboratory, we have been able to retain
weapons-skilled people in our workforce by employing them outside the
core weapons program in activities that we see as having dual benefit.
These activities, related to the civilian science and technology
projects, including partnerships with industry, that I will discuss
below, have become essential to the support of the core weapons program.

Because of these activities at the Laboratory, we would in a national
emergency be able to reconstitute a skilled weapons workforce somewhat
larger than that supported by current funding levels. However, this
capability will clearly erode over time and as noted last year would be
insufficient to fully reconstitute capability in all critical skill
areas. Of immediate concern, current and planned funding levels are
insufficient to support some of the program activities required for
enhanced surveillance of the existing stockpile as well as to complete
the transition to a stockpile stewardship program without nuclear
testing.

**Capabilities**

Historically, defense activities have formed the foundation of research
and development at the laboratories and have allowed us to make
contributions in many other areas of national importance. Shrinking
budgets for weapons research and development have now reversed that
situation to the point that we now use these other programs to help
shore up the technology base needed for the weapons activities. Even
with this strategy, however, we are beginning to lose some of the
diverse capabilities that would enable Los Alamos to respond to future
national contingencies. Some examples: Los Alamos has lost the
capability to do high-explosive synthesis and has closed some of its
laboratories that perform characterization experiments on explosives.
This reduces our capability to address fundamental safety issues and
respond to potential future requirements. We have had to close two laser
facilities that were intended to perform laboratory experiments relevant
to thermonuclear weapons physics. We terminated several advanced
development programs that would have improved our experimental
capability to offset the loss of testing. All of this was done in order
to support urgent near-term requirements. Indeed, rather than expanding
our capabilities to maintain nuclear weapons competence in the absence
of underground testing---as directed by both the Congress and the
President---we have been forced to reduce activity. In many areas we are
currently only one or two people deep. Another round of budget cuts will
clearly result in additional lost capabilities.

**Facilities**

In the past, the Laboratory has described a "crisis in facilities" that
was putting our ability to ensure the safety and reliability of the
nation's nuclear stockpile at risk. Los Alamos is committed to
responsible and flexible stockpile stewardship and support. This
requires that the facilities essential for the DOE weapons mission can
operate in compliance with all applicable safety, security, waste
management, and environmental protection regulations and standards.
These facilities house activities and materials that demand increasingly
focused attention, with increased operating and capital funding, to
ensure that safety and environmental concerns, as well as programmatic
goals, can be met simultaneously. Operating these facilities has become
very expensive. The current fixed cost for the Laboratory\'s operating
nuclear facilities is in the range of 50% to 75% of total cost, and
rising. Thus the fraction of operations funding available for both
programmatic work *and* necessary improvements in safety systems and
procedures, process waste minimization, environmental protection, etc.,
is decreasing.

With the closure of many elements of the production complex, our
facilities will be critical to maintaining the stockpile, supporting
dismantlement, and providing the research and development expertise for
remanufacturing, should this be required by the DoD and authorized by
the President. They will be the only facilities of their kind in the
consolidated national complex. For example, Los Alamos currently has the
only capability to fabricate plutonium pits---the heart of a nuclear
weapon---in the country.

The total cost of maintaining and operating a nuclear facility is being
driven by more stringent requirements for demonstrating safety,
security, and environmental compliance. For example, at the
Laboratory\'s plutonium facility, the cost of operating the facility,
was about 35% of that program\'s budget in 1987. In 1995, these costs,
including lost work time by our technical staff, are estimated to exceed
75% of the total. The increased costs are being driven by

• Replacement costs for aging equipment and facilities,

• Increased requirements for formality of operations demonstrating
compliance,

• Environmental compliance initiatives required by EPA, State of New
Mexico, and DOE,

• Rigorous training required by new standards for personnel
qualification,

• Ever-increasing concerns for safeguarding nuclear materials, and

• Increasingly burdensome government oversight in all operational and
administrative functions.

A healthy infrastructure is also a requirement for efficient operation
of a complex institution such as Los Alamos. That infrastructure is at
risk in times of prolonged budgetary pressure because infrastructure
investments are not uniquely associated with a specific product. In
times of transition, and without sufficient designated investment
capital, the infrastructure burden on programs has become heavy and
overwhelming. It is time to recognize that these critical
government-owned facilities must be upgraded and maintained consistent
with current regulatory standards and good business practice. The Galvin
task force report pointed out that "If we do not correct this facility
situation, the cost of managing and maintaining facilities "today\'s
way" will soon be so costly that it may substantially consume the
laboratories\' budget." The task force report goes on to say that
management improvements could then significantly reduce the costs of
maintenance of renewed and modernized facilities.

While we believe that our facilities are operating safely and present no
threat to our employees, the public, or the environment, proper
investment is needed now to ensure that they will remain operational and
will continue to serve the nation's defense needs. We are working with
the DOE to better estimate what will be required at Los Alamos over the
next several years. However, we expect that an investment of the order
of \$100 M per year in capital, construction, and operating funds will
be required.

***[Conventional Defense]{.smallcaps}***

In 1985, the President's Blue Ribbon Task Group on Nuclear Weapons
Program Management headed by Judge William Clark concluded that the DOE
defense laboratories (Los Alamos, Sandia, and Livermore) should be
tasked to serve some of the research and development needs of the
Department of Defense in nonnuclear areas. Such work would concurrently
benefit the laboratories' competencies for their nuclear weapons
requirements. Ten years later, the three DOE defense laboratories have
demonstrated the wisdom of Judge Clark's recommendation with many
contributions to DoD requirements, especially under the auspices of the
joint DoD/DOE munitions program.

As the DoD restructures and consolidates its research and development
enterprise today, the Blue Ribbon Task Group's recommendation is more
applicable than ever. The DOE defense laboratories can support the DoD
laboratories and help extend the shrinking defense science and
technology base of the United States. The science and technology base
developed for our nuclear and past conventional defense activities are a
resource to address the emerging threats of the 21st Century. Use of
these capabilities by the DoD is an effective way to leverage the
investments made in the nuclear weapons program for conventional
defense. In turn, conventional defense programs at Los Alamos are a
vital part of the Laboratory\'s portfolio, supporting and strongly
complementing its nuclear national security missions. These programs are
also a major contributor to our defense science and technology base.

We have organized our defense technologies portfolio based on technology
and programmatic platforms to best support new DoD initiatives while
meeting current commitments. We are building strategic partnerships with
the military services and service laboratories, industry, and academia
to support science and technology efforts.

**Conventional Weapons Technology**

Conventional weapons technology includes the Non-Nuclear Munitions
Memorandum of Understanding, technology programs and projects in
high-explosives, conventional weapons, lethality, and survivability for
DoD applications. The joint munitions program supported by both DOE and
DoD has been very successful. It was funded at \$24 million in FY 1995,
and is scheduled for the same level for FY 1996; this is a program that
provides significant leverage and could easily be increased.

One example of this work is the armoring of C-141 aircraft. Based on the
capabilities developed in our Armor/Anti-armor program, we were able to
design and produce modular kits to retrofit C-141 aircraft with cockpit
armor. Five complete sets were fielded within eight weeks to protect the
crews and critical systems of these aircraft as they flew peacekeeping
missions in Bosnia. Other examples include new classes of insensitive
high-explosives that are far less vulnerable to detonation in accident
conditions; the development of new processes for the safe,
environmentally sound demilitarization of energetic materials; and new,
smart, adaptable warheads for multiple target sets.

**Biological Warfare Agent Detection**

The Desert Storm campaign clearly identified the inability of U.S. and
Allied forces to effectively detect and identify biological-warfare (BW)
agents as a critical military deficiency. Because of the low level of
technology required to manufacture BW agents, and the relative ease with
which they may be employed, our military forces could easily be
confronted with the potentially catastrophic effects produced by these
agents. Los Alamos was selected by DoD to pursue the development of
innovative technologies for BW agent detection and identification.
Drawing on our interdisciplinary skills in lasers, optics, information
technologies, and engineering design, a light detection and ranging
(lidar) system, designated the XM-94 by the Army, was designed, built,
and tested by Los Alamos in a period of five months in 1993. The XM-94
is an order of magnitude smaller in size and weight and has
substantially improved operational characteristics, compared to an
earlier prototype BW agent detection lidar quickly fielded by Los Alamos
during Desert Storm. As part of the DoD Counterproliferation Support
Program, Los Alamos will build two military-engineered-and-qualified
advanced prototypes based on the XM-94 concept, and transfer the
technology to industry for production.

In a closely related activity, Los Alamos has also been tapped by the
Army to exploit its expertise in sensors and biotechnology to develop a
miniature flow cytometer (a technology that Los Alamos pioneered) for
its Biological Integrated Detection System, which provides point
detection and rapid identification of BW agents at forward deployment
locations. Compared to current, off-the-shelf flow cytometers, the
mini-system will represent a significant reduction in system volume,
weight, and power requirements; operate in a semiautomatic detection and
identification mode; and be designed and engineered for the military
environment. This will bring the military\'s capability significantly
closer to its goal of near-real-time, positive BW agent identification.
Production beyond the initial test articles will also be transferred to
an Army-selected industrial contractor.

**Modeling and Simulation**

Advanced modeling and simulation capability will allow the our military
to "practice" an actual engagement scenario while varying tactics and
weapons to determine an optimum approach that minimizes casualties and
collateral damage, as well as providing a structured approach to
procurement decisions and the evaluation of life-cycle costs.

Simulation is defined as macroscopic systems modeling for requirements,
prototyping, procurement, test and evaluation, operations, and training,
including man-in-the-loop scenarios. The full utilization of
high-performance computing for modeling needs of the defense community,
for simulation of agile manufacturing and process control, and for
analysis of complex systems involves the use of scalable workstation
resources linked effectively with high-performance computers.

Significant results with the 1024-node Connection Machine 5, vectorized
codes on Cray machines, and connection to a network funded by the
Advanced Research and Projects Agency and the National Science
Foundation will enable Los Alamos to make major contributions to the
modeling and simulation of defense problems. The object-oriented
modeling of systems for global and theater missile defense, corps
engagements, and satellite architectures has shown great utility for
many defense simulation applications and can provide a framework for
modeling advanced technology concepts and evaluating acquisition
strategies.

**Beams and Sensors**

Los Alamos work encompasses particle, laser, and microwave beams and
active and passive sensors. The primary emphasis in laser technology at
Los Alamos in the near future will be on laser systems that provide
frequency-agile sources, both continuously and discretely tunable, for
defense-related applications such as biological warfare agent detection,
missile defenses, lidar systems, countermeasures, and antisensor
devices.

Recent advances in electronics, electrooptics, and computers are
facilitating the development of highly capable, compact, active and
passive sensors that support a wide variety of DoD applications, such as
the use of lidar technology to detect biological agents and theater
ballistic missiles and the use of passive threat-warning systems to
detect spacecraft, aircraft, and land vehicles. Space environmental
sensors and novel low-light level and multispectral imaging sensors
developed for nonproliferation and counterproliferation missions are
also applicable to DoD needs.

**Advanced Concepts**

Advanced concept technologies encompass a broad range of projects.
Advanced materials for specific applications could be developed that
have unique properties such as strong absorption of specific frequencies
of electromagnetic radiation. Hypervelocity interceptor missile
technologies could enable boost-phase interception of theater ballistic
missiles. Other technologies include capabilities and systems that
support peacekeeping, low-intensity conflicts, and special missions,
those that provide the military and policymakers with flexible options;
and novel energy storage systems and beam sources.

**Summary**

In the past, the DoD put considerable reliance and investment in its
science and technology base to provide top-flight weapons systems to our
armed forces. Examples include stealth technology, precision-guided
munitions, and global positioning systems. With reductions in defense
budgets and increasing demands for operational readiness, this
investment in the future is at risk.

Moreover, recent changes in DoD procurement practices and restrictive
interpretation of authorization and appropriations language have had a
negative effect on the DoD's and the Services' ability to leverage and
access the science and technology expertise resident in the DOE defense
laboratories. We would advocate new approaches to incorporating the DOE
defense laboratories in the DoD science and technology base to ensure
the provision of innovative solutions for the future force structure and
to help maintain the technological superiority of our defense.

***[Defense Mission Summary]{.smallcaps}***

Los Alamos is well positioned to serve the nation in this new world. Of
the seven nuclear systems that will remain in the U.S. nuclear arsenal
after the turn of the century, Los Alamos designed and engineered five.
However, the scientific challenge of ensuring the stockpile beyond its
design lifetime and doing it without nuclear testing is greater than was
the challenge of designing new weapons. At Los Alamos, we have the most
complete set of facilities to help support the stockpile of tomorrow. We
have a history of technical accomplishments and facilities to help
manage the nuclear materials, and we have turned our considerable
expertise in chemistry, engineering, and life sciences to addressing the
daunting problems of the environmental legacy of the production complex.
We are working closely with Livermore and Sandia laboratories to provide
the nation with the best technologies to prevent and respond to the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We have made significant
progress in developing a cooperative working relationship with its
counterpart laboratories in Russia to address worldwide proliferation
concerns.

So, *reducing the nuclear danger* will be a compelling central mission
for Los Alamos for the foreseeable future. This mission will require
that we keep excellent, experienced people committed to these challenges
and that we maintain and modernize our facilities. We must also maintain
excellence in several core technical competencies that cannot be
supported entirely by our core mission activities. Programs in civilian
science and technology, whether directly funded or performed in
partnership with

industry or universities, help maintain the competencies needed by our
core defense mission areas while at the same time contributing to
broader national goals.

**II. Civilian Science and Technology**

For this Laboratory to perform its defense missions, the strength and
reputation of its scientific and technical capabilities must be
maintained. The challenge of assuring a safe and secure nuclear
deterrent, particularly in the absence of nuclear testing, requires a
diverse scientific and technical environment. In a stringent budget
climate this entails access to skills and technologies beyond those that
can be supported solely for the national security mission. Civilian
research programs now supported by other Department of Energy offices
such as the Office of Energy Research, as well as work for other federal
agencies, and partnerships with industry, help support necessary defense
capabilities. Further, maintenance of the quality of the Laboratory's
work requires that the Laboratory's scientists be integrated into the
broader scientific and technical community. The multiprogram nature of
our Laboratory must be maintained if we are to continue to perform, much
less excel, in our defense mission.

I view work in civilian research and development as being vitally
important to the Laboratory. *First*, there are direct benefits to
working in these areas that accrue to the Laboratory. The intellectual
challenges brought by civilian research and development often provide
the necessary dynamics for development of technology for mission
applications. A *second* reason for the essential character of civilian
research and development is the need for the Laboratory to continue to
attract the best scientists and engineers. Work in these fields helps
provide the level of challenge needed to recruit a world-class staff. I
am concerned that we may find it difficult to maintain the competencies
necessary for the performance of our core defense mission if that
mission is interpreted too narrowly. Civilian research is therefore a
strong supporting component to the defense mission of the Laboratory.

***[Basic Research]{.smallcaps}***

Basic research has long been a central feature of work at Los Alamos. It
has served to inspire young scientists to come to Los Alamos, and it has
helped retain some of our most productive senior people. A healthy basic
research program also helps keep a focus on science and enhances the
reputation of the institution for excellence. Basic research,
exemplified by the first detection of the neutrino by a Los Alamos team
in 1956 and our recent research on the mass of the neutrino, is
essential to our defense mission. Research in materials using spallation
neutrons at the Los Alamos Manuel Lujan Jr. Neutron Science Center
(LANSCE) will support the defense mission as well, leading to greater
understanding of stockpile stewardship issues, new means for tritium
production, and perhaps to new ways to rid the nation and the world of
long-lived radioactive wastes.

The laboratory provides a base of support for many projects in basic
research that have direct applicability to our defense mission. Work in
theoretical astrophysics has long had close ties to our

weapons design capability. Research in the synthesis of novel materials;
the interaction between radiation, both nuclear and electromagnetic, and
materials; and in the properties of materials under extremes of pressure
and temperature has produced direct benefits to our core mission.

One of the most synergistic facilities at the Laboratory for the last 25
years has been the Clinton P. Anderson Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility
(LAMPF). As a national user facility, it brings scientists from all over
the world to Los Alamos to perform experiments and interact with our
staff, and sometimes join us as employees. The cross-fertilization that
comes from interacting with these visitors is part of what keeps the
Laboratory a vital and exciting place.

Neutron scattering is a basic tool for probing the structure and
dynamics of condensed matter systems and is complementary to more
conventional X-ray diffraction, microscopy, magnetic resonance, and
structural probes. The use of neutrons as a probe in biological and
materials science is growing worldwide, and the importance of neutron
beam research facilities has been established by high level review
committees, each stressing that existing United States reactors for
neutron research are now over 20 years old and that new sources are
urgently needed. When the LAMPF accelerator came on-line in 1972, it
became a new source of neutrons for research, an activity enhanced again
by LANSCE, which started operating from the LAMPF beam in 1985.

Basic research at LANSCE covers a wide range of topics in condensed
matter physics, materials science, chemistry, structural biology,
geology, and engineering. Static structure and atomic and magnetic
fluctuations are probed in a variety of systems ranging from
high-temperature superconductors to macromolecules that control muscle
contraction. Scientists at LANSCE have concentrated over the past few
years in developing techniques in scientific areas to which neutron
scattering has not been applied in the past. As a result, the facility
has a number of unique capabilities, including diffraction measurements
at high pressure, neutron reflection studies of liquid surfaces, and
studies of materials under shear. Neutron radiography has been
demonstrated, and this can provide an important non-destructive
evaluation technique for nuclear assemblies with microscopic resolution
and unique isotopic selectivity.

With the medium-energy nuclear physics national user program ending at
LAMPF after FY 1995, neutron research will become the focal activity for
the high-power accelerator facility and will become an important element
of the Laboratory\'s stockpile stewardship program. The \$35M LANSCE
Upgrade project, currently funded and underway for Phase I, will improve
facility availability with a goal of running eight months per year at
85% reliability. Better access to LANSCE will be important to the
institutional vitality of the Laboratory, as more scientists from around
the world use its facilities and increase contact and collaborations
between Los Alamos scientists and their peers from government,
universities, and industries.

The DOE\'s plan to build the Advanced Neutron Source (ANS) reactor at
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is shown terminated in the FY 1996
President's Budget because of cost. The identified alternative is an
*accelerator-driven spallation neutron source*, such as that pioneered
at LANSCE and the Argonne National Laboratory Intense Pulsed Neutron
Source. However, LANSCE and its sister facility at Argonne are
oversubscribed and underpowered with respect to future user demand. The
Neutron Scattering Society of America, through its Pulsed Spallation
Source Committee (PSSC) hosted by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, has laid
out a roadmap for spallation neutron source development which relies on
facilities and expertise at Los Alamos and Argonne national
laboratories.

LANSCE can also become a higher-power operational prototype. The 1-MW
accelerator provides the only beam near this power level in the United
States for target development. For the research community, the prototype
facility would be a source of neutrons that is at least equivalent to
the reactor at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and
in some cases better than the world\'s best neutron research reactor,
the 57-MW reactor in Grenoble, France. This test bed is projected to
cost in the \$50-100 M range and will serve the community well for 10-15
years until the next generation source (5-10-MW range) is on-line. The
PSSC recommended the High Power Spallation Testbed at Los Alamos as an
important component of the U.S. spallation neutron roadmap and is likely
to ratify this decision even with the cancellation of the ANS. Thus the
United States can, for a modest investment, develop a facility at Los
Alamos that is equivalent to the best neutron source in the world until
the major next-generation neutron facility is designed and built, a
source that will have both defense and non-defense applications.

***[Energy and Environment]{.smallcaps}***

The Laboratory's capabilities in long-term interdisciplinary research
and development, nurtured by our defense mission, can also be applied to
other civilian research and development needs, thereby leveraging both
investments. I discussed our work for the DoD above as examples of
mutual benefit to important national needs that in turn support our core
nuclear weapons mission. The same is true for programs in energy and
environment. In a broader view, energy security is also an integral part
of national security; the potential for economic disruption that
dependence on foreign sources implies has been demonstrated more than
once.

Per-capita demand for energy can be expected to continue to increase
worldwide. While there may be no immediate needs for new energy sources
in the United States, development of high-efficiency, low-polluting
sources should be pursued more vigorously. The form, value, and
efficient use of energy in applications is as important as new capacity;
therefore a systems approach to energy production and use needs to be
taken. These activities can help sustain the developing world and make
our own industry more efficient and cost-effective. More effective
energy technologies and integration of raw materials issues with product
design and recycling considerations will also work to increase the
effectiveness of our industrial base.

These issues are too complex and interwoven to expect industry to find
solutions by themselves. Many promising technologies are sufficiently
speculative that their development poses too high a risk for any
industrial segment. The benefits from such work, however, accrue to the
public, not individual firms. Success in these areas therefore requires
a strong partnership between the federal government and industry, using
all the technological resources the nation has to offer. Work at Los
Alamos in a number of areas contributes both to new source exploration
and the efficient use of energy.

An early example of this approach was the establishment in FY 1988 of
the Superconductivity Technology Centers (STCs) at Los Alamos, Argonne,
and Oak Ridge national laboratories. The centers\' specific mission is
to form partnerships with U.S. industry to expedite the development of
high temperature superconductor (HTSC) technology with commercial
feasibility. These partnerships are industry driven (that is, they are
based on research and development projects of joint interest to a
company and the Laboratory) with industry bearing the full cost of its
participation. The partnership concept benefits both government and
industrial research and development programs and focuses on the timely
introduction of practical HTSC devices into the commercial marketplace.
The emphasis in developing these partnerships is on power applications
of HTSCs, although the Laboratory does respond to strong industry
interest in collaboration on electronics applications. Industry\'s
positive response is expected to lead to an expansion of the STC program
with increased DOE funding. The Laboratory uses its center as a model
for industry/national laboratory partnering by extending the concept to
other important strategic technologies.

The Laboratory also participates in the Natural Gas and Oil Technology
Partnership program, which encourages the domestic natural gas and oil
industry to use the scientific and engineering resources of the DOE
laboratories to acquire new technologies for improved domestic natural
gas and oil recovery. The domestic industry guides the research and
development efforts proposed as part of this initiative. Costs of
partnership projects are shared with industry collaborators.

The Advanced Computing Technology Initiative (ACTI), which is a major
collaboration with the nine multipurpose national laboratories and U.S.
industry, primarily the major gas and oil producers, aims to apply the
high-performance computing capabilities at the national laboratories to
assist in oil and gas explorations, reservoir performance simulation,
and other extraction activities. I discuss this program further when I
discuss how our scientists work with industry.

A greater emphasis on fundamental environmental research and development
is also needed. Examples in which the Laboratory has demonstrated
capabilities include

• Instrumentation, applied information processing, and monitoring
technologies and integration.

• Global atmospheric and climate modeling and measurements; e.g., the
understanding of the effect of greenhouse gases.

• Risk assessment considerations and methodologies.

• Modeling of complex industrial and demographic systems, e.g.,
transportation systems.

• Modeling and simulation of energy and environmental recovery
processes.

In the past year Los Alamos has become one of the preeminent
institutions in computer modeling of the earth\'s oceans. The original
task was to make changes necessary to run a few ocean-circulation codes
efficiently on the massively parallel supercomputers at the
Laboratory\'s Advanced Computing Laboratory. Los Alamos scientists did
much more. They made such substantial improvements to the numerical
methods and physics that these codes now are ranked as the best in the
world. This happened because of the legacy of the nuclear weapons design
program. The years of experience with large fluid-dynamic computer codes
and the large numbers of scientists expert in fluid flow and nonlinear
dynamics, numerical methods, and computer science that the weapons
design program has supported were easily able to make rapid strides in
this non-weapons effort.

Today the Lab is running the most highly resolved ocean simulation (6-10
mile grid) with complete topography (continental margins, islands, and
subsurface topography). Details of ocean circulation compare well with
satellite observations. The Arctic Ocean is being included for the first
time with sea ice physics. Two different codes are being worked
representing two different numerical approaches. Plans are being made to
couple one of these codes to a very powerful global atmospheric code
offering the possibility of the best coupled ocean/atmosphere
simulations of the climate. The use of these coupled models to study the
effects of energy development in the Third World, for example the use of
soft coal as a primary energy resource in China as it develops its
economy, ties directly to our fundamental energy mission.

Similar results have come from the weapons program in the area of global
atmospheric studies. In the mid-1980s, Laboratory scientists responded
to requests for a substantial study of the so-called \"nuclear winter\"
scenario. Much work was being done around the country on this subject,
but none of it was conclusive. Los Alamos scientists made substantial
modifications to a global atmospheric code originally developed at the
NSF-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research. In about 18 months,
working with atmospheric scientists from NASA\'s Ames Research Center,
they were able to make fully 3D simulations of the response of the
earth\'s atmosphere to massive loading of black smoke and soot. Their
analysis showed the major mechanisms that would come into play, and at
the special National Academy of Sciences meeting in Washington DC, Los
Alamos scientists were the only ones able to show such results. A few
years later this capability was used again to make predictions---a task
done in only two weeks---of the effects on global climate from the
burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields.

Recent measurements and demonstrations conducted by Los Alamos in
collaboration with a variety of other organizations have shown that
lidar technology, developed by the Laboratory for verification
activities, can be a powerful tool for measuring air quality associated
with vehicle emissions. Experimental campaigns conducted in Mexico City,
Mexico; Barcelona, Spain; and Albuquerque, New Mexico, have located
sources of pollution, tracked the movement of aerosols, and located
mixing-layer boundaries as a function of time and traffic conditions.

In a somewhat different category, natural disasters cost the United
States over one trillion dollars annually. The ability to base real-time
decisions on event simulations would significantly reduce the
destruction of property and the loss of life. By combining predictive
models with adaptive systems that enable the extraction of information
from large, often noisy, low-confidence data; understanding the limits
of predictability driven by the inherent sources of uncertainty; and by
creating an environment that accelerates model building to ensure agile
responses to developing conditions, Los Alamos could develop the
capabilities to predict the rapidly unfolding future, provide guidance
to manage emergencies, and develop strategies to optimize remediation
efforts. This grand challenge computing problem would be tractable only
at an institution like Los Alamos, where the high performance computing
hardware is joined with extensive software, data analysis, modeling, and
scientific expertise.

Challenges like these, as with our work in basic research, contribute
significantly to the nation, thereby leveraging the nation's investment
in the Laboratory, and help to support the science and technology base
needed to succeed in our defense mission.

***[Work for Other Federal Agencies and Industry]{.smallcaps}***

In addition to the DOE's own programs, work for other federal agencies
and industry, whatever the mechanism, also maintains and strengthens
Laboratory capabilities which are required for the performance of its
core defense mission while contributing to other national needs.

Work for other federal agencies and industry represents the principal
application of the Laboratory's core competence and varied capabilities
to national needs in a broader context and to a broader customer base.
At the same time, the Laboratory must maintain its mission orientation
and not become a "job shop" for industry or for other federal agencies.

The Department must recognize that part of its mission is the
facilitation of the use of its laboratories by other federal agencies
and by industry. The Department has a trustee responsibility to preserve
the competence of the Laboratory as a *national* resource and should not
impede the broader use of Laboratory facilities and expertise through
the imposition of arbitrary taxes and added factors.

*Department of Transportation:* We are supporting the Department of
Transportation under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency
Act of 1991 in several ways. We are partners with the State of New
Mexico, local universities, and Sandia National Laboratory in the New
Mexico Alliance for Transportation Research. This alliance brings the
research and development capabilities of the Laboratory to bear on
infrastructure issues.

Los Alamos is also being funded by the Federal Highway Administration to
develop new modeling and analysis capabilities for transportation system
planning. We have developed a systematic approach based on principles of
dynamic analysis rather than the traditional functional decomposition of
transport systems. The Transportation analysis simulation system
(TRANSIMS) architecture uses what is appropriate from the traditional
process, while developing new and more powerful methods employing modern
and newly emerging computing technologies, software technologies,
simulation techniques, and analytical methods for complex dynamical
systems.

The most important new capabilities offered by TRANSIMS are the
integration of congestion and incident effects analysis, detailed air
quality impact analysis, and intermodal systems analysis. A significant
difference between TRANSIMS and traditional methods is the incorporation
of regional scale traffic microsimulation. Vehicle emissions data
produced by the microsimulation is collected for mobile emissions source
analyses and verification against atmospheric measurements.

*National Institutes of Health:* The multidisciplinary nature of the
Laboratory and its strong capabilities in physical science and
large-scale computing enable its scientists to conduct biological and
environmental research programs not possible at academic institutions.
The National Institutes of Health have drawn on these capabilities to
establish at Los Alamos a number of programs including the National Flow
Cytometry and Sorting Research Resource, which makes advanced
flow-cytometric instrumentation available to the biomedical research
community; the National Stable Isotope Resource, which develops new and
efficient methods of incorporating stable isotopes into compounds of
immediate use in biomedical research; the Genome Sequence Database,
which contributes to an understanding of the role of genes and
chromosomes in disease; and the human immunodeficiency virus/autoimmune
deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) database, which collects and distributes
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequences and determines phylogenetic
relationships.

The National Institutes of Health programs nicely complement the Human
Genome Project which is funded jointly by DOE and the National
Institutes of Health. Los Alamos has just finished a high-resolution map
of chromosome 16 as one of the principal responsibilities of its DOE
Center for Human Genome Studies work.

***[Ties to Industry]{.smallcaps}***

Industrial interactions continue to be a key contributor to the
scientific vitality of Los Alamos National Laboratory. I view working
with industry not as an option but as a business necessity. To carry out
our mission of nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship and stockpile
management, we will increasingly have to integrate manufacturing and
maintenance with research and development. We must learn the best
practices of American industry which has made great strides in
concurrent engineering and quality manufacturing in the past decade. In
addition, we find a great deal of commonality with American industry in
technology development---this is especially evident in areas such as
high-performance computing, modeling, and simulation; advanced materials
and processing; advanced sensors; environmentally-conscious
manufacturing; optoelectronics; and chemical processing.

The Laboratory's collaboration with American industry has increased
dramatically over the past five years. We can credit this increase to
the 1989 National Competitiveness and Technology Transfer Act (NCTTA)
and the Congressionally supported DOE Defense Programs Technology
Transfer Initiative (TTI). The 1989 NCTTA provided the vehicle for
effective interactions, the Cooperative research and development
agreement (CRADA). The DOE TTI program provided the financial support
for cost-sharing, collaborative research and development with industry
where direct benefit could be demonstrated for DOE Defense Programs as
well as for industry. The NCTTA provided sufficiently attractive
intellectual property rights to the private sector to make cost sharing
interesting to industry. In fact, these arrangements, and the dual
benefits that accrue, encouraged the laboratories and industry to
collaborate across a broader spectrum of defense programs, not
necessarily limited to the TTI program.

At Los Alamos, we have just signed our 166th CRADA; our CRADA contracts
now have a total multiyear value in excess of \$385 million. The
interest from industry continues to outpace our funding levels by
factors of eight to ten. Just as importantly, we are finding enormous
excitement among the Laboratory's technical staff for working with
industry. We find that by selecting the technology and the industrial
partner carefully, we can not only maintain, but enhance, the core
technical competencies required for our defense mission. Furthermore, we
have several cases where collaboration with industry in an area closely
related to defense technologies allowed us to keep critical scientists
and engineers in the weapons program.

Let me provide a few examples, to highlight both their contribution to
our DP mission and their impact on U.S. industry:

We developed a new acoustic technique called resonant ultrasound
spectroscopy at Los Alamos to evaluate material properties of
high-temperature superconductors. That technology has now been further
developed through licenses and CRADAs into commercial gear usable for a
wide range of characterization. One company is now selling
non-destructive testing instruments for applications ranging from
improved ball bearing characterization (critical in predicting and
improving lifetimes of rotating systems) to improved ceramic oxygen
sensors for a major U.S. car company. These same acoustic technologies
are now also being used for characterization of weapon pits at one of
the Department\'s facilities. We anticipate that such improved acoustic
technologies will be a key contributor to the requalification of weapon
components to minimize the need for future production.

The Los Alamos technology base in geophysics and computational modeling
has been applied to improved characterization of underground oil and gas
reservoirs through improved collection and interpretation of seismic
signals and better characterization of the permeability of the
underground rock formations. We\'ve further improved this industry\'s
capabilities through work with a major oil field service company to
significantly improve the use of well-logging tools. In this latter
effort, we applied a class of radiation transport computer codes
(\"Monte Carlo transport\"), developed at Los Alamos to predict the
interaction of radiation with materials (important in nuclear weapons
design), to improve the accuracy of well logging. Through well-logging,
the structure of geologic strata outside the oil well casing can be
measured and potentially oil-bearing formations localized. The Director
of Research for Schlumberger Doll Research noted that \"\...the
improvements will ultimately provide crucial capabilities required to
develop new and improved logging tools and more accurate measurement
interpretation, which translates into more economic recovery of oil and
gas.\" Our defense mission also benefits directly from the improvements
made in the computational physics capabilities and the development of
improved user-friendly interfaces for the many Los Alamos applications
of radiation transport codes, most of which have weapons applications.

With Amoco Oil Company, we expanded an important defense mission
research area, the study of turbulent interpenetrating material flows,
and improved our ability to simulate these flows more accurately with
massively parallel computers. Amoco, for its part, is now able to design
more efficient processing systems for residual oil and heavy crude.
Through the new Advanced Computing Technology Initiative (ACTI), we will
further expand the development of these approaches. For the industry,
this can mean improved recovery by better relating seismic measurements
and simulations to the parameters of each reservoir and well hole. ACTI
projects also contribute to explosives technology, the speed of
simulation codes, and database development. Department missions benefit
from improved use of seismic signals to interpret underground
disturbances, including clandestine nuclear detonations, and better
tools for determining the safety of radioactive waste storage.

With General Motors we have had the opportunity to develop a novel idea
for surface treatment of materials based on an invention at the
University of Wisconsin. Surfaces of materials such as gears or dies are
treated in a plasma generated with equipment that the Laboratory was
able to bring together from its fusion research, weapons program, and
strategic defense research. This Plasma Source Ion Implantation CRADA
with General Motors promises to improve hardness and wear of industrial
materials in an environmentally benign process, while concurrently
opening up the possibility of improving materials for enhanced nuclear
weapons safety and for decontaminating surfaces of nuclear process
equipment at sites such as Rocky Flats.

Much has been said about having the DOE laboratories contribute to the
competitiveness of American industry. The Galvin Task Force report
cautioned that the laboratories should stay within their mission areas
in forming partnerships with industry. Our experience over the past few
years, drawn principally from the DOE TTI program where dual benefit to
defense programs was built in at the planning stage, is that Los Alamos
does indeed have much to offer to American industry. However, the real
story is just how much the Laboratory has benefited from these
partnerships. We have carefully examined our 150 CRADAs and found that
all of the TTI CRADAs, which constitute the bulk of the 150, have direct
benefits to our defense programs, with most of them greatly contributing
to the core competencies required for our core mission of reducing the
global nuclear danger.

Over the next few years we see the laboratories integrating their R&D in
nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship with manufacturing. To be able to
offer the nation the ability to manufacture whatever will be required in
the future without having a large and expensive production complex in a
standby mode, we will have to develop agile manufacturing techniques
similar to those American industry is developing to stay competitive in
a global market place. In the future, small numbers of a variety of
remanufactured weapons and/or components will likely be needed, and this
will require a highly flexible manufacturing capability with the highest
quality assurance standards. Hence, we see future cooperation with
industry becoming more focused on providing benefits for the nuclear
weapons program. In some cases, we can work cooperatively with U.S.
industries to develop manufacturing capabilities that will not only
enable future weapon component manufacturing, but also advance the
state-of-the-art in the manufacturing sciences crucial to U.S. industry.
We have found the CRADA mechanism and the TTI funding channel a very
useful way to encourage this truly mutually beneficial arrangement. I
encourage the Committee to continue its support of this effort.

**III. The Galvin Task Force Report**

In 1994, a task force of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board on the
Future of the DOE National Laboratories was convened under the
leadership of Bob Galvin of Motorola. The task force, and in particular
its subgroup on national security, spent substantial time on the
question of the future of the nuclear weapons laboratories and
encouraged the laboratories to take a close look at themselves in new
ways. In fact, one of the positive outcomes of the process of the task
force is that the laboratory directors now communicate and coordinate
their activities more closely than ever before. The report of the task
force, released on February 1, 1995, is the result of a thorough
examination of all the laboratories. I view the report of the task force
more as a beginning than an end. The report will be one of several
inputs to the White House National Science and Technology Council as it
considers the future of the major federal laboratories this spring. As
indicated by this hearing, Congress is also keenly interested in
following up on the report because it deals with programs, budgets, and
governance---all areas of great interest to the Congress. Nevertheless,
I will reserve my comments on the report primarily to those that
directly concern Los Alamos.

We find strong support in the report for the Los Alamos core mission of
reducing the global nuclear danger. The task force strongly endorses the
need for science-based stockpile stewardship in the absence of
underground nuclear testing. Specifically endorsed are the needs to
attract and retain skilled scientists and engineers; to enhance
surveillance of weapons; to re-analyze previous test data by using
advanced numerical simulations; to sustain the scientific process of
inquiry through experimentation; to support the Dual Axis Radiographic
Hydrotest Facility (DARHT) to continue hydrodynamic testing; to utilize
the Los Alamos Manuel Lujan Jr. Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) for
neutron radiography; and to support research programs such as advanced
computing and accelerator concepts for producing tritium. In addition,
the report is consistent with our laboratory playing a strong role in
nonproliferation and counter-proliferation, the safe tracking and
disposition of fissionable materials, and cleaning up the legacy of 50
years of nuclear weapons production.

The issue of civilian control of nuclear weapons activities has been
visited and revisited frequently. From the Atomic Energy Act of 1946,
civilian control of nuclear weapons research and development has been a
bipartisan mainstay of U.S. policy, a policy reiterated in the formation
of the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Department
of Energy. This suggests that, while the world situation has changed, a
transfer of the weapons program to the DoD should not be approached
lightly.

In 1985, the President's Blue Ribbon Task Group on Nuclear Weapons
Program Management I already mentioned was directed to review the
question of fiscal responsibility in the nuclear weapons program. As a
result of extensive studies of the costs of the nuclear weapons program,
the Task Group concluded that funding responsibilities for DOE's nuclear
weapons activities should *not* be transferred to DoD and that the
disadvantages of such a transfer would more than offset any advantages.

The Galvin Task Force came to the same conclusion, finding *"...no
compelling reason for DoD to manage the national security activities at
the weapons laboratories. Indeed, the Task Force believes that there is
much value at this time in maintaining an independent and technically
expert organization to focus on nuclear stockpile issues and to continue
to ensure that decisions regarding the safety, control, and stewardship
of nuclear weapons are raised to the high policy level that they
deserve."*

The task force also finds that \"basic research is necessary to support
their core missions \... that it is necessary to attract the most
talented people to the laboratories.\" The report expresses concern over
what appears to have been a significant decline in Departmental funding
for fundamental research over the past three years. I share this concern
as I expressed above.

The task force is also supportive of the Department\'s missions in
energy and environment. The report states, \"there is a long list of
exciting, challenging, and vital areas of research and technology
development that constitute the appropriate energy agenda for the
laboratories.\" The task force calls for greater attention to the energy
mission by the laboratories in conjunction with collaboration with the
private sector. It specifically calls out a need to support industrial
ecology. We must demonstrate how Los Alamos can make very special
contributions to the nation\'s civilian agenda because of the strengths
and synergism arising from our defense mission.

On the matter of working with industry, the task force provides some
cautions to avoid making economic competitiveness a principal mission of
the laboratories. I agree with many of the concerns of the task force,
however, I want to ask this Committee not to indiscriminately cut back
the laboratories\' industrial collaborations. As I hope I have already
impressed upon you, working with industry allows us to stay sharp
technically and to provide leverage for the federal research investment
in our programs and institutions.

The task force was also asked specifically to address the size of the
laboratories. It does not recommend closure of any laboratories.
However, it rejects some of the current arguments for the need for two
competing nuclear design laboratories, calling for consolidation of key
nuclear weapons functions at Los Alamos over the next five years. These
recommendations will have to be reconciled with the Department\'s
Defense Programs vision and roadmap of the future weapons complex.

The task force also stated that it \"believes that the national
laboratory system is oversized for its current mission assignments.\"
Several contributing factors are mentioned, including current management
inefficiencies at the laboratories and the Department, excess capacity
associated with nuclear weapons, and politics that make it difficult to
downsize or restructure. Although I certainly agree that improvements in
governance and a sharpened mission focus for the laboratories will yield
significant productivity improvements and will allow for somewhat
smaller laboratories, along with significantly fewer government
oversight personnel, it is critical that we focus first on function and
then on size. The 10 laboratories reviewed by the task force currently
constitute approximately one-third of the Department\'s budget. It is
imperative that the Department develop its missions and the roadmaps to
accomplish those missions and then size the laboratories accordingly.

For example, the current Defense Programs vision and roadmap anticipates
a smaller, less costly overall defense complex in the future. However,
to achieve this vision the defense laboratories would have to assume
additional tasks within the overall complex. The Department should
develop similar roadmaps for energy and environment, cleanup, and
science. In addition, work for other government agencies must be
strategically incorporated to provide the proper synergy with the
Department's missions. Congress can help by encouraging the Department
of Energy to take this approach to effectively size the laboratory
system.

The report leaves little to the imagination on the subject of DOE\'s
oversight and management of the laboratories with the statement, "the
current system of governance of these laboratories is broken and should
be replaced with a bold alternative.\" I applaud taking a fresh look at
the governance of the laboratories. Over the years the laboratories have
been pushed toward *the federal norm* in many of their business and
operational practices, consequently losing much of the flexibility and
independence that were the hallmarks of the government-owned,
contractor-operated (GOCO) system of governance.

The corporatization model proposed by the task force has certain initial
appeal. However, the versions I have examined so far do not appear as
attractive as fixing the GOCO system. The major changes outlined in
Appendix B of the report aimed at fixing the GOCO system would go a long
way to remedy what the task force saw as \"operational inefficiencies
and demotivational consequences\" of excessive oversight and
micromanagement.

I am very encouraged by the Department\'s response (as outlined in
Secretary O\'Leary\'s testimony to the Senate Committee on
Appropriations on February 28) in addressing the governance and
oversight issues. Such actions, along with developing specific roadmaps
for the civilian and science missions of the Department would greatly
enhance the value of the Department and its laboratories to the nation.
I urge strong congressional support for such actions.

As to what the laboratories can do, we must continue to improve our
operations and business practices. The standards that the Galvin Task
Force have in mind are not lower than those practiced now. We must be
scrupulous in protecting the health and safety of our employees and the
public. We must comply with federal and state laws and regulations. We
must demonstrate responsible fiscal and property management. Management
improvements would be targeted to focus on effectiveness and product,
not on administrative process. We must continue to benchmark our
operations and practices against the best-in-class. Only then can we
hope for a world with fewer audits and greater flexibility. Further, we
must continue to work together more cooperatively as a *system* of
laboratories, teaming as appropriate with universities and industry to
meet the science and technology needs of the nation.

To sum it up, the task force makes some excellent recommendations on how
the Department of Energy and the laboratories can enhance their
contributions to the nation. I view it as a positive beginning for the
next phase---making it all happen.

**IV. Summary**

The great strength of our Laboratory is the quality of the science and
technology it is able to apply to its mission of *reducing the global
nuclear danger.* Indeed, the Laboratory's identity and international
recognition rest upon its sustained excellence in satisfying national
needs in science and technology. For its entire existence, the
Laboratory has been large enough, with sufficient resources and depth,
to carry out its defense responsibilities. I want to reiterate the
themes on which I began this testimony.

• We are the caretakers of the nation's nuclear stockpile, and we fully
recognize the responsibility that that mission entails. We also
acknowledge nonproliferation, nuclear materials, and environmental
cleanup responsibilities.

• We need help to arrest the continuing erosion in our competencies. In
addition to strengthening support of our defense programs, we must
maintain the facilities needed for our defense mission while preserving
the talent base upon which our programs depend.

• We need help from Congress and the DOE to implement the changes called
for in Appendix B of the Galvin Task Force Report. Without these changes
we will price ourselves out of business.

• We must maintain our nonnuclear defense and civilian research and
development activities in order to help maintain the competencies needed
for our defense mission and to continue to attract and retain the best
people for our core mission.

Los Alamos has served the nation for fifty-two years. We are prepared to
face the new challenges of a different era. I appreciate the continued
support that this Committee and its predecessors have given the
Laboratory.