ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT 

APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 

HEARINGS 

BEFORE A 

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT 

RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey, Chairman 

JERRY LEWIS, California 

MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho 

DENNY REHBERG, Montana 

RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana 

STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas 

ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi 

PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana 

ED PASTOR, Arizona 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts 

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Dicks, as Ranking 

Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees. 

ROB BLAIR, JOSEPH LEVIN, ANGIE GIANCARLO, 

LORAINE HECKENBERG, and PERRY YATES, 

Staff Assistants 

PART 8 

NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION 

Page 

Energy Weapons Activities ................................................... 1 

Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation and Naval Reactors 127 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations 


smartinez on DSK6TPTVN1PROD with HEARING-P1
PART 8—ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 


smartinez on DSK6TPTVN1PROD with HEARING-P1
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT 

APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 

HEARINGS 

BEFORE A 

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT 

RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey, Chairman 

JERRY LEWIS, California 

MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho 

DENNY REHBERG, Montana 

RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana 

STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas 

ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi 

PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana 

ED PASTOR, Arizona 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts 

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Dicks, as Ranking 

Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees. 

ROB BLAIR, JOSEPH LEVIN, ANGIE GIANCARLO, 

LORAINE HECKENBERG, and PERRY YATES, 

Staff Assistants 

PART 8 

NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION 

Page 

Energy Weapons Activities ................................................... 1 

Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation and Naval Reactors 127 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations 

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

68–245 WASHINGTON : 2011 


smartinez on DSK6TPTVN1PROD with HEARING-P1
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman 

C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida 1

JERRY LEWIS, California 1

FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia 

JACK KINGSTON, Georgia 

RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey 

TOM LATHAM, Iowa 

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama 

JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri 

KAY GRANGER, Texas 

MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho 

JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas 

ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida 

DENNY REHBERG, Montana 

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas 

RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana 

KEN CALVERT, California 

JO BONNER, Alabama 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

TOM COLE, Oklahoma 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

STEVE AUSTRIA, Ohio 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

KEVIN YODER, Kansas 

STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas 

ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi 

————— 

1 Chairman Emeritus 

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana 

NITA M. LOWEY, New York 

JOSE ́ E. SERRANO, New York 

ROSA L. DELAURO, Connecticut 

JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia 

JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts 

ED PASTOR, Arizona 

DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina 

MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York 

LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California 

SAM FARR, California 

JESSE L. JACKSON, JR., Illinois 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey 

SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR., Georgia 

BARBARA LEE, California 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California 

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota 

WILLIAM B. INGLEE, Clerk and Staff Director 

(II)


smartinez on DSK6TPTVN1PROD with HEARING-P1
(1) 

ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT 

APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 

TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2011. 

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY WEAPONS ACTIVITIES 

WITNESSES 

THOMAS D’AGOSTINO, UNDER SECRETARY FOR NUCLEAR SECURITY 

DR. DONALD L. COOK, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR DEFENSE PROGRAMS 

BRIG. GEN. SANDRA E. FINAN, PRINCIPAL ASSISTANT DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR MILITARY APPLICATION 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. The hearing will come to order. Good morning, everybody. Before we get started I would like to welcome everyone to the Subcommittee’s first hearing of the year. There have 

been many changes over the last several months but some faces are 

familiar and I suspect there will be more faces for you to see as 

the hour goes on, a lot of competing hearings this week. 

Mr. Pastor, it’s great to be working with you again. Thanks for 

being a good friend and ally and partner in the process. I look forward to a really good year with you. 

I would also like to extend a special welcome to two new members who have yet to arrive but you will see them when they come 

in. Steve Womack of Arkansas and Allen Nunnelee of Mississippi. 

I think those gentlemen will find out that the issues this Subcommittee oversees are both challenging and incredibly important 

to the security and well being of this nation and we are glad to 

have them as part of our committee. 

As we begin our Fiscal Year 2012 hearings, I do want to commend to the attention of my colleagues on this Subcommittee as 

well as each Department and Agency official that will come before 

us in the upcoming weeks to review their Fiscal Year 2012 budget 

requests, that it is highly unlikely there will be any new funding 

in Fiscal Year 2012 for our subcommittee. In fact, the committee 

was just tasked with finding $3.5 billion in savings from existing 

programs for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2011 and that’s what we 

delivered in the House approved Fiscal Year 2011 Continuing Resolution. I expect our task will be as great if not greater in Fiscal 

Year 2012. Our committee must do its part to reduce federal spending and our huge Federal deficit. 

So in short, resources will be constrained, even for the most essential of activities under our jurisdiction. The issues we will review and discuss today and in future hearings must be considered 

in that context. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
2 

To the task at hand, we have before us three professionals who 

have dedicated themselves to ensuring a safe, secure and reliable 

national nuclear stockpile and what we commonly refer to as the 

nuclear ‘‘enterprise’’. 

The first of these is well known to us, Thomas D’Agostino, Undersecretary for Nuclear Security and NNSA Administrator. He 

has served Republicans and Democrats and we have full confidence 

in your abilities. We also know that you attended the Naval Academy of which you are rightly proud and once a submariner, always 

a submariner, sir. 

Also Donald Cook as Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs 

has had wide experience running similar programs in the UK and 

many years of service at Sandia. We welcome you as well, Dr. 

Cook. 

Brigadier General Sandra Finan, Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Military Application. Thank you for your distinguished career in the Air Force and thank you for being with us 

this morning. 

And of course we look forward to your remarks. 

Mr. Administrator, as you surely noted in our recent House action on the Fiscal Year 2011 Continuing Resolution, your program 

was the only program under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee 

that was ‘‘held harmless’’. And for good reason. 

That said, I am aware that the Administration’s request for Fiscal Year 2012 for Weapons Activities asks for a substantial increase. Compared to Fiscal Year 2010, this request is $1.2 billion, 

or 20 percent higher. Mr. Administrator, in the fiscal environment 

that we are now facing, that request is very unlikely to be met. 

Mr. Administrator, I promise you a fair and thoughtful hearing, 

but with the proviso that new resources will not be available unless 

they come from other existing accounts. No account in this request 

will be spared and you will have to ensure that we understand the 

need for every dollar you request. 

And so I end my remarks there and I am pleased to turn to Mr. 

Pastor for any remarks he may wish to make. 

Mr. PASTOR. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and good morning to 

the other members of the Subcommittee. I look forward to working 

with you and the Subcommittee members on the issues we will discuss today. 

Mr. Administrator, welcome again. Good morning to the three of 

you. It is good to see you before the Subcommittee again. Dr. Cook 

and General Finan, welcome. We are all looking forward to your 

testimony. 

As the Chairman mentioned, this is the second consecutive budget request for weapons with a large increase, intended to ensure 

the safety, reliability and security of our nuclear weapons stockpile. 

We have supported the President’s commitment to complex modernization as evidenced by the inclusion of the anomaly for weapons in the existing CR at the President’s request. 

I look forward to hearing your justification for this budget today. 

As you are discussing the 2012 budget, I would also like for you 

to address how the recently passed House CR will impact your 

plans. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
3 

I join the Chairman in believing that the NNSA must provide 

this Subcommittee detailed information on how you plan to execute 

this expanded program. In these challenging budget times it is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that the taxpayers’ hard earned 

dollar is used efficiently and effectively, and thank you, Mr. Chairman for the time. 

I yield back. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you, Mr. Pastor. Mr. D’Agostino, 

welcome. Thanks for being with us. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Pastor, members of the Committee. 

I look forward to addressing and the opportunity of addressing 

the Committee today and to discuss the investments the President 

has proposed in the future for our nation’s nuclear security enterprise. 

I would like to begin by thanking the two of you for your continued support for the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Our 35,000 employees, men, women 

working hard every day, across our enterprise to keep their country 

safe and secure, protect our allies, and enhance global security. We 

could not do the work we do without the support of the Committee 

and all of you, all the members, and I do greatly appreciate it. 

I come before you today to discuss the President’s 2012 budget 

request. That request seeks to make critical investments in the future of our nuclear security enterprise and to continue the recovery 

path that started last year. 

Despite the challenging economic times facing our country, Presi- dent Obama requested $11.8 billion for NNSA up from $11.2 billion 

in the 2011 request. This is the second consecutive year in which 

he has requested increased resources for our program, which reflects his commitment to our mission. 

As I see it, the budget request can be broken down into three key 

themes: first, we are investing in our future. This budget request 

reflects the President’s—President Obama’s commitment made last 

November to invest more than $85 billion over the next decade to 

assure the safety, security, and effectiveness of our nuclear stockpile and to modernize the nuclear security infrastructure and revitalize the science and technology base that supports the full range 

of our nuclear security mission. It provides $7.6 billion for our 

Weapons Activities Account to support our efforts to leverage the 

best science and research in the world to maintain our deterrent 

and modernize the infrastructure that supports the deterrent. This 

will enable us to enhance surveillance activities of the stockpile, 

proceed with key life extension programs on the B61 and the W76 

and W78 warhead systems, and to continue to design the uranium 

processing facility at Y–12 and the chemistry and metallurgy research replacement facility at Los Alamos Laboratory. 

These two facilities are critical to maintaining the nation’s expertise in uranium processing and plutonium research. Investing in a 

modern nuclear security enterprise is critical to our stockpile stewardship program but it also supports our full range of NNSA nuclear security missions, which brings me to the second theme in 

this budget request, which is implementing the President’s nuclear 

security agenda. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
4 

President Obama has made strengthening our security—nuclear 

security, and the nuclear nonproliferation regime around the world 

one of his top priorities. As he said in his speech in Prague in April 

2009, ‘‘The threat of a terrorist acquiring and using a nuclear 

weapon is one of the most immediate and extreme threats we face.’’ 

This budget request makes the investments needed to continue 

to implement the President’s nuclear security agenda. In addition to the $7.6 billion investment in modernizing our infrastructure and maintaining the deterrent, this budget request 

provides $2.5 billion in fiscal year 2012 and more than $14.2 billion 

over the next five years for nuclear nonproliferation programs. 

To power the nuclear Navy, the budget request includes more than $1.1 billion for NNSA’s Naval Reactors Program, an increase 

of 7.8 percent over fiscal year 2011 at the President’s request. 

These—as I understand, we will be able to have the opportunity to 

discuss these in our hearing tomorrow, sir. 

These are all critical investments of the nuclear security agenda 

defined by the National Security Strategy and in the Nuclear Posture Review. 

Mr. Chairman, we recognize that this request for increased investments in nuclear security enterprise comes at a time of acute 

financial challenges for our nation and we recognize the need to be 

effective stewards of our taxpayer dollars. 

That brings me to our third key theme outlined in this budget 

request and that is our commitment to improve the way we do 

business and manage our resources, including the budget resources, our people, our projects, and our infrastructure. Mr. Chairman, I realize that you and the Ranking Member and all members 

of this committee have many competing requirements, and while I 

believe that nothing is more important than our shared responsibility to ensure our nation’s security, I also recognize that it is my 

responsibility to assure you that we can manage those resources 

wisely. 

We can and we must do better and continue to improve, which 

is why we are working with our management and operating partners to streamline our government’s model to devote more resources to critical mission work and to maximize our ability to complete our mission safely and securely and to do it cost-effectively. 

We are making sure that we have the right contracting strategy 

in place. We are improving our project management by ensuring we 

have qualified project managers leading our major projects, setting 

costs and schedule baselines on our construction projects only when 

the design work is 90 percent complete, then subjecting those estimates to rigorous, independent reviews and placing renewed focus 

on our organization for project management. That is why we recently created a new policy and oversight office for managing major 

projects that report directly to me. This will help ensure that the 

project management gets the high level focus it deserves. 

We will continue to find innovative ways to save money across 

the enterprise. Take, for example, our supply chain management 

center. It’s managed largely out of the Kansas City plant but implemented across the whole enterprise. Since 2007 it has used new 

technologies, and pooled purchasing power, to drive efficiencies 

across our enterprise, to operate more as an integrated enterprise. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
5 

We have saved, as a result of this, over $213 million in the past 

three years alone. We think those savings will increase. 

All of this is part of our effort to create one NNSA, a true partnership between our programs and all the partners we need to fulfill our mission. We must breakdown stovepipes, work collaboratively across our programs and organizations, make sure headquarters organizations, site office organizations, contract organizations are coordinated and leveraging all of our resources. Taken together, these steps will ensure that we have a modern, 21st century nuclear security enterprise that is smaller, smarter, more secure, more efficient, and organized to succeed, an enterprise that 

can address the broader security needs that the nation requires. 

While also realizing positive results, last year our Kansas City 

plant won the Malcolm Baldrige Award. Since October two NNSA 

projects have won separate Project Management Institute awards 

and one of them has become the first federal project ever to win 

the PMI Institute Distinguished Award. That has never been 

awarded to a federal agency until just recently in the last few 

months. That is the vision that we have outlined in this budget request and it supports the full range of missions. More importantly, 

it invests in the infrastructure, the people, the science and technology required to fulfill those missions. We look forward to working with the members of the Committee. At that, I would be happy 

to take any questions you may have. Thank you. 

[The information follows:] 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
6 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 16 here 68245A.001
7 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 17 here 68245A.002
8 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 18 here 68245A.003
9 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 19 here 68245A.004
10 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 20 here 68245A.005
11 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 21 here 68245A.006
12 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 22 here 68245A.007
13 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 23 here 68245A.008
14 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 24 here 68245A.009
15 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 25 here 68245A.010
16 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 26 here 68245A.011
17 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 27 here 68245A.012
18 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 28 here 68245A.013
19 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 29 here 68245A.014
20 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 30 here 68245A.015
21 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 31 here 68245A.016
22 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 32 here 68245A.017
23 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 33 here 68245A.018
24 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 34 here 68245A.019
25 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 35 here 68245A.020
26 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 36 here 68245A.021
27 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 37 here 68245A.022
28 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 38 here 68245A.023
29 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 39 here 68245A.024
30 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 40 here 68245A.025
31 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 41 here 68245A.026
32 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 42 here 68245A.027
33 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 43 here 68245A.028
34 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 44 here 68245A.029
35 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 45 here 68245A.030
36 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 46 here 68245A.031
37 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 47 here 68245A.032
38 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 48 here 68245A.033
39 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 49 here 68245A.034
40 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 50 here 68245A.035
41 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 51 here 68245A.036
42 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 52 here 68245A.037
43 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 53 here 68245A.038
44 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 54 here 68245A.039
45 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Okay, thank you. I am going to take five 

minutes and then I am going to turn to Mr. Pastor and then after 

Mr. Pastor, Mr. Rehberg, so I am not going to take too much time. 

Mr. Alexander? Okay, well, in order of arrival, I guess that is the 

way we will do it. 

Okay, first question, Mr. Administrator, there is more than a little bit of confusion regarding what the Administration has actually 

pledged to modernize in the nuclear security enterprise over the 

next several years. For instance, the Administration announced 

last year that it would be requesting approximately $9.2 billion 

through 2017, more than a baseline. But in your written testimony, 

some of which you have gone through, you only refer to a commitment to invest $85 billion over the next decade. 

In any case, they are huge numbers, but this is the most critical 

responsibility of the Department of Energy. I would like to take a 

moment to drill down into what you are really asking for and why. 

Now, in your planning, what will the infrastructure and stockpile 

look like 10 years from now? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. In our broad based planning—and some of the 

details are classified, so I will keep it focused at, obviously, the unclassified level—our desire is to meet the commitments of the New 

START Treaty which is 1,550 operationally deployed warheads 

and, obviously, in order to do that it requires us to finish the production work that we are currently underway on with the W76 

warhead, which comprises a significant share of our nation’s deterrent. That will take us to the 2017 timeframe. 

The next piece of that will be work on the B61 warhead, to do 

the detailed engineering and design—production engineering and 

design work that is required over the next few years in order to 

start that production cycle on the B61 in 2017 and refurbish a 

small set of those warheads. 

And then the third major piece is to focus on starting the study 

on the W78 warhead, which is a warhead we know will need some 

attention in about a 10-year timeframe, will need to be having 

some replacements put forth on it. 

But our overall approach, essentially, for our infrastructure is to 

get—frankly get smaller, to get more focused, and to have fewer 

places around the country where the same thing is being done. 

Maybe an example might be the best way to move forward. 

And I would ask Don, when I am done, maybe to add to that if 

it—an example would be, in the past, plutonium, for example, right 

now there are two places in the country that work on plutonium, 

one at Los Alamos and one at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. The 

nation really only needs one capability, we do not need two capabilities. Having two capabilities drives up costs because I have got 

to maintain two sets of expertise across two different geographic locations, I have got to provide security over two geographic locations, and because we are migrating to a smaller stockpile and a 

more focused stockpile, as the President said, we are going to take 

care of that stockpile. Instead of having two, what I would say, 

older plutonium capabilities, we would rather have one smaller capability and we are going to put that up at Los Alamos. 

We estimate, for example, on security costs alone we would save 

$30 million a year at Lawrence Livermore and not only that, get 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
46 

plutonium further away from the community that happens to be 

growing around that laboratory. 

So, we envision a smaller enterprise. When we first embarked on 

this vision a few years back we had this idea of taking the 36 million square feet of infrastructure that we have at the NNSA and 

taking about 9 or 10 million square feet off of that. So, we think 

we are going to go down to about 25 or 26 million square feet of 

infrastructure as a result of eliminating these types of redundant 

capabilities, and I have given just one example in plutonium. 

There are other examples in the areas for sled—for, example, in 

sled tracks, that we used to—all of our laboratories used to have 

sled tracks. We are going to focus that look at Sandia, and operate 

more as an integrated, interdependent nuclear security enterprise 

instead of eight separate geographically independent entities, and 

that is kind of our vision, that is where we need to go to this one 

NNSA theme, is operating and working together. The supply chain 

management example that I used in my oral statement is a very 

specific example of how we have said, instead of having eight separate unique procurement organizations going out there buying stuff 

on their own, we are going to work together as one organization to 

try to drive our costs down. 

It is a model that can be applied across procurements, human resources, financial management and the like. It can actually cut 

across—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And contracting, right? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. And contracting, sir, as well. This is one of our 

elements of our contracting. We are examining very closely the idea 

of combining contracts between Pantex and Y12. They are currently managed both by the same contractor. There are some significant efficiencies we can look for in pushing that together. As 

Don knows, we have just received our final set of public input on 

that and we are fixing up a proposal for me to present to the Secretary and we will be making a decision before—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You said in your remarks, ‘‘The Agency is 

improving its project management by, for example, ensuring that 

NNSA no longer sets costs and schedule performance baselines on 

construction projects until design work is 90 percent complete ensuring it has the right leadership teams in place and by performing 

independent cost reviews.’’ 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir, and this request specifically goes forward in implementing that. For example, in the FY12 budget request that we have before us, we are looking to do two things simultaneously, one is reduce the size of our overall federal workforce by a bit from 1940 full time Feds to like a number in the 1928 

range, and then adding 56 project management professionals to 

work on the uranium processing facility, the chemistry and metallurgy replacement facility, and the fissile material disposition work 

we have down in the state of South Carolina in MOX and PDCF, 

but these would be limited term, in other words, these would be experts that would come in from the outside, they are highly trained 

project management experts. When the project is done, then the 

work is done. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You have got huge costs associated with all 

of this. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
47 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So, we are confident that hopefully you can 

get some of those costs under control. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Dr. Cook. 

Mr. COOK. Yes, if I could add some specifics to what the Administrator said. One of the issues that we had at Los Alamos some 

years ago there was, for security purposes, a need to relocate reactors that were at tech area 18. Those have now been relocated to 

Nevada in the Device Assembly Facility there, but we have a criticality experiments facility that is coming up has passed most of the 

requirements to be fully on line and so that security past issue has 

been resolved and at the same time we’ve made investments in Nevada to maintain the work that is required for a wide range of national security purposes there. 

At Y12 we are focused on footprint reduction. Each retrieval facility is fully in place. It has been loaded, we have already done 

some consolidation and a second key part of that is the uranium 

processing facility that would replace many of the capabilities that 

we have in Y12. 

To address your question specifically, you said 10 years. It is ’11 

now, so by 2021 we intend to have the nuclear facility structures 

in place both for UPF and CMRR and we have engaged the M&Os 

and their parent companies in doing interactive planning to put the 

equipment in place at the rate that it’s needed to meet the B61, 

W78, and follow on W88 requirements to the services. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Getting back to my original—is $9.2 billion 

the right number to get us there? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The 9.2—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And will that amount be enough to fully 

implement the NPR? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, yeah, if the $9.2 billion is a subset of the 

$85 billion, yes, it is an increment above what we—if we went back 

two years and looked at our FY10 or FY09 budgets, we were on 

that wrong trajectory, you know, over 10 years that number added 

up to over $64 billion. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You have mentioned certain major investments in there—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, that is in there, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Are there any others that are not included 

in that figure, or that you know about. Then I’m going to turn to 

Mr. Pastor, but—if you can give us some more clarity? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Sure, they are all included in the planning, in 

fact, we have an integrated priority list. We have driven some further integrated planning and formality into the process, so in the 

long-term planning that we articulated in both the 3113 and 1251 

reports with a 20-year and a 10-year horizon, specifically you can 

see project by project and the time in which they would be done. 

A sizable one is the High Explosives Pressing Facility at Pantex 

that we need not only for the later stages of the W76 full build, 

but to prepare for the B61 and follow on to W78. I think those are 

the big ones. We can comment more as you wish. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I am looking forward to visiting Pantex. I 

tried to get there. I apologize. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
48 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Looking forward to that visit. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Pastor. 

Mr. PASTOR. Thank you Mr. Chairman, in 2009 GAO issued a report and they had four recommendations which dealt with the life 

extension program. And basically I think in that report it said 

NNSA and DoD were not effectively managing costs or schedules 

or technical risks for the B61 or W76, and so they recommended 

to you four specific actions for both schedules. 

I guess the first question is, were those recommendations realistic? And if they are, have you followed them? And where are we 

today? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Not recalling the specifics from a few years ago 

on the exact recommendations—if I recall—— 

Mr. PASTOR. One of them—address technical challenges while 

meeting all military requirements, that was one. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR. Build in time for unexpected technical challenges 

that may delay the program. Assess the cost and include funding 

in the baseline for risk mitigation activities that address the highest risk to the W76 future life extension programs, and before beginning a life extension program, assess the risk, cost and scheduling needs for each military requirement established by DoD. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I will answer it and then Don can follow up. 

Mr. PASTOR. Sure. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, from my standpoint those specific GAO 

items have been addressed and that is what we are incorporating 

into—as we look at life extensions out in the future. 

An example probably would be—help again in this case to give 

you some idea of what that means. When we looked, we internally 

in the executive branch, particularly most recently, we looked at 

what drives the costs of our—what is driving the request that the 

NNSA is putting forth to the President and how do these things 

get traded off, which is a key point you brought up in one of the 

GAO recommendations. 

So, we looked at that and with OMB we decided, you know, let’s 

get together with the Defense Department and make sure we understand so we can evaluate tradeoffs internally so we do not add 

cost drivers into our programs over the next five years that we may 

not need, because it does end up coming back to the Defense Department relationship with the NNSA. 

So, we spent—we had a Nuclear Weapons Council session—a 

couple of Nuclear Weapons Council sessions last fall to examine a 

couple of key pieces on, for example, numbers of W76s we were 

processing in a given year. Should the number be X or should the 

number be X plus what we originally thought it was going to be, 

which—and then we decided with the Defense Department as a result of that session is to go with the lower number when they realized that—because they wanted this number that it drove up costs 

by a certain amount of money, they said, well, maybe we do not 

need to go on that kind of a pace. Let’s go on a slower pace. 

And that same type of philosophy we used on the W76 warhead, 

we used that same type of philosophy on the B61 warhead, and we 

used that same type of philosophy in examining our approach for 

the W78/W88 study that we would like to do. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
49 

So, I think, since—I believe it has gotten better as a result of the 

GAO recommendations, and in particular, of the Administration 

working as a more integrated unit in this area. I have had the opportunity over the last four years, in the Nuclear Weapons Council, 

to see a couple of different models and it is largely driven by the 

Chairman of the Nuclear Weapons Council, who is Mr. Ash Carter—is our current chairman. So, this Chairman is absolutely committed to looking at ways to integrate our costs, understand what 

drives costs in order to push things forward. 

And it is that same model we are using, actually, to examine 

these two large construction projects that we talked about earlier, 

the uranium project and the plutonium project, because we recognize that to get—you know, that it has to be a sustainable, reasonable approach, and executable, and we want to understand what 

DoD requirements drive our costs. That particular study is under 

way for these line item projects. 

Don may have, if I could, ask you to provide a little more detail. 

Mr. COOK. Sure, let me comment on some of the response to recommendations. 

The W76 had a number of, basically, early life issues in getting 

ready for the full build and we are now in full build that required 

Sandia and the Kansas City Plant to work closely together, and 

they did that. 

For the B61 we’re taking a fairly formal project approach, these 

life extension programs we treat as projects, an element to deal 

with technology risk is to use the old NASA approach of technology 

readiness levels. They are being made quantitative. We will require 

that things be at the sub-system level, operated in a relevant environment before we commit to production, and that is a technology 

readiness level of 6. 

There are associated earlier levels but following through on that 

formally is important. 

A key element that we have found is that there had been issues 

in, I will just say, a lack of infrastructure funding over a number 

of years that were popping out as problems that were coming up 

in the life extension programs. So, you will notice in the President’s 

request for 12, while the increase for weapon systems is 4.8 percent 

and for science, say, about 3.1 percent, the request for infrastructure is 21 percent. That fundamentally goes to the core of the kinds 

of issues that were addressed in the GAO report and with which 

we are familiar. 

The W78 and 88 study that we hope to undertake and the request has been made will look at cost reduction possibilities that 

may come with commonality, with adaptability to two different 

missile systems, and with interoperability in the land based ICBM 

fleet and the sea based SLBM fleet. 

Again, those we treated as projects. 

In terms of the reporting level, most of the work has been in the 

field, and so the restructure that we have done for the site office 

managers, to elevate their reporting level, they now report directly 

to my office in Defense Programs, and that means that they are 

tasked and they are held accountable for site oversight in the same 

way, that the key program leaders and the LEPs—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. How had they been reporting prior to that? 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
50 

Mr. COOK. One level down. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Okay. 

Mr. COOK. To one of the units that reported to Defense Programs. And lastly I will comment that we have in place a national 

work breakdown structure now that we have undertaken and are 

fully in the step of populating a modern tool, we call it EPAT, or 

the Enterprise Performance Assessment Tool. It is standardized 

software but applied to our business. 

Mr. PASTOR. Just one more question. Two barriers you have are 

personnel and infrastructure and you are trying to replace, or at 

least extend, an infrastructure that has been involved in the life 

extension of weapons. As you know, dealing with one particular 

weapon takes time because of risk factors—— 

Mr. COOK. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR [continuing]. Including the infrastructure you have 

in place, and also the training or expertise of the people who are 

doing it. 

Mr. COOK. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR. I think one of the circumstances you are facing is 

that your personnel is now getting older in terms of retiring—— 

Mr. COOK. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PASTOR. So, that is one issue. If you want to increase the life 

extension of some of these weapons you are going to need additional people—— 

Mr. COOK. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PASTOR [continuing]. And they will need to have the expertise and the experience to be able to do it effectively, but the infrastructure that you have is old. Because of the nature of the work 

you are doing, it is very difficult to replace it or expand it. So, I 

believe that you have major problems in working with at least 

those two issues because in some of these labs, I do not know how 

old some of this infrastructure is, it is a very delicate type of infrastructure and to replace it, it is going to take a major effort. 

Mr. COOK. Mr. Pastor, you have that exactly right. Personnel and 

infrastructure are two key areas. What we have learned about our 

personnel is that they want to do work, actual physical work on the 

stockpile, work that the country cares about, work on the nuclear 

security missions we have across the NNSA, to include nonproliferation. It is exciting work, they absolutely want to do it. 

What we have with the Nuclear Posture Review, I believe, 

committedly believe, is a very defined path for the future. We have 

the New START Treaty, which identified the size of the stockpile 

the country needs, we have a Nuclear Posture Review, which is a 

road map or plan, on how we need to move forward. We previously 

had NPRs but we did not have what I would call kind of a national 

consensus behind the Nuclear Posture Review. 

And I think there is large agreement by many, on both sides of 

the aisle, as well as inside of government and outside of government that now is the time to invest. And so the personnel actually 

have quite energized the older folks, like myself and older are quite 

energized that, hey, we have got a path forward, we know there is 

a defined set of work that has to get done, and so there is an opportunity to take those people that have those skills and expertise and 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
51 

marry them up, if you will, with our next set, a future generation 

of nuclear security experts, to do this work for the next 10 years. 

I think we have, kind of, one good opportunity to really put that 

in place in this upcoming 10 years. This is a pivotal year, a pivotal 

set of years for the enterprise. If we miss this opportunity, I believe, we will have a more—the ability to recover is going to be difficult. 

Infrastructure, you are absolutely right, some of it dates back to 

1952, particularly these plutonium and uranium pieces, and that is 

why we are moving forward with an approach that recapitalizes 

both of those capabilities. 

Because of the way the work is laid out, W76 work is largely at 

Pantex and Y12. The B61 analysis work is largely at Los Alamos 

and Sandia. The W78 work is at Livermore and Sandia. We have 

spread it out, so I think it is manageable, but there is a golden opportunity—there is an opportunity before us and I think we want 

to take advantage of it. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you. Mr. Alexander. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When Mr. Rehberg 

found out he was not going to get to ask the first question, he left. 

I hope you did not offend him. 

Mr. Administrator, you may yield to the General, but we hope, 

at least I do, that the weapons are loaded and locked into place 

that might be needed to protect our interests if the need arises 

without having to wake a ground crew up in the middle of the 

night to do so. 

A few years ago there was a report released that the media got 

a hold of and led the public to believe that for whatever reason a 

crew was just flying around, for no particular reason, unaware that 

their B–52 was loaded with nuclear weapons. Have steps been 

taken to prevent that from happening again? We want the public 

to know that we know what we are doing—at least you all. They 

know that we do not know what we are doing, but we want them 

to think that the Military knows what they are doing. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Why don’t I start? And obviously this is a question—the details of the operational questions that the Air Force 

and the Department of Defense would be in the best position to answer because I will—my role on the Nuclear Weapons Council, 

General Finan is our representative on the working Committee, the 

Nuclear Weapons Council Standing and Safety Committee. 

Below that, what I can say is I have seen a sea change in focus 

on the topic of maintaining and operationalizing the deterrent in 

a way that exercises the components. When you don’t exercise 

something, you tend to get a little rusty, and when you do exercise 

something, it tends to sharpen focus on, wow, we did not realize 

that you had that problem, we better go work on that particular 

area. 

My experience in submarine operations, led me to really appreciate that in a real way. I know we would always grumble when 

we had to do the fire drill or the collision drill, but at the end of 

the day, because of some real world events, we were able to respond, and I think there is the same thing with the Air Force. Do 

you want to add? 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You have to get your oar in the water. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
52 

General FINAN. Obviously, this is an Air Force issue and I will 

tell you having been a part of the things that occurred after that 

flight. 

The Air Force has taken a great deal of time and effort in changing their culture, changing the way they do business, reemphasizing the nuclear aspects of our mission. They stood up a new 

command, they stood up a new division up at the headquarters to 

focus on nuclear issues. 

So, while obviously I defer to them to answer specifically, I assure you, they have taken a great deal of time and effort and done 

a number of things to ensure that that type of event does not happen again. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Well, we certainly appreciate the need for operations to take place with loaded weapons and armed weapons, but 

we just hope that the public is not led to believe that the pilot did 

not know that they were on there. That just was not real good, it 

was bad for all of us. 

Mr. Administrator, the GAO has raised concern that you all are 

often unable to determine precisely how much it costs to operate 

and maintain the infrastructure simply because there are multiple 

sources of funding. 

If we are to accept that significant increases by the Administration will place the weapons complex on a path to sustainment, how 

are we to understand that the full cost associated with your facilities is being looked at and taken care of? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Thank you, sir. I am aware of the GAO report 

in this particular capacity and I will tell you the actions we have 

taken as a result of that and then the GAO, most recently, has 

come out with their assessment of our progress in that area. I will 

share some insight on that. 

Don or General Finan, if you would like to follow up. 

Step one is changing our project management policy. The way we 

go about, in the Department, implementing our projects, and it has 

changed significantly. You have heard me mention this idea of before we come to the committee and say we know how much something costs, we will actually go through and finish 90 percent of the 

design work in order to have a better sense of what that costs. But 

that is not enough just to do that. You need to have the policy 

changes also put forth, the idea that we would do independent cost 

estimates at every critical decision point in the project, not wait for 

just the times which we were required before which is only do it 

twice during the life of the project, but in each of the four critical 

decision points dramatically increase the review of costs associated 

as the project goes on. But in addition to that, we have also decided 

that independent peer review of our projects is critically important, 

peer review from outside of the organization itself, because these 

people are not beholden to pressures that they might feel if they 

were within the organization. 

So, those three things taken together along with a reorganization 

that Don—that we mentioned, which is putting forth an oversight 

and project management organization separate from the program, 

Don runs the program, I oversee that particular program that reports directly to me in this particular capacity. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
53 

Third element is having the right people. You heard me mention 

about bringing on board limited federal employees that are project 

management experts. That absolutely has to be done. The GAO recognized that that was important to do to make progress in that 

particular area. 

And I think from a results standpoint we are seeing some early 

signs that this is yielding some benefit. The two Project Management Institute Awards that I mentioned earlier indicate particularly for the NIF project which started off 10 years ago with a 

major problem, for the last 10 years, has been, from a construction 

standpoint, has been delivering consistently from that standpoint. 

The one thing also I would mention which is important is the 

right federal oversight. We have quite a few changes internally, 

bringing in folks and expertise from the Office of Management and 

Budget that understand how to track and link budget formulation 

to budget execution, and that is the piece that we did not have before which is the piece that Don is bringing into his organization. 

Don, did you want to add anything? 

Mr. COOK. Sure, a couple of quick points. The Defense Programs 

restructure that I did over eight months ago put in place a new 

unit that is actually called infrastructure and construction, and 

that is where we are building the capability and the excellence on 

the operational side. 

The area that the administrator and deputy administrator have 

changed is the oversight in the policy, both of these are required 

and must work together. At a practical level from the GAO report, 

what they understood and what we understood was each of the 

M&Os has a fairly robust financial system but they are not identical and we did not have a method of taking the financial information in a step-by-step way and putting it together, so the way we 

addressed that correctly is back to put in place a national work 

break down structure that has definitions that are agreed to by all 

and then a methodology which is populated by the M&O financial 

systems, but it puts it into a government format that we can use 

to report to both authorizing and appropriations committees in the 

House and Senate. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. We would appreciate it if you would not use 

that word, ‘‘robust financial system.’’ That does not set with the 

public too well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Olver. 

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you taking me, but I 

think that said you were going to take people in the order that they 

appeared. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. All right, well, I will take that back. Mr. 

Nunnelee. 

Mr. NUNNELEE. I yield to Mr. Olver. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Olver, back to you, then we go to Mr. 

Womack. Your long distinguished service puts you up front. 

Mr. OLVER. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your testimony, all of you, and all of you for your service. I mainly want to 

try to understand context here. You mentioned, Mr. Administrator, 

that part of the reason we are doing some of the things we are 

doing is because of the New START Treaty. The New START Treaty takes us down to 1,550 warheads? Is that correct? 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
54 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Operationally deployed, you are right, sir. 

Mr. OLVER. How many do we have deployed at the present time? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right now operationally deployed, we are at 

about 2,200 operationally deployed. To be clear, there are warheads 

that we need to maintain back here, if you will, to make sure those 

operationally deployed are fully ready. So, we have to take care of 

two types of war buckets, warheads. 

Mr. OLVER. And what happens to those other 700 or thereabouts? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The operationally—the 700 that are not operationally deployed that, you know, if you will, takes us from 2,200 

down to 1,550, the details do matter in this particular case and I 

would be happy—it would be classified, but we can show you specifically. We put together a 10-year plan, a very detailed 10-year 

plan, and a slightly less detailed 20-year look ahead on numbers 

of warheads by year, by weapons type, and in many cases—in some 

cases the warheads—elements of those 700 go back into what we— 

what could be euphemistically called the reserve stockpile, if you 

will—— 

Mr. OLVER. But these are all old? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. These are—some of these are old, some of these 

are very old, and some of them were taken apart. A number of 

those—— 

Mr. OLVER. The details, maybe. I do not have but five minutes 

here. Your answer is going to take me beyond five, I think. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, what may be best, actually, is to come in 

and give you a classified brief with the details, because some of 

those 700 actually we will take apart, will become decommissioned 

never to be used again. Some of them, because they are of a specific 

type of warhead, we will actually keep as a reserve. 

Mr. OLVER. And all of the ones that you are talking about are 

new weapons, I heard B61, maybe I didn’t get—a W78 and so on, 

are all of those related to the 1,550? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. Yeah. 

Mr. OLVER. And you are taking whatever are the warheads 

which are now obsolete which may go back into a reserve stockpile—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. None of these are—— 

Mr. OLVER. Is there much cost involved in taking down these 

700? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. We have a line item in our program for dismantling warheads, specifically to take warheads apart—— 

Mr. OLVER. Is it included in the 11.78? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. 11.78? 

Mr. OLVER. The 11.78—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Oh, yes, sir. It is. 

Mr. OLVER. Is that considered a Nunn Lugar activity? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, some might consider it that though it is 

not specifically called that, no. It’s cooperative threat reduction. 

Mr. OLVER. Is that included in this 11.78? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, we have a cooperative threat reduction program in effect in our nonproliferation activities. We have $2.5 

billion that we are asking for nonproliferation work out of the overall NNSA budget request. Elements of that $2.5 billion do go off 

to protect and consolidate nuclear material around the world. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
55 

Mr. OLVER. I am having a hard time making these numbers total up. It is $2.5 billion for Nunn Lugar activities? It’s $7.6, I guess 

it was, for the regular NNSA activities? There is $1.2 for naval reactors. And there is some other item there, future nuclear security 

enterprise, that must, in sum total, lead to three, seven, That is 

$11.2. Is it only—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. There is about $450 million that we are asking 

for which is called a Program Direction Account—— 

Mr. OLVER. Future Nuclear—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. No, sir, the Program Direction Account pays for 

federal salaries. We have 1,984 federal employees, which is different. 

Mr. OLVER. Then I’m not getting to the number for—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I think you actually got it correct, sir. You talked about $1.2 billion for naval reactors, $7.6 billion for the 

weapons activities account, $2.5 billion for our nonproliferation 

work, and about—— 

Mr. OLVER. I am trying really to just get structurally what is 

going on here. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. OLVER. All right, so then it is in the NNSA’s part of the 

Nunn Lugar activities, the Nunn Lugar activities which are mostly 

in Defense, I guess. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yeah, there is—the Nunn cooperative threat reduction work happens across State Department, Defense, and 

NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is 

what we are here today talking about, and because—— 

Mr. OLVER. I am particularly concerned that here we are in the 

President’s budget, which you are defending for your activities, and 

he is freezing for five years the budgets in discretionary expenditure for all of the non-security agencies, and this one is going up 

by, I guess it’s a total over 10 years of $85 billion, but it includes, 

basically, in the one-year frame, 5 percent for the weapons activities and 19 percent for another group, in your testimony, and a 21 

percent increase for infrastructure and a 7.8 percent for the Naval 

Reactors Program, all of them are going up. This is just in one 

year. Those are sizable percentages though the total numbers may 

not come to more than a billion dollars in sum total. 

I am concerned about that, because we are making those kinds 

of reductions and there are moves around to make even vaster reductions in the five-year. So it is something I think we can all understand. 

Sustainability here for this weapons program comes at the cost 

of a lot of other things that go on. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. If I could make a comment on that, I think it 

would be important. The work in the weapons activities account, 

this is a specific financial account, supports nuclear security work 

broadly. I will give you some categories: one is nuclear nonproliferation, making sure material does not end up in the hands 

of terrorists; one is a nuclear counterterrorism program, which provides counterterrorism experts to support the FBI and the Defense 

Department, these would be actually the weapons experts, because 

we do want the nation’s best people working, God forbid, if there 

was an improvised nuclear devise somewhere on those programs. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
56 

Mr. OLVER. Is any of the counterterrorism in NNSA? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. It is. Absolutely. 

Mr. OLVER. But some will be coming out from Homeland Security 

as well? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. It is an integrated program. We work with the 

Department of Homeland Security, we work with the FBI, we work 

with the Defense Department, because each of us have different 

authorities. What we have, sir, is the technical expertise. The nation’s invested, during the Cold War, and most recently in the last 

decade and a half, in making sure we can maintain nuclear experts, the best experts in the world, to not only take care of the 

stockpile, the smaller stockpile, but also make sure that those experts are available to the agencies that have to respond to a nuclear emergency. 

So, we provide the scientists, the engineers, the people that say 

cut the blue wire, not the red wire, these types of—this type of expertise. And whether the nation has, you know, a larger number 

of warheads or a smaller number—we are talking about two numbers, sir—we feel, the President feels, that it is important to maintain that expertise because as stockpiles change, with a decrease 

over time, maintaining that expertise is going to become even more 

and more important and more and more relevant. 

So, that is our job. That is why the President put forward this 

budget request. We recognize that it is an increase, we do stand 

out in the Administration, but it is an increase that we feel is justifiable. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Olver, I can return to you. I want to 

give Mr. Womack a chance. Thank you. 

Mr. WOMACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let the record reflect 

that I got here before my colleague, Mr. Lewis. It means I get to 

go before him and it is not because the younger, good-looking guys 

go first. 

I’ll pay for that later. Last night Secretary Clinton called for 

United Nations to finalize global negotiations on its nuclear bomb 

making material. I have two questions, one general and one specific. The general question is: how does it affect the work in this 

budget as proposed? And more specifically, how does it affect the 

weapons modernization efforts by your agency? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Okay. I will address broadly, and if I could, the 

General and Don Cook might want to add something to that. I was 

talking about the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, which is a treaty 

which looks to get a global agreement to not produce more weapons 

usable—we call it special nuclear material, than we currently have. 

This nation currently maintains a—the number is classified, but an 

amount of plutonium and an amount of uranium that it feels it 

needs to do that, and so what we are seeking to do, because an element of our program, of course, is to make sure the security is 

right around all this material around the world, is the fewer places 

in the world that have this material, and the less of the material 

that is out there, the easier it is to protect it. I mean, it is just that 

approach. 

Dr. Cook can talk about the impacts of this on the specifics, the 

second part of your question. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
57 

Mr. COOK. Sure. I would say first, given the two materials that 

are special nuclear materials that we use in the weapon program, 

we have largely a closed cycle as far as plutonium is concerned. So, 

when we take weapons apart, we recover the plutonium, we purify 

it, we reuse it in newly manufactured weapons. 

Now, the enriched uranium is a different issue. We require highly enriched uranium for our weapons systems, and once again, that 

element is a largely closed cycle. The low enriched uranium that 

we use to generate tritium is another issue. It requires access to 

an indigenous source of enrichment to continue to both make tritium and to provide capabilities to support Naval fuel production. 

So, I think I have addressed the key concern. And we certainly 

are working with the State Department and Departments of Defense and Energy on this. 

Mr. WOMACK. Thank you very much. I will yield back, I would 

like for myself to organize for the classified brief that you discussed 

earlier. I sure would like to have that. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Sure, glad to do that, sir. Be glad to do that— 

provide you with great details. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you, Mr. Womack. I would like to 

recognize Mr. Lewis from California who chaired the Overall Appropriations Committee and is a valuable member of any subcommittee. Mr. Lewis. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Nunnelee, are you 

sure you—okay. 

The last hearing I was participating in we were talking a lot 

about the importance of coordination between agencies within that 

department. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. LEWIS. And there we were discussing questions like do we 

capture enough money from people who are producing value from 

mines, et cetera, are we getting the revenue we need to be able to 

implement the enforcement in the territory, should we sell property 

or otherwise? 

The need to communicate between agencies was emphasized by 

me by saying that for the longest time, during my years on the Defense Subcommittee, we could not figure out exactly how to get the 

Navy and the Marine Corps to communicate with one another. We 

spent a lot of money and effort developing the software to effectuate that. 

Effective coordination and communication could not be more important in all the agencies than it is within this task that you 

have—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. LEWIS [continuing]. And I certainly hope that you have the 

wherewithal as well as the challenge to make sure that we are 

maximizing GIS capabilities, applying software, et cetera, so that 

we can break down the standard barriers that exist between, we 

call them stovepipes, but it is really important. If you can communicate effectively with the FBI I want to know about it but in the 

meantime, are you sure that all of that is going forward well? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I believe it is going well. I have seen tremendous improvements in the last few years. It kind of covers across 

a broad variety of fronts, we have this coordinating body called the 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
58 

Nuclear Weapons Council. That body, as I described earlier, has 

taken a very aggressive stance on making sure the Defense Department understands if it asks for something that it has an impact 

over here in this particular program. And by making sure that all 

our cards, all that information is on the table, we have actually 

broken through a couple of key pieces on that. 

We are starting this process aggressively for these two large 

projects, these are multibillion-dollar projects. The Defense Department is keenly interested in reducing the costs there. The Secretary and I, as well as Don and the team are keenly interested 

because we recognize that, you know, it is first of all our obligation 

to the taxpayers to do this right, but second of all, there has to be 

something if it is not authorized or appropriated, then you are not 

going to do it. And so we have to figure out ways to make sure that 

we build what the country needs and not what the country does not 

need, and something bigger than that point. 

The global information systems that you talked about is something that we are implementing in the NNSA to tie together to 

have a common work breakdown structure and common way we 

look at numbers across our enterprise. We are not quite there yet. 

We need to do a lot more in this particular area. 

Don has brought in an individual in his organization that was 

doing this across the Department of Energy to specifically apply to 

this particular area. I believe there is a lot of opportunity in that 

area to get to improve. 

We are not quite finished with what we need to do. Don, I don’t 

know if you have anymore to add here? 

Mr. COOK. I would not add that but I point to General Finan. 

The key commission of the Department of Defense, General Finan, 

although new in her term has been traveling with the new head 

of Strategic Command of General Bob Kehlor. She has been over 

at the Pentagon probably half the time in one form or another 

working with both the Navy and the Air Force and connectedness 

there is pretty high. I would ask her if she wishes to comment further? 

General FINAN. Absolutely. As far as coordination with the DoD, 

that is essentially what I am here for, to make sure that the requirements that they have get translated over, that the capabilities 

that the DoE and NNSA has, that they understand as well, so that 

together the two agencies can chart a path forward. That process 

comes together through the Standing Safety Committee and the 

Nuclear Weapons Council when senior decision makers can look at 

both sides of that and chart that path forward. 

Additionally I have about 30 officers in the NNSA of all the 

branches of services, so that also helps us with the coordination at 

the Working Group level so that we get that communication and 

coordination at the lowest levels so it works its way all the way up 

the chain. So as far as DoD, we have a structured process in place 

and we also have the informal military officers over at the NNSA 

who also facilitate that level of communication. 

Mr. LEWIS. Well, across the board of government I cannot think 

of a responsibility where communication is of the highest priority, 

and certainly money pressures should not stand in the way of our 

implementing that. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
59 

Mr. D’Agostino, I am sorry. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. LEWIS. You mentioned the labs and we are very proud of the 

work of those labs and their development over time. I have been 

thinking about trying to think through a visitation to our labs. A 

close friend of mine is on the Board of Regents at the University 

of California, and he is interested in joining me on such an effort. 

But, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that we might very well 

have a cross-section of our Committee plan to visit the labs and try 

and get a better understanding of just how significant they are to 

the role we are playing here. So if there is a way I can help you 

implement that. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Some of us are on our way out to Los Alamos and Sandia and the Nevada Test Site at the end of the week 

and we are trying to make sure—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Are you really? 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We have not forgotten California. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, good for you. Well, I think there is an 

extra seat on the plane, sir, actually. 

Mr. Lewis, I would be happy, of course, to take you to the laboratories on your schedule or work with your office and work with Rob 

on the appropriate time, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. LEWIS. I assume that there are facilities there where the 

kind of intelligence briefing we were talking about could take place 

as well. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Absolutely there is. 

Mr. LEWIS. There are significant items. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. We are planning on talking to the Chairman 

and Mr. Pastor on those specific items this week. And when you 

come out, we would love to do the same for you to give you some 

insight as to how core science, technology, and engineering supports the Intelligence Community broadly. 

Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Chairman, I apologize for being late. Thank you 

very much. I appreciate it. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Administrator, recognizing there may 

be limits to what you can say in this hearing room, will you provide 

for the members some context on how our weapons production infrastructure and experimental capabilities compare with the Chinese and the Russians? Specifically, we talk here about having a 

capability-based system here, which could produce up to 80 new 

pits a year. How does this capability compare to that of Russia and 

China? And have these countries declared, as we have, that they 

will not produce any new nuclear weapons? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Okay. I think the Chairman is absolutely— 

there will be some limit as to what I can say, but broadly we have 

decided on a—we in the United States have decided from a policy 

standpoint to approach taking care of our stockpile as you described, maintaining capability. And when we need to work on the 

stockpile, we work on the stockpile and the W76 warhead, for example, and a B61 are some examples. 

The approach taken by our colleagues in Russia is a bit more of 

keeping their enterprise fully exercised, the production enterprise 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
60 

exercised, and cycling systems through. It is an approach, frankly, 

that is, I believe, more expensive, but, at the same time, exercises 

just kind of a full threat in a more aggressive way. And that, in 

fact, that is why the approach we were, you know, moving forward 

in over the next few years, pursuing life extensions to modernize 

these very old systems, recapitalizing our infrastructure, investing 

in science is so important because those three things taken together will provide that exercising of the workforce that was described. We have to exercise the workforce. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Are they taking similar steps? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. They are actively—the ‘‘they’’ in this case would 

be the Russians—are actively pursuing actual production operations and have been for the number of years while we have both 

stopped underground testing because we have committed as a policy to take care of our stockpiles without underground testing. So 

the Russians have said, well, we are not going to stop production. 

We are just going to take our old systems out, rebuild them, and 

put them back in. We have decided instead of recycling a lot of nuclear weapons and materials around this country, we have decided 

we are going to take care of the ones we have where they are. And 

then when it comes to the point we actually have to do something, 

which we are at in certain systems, we are going to bring them 

back, work on them, and put them back out. 

The Chinese, I would say, we are a little bit more limited in our 

knowledge there and probably it would not be appropriate to go 

into any great detail. 

Don, did you have anything to add on that particular point? 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And speak somewhat in generalities here. 

Mr. COOK. The thing that I would add to what the Administrator 

has said is that the investment that the nation made, has made in 

stockpile stewardship capabilities. And this exhibit is, for example, 

in high-energy density physics science at the National Ignition Facility at Livermore, the Z machine at Sandia. And in 

hydrodynamics one of the best capabilities, the dual-access radiographic hydro test capability at Los Alamos, something we call 

DARHT. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I like the acronym. I know the acronym. 

Mr. COOK. DARHT. You know those really address the capabilities, respectively, of what we need to understand in weapon science 

without resorting to underground testing. In the case of NFIDs 

what happens in secondaries; in the case of DARHTs what happens 

in primaries. And we put together the knowledge with some of the 

best computational capabilities, which is where the researchers put 

models together. 

We are at the forefront still in all of those areas, although, you 

know, the Chinese supercomputer capability is clearly growing, 

still with American chips, but something we monitor all the time, 

so. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So to answer my question, by and large we 

are pretty transparent somewhat with what we do. 

Mr. COOK. I think that is correct. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. But in reality you are not characterizing 

what they have. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
61 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So does that mean that we know what they 

have, but we cannot discuss it here? But how would you discuss 

then their capabilities? Are they increasing the capability of their 

weapons and their infrastructure, in a general sense? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. In a general sense, yes. In a general sense, I 

believe the infrastructure capabilities are improving. Don gave a 

great example of the Chinese capability with supercomputing, 

which, of course, is not just applications from a national security 

standpoint. It drives innovation and technology, which helps economies grow. 

But in the general sense, I believe that what we have is a commitment and understanding on the part of these other nation 

states that you need to exercise your workforce and capability to 

maintain it, and that they are being—we obviously talk about ours 

a lot more than is talked about publicly there; that in the ’90s and 

earlier part of this century, if you will, there was an approach that 

we undertook which was making sure that we stay on top of our 

science and technology and engineering, drive it as best as we can 

so we can observe what is happening with our stockpile, where the 

Russians would look at it, well, that is good, they are going to do 

a little bit of that, but they are also going to actively work on the 

warheads themselves, so. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We are obviously proud of what our men 

and women are doing. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This would be in accord with Mr. Lewis at 

all our laboratories. And sometimes our citizens are unaware of 

what we are doing, the whole need to have reliable nuclear weapons and never the thought that they would ever be utilized, but, 

you know, the ability to sign off on what we have, their veracity, 

their ability to be used if we had to, but just in the overall context 

of what the Chinese and Russians are doing. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Yes. And where are they? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, the Chinese are building the—have decided to go forward with the process of making sure that they have 

a deterrent. They say it is going to be the minimum size that they 

are going to need to ensure their sovereignty and their nation’s security. As you rightly mentioned, you know, these warheads are 

not static. Once you build them and you put them here, they are 

not going to stay like that forever. It is like your dashboard on your 

automobile. You set it out and park it on the street, 10 years later 

the dashboard is cracked. Well, why does that happen? Well, because the sun is shining on it and heating it up. 

But we have components. Our stockpile is safe and secure, but 

these things are not static. General Chilton, who was the previous 

strategic commander, called them little chemistry experiments, you 

know, moving along, and they are, and that is why it requires constant surveillance and constant attention. And that is why we have 

asked for increased resources in our surveillance area. We will 

move that number up from about 180 million up to $240 million 

per year because we know we have to watch these things. They are 

not static. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
62 

And in our observations, the watching we have been doing over 

the last five years or so dictates to us we need to move forward aggressively on our B61 Life Extension Program, move forward aggressively on the W78 study because things are changing in these 

systems. They are safe now, but they require attention. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Pastor. 

Mr. PASTOR. Mr. Administrator, we have invested heavily in the 

experimental facilities over the last few years, and Dr. Cook just 

went through a litany of them: the Z, the DARHT, I guess you 

could talk about the Sequoia. 

Mr. COOK. Absolutely, absolutely. 

Mr. PASTOR. And we are trying to find, as you say, the chemistry, 

the physics, the what do we do to ensure that we can certify our 

aging stockpile without nuclear testing. I mean, that is the whole 

intent and so we invested all this money. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR. As I see your Life Extension Program schedule, it 

is, I think, very aggressive. You know, but that is my opinion and 

I think you may want to classify it, too, as you want to get on with 

it. You are slated to make major decisions regarding the technology 

on the B61, the W78, and now I think the W88, too. 

I guess the question is about time. Is there sufficient time to conduct the experiments and then enough time to incorporate sufficient experimental data into the decision-making? Because sometimes they are not parallel. And as I recall, one of the GAO recommendations was you may have to slow one down to ensure that 

the investment you are making pays off. 

And so my question is with all the experimental stuff that we are 

doing and your schedule, which I think is aggressive, is there 

enough time? Have you considered time to implement your experimental data to ensure that the Life Extension Program is going to 

be profitable in terms of being efficient? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. And the answer is yes, I believe there is enough 

time to do it. And the reason why I believe that is because of some 

of the project systems that we have in place. Within the defense 

programs area the scientists have worked together. This is led by 

the federal managers here that Dr. Cook has in his organization to 

establish what is known as a predictive capability framework, 

which outlines over the next 10 years the specific experiments, you 

know, broadly what goals and milestones need to be achieved, and 

then the specific experimental schedules, the sub-critical experiments to get the data so we can put them into the computers. 

We are actually in a pretty good spot because what we have right 

now, as you have described, is the finishing up of very significant 

investments in building scientific tools. And now we are 

transitioning from building the scientific tools into operating the 

tools, actually conducting the experiments, and putting that data 

into these large computers—the Sequoia, for example—to get the 

data out of it. 

The timing is pretty good in this area. Don, if you might want 

to—— 

Mr. COOK. Sure. 

Mr. PASTOR. But that is the question. You are doing this and I 

do not know what the timeline is in terms of where you have suffiVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:21 Oct 01, 2011 Jkt 068245 PO 00000 Frm 00062 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A245P2.XXX A245P2

pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
63 

cient information from your data you are collecting experimentally, 

but right now you are still aggressively working on these weapons 

systems. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yeah. 

Mr. PASTOR. So right now, as we speak, there is probably a weapons system, a pit right now being modified, and yet are we going 

to use the best science and that we have invested so much time to 

do? 

Mr. COOK. If I can answer again with just a few specifics. The 

time scale is aggressive. We would certainly agree with that. It is 

also well planned. So the Administrator talked about the predictive 

capability framework. This is focused on codes, understanding the 

basic data, doing the design work that is required. 

We have a counterpart to that now, which is called the component maturation framework. This is the one that deals with the 

technology readiness levels that I addressed earlier. And it is basically a conscious choice of what we have ready for the B61, what 

we believe we could get ready, and a boundary that says we cannot 

get something ready in time for the B61, therefore, we choose not 

to use it. We continue to advance it for the W78 and beyond that 

for the W88 that follows. We have now been integrating that kind 

of, you know, fairly disciplined project planning into the components themselves. 

In the case of the B61, the importance on having the first production unit in 2017 is actually driven by the fact that we will have 

to replace the power source, the neutron generators, and a portion 

of the radars anyway. And so we either do that as a separate block 

of activity and then do the life extension later or we choose what 

we can do and we do the life extension and the replacement of 

those components at the same time. 

Mr. PASTOR. But once you open it up, though, you want to be 

able to do the best job as possible because you cannot be opening 

and closing things as many times as you want. 

Mr. COOK. Well, that is correct. It is the best job that is possible 

within a defined set of conditions. And those conditions are the 

hardware that we put in must work and the first production unit 

must be completed within 2017. 

For the W78, where we are again driven by some lifetime limits, 

that will follow, but its first production unit does not occur until 

2021. So we have enough time to do the design. We are requesting 

approval to begin the 6–1 or the conceptual drawing study. That 

will take us the better of a year. And then a two-year period for 

the W78 to do the engineering study and the detailed cost assessment. The reason that we have asked, as has the Department of 

Defense, to incorporate the W78 arming, fusing, and firing system 

in that is that is a unit that needs to be updated as we did with 

the W76. And if we do that thinking and planning in concert with 

the W78, we can again look at the opportunities to save cost 

through having common features or adaptable features. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. It is probably worth describing life extensions. 

There are basically three main steps. We are clearly—it sounds like 

a lot of work and it is, the 76, the 61, and the 78/88 study, but they 

are all in different phases. The W76 is in the production phase, so 

that uses up a couple of our sites kind of fairly aggressively. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
64 

Mr. PASTOR. Which warhead are you waiting for the F35? So you 

have more time on that one. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The B61 is being driven by two things. It is in 

the production engineering phase and that was because of these 

components that failed. That is in the production, engineering, and 

design phase to support the Air Force’s need for the F35, but also 

it is driven by the fact that components are aging. So that is in actually the production engineering phase. 

And 78 is in the study phase, so it uses different elements. We 

are actually fully utilizing all of our pieces, but if we have de-conflicted the overlap so that we do not have this kind of crisis of two 

things arriving at the doorstep at the same time. And that is kind 

of how we have our work laid out. 

Mr. COOK. Yeah, and what I would say is it is an opportunity— 

there is an opportunity to read the—I am sorry, as we go on year 

by year to update and refine the 12–51 report, and that is the one 

with a 10-year horizon. It talks about the detailed nature of what 

we are doing to each of the weapons systems. I—— 

Mr. PASTOR. Go ahead. 

Mr. COOK. I just think it is a good question. I mean, a good question that should we be concerned about all the activity we have to 

do? I would say absolutely, and we are managing it and structuring 

it to make it workable. 

Mr. PASTOR. One more question. This deals with, as you do, the 

various experimental studies that obviously you may end up with 

a result or data that says you can do this better in terms of whether it be ignition or whatever the fifth component may be. But you 

have a fine line because you really cannot. You are required, I 

guess, by treaties that you cannot cross that line because it may 

be modified as a new weapon. Who is the one that makes those decisions in terms of what stays with what is proper or what would 

be certified as a—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Sure. 

Mr. PASTOR. Because it is such an improvement that you are 

talking about a new weapon. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, in the end, the Nuclear Posture Review 

provides us very specific guidance from a policy standpoint. Our 

focus is to modernize the existing stockpile. Extend the life of our 

existing stockpile. Put the best technology into that existing stockpile in order to do the job it was originally intended to do, not design new warheads for new capabilities. Okay? So that is kind of— 

that is the first point. 

The second point is we want to make sure our designers, our laboratory directors specifically, as they make recommendations to the 

Federal Government, that they are given the opportunity to examine all the different ways that they can extend the life of that 

stockpile, but ensure, at the same time, that we drive as much 21st 

century safety and 21st century security into that stockpile. I 

mean, that is a good thing. We want the best safety and security 

in our stockpile. We do not want, you know, the seat belts from the 

1960s on our automobile of the 2010s, right? And so our lab directors have full flexibility to provide recommendations. 

If there is a sense that that recommendation would require a 

modification to a nuclear component, a very significant modificaVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:21 Oct 01, 2011 Jkt 068245 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A245P2.XXX A245P2

pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
65 

tion to a nuclear component that some might construe as a new nuclear warhead, we are obligated and all of our decisions pass 

through to the President—to the President—who would just make 

that decision if we decided to move forward with what we have 

called a, you know, a replacement, if you will, of that component. 

In all cases, we are going to stick to no underground testing and 

we are going to use components that are based on previously tested 

designs. 

So, there is a fairly rigorous process in the Nuclear Weapons 

Council for making those types of decisions. Our opportunity, if you 

will, with the B61 work, is to figure out, as Don had described, 

what components are mature enough to actually go into that stockpile and then he will recommend to me and the Nuclear Weapons 

Council this is the way we think we ought to move forward with 

this particular system. We will be in pretty good shape on that one. 

Mr. COOK. Yes, I have nothing to add to what you said. I would 

add in General Finan’s area we have also got a very close interaction on all of these LEAPs with the commander of Strategic Command and his folks with the Air Force and the Navy for systems 

for which they are accountable and with all of the civilian ranks 

of the Department of Defense, both in the policy line and in the acquisition line. 

Mr. PASTOR. Thank you. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I want to refocus on your funding priorities. 

We are proceeding to construct the UPF at Y12 at Oak Ridge. We 

are doing the CMRR at Los Alamos. These are primarily new investments. They are expensive. They will continue to be expensive 

for the foreseeable future. Where are they in the overall scheme of 

things in terms of your setting priorities? 

We have existing infrastructure we are trying to maintain and 

modernize. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And they are obviously an essential element of life extension. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. But how do you prioritize? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The priority for me, in my view, is to move as 

aggressively into the future as we can. And, you know, obviously, 

as you described, we will have to maintain some funding to do deferred maintenance on facilities and to invest in some of our old, 

early 1950s facilities. 

Let me take the plutonium and then talk to uranium. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Yeah, please do. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I think you want some specifics. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Yes, I do. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yeah. So on plutonium, we have an existing 

chemistry, metallurgy, and research facility. There are eight wings 

of this particular facility at Los Alamos. And what we had been 

doing over the last few years was getting ourselves out of that facility. We are down into essentially our last two wings. We have 

moved all of our operations because it is too expensive to maintain 

the rest of it. And now we are down into that last two wings or 

so that we have to stay there until a new chemistry and metallurgy 

facility comes back online. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
66 

And from my standpoint, I think we have—I would call it like 

squeezing maybe a sponge, if you will. It was a sponge at first because we managed to get ourselves out of a lot of that space and 

reduce our costs there. But I cannot go any further in that particular area. 

So what we were trying to do is spend, you know, frankly, the 

minimum amount I can, just enough to maintain the safety systems in that facility because I would rather have more of the resources go towards building a future capability. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. The existing facility, obviously it has to be 

maintained and protected and so forth. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes. But what we have done in the meantime 

is not maintain the whole existing facility. We have actually said 

we are only going to maintain these last wing and a half to two 

wings of capability at Los Alamos, and the rest of it is going to go 

away. We are letting it—we are not maintaining it. We have gotten 

stuff out of it. It is in a safe position, but we are not doing—you 

know, not changing ventilation filters and we are not, you know, 

doing the painting of the hallways and so on. 

The same kind of problem we have in the uranium facility and 

capability at Y12. We have a building called 9212. Don is very familiar with this facility. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And I visited there. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, you visited, I remember that. And then 

what we—that is a little bit more challenging because we actually 

need basically almost all of that 9212 capability while the uranium 

processing facility comes up. So we have a risk reduction program 

that Don can describe some of the details on that where, with the 

Defense Board, we have—and looked at—but we have come up 

with—we looked at a list of what do we have to maintain and what 

investments do we have to make on the order of tens of millions 

of dollars a year that is not going to build the new UPF, but is 

going to maintain that existing capability. 

We do have—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Maintain and protect. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Maintain and protect. Now, our most important 

is safety to the workers and environment and the people in the 

area. At the same time, we do get into differences of opinions with 

the Defense Board—I think that is just natural; technical people 

will disagree—differences of opinion on whether we need to make 

that investment to do whatever it is, and Don may have some examples, or should we use that money to build the new UPF. I am 

always—it is a tradeoff. It is something that is fairly dynamic and 

gets managed fairly regularly. 

Don, can you provide some additional insight? 

Mr. COOK. Sure. On a couple of issues, it is important to recognize, and we do, that what we need to do, both at Los Alamos and 

at Y12, is construct new facilities, that they are new nuclear facilities, that they are replacing facilities that are 60 or in one case 

more than 60 years old, and that we have got to meet modern safety and security standards. So the first and best way to constrain 

the cost is not to make them any bigger than we have to. That is 

why the interactive planning that we have done with the DepartVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:21 Oct 01, 2011 Jkt 068245 PO 00000 Frm 00066 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A245P2.XXX A245P2

pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
67 

ment of Defense is so important. And we call them capability-based 

facilities rather than capacity-based. 

We structured them so that we could do 50 to 80 primaries or 

secondaries per year in these, but not larger than that. We are not 

betting on the Com; we have an agreement for the future of the national deterrent, nuclear deterrent, that we will not require something larger. 

The intermediate space, that is the next 10 years, as you mentioned earlier, sir, is the one that we are structuring to live 

through, and we must. And when it comes to discussions with the 

Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board the key issue in their mind 

is, is the schedule going to wander? You know, if it wanders and 

it is not trustable, if we cannot make the commitments, then they 

will say we need to make more investment in the current and old 

facilities. That is not a very good economic bargain. The better bargain was to put in place a schedule and execute the schedule. 

Something we have done in the past nine months to enable remember that and make it more probable is the management and 

operations entities have big companies and several are big nuclear 

builders; Bechtel and BWXT [phonetic] are two. They are in both 

of our sites. We have asked them to help us with the options: the 

learning, the planning, the deep integration, and to phase these 

projects in such a way that CMRR would lead and UPF would lag, 

but not by more than 24 months so that we can really apply the 

lessons learned. 

And I mentioned earlier that the nuclear structures would be in 

place in 2020—the comment was 10 years—so they will be in place 

in 2021. But the planning right now for implementation of the tool 

sets and the people and the technologies, we are in the guts of that. 

And so 2023, we intend to be fully in operation at the new CMRR 

in 2025. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. What is the role of this ominous group, the 

CAPE? What are they doing relative to both of these facilities? 

Maybe even go through that acronym so everybody knows it. 

Mr. COOK. Sure, sure. It is a DoD entity. Neile Miller, the Deputy Administrator to the Administrator sitting behind me, has been 

active on this. We have a strong interaction and a good one with 

OMB. The Cost Analysis and Program Evaluation, or CAPE, Unit 

of the DoD is basically their independent arm to look at costs. 

We have an equivalent independent arm within the Department 

of Energy and we asked each of those two independent arms to do 

an independent cost evaluation. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. They are doing a review now. 

Mr. COOK. They are doing—yes, yes. CAPE is just getting into 

the beginning parts for the CMRR whereas our arm completed that 

work for UPF. And they are now working together to do that. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So, when will the review be completed? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I would say it is going to take—yes. 

Mr. COOK. Spring to summer, late spring to early summer. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So they come up with their recommendations and observations, but are you sort of proceeding nonetheless 

with design and construction? 

Mr. COOK. Yes, the answer is we are proceeding with design. We 

do not have standing armies. We have armies of very competent 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
68 

people who are doing the design and they have got to get the design right. We are proceeding and we will take into account prior 

to setting the baseline for the facilities, we are going to get the cost 

estimates from CAPE and from our internal arm, and we will compare that. If they are reasonable and if we have—if we feel we have 

a good understanding of the cost, then we will proceed once the engineering is beyond 90 percent done to set the performance baseline and hold the control. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I do not mean to be facetious, you have got 

armies over in Savannah, don’t you? 

Mr. COOK. We have big sites. We have a lot of work, so I am not 

sure which army at Savannah you are talking about. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Yes. 

Mr. COOK. We will certainly have a lot of activities in tritium. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Yeah. Well, let me get—— 

Mr. COOK. And the construction on the other side. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Let me get to the Tritium Readiness Program. 

Mr. COOK. Sure. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. The GAO has investigated the Tritium 

Readiness Program this past year and raised some, I think, fairly 

serious questions about your ability to provide a reliable source to 

maintain the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile for the future. 

They recommended that a comprehensive plan be developed to 

manage the technical challenges and production requirements. Can 

you talk to us about their recommendations? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Absolutely. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This is, of course, on top of all the other 

things that you are doing, right? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. All the other priorities. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And some of the priorities that we have 

mentioned. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. New investments. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Your desire, obviously, and all of our desire 

to deal with the legacy of an ancient, you know, nuclear infrastructure that is—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The training piece is absolutely critical to our 

efforts. And GAO identified a couple of concerns that they had. One 

of them had to do with a large number of uncosted balances that 

are the results of the program. That was strictly a matter of how 

the contracts were initially structured and the GAO made a recommendation on that and we are implementing that recommendation to do more of a year-by-year approach instead of putting all 

the money out there and then waiting for seven years for all that 

money to get spent. So that was purely a matter of structure, but 

we are going to make that change. 

The second element of their concern had to do with the amount 

of tritium-producing burnable absorption rods—or TP BARS as it 

is called—and whether we had the right number and the right 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
69 

agreements in place with the Tennessee Valley Authority in 

WattsBar Unit 1 in order to irradiate these. They are currently—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This is where there is one and potentially 

three. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right, right. Absolutely, sir. There is one and 

potentially three reactors that we can use in this case. 

Don, since the tritium is in your area, could you add some of the 

details on that? But there are good options for the enterprise in 

order to make sure we maintain this tritium capability. I am confident that we will. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. But maybe before Dr. Cook answers, with 

the size of the stockpile going down are the requirements for reducing tritium going down as well or? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. It changes a little bit because we do have an 

operationally deployed stockpile decreasing in size, as you know, 

sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Yes. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. There is an overall size of the stockpile we need 

to maintain. And so some of the details associated with that series 

of warheads, the group of warheads that are not part of the operationally deployed set of units. We have different requirements 

within the Defense Department on, you know, keeping tritium bottles full on this handful and because they are in the more ready 

state, and then we have a secondary readiness state where we do 

not have to worry about it as much. 

The bottom line is that there is a tightly integrated—Don has a 

group of folks that track tritium, you know, by the liter and by the 

milliliter most likely, to make sure, you know, with the decay of 

tritium and the requirements curve going up, to figure out when 

and where we have our issues out into the future. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So you are going to tell us how all those 

pieces are going to fall together? 

Mr. COOK. I am going to describe that we have a plan. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Oh, good. 

Mr. COOK. Tritium decays with a half-life of about 12 years, so 

that is clearly in our plan. We are in the early stages of really the 

engineering and production of tritium, so the tritium extraction facility which takes tritium out of the BARS, our contracts with companies such as Westdyne and the relationship with TVA, we have 

worked through. 

You know, a technical issue, tritium is permeating through the 

BARS and the early licensed condition that was established had 

one assumption. We continue to make progress on containing the 

tritium, but for 10,000 tritium atoms we contain all but 4 and we 

hope to get that down to containing all but 2 and all but 1. This 

is the reason why having the expansion to three reactors rather 

than one is so important. Under no condition will we go past the 

EPA limits. The question about the—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. There is a lot of angst on the first one, 

right? 

Mr. COOK. The angst on the first one is we can—yes, there is. 

And we are—you know, we will not exceed the license conditions 

certainly that TVA has with NRC and with environmental organizations. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
70 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Even for that one you have to have some 

sort of a—— 

Mr. COOK. That is correct. So we developed a plan—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. Side by side or something. 

Mr. COOK. Yeah. And we are, again, working this with a decrease in the stockpile, the return of older weapons. And again, 

General Finan has been right in the thick of this with the Department of Defense because that is one of the deliveries we produced. 

So, every 18 months we have a cycle of these TP bars go through 

the reactor, a TVA reactor. And we have—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So the side-by-side of what I talked about 

was sort of a retention area, right, or the clean up? And is that 

budgeted for? Is that—because that is a cost that I would assume 

somebody must have anticipated. 

Mr. COOK. The answer is yes. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It is budgeted for? 

Mr. COOK. The answer is it is budgeted for. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. It is budgeted right next to the tritium extraction—excuse me, right next to the tritium extraction facility. That 

is Savannah River. I think it is Building 232. It is an older facility, 

but the pipe goes from one end to the other facility. And it is in 

that old facility where the old bottles come in from the stockpile, 

the tritium is cleaned up, the gasses are separated because it does 

decay as Dr. Cook was describing. And so having these things 

scrubbing out these particular isotopes is what happens in that 

building. And that all feeds—all that data comes in on a very regular basis to feed the database that tries to—that keeps on top of 

the decay of tritium, then the stockpile needs and our production 

requirements. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. But the TVA, the area around the reactor 

had some issues. Aren’t there cleanup issues there? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Associated with the—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Tritium, yeah. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Yeah, the leakage issue. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. As reactor coolant comes out during sampling 

and the like, it has got a little bit more tritiated water than is normally expected. In this goes to the 4 atoms out of 10,000 versus 

what we are going to get to is 2 out of that 10,000. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So there are costs associated with that. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. We are working with TVA. I am not familiar 

with the specific costs associated with them, but we have been 

working very closely with TVA on this as well as the licensing. We 

can provide the Committee some specifics on costs. 

Mr. COOK. Yes, if I can quickly address two issues. There was an 

impression early in our working with GAO that they thought the 

large uncosted balances were because we were not making technical progress. I want to just clarify it was because we had longterm contracts structured. We did not want to lose the supplier of 

these TP BARS. They are also a critical supplier to TVA. 

But the real issue at hand is the timing at which TVA and with 

our support can achieve a change in the license condition. If it 

looks like that is going to be too long off, then to meet the tritium 

needs we will have to use more than one reactor. We will still lose 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
71 

the same amount of tritium, but in two or three different places 

rather than one. If the license condition can be changed in time, 

then we only have a need to use one. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. A lot of things have to fall in place. Is that 

another way of—— 

Mr. COOK. A lot of things need, yes, need to be worked into place. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Yeah. 

Mr. COOK. That is correct. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Mr. Chairman, we would be glad to get some 

of the specifics on cost to you. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Let me yield to Mr. Pastor to see if he has 

some additional questions. 

Mr. PASTOR. There are a lot of things that have to fall into place, 

but we have a plan for it, that is the good news. The question I 

have is about warhead dismantlement. In the review, Nuclear Posture Review, it states that modernization will allow you to accelerate dismantlement of retired warheads. But yet in this budget 

there is a reduction. I think you had $96 million in fiscal year 2010 

and this year, 2012, you were talking about $57 million. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR. Why is the funding going down if the review states 

that you can accelerate the dismantlement? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The dismantlement work, there was an—we 

had a one-time increase in fiscal year ’10, as you pointed out, to 

accelerate some safety studies that we needed to do for a couple of 

our warhead systems, the W84 and the B53 warheads, as well as 

by the tooling because these are special tools that you need in 

order to take apart the warheads. The dismantlement, we put together an accelerated schedule a few years back and, in effect, we 

are implementing on the particular track on the accelerated schedule. 

There is not a one-to-one correlation between dollar appropriated 

and number of warheads dismantled because each of these warhead systems are different. The larger warhead systems, for example the B53, for example, takes many, many weeks to take apart 

just one. In some of our earlier systems you can take apart a warhead in just two shifts’ worth of work. So it is very difficult to, in 

my view, ascribe just a dollar and say $1 million provides you 1 

warhead, so 58 gets you 58 warheads. 

The key for me is not speed of warhead dismantlement, but safety of warhead dismantlement. We are very careful not to pressure 

our contractor, Babcock and Wilcox down at Pantex, to take them 

apart faster or to exceed some goals because these are systems that 

have been together in some cases for 45 years, you know, high explosives and polymers and metals that have been put together 

under pressure for 45 years, and the key is to do it safely. So I 

know that there is a lot of value. The more warheads that we have 

taken apart, the safer I feel because it separates the high explosives from the special nuclear material. But speed is not one thing 

that drives me because I am concerned about safety. 

Don, do you want to maybe comment as well to Mr. Pastor? 

Mr. COOK. Yes. Sure. And I think the observation that the funding levels are different is very clear. And the key difference is, as 

the Administrator said, the investment that was made in the toolVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:21 Oct 01, 2011 Jkt 068245 PO 00000 Frm 00071 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A245P2.XXX A245P2

pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
72 

ing and in the safe systems for the 21st century. SS21 is what we 

call it at the plant. Those are all complete. So for the first time in 

more than a decade, Pantex now has full safety authorization to 

disassemble or to reassemble any of the elements in the present 

stockpile or all parts of the retired stockpile. So—— 

Mr. PASTOR. So—oh, okay, go ahead. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes. So, I do not have a concern that we will 

meet our dismantlement levels to which we have committed. And 

it will take—once again, the important activity in weapon dismantlement is to ensure it is absolutely safe. And keeping it at a 

steady pace from now on where we are is going to be the driving 

requirement. 

Mr. PASTOR. Well, you are saying that there is not a one-to-one 

ratio. And so—but the $96 million, as I understand it, was basically an acceleration, but it went into, I guess, infrastructure? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, special tools that were designed—— 

Mr. PASTOR. So, it went into having the equipment, having the 

infrastructure, so that you could do a more efficient job of dismantlement. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir, that is right. And the way—you know, 

obviously there are ways to speed things up. 

Mr. PASTOR. I understand. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. We could bring up a whole new—we could hire 

people specifically for the shop as a new shift. The concern I have 

kind of from a sustainable planning standpoint is if we decided, for 

example, that it was so important that we wanted to—you know, 

now that we have our tools, we want to fully utilize them 24/7, if 

you will. That way we can get the work done faster. That is certainly possible, but it would require, I think, some significant hiring of production technicians down in Pantex. These are some fairly expensive people to bring on board because we have to make 

sure—it is not just hiring a mechanic off the street. We process security clearances and give them their training, and so about a year 

after they get on board they are actually doing some useful work. 

And then I would be in the business of laying off a whole bunch 

of people about five or six years from now, or maybe more like 

seven or eight years from now, after all the work is done. And that 

provides a bit of a bubble in our workforce. So there is an element 

of that that goes into the planning. Associated with that is the 

numbers of technicians that we have balanced off against the existing work that we currently have. 

Mr. PASTOR. So I guess the policy decision was to take the money 

in 2010 and, for safety reasons, get the equipment that would allow 

us to safely be able to dismantle a number of weapons? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR. So, now you have the equipment? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR. And you decided to run one shift because you did 

not want to bump the personnel because five years out, six years 

out, whatever the time length, you would have to lay off the other 

two shifts because of the number of weapons that needed to be dismantled. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
73 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. It is a policy and a financial decision 

as informed by the financial piece of it because it would cost a lot 

to bring people up and—— 

Mr. PASTOR. Sure. 

Mr. COOK. If I can make two other connections. When it comes 

to nuclear explosives safety we have got the Sandia lab strongly integrated in our work at Pantex. We also have the Y12 activities, 

so when a weapon is dismantled at Pantex, even if we might choose 

to do it faster there, we wind up piling up the secondary systems 

that have to go to Y12 to be taken apart. And what we have been 

driving toward is a sustained capability for the next decade at a 

rate that all elements of the complex can work, too. 

Mr. PASTOR. So, because now you have a strategy pretty much 

planned to go through the decade, would it be realistic for me now 

to say, well, $57 million will be kind of the yearly expense that we 

are looking at for this? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. I would have to look at my stat table 

to find out how it changes. It changes a little bit over time. 

Mr. PASTOR. But that it is basically what it is around, is that correct? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, where we can partition that off specifically 

for this particular activity. It is supported by the rest of the tooling 

because it is obviously utilizing the Pantex plant. It utilizes the 

production technicians, the gauges and testers that get used as 

these things get taken apart. 

Some of this work is also supported by the surveillance program 

because when we take things apart, we—instead of just taking 

them apart and then destroying the components, some of these 

components actually will get looked at for how they have aged. Because there is a lot of data that we can extract from this dismantlement activity, so elements of that are supported by the surveillance 

program. But those specifically focused on taking apart retired 

warheads are part of this unique dismantlement plan. 

Mr. PASTOR. So let me go again. The $96 million allowed you to 

buy the equipment or the tools. And for safety reasons, we needed 

them. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes. 

Mr. PASTOR. A decision was made not to bring on additional personnel because you wanted to keep a steady flow. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PASTOR. So, now we have a plan for 10 years, more or less. 

One of the problems being that the secondary institution, wherever 

it may be—— 

Mr. COOK. Y12, yes. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR [continuing]. Wherever it may be, does not have the 

capacity, so that is another limiting factor. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. Yes, sir. 

Mr. COOK. So, it—— 

Mr. PASTOR. Right? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. COOK. That is all correct the way you said it. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
74 

Mr. PASTOR. So are we really accelerating dismantlement or are 

we just on the same program? And if we are increasing it, what 

is the baseline that we are using to say we are increasing it? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. So the baseline is established in a report, a 

classified report, provided to Congress. We will provide it to the 

Committee. I would be happy to provide it to the Committee. 

Mr. PASTOR. I guess I did not have the clearance to read it, so. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. No, no. No, you have the clearance, sir, there 

is no question about it. You might not have a safe in your office, 

but we will make sure the Committee gets that report. But also, 

what we have actually is very significant—— 

Mr. PASTOR. Well, the question is in the 10 years are we really 

accelerating or are we status quo or—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes. I will explain. 

Mr. PASTOR [continuing]. Are we decreasing? I mean, I guess 

that is probably what we are looking for. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. No, we actually are accelerating, Mr. Pastor. 

The report provides the baseline. That is our commitment. 

Mr. PASTOR. Okay. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. That is step one. Step two is we are accelerating. Just last year, in fiscal year ’10, Pantex exceeded its dismantlement plan by 26 percent. It did 120 percent of that workload. In FY10, fiscal year ’10, the previous fiscal year I think they 

were up about 10 percent. And what we have realized is as a result 

of this baseline and these new tools that have been brought in 

place, that these new tools drive the efficiency of the dismantlement and the safety of dismantlement rate up much better than we 

had expected to. 

So what we are in the business of—and, hopefully, we are always 

in this business—but it is underpromising and overdriven. You 

know, I do not want to promise something that we cannot deliver 

on, but I always want to promise something that I know I can at 

least deliver on and hopefully exceed that piece. 

So our commitment to the President earlier on was to get that 

whole retirement set of workload done by about 2021, 2022 timeframe, 10 years out. 

Mr. PASTOR. Ten years out. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. But our data shows us we will probably actually get there sooner. That is a good story. 

Have we re-baselined our old report? No, sir, we have not. Could 

we? We probably could and kind of re-normalize the curve, if you 

will. So that is in our acceleration piece. We are accelerating as a 

result of that. But it is as a result of the workforce down at the 

plant with the new tools and the new processes that we put in 

place. It is actually a good story, I believe. 

Mr. COOK. Yes, if I could just comment. I was looking at my 

notes. Earlier, sir, you said that the—earlier, sir, you said the barriers were personnel, infrastructure, and training. 

Mr. PASTOR. Right. 

Mr. COOK. And I think that is pretty clear. So, you know, we had 

been training people at Pantex through ’09 and ’10. Much of the 

new tooling was implemented in ’10. It will be kept operating in 

’11, ’12, and beyond. And the budget for dismantlement is relatively flat into the future. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
75 

In order to deal with the backlog that we had at Y12 we are 

doing planning activities right now. But in terms of another key infrastructure item is having safe systems, you know, having the 

business practices and the safety approvals. That tended to be the 

dominant one at Pantex besides the training of people and the new 

tooling. At this point, all three are in place. And so we expect to 

have now a sustained level of dismantlement that is at a higher 

rate compared to years 7 and 8. So clearly a higher rate and that 

ought to be sustained for a decade. 

Mr. PASTOR. So what do we do in 2012 in terms of dismantlement? We say we are done and—— 

Mr. COOK. In 2020? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. 2020, 2022. 

Mr. PASTOR. 2022, I am sorry. Yeah, 10 years from now, right. 

Mr. COOK. My belief is that as the weapon numbers come down 

because we are going to take things off operational alert—— 

Mr. PASTOR. Right. 

Mr. COOK [continuing]. The 2,200 down to the 1,550. And as 

newly manufactured weapons are put in place that will have other 

weapon systems that we need to take apart, we will want to recover special materials, we want to safely dispose of the high explosives. And that time scale of 2022 will probably move out, but the 

number will taper off to a relatively steady state. 

Mr. PASTOR. Within the scope, yes. Thank you. 

Mr. COOK. Sure. Good question. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. He is every bit persistent. We are approaching noon and I just want to get back in here and then we 

are going to—— 

Mr. PASTOR. We finally got the review, so that was the good 

news. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. A lot of what we are talking about here is 

sequencing—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. And your ability to sort of get 

things done. And Mr. Administrator, you spoke earlier about your 

relationship with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. And 

there seems to be some disagreement between NNSA and that 

board regarding some safety issues at CMRR. Are there some 

issues there relative to seismic issues? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, yes. I would not call them issues per se. 

I would call them technical differences in approaches on the chemistry. The CMRR, which is the replacement facility that we have 

right now before us, the Board and the Department have agreed 

and certified a particular design, and that is the approach that we 

are moving forward on. 

What we are looking at is to make sure as—you know, obviously 

as you said earlier and I have said earlier, our understanding of 

what it is going to cost to provide these facilities has changed. We 

want to make sure we understand what drives the cost change. Because it is important for us to understand what drives the cost 

change and to make sure that we understand those particular drivers. 

And this is not a matter of backing off on safety at all. On the 

contrary, it is a matter of taking a look at making sure we underVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:21 Oct 01, 2011 Jkt 068245 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A245P2.XXX A245P2

pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
76 

stand what drives costs. And if we need to change, we have not 

made any views on changing the design approach, if we need a 

change, we understand what we are getting into changing. 

The current CMRR, the replacement building design, is designed 

to withstand a certain seismic load, if you will, the 1 in every 

10,000 or 1 in every long period of time type of an earthquake. A 

priority, of course, is balance, you know. What we do is we have 

to manage risk. And we manage risk—each and every one of us 

manages risk at any point in time, and so I expect—obviously as 

designs mature and as decisions need to be made on, well, should 

we put this in the building or should we put that in the building, 

we will have differences of views and we will resolve those. 

But one thing that is important from my standpoint is the Board 

provides an independent input into the Department on safety 

issues. It is critically important for us to get that input because 

they give us an independent set on something that is so important, 

which is nuclear safety. We as a department, as the Executive 

Branch, have the responsibility to take that input, make sure it is 

duly considered in the policy decisions as we move forward, and 

then balance the tradeoffs. 

Don may have some specifics associated with any particular specific differences of views that currently exist, but. 

Mr. COOK. We have asked some questions of Los Alamos. Let me 

tell you what they are and why they were asked. 

So CMRR has really two functions: it replaces a CMR capability 

that we have and it also has a storage vault for special nuclear materials. That is like HEUMF at Y12 for storage of uranium. Here 

it is a storage of plutonium. The material went into—in that vault 

is not considered material at risk. Because the requirements for the 

number of pits that we need to be manufactured at Los Alamos is 

now in a clearly defined fine range—the 50 to 80, and at the beginning of CMRR years ago the number was larger—there is the potential to deal with more material in the vaults, better process in 

the actual manufacturing processes, and less material at risk. 

And I asked the question of the Los Alamos team have we done 

the best job we can to minimize the material at risk in all of the 

process flow, all of the glove boxes that we have, all the transportation of material. Because it is only when material is in that case 

that if an earthquake occurred—and we do understand the seismology of the region better—and then if that triggered a fire, certainly earthquakes have been known to trigger fires in the place, 

and then if we had a fire suppression system fail and be required 

to active ventilation through all of this fault sequence, the amount 

of money that we have to invest in all of that is critically dependent on the material at risk. 

And so my question is have we gotten that material at risk at 

the lowest level possible? I sent a letter to Los Alamos and also 

sent immediately a copy of the letter to the Defense Board so they 

can see what we are doing. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So is there likely to be a delay or not at Los 

Alamos? 

Mr. COOK. There is not likely to be a delay. The issue—we have 

a current design for the plant. The question is not whether we need 

to have more in the plant, but whether the safety systems have to 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
77 

work at the level assumed in the past, and it may well be the case, 

or whether we can reduce the material at risk and take a minor 

change in the safety systems. That is the question at hand. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I think we have covered quite a lot of territory this morning. And I want to thank all three of you for your 

testimony—hearings often do not get through on time—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. In closing, Mr. D’Agostino, please ensure 

that the hearing records, the questions for the record, and any supporting information requested by the Subcommittee are delivered 

in final form to the Subcommittee no later than four weeks from 

the time you receive them. The members who have additional questions for the record will have until close of business tomorrow to 

provide them to the Subcommittee staff. 

And I want to thank you all for being here, for your participation, for your education, and may I say for the work that you do 

each and every day. And I know you have got a lot of supporters 

in the back of the room who have dedicated their lives to the same 

purpose, and we would like to recognize their efforts and dedication. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Pastor. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We stand adjourned. Thank you. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
78 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 134 here 68245A.040
79 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 135 here 68245A.041
80 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 136 here 68245A.042
81 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 137 here 68245A.043
82 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 138 here 68245A.044
83 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 139 here 68245A.045
84 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 140 here 68245A.046
85 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 141 here 68245A.047
86 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 142 here 68245A.048
87 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 143 here 68245A.049
88 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 144 here 68245A.050
89 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 145 here 68245A.051
90 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 146 here 68245A.052
91 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 147 here 68245A.053
92 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 148 here 68245A.054
93 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 149 here 68245A.055
94 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 150 here 68245A.056
95 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 151 here 68245A.057
96 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 152 here 68245A.058
97 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 153 here 68245A.059
98 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 154 here 68245A.060
99 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 155 here 68245A.061
100 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 156 here 68245A.062
101 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 157 here 68245A.063
102 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 158 here 68245A.064
103 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 159 here 68245A.065
104 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 160 here 68245A.066
105 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 161 here 68245A.067
106 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 162 here 68245A.068
107 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 163 here 68245A.069
108 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 164 here 68245A.070
109 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 165 here 68245A.071
110 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 166 here 68245A.072
111 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 167 here 68245A.073
112 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 168 here 68245A.074
113 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 169 here 68245A.075
114 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 170 here 68245A.076
115 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 171 here 68245A.077
116 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 172 here 68245A.078
117 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 173 here 68245A.079
118 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 174 here 68245A.080
119 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 175 here 68245A.081
120 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 176 here 68245A.082
121 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 177 here 68245A.083
122 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 178 here 68245A.084
123 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 179 here 68245A.085
124 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 180 here 68245A.086
125 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 181 here 68245A.087

pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
(127) 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2011. 

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, DEFENSE NUCLEAR 

NONPROLIFERATION AND NAVAL REACTORS 

WITNESSES 

THOMAS D’AGOSTINO, UNDER SECRETARY FOR NUCLEAR SECURITY 

ANNE HARRINGTON, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR DEFENSE NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION 

ADMIRAL KIRKLAND H. DONALD, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR 

NAVAL REACTORS 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I’d like to call the hearing to order. Good 

morning to everybody. 

VOICES. Good morning. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Today’s hearing will continue this week’s 

focus on the national security programs at the Department of Energy. Administrator D’Agostino and Admiral Donald, welcome back 

to the Subcommittee. Ms. Harrington, welcome to your first hearing. It’s nice to have you here. 

As I said yesterday, our Committee is not immune to the reality 

that we must do our part to reduce federal spending and our huge 

deficit. Our resources will be constrained, even for the most essential activities under our jurisdiction and all programs, even vital 

security programs must be considered in that context. 

I consider the Department of Energy’s national security programs to be its most important mandate. The two accounts we’ll 

consider here today, Naval Reactors and Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, are critical components of our nation’s defenses. 

The Administration’s request for nonproliferation programs is $2.5 billion, $140 million below last year’s. 

Given the attention the President has given to nonproliferation 

programs, including his attempt to secure fissile material overseas 

in four years, I look forward to hearing how this budget moves 

those efforts ahead. 

I hope that you will also assure us that you are able to meet the 

growing challenges in Libya, Iran and North Korea, among other 

areas, and that our national security needs are met under this 

budget request. 

Admiral Donald, your budget request for Naval Reactors is an 

8% increase over your last year’s, and a 22% increase over your 

current operating level. 

Your programs are critical to national defense and give our naval 

forces the next-generation propulsion systems that maintain our 

Navy’s edge. 

Since the Naval Reactors program is split with funding from the 

Navy, the NNSA component is only part of the story. I hope you’ll 

take some time this morning to clarify for us all how that relationship works, and what complications it causes. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
128 

Admiral Donald, I consider it our Constitutional responsibility, 

first and foremost, to fully support national defense and also to 

fully protect the hard-earned tax dollars of Americans that only 

House members can raise. 

Frankly, there are still many questions to be answered about the 

Administration’s planning to modernize our nation’s nuclear submarines and therefore we don’t have a good grasp on what your 

budget to support this program needs to be. Perhaps you will be 

able to shed some light on these plans for us today. 

Again, I’d like to welcome our witnesses to the Subcommittee. 

Mr. D’Agostino, please ensure that the hearing record, questions 

for the record, and any supporting information requested by the 

Subcommittee are delivered in final form to us no later than four 

weeks from the time you receive them. Members who have additional questions for the record will have until close of business tomorrow to provide them to the Subcommittee office. 

With that I will turn to Mr. Pastor, the Ranking Member, for any 

remarks he may have. Mr. Pastor. 

Mr. PASTOR. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very 

much. 

Mr. Administrator, good morning and welcome again. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. PASTOR. And Admiral Donald, good to see you again. And 

Ms. Harrington, good morning and welcome to the hearing, and we 

all look forward to the testimony you will give us this morning. 

As the Chairman said, this President has been very aggressive 

in terms of securing these materials and wants to do it in four 

years and it is a surprise to me that this budget is reduced, as the 

Chairman explained to us, so I would like to understand why, 

given all the attention to securing this material, this account sees 

a decrease when the remainder of NNSA is increasing. 

Once again the magnitude of the increase raises concern whether 

the increase can be effectively executed in a single year, and I look 

forward to your testimony today on how this funding can be effectively used. 

As you are discussing the budget today, I would also like you to 

address how flat funding for your organization in 2011 will impact 

your activities. 

Admiral, your organization sees a large increase over 2010 and 

over the 2011 request. The requested level for nuclear reactors is 

a 22 percent increase over 2010. Again, there are issues of execution with that magnitude of increase. I look forward for your explanation how this funding will be used. 

I look forward to your testimony regarding the areas of national 

security and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the time. And I yield 

back. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Administrator, the floor is yours. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Pastor, Mr. Alexander. I appreciate the opportunity for us to join 

you again today and talk about our nuclear security programs. 

Since I joined you yesterday, I will keep my opening remarks 

brief. Mr. Chairman, NNSA will comply with your request to provide responses in the timeframes you requested. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
129 

Last year the Nuclear Posture Review reaffirmed the vital role 

that nuclear submarines play in our strategic deterrent. For fiscal 

year 2012 President Obama has requested $1.1 billion for NNSA’s 

Naval Reactors Program. The Nuclear Posture Review highlighted 

the need to build a replacement for the Ohio Class submarine, 

which will start to be retired from service in 2027. 

Our fiscal year request continues the design work on the propulsion unit for that Ohio Class replacement submarine in order to 

meet the Navy’s required procurement date of 2019. 

The budget request also includes critical investments in modern 

and sustainable fuel infrastructure at Naval Reactors site in Idaho 

National Laboratory. This will allow us to move fuel from wet to 

dry storage and ultimately dispose of it while we maintain the capacity necessary to receive spent fuel generated during sustained, 

increased periods of fuel handling in our shipyards. 

Finally, the budget request also seeks the resources to refuel the 

land-based prototype reactor in upstate New York. 

Mr. Chairman, these three investments support our historic and 

essential role in helping power America’s nuclear Navy. Admiral 

Donald is here with me today, of course, and he will provide a few 

comments in a few minutes here. 

With respect to our nuclear naval—I am sorry—our nuclear nonproliferation programs, the President is seeking the resources required to implement his unprecedented nuclear security agenda he 

outlined in Prague. 

On any given day we have people working around the world in 

more than 100 countries to reduce the global nuclear threat. 

If I could, I would like to make a simple but important statement. Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and keeping dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists is a vital national security priority. These are, without a doubt, national security programs that we have here. 

As President Obama said, the threat of terrorists acquiring and 

using a nuclear weapon is the most immediate and extreme threat 

we face. His 2012 budget includes $2.5 billion in FY12 and $14.2 

billion over the next five years to reduce the global nuclear threat 

by detecting, securing, safeguarding, disposing, and controlling nuclear and radiological materials as well as promoting the responsible application of nuclear technology and science. This includes 

stemming the risk of expertise proliferation through innovative 

science and technology partnerships around the world. 

The President’s request provides the resources required to meet 

commitments secured during the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit. 

For fiscal year 2012 it includes $1.1 billion or close to $1 billion to 

remove and prevent the smuggling of dangerous nuclear material 

around the world and enable NNSA to continue leading international efforts to implement more stringent standards for physical 

security and protection of material in facilities worldwide. 

The President is also seeking $890 million for the Fissile Material Disposition Program, which supports the continued construction of a mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility, the waste solidification building, and efforts to baseline the pit, disassembly and conversion project at the Savannah River site in South Carolina. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
130 

Not only will these facilities be used to permanently eliminate 

more than 34 metric tons of surplus weapons plutonium, but it will 

be done in a way that produces electricity for America’s consumers. 

As I like to say, this is the ultimate swords to plowshares program and a key element of the President’s nuclear nonproliferation 

agenda. Finally, the budget request directs more than $360 million to the 

research and development required to create new technologies for 

detecting nuclear proliferation or testing and for monitoring compliance with nuclear nonproliferation and arms control treaty 

agreements. To me, this last point is the key. Investing in the 

science and technology underpinning our programs is critical to implementing the President’s nuclear security agenda. 

This is serious business. We need the best minds in the country 

working at our national laboratories and sites to develop the tools 

that will keep the American people safe and enhance global security. 

Investing in a modern, 21st century nuclear security enterprise 

is essential to preventing nuclear terrorism or nuclear proliferation. These missions are interrelated, they rely on the same skill 

sets, the same people, and many of the same facilities. 

This is a major part of the reason why we need to complete the 

uranium processing facility at Y–12, the National Security Complex, and the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility at Los Alamos Laboratories. 

These projects are critical to maintain the nation’s expertise in 

uranium processing and plutonium research and I strongly encourage this Committee to continue supporting them. 

Mr. Chairman, these are some of the highlights of this request 

as it relates to nuclear nonproliferation, naval reactors. I look forward to answering any questions and I would request Admiral 

Donald provide a few minutes on his program, sir. 

[The information follows:] 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
131 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 194 here 68245A.088
132 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 195 here 68245A.089
133 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 196 here 68245A.090
134 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 197 here 68245A.091
135 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 198 here 68245A.092
136 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 199 here 68245A.093
137 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 200 here 68245A.094
138 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 201 here 68245A.095
139 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 202 here 68245A.096
140 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 203 here 68245A.097
141 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 204 here 68245A.098
142 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 205 here 68245A.099
143 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 206 here 68245A.100
144 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 207 here 68245A.101
145 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 208 here 68245A.102
146 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 209 here 68245A.103
147 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 210 here 68245A.104
148 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 211 here 68245A.105
149 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 212 here 68245A.106
150 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 213 here 68245A.107
151 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 214 here 68245A.108
152 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 215 here 68245A.109
153 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 216 here 68245A.110
154 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 217 here 68245A.111
155 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 218 here 68245A.112
156 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 219 here 68245A.113
157 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 220 here 68245A.114
158 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 221 here 68245A.115
159 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 222 here 68245A.116
160 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 223 here 68245A.117
161 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 224 here 68245A.118
162 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 225 here 68245A.119
163 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 226 here 68245A.120
164 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 227 here 68245A.121
165 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 228 here 68245A.122
166 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 229 here 68245A.123
167 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 230 here 68245A.124
168 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 231 here 68245A.125
169 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 232 here 68245A.126
170 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you, Tom. Admiral, good morning. 

Admiral DONALD. Good morning, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We have got two submariners at the dais. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. One in uniform, one without. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Sir, with your permission I would like to introduce two guests that I have here with me today. The first is my 

wife of 37 years, Diane. She’s been on this journey with me, this 

naval career, and supported me and I would not be here without 

her. Also, her sister is here, Terri, who is just returning from an 

eight month tour in Afghanistan, a Navy Reservist serving our 

country. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Well, we salute you. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Where are they? 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We thank you all for your service and for 

those of you who did not see the Washington Post this morning, 

General Kelly, there is a rather poignant story I commend to your 

attention. He does not advertise that he lost a son, but we should 

reflect every day how blessed we are by the service of so many 

young men and women and some not so young, serving in the military, and their families, each and every day. We are extraordinarily 

proud. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. All of us here are proud. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Admiral. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. Chairman Frelinghuysen, Mr. Pastor, 

Mr. Alexander, thank you for the opportunity to testify here today 

on the Naval Reactors fiscal year 2012 budget request. The request 

is for $1.15 billion. 

This funding provides the resources to sustain a nuclear fleet of 

71 submarines and 11 aircraft carriers that comprise over 40 percent of the major combatants in the United States Navy and the 

most survivable leg of our strategic nuclear deterrent, 14 fleet ballistic missile submarines. 

Our FY12 request also supports the modernization of our nation’s nuclear deterrent with funding for the reactor plant design 

and land based prototyping to replace the existing Ohio Class ballistic missile submarines. 

The Ohio Class ships will start retirement from service in 2027 

and to meet the Navy’s required procurement date of 2019, my program’s work is underway now. Further, that land based prototyping work will provide a training platform for one-third of my nuclear operators for the future for the next 20 years once it is back 

on service. 

And finally, this budget funds the modernization and 

sustainment of our aging spent nuclear fuel infrastructure in 

Idaho. 

As the Administrator pointed out, we have to do this to ensure 

that we remain in compliance with the Idaho Settlement Agreements of 1995 for movement of fuel from wet storage to dry storage 

and to ultimately dispose while we maintain the capacity necessary 

to receive spent fuel generated during a sustained, intense period 

of fuel handling in our shipyards. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
171 

Sir, I realize I come before you today at a very challenging time 

for our nation and I know I am not alone in asking for funding for 

claimed important programs. As you deliberate and make the difficult decisions that you must, I ask that you consider the following: the Naval Reactors Program operates and maintains 103 

nuclear reactor plans on submarines, aircraft carriers, and ashore 

at training, and research and development facilities. We perform 

complex engineering and technical work to develop and maintain 

highly capable reactor plans and associated equipment for their 30 

to 50 year lifespan. 

Our ships are deployed around the globe and they are welcome 

in over 150 ports worldwide. Nuclear powered ships are home 

ported in eight United States cities and in Yokosuka, Japan. That 

unfettered access to ports and the associated operational flexibility 

is only possible because the public trusts us, and that trust is derived from confidence in our record of safe operations, in environmental stewardship, in managing complex nuclear technology that 

has high consequence in the case of failure. 

Similarly, our performance in reactor plant operations, in our 

shipyards and in spent fuel handling operations in Idaho has engendered trust within our workforce and in the local communities. 

We have built our record through a singular focus on safety that 

has been facilitated by having the necessary resources to ensure 

the highest standards are maintained, to allow us to address small 

problems before they become big problems, and to conduct our engineering in a conservative, defense, in-depth approach. 

The Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has historically been a 

good steward of the taxpayer’s dollars. We have a record of delivering projects of the highest quality, on time, and on cost. The Virginia-Class submarine program, cited as the standard for major acquisition programs in the Navy, is the latest example of that performance. Further, when challenged to prepare spent fuel for dry 

storage and ultimate disposal in a land repository, we successfully 

constructed the complex facilities within our budget and establish 

a production process that ensures we fulfill our commitments to the 

citizens of Idaho. 

Our stewardship is not limited to major projects, but rather it is 

engrained in our day to day work and it starts with our headquarters staff, a lean staff comprised primarily of engineers who 

conduct the oversight of all of our activities. 

Our laboratories and our unique industrial base are focused not 

only on safety and effectiveness of our propulsion plants, but also 

on cost-wise performance, always seeking opportunities to improve. 

This effort enabled a 15 percent reduction in the cost of a Virginia 

Class propulsion plant after the final design was completed. 

This is a unique time in the 60-year history of the Naval Nuclear 

Propulsion Program. In addition to ensuring day-to-day safety and 

effectiveness of an aging nuclear fleet that is maintaining a very 

high operational tempo, as I highlighted earlier, we are on the cusp 

of a required modernization effort in the Department of Defense 

and the Department of Energy that has no precedent. This effort 

will challenge our proven technical and project management skills. 

Finally, we are in the early stages of a workforce demographic 

shift where many of our seasoned veterans will be replaced by very 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
172 

bright, energetic, but relatively inexperienced, newcomers, and 

while I do not underestimate the challenge, I am very confident of 

our ability to be successful and to execute. That confidence is derived from the facts that we have a track record of excellence in 

similar endeavors, that our requirements for our projects are fully 

defined and fully validated by the Department of Defense and the 

Department of Energy and the Office of Management and Budget, 

and that we have maintained focus on and demonstrated continuous improvement across the full spectrum of nuclear propulsion 

operations. 

Further, all of our projects represent evolutionary as opposed to 

revolutionary technology. We have the essential experience that 

serves to minimize cost, schedule, and quality risk. 

Our new projects require many years to bring to fruition. We are 

in the early stages of concept development and design that will, for 

the most part, define overall cost and time to deliver. Sufficient resources at this time in the life of major projects is absolutely critical as they allow us to sufficiently mature designs prior to construction start, a condition widely recognized as essential to project 

success. 

Mr. Chairman, Members, our success would not have been and 

will not be possible without the strong support of this Subcommittee. Historically the combination of our proven performance, 

our rigor in developing our requirements, our efficiency in executing those requirements, and the acknowledgment of the complexity and high consequence of failure in nuclear technology has 

been recognized with appropriate funding for our request. 

It is with that understanding that I am concerned over the fact 

that the Naval Reactors Program sustained a cut in the Energy 

and Water Appropriations funding in FY10 of $58 million. 

Further, HR1, which passed the House in February, provided 

$103 million less than our FY11 request. The combined effects have 

been delays in hiring qualified people to do the work to prepare for 

the aforementioned demographic shift, impeded progress in the 

critically important early design work, and the resultant substantial increased risk to all projects. 

While the shortfalls are relatively small in the context of overall 

department budget, the impact is particularly disproportionate in 

the early stages of these projects. In short, we will not be successful in the long term if this funding trend continues. 

I believe we have provided all of the information requested by 

the Subcommittee that supports our request and we stand by to 

answer any further questions or provide any further information. 

I would also welcome the opportunity to host you at one of our 

laboratories. I believe your visit would give you a unique perspective in both the diversity and magnitude of the ongoing work made 

possible by your support of this program. I respectfully request 

your support for the full amount of my FY12 budget and on behalf 

of the men and women of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, 

thank you for your support, and I look forward to answering any 

questions that you may have. 

[The information follows:] 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
173 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 241 68245A.127
174 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 242 68245A.128
175 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert graphic folio 243 68245A.129
176 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you, Admiral. Ms. Harrington, any 

comments you might have? 

Ms. HARRINGTON. No, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Okay, thank you. Admiral Donald, your fis- cal year 2012 request, as you said, is $1.153 billion, an increase of 

19 percent over the continuing resolution level. It continues a trend 

of large increases in your budget requests over the last two years. 

Requests which have not generally been supported by Congress, at 

times, appropriators, and authorizers, but not just appropriators. By fiscal year 2016 your proposed budget will grow to $1.57 bil- lion, double the 2008 amount of $774 million. Why does the Naval 

Reactors need to be twice as large as it was before the start of this 

Administration when it has so successfully executed its mission in 

the past? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. I would characterize it in two places, 

first is the day-to-day operations of the fleet. The fleet size is essentially the same and will be essentially the same over the period of 

time that you mentioned. The operational temp will remain the 

same, so there is a baseline of technical support that has to be provided to that operating fleet that is included with our baseline 

budget. 

The increases that you are seeing, aside from what you would account for in inflation, the increases that you are seeing are involved in the major projects that I mentioned in—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This is what you classified as cost drivers? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. Absolutely. That is the three major 

projects within the Department of Energy, that is the Ohio replacement reactor plant design, the SAG land-based prototype refueling, 

and the recapitalization of the spent fuel facility in Idaho, those 

three drive the cost. They are expensive projects, no doubt, but all 

of them there is a valid timeline that they have to be done that 

in many cases is physics based. 

For instance, the Ohio Class submarines, they start coming off 

service in 2027. That will happen based on the fact that the fuel 

will be depleted, based on the fact that the life of the submarines 

will reach 42 years. They will come off service, so if I cannot deliver 

by that time, that means force structure will have to come off and 

the fleet will be smaller and less likely to be able to meet the requirements. 

The prototype in New York, there is fuel, it is running out of reactor fuel. That will happen if I do not refuel that by 2017. That 

means I cannot do the prototyping work I need for the Ohio replacement core design, that means I will not have one-third of my 

training capacity to support the students that have to go through 

and become reactor operators in the fleet. 

And then finally the replacement for the water pit, that is the 

recapitalization in Idaho, that is really a water pit replacement out 

there. That has to be done at that time because of the fuel that is 

coming out of the aircraft carrier fleet. We are in a heavy period 

of refueling as each aircraft carrier comes heel to toe for their midlife refueling or end of life, and as that fuel moves into Idaho, if 

I cannot accept it in the water pit facility, if the water pit is not 

capable or we have a material problem that puts it out of commission, I cannot take fuel off of those ships and leave it in the shipVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:21 Oct 01, 2011 Jkt 068245 PO 00000 Frm 00176 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A245P2.XXX A245P2

pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
177 

yards. That would mean the ships could not be refueled. That 

means operational capability is lost to the Navy. 

So, that is why you see the profile, why the ramp up is so high 

at this particular point in time in the early stages of these projects. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Is there something happening in the fleets 

of our competitors which is also driving the need? 

Admiral DONALD. I would not characterize it as much at a specific fleet of a competitor as I would if you just look at the world 

environment right now and what the Navy is doing. If you look at 

the operational temp of our aircraft carrier, submarines, and really 

all of our ships, it is as high now as I have seen it, really, in my 

career. At any given time half of the fleet is underway. 

There is a significant demand in the Western Pacific as the rise 

of China, as they have more influence out into the blue water. 

Some concern about stability in that region and support of our allies in that area. Similarly in the Gulf. It is a very taxing operational tempo, so the need for those ships right now is as great as 

I have seen it in the course of my career, and we are a relatively 

smaller fleet. If you compare where we were in 1989 with roughly 

a 600 ship Navy, we are at 284 ships in the Navy right now. Half 

the size, yet our commitment—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It is dangerously low. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. But our commitment has really not 

changed worldwide. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So, you have got three simultaneous cost 

drivers, facing you at the same time. Why are they coming at the 

same time? 

Admiral DONALD. It is—believe me, sir, I would prefer that they 

did not come all at the same time, but it is—again, it is driven— 

two of them, in fact, driven by physics, the fact that the fuel is— 

the fuel in the reactors that are operating—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Of the ones that are operating now. 

Admiral DONALD. The ones that are operating now, the Ohio 

Class, the Ohio Class that is on deterrent patrol right now, and the 

lifetime of those ships. I remind you, those ships—the Ohio Class, 

we built those with the plan that they would last for 35 years. We 

have extended the life of those ships to 42 years. We do not believe 

it is possible to take them any further. That is, if you look from 

a submarine point of view, you start getting concerns about safety 

of ship, safety of the crews. Forty-two years is as long as we should 

be operating those ships. 

So, there is a hard stop right there and we know how long it 

takes to design and build a new ship to come online in 2027 and 

now is the right time that has to be done. 

Similarly, the refueling of the prototype in New York, we know 

it runs out of fuel in the vicinity of 2017, now is the time I have 

to start designing the reactor to go in it, building it, and then having it ready to be installed when the refueling starts in 2017. 

The water pit, little more—it is a little more challenging when 

you start trying to define it, but they are really—if I could talk just 

a little bit about what this is. In Idaho this is a water pit where 

we take all our spent nuclear fuel, we store it in there for a period 

of time to allow it to cool down. We also store it in there to be examined as part of our technical work that we do. But this is housed 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
178 

in a building that is about 1,000 feet long and 400 feet wide. It is 

over four million gallons of water in this water pit with 25 metric 

tons of nuclear spent fuel in it. Parts of that water pit were built 

50 years ago. The newest part was built 30 years ago. It has cracks 

in it. It has some leaks in it. It has some structural issues that we 

have just spent a lot of time and money and effort and inefficiency 

in the work we do out there to make sure we are no having a safety issue or an environmental issue. 

There is not a soul that I have not taken through that water pit 

to take a look at it that comes away saying, Admiral, you need to— 

they say, you need to replace this thing. It is time. It does not meet 

current standards. 

So, it has to be done. And the impacts are this: If I have a material problem and it shuts that water pit down, which is something 

I cannot predict right now, then I am out of business refueling aircraft carriers, and they stay. The ones that need to be refueled stay 

in port. 

If, even under the best of circumstances as I am refueling all of 

these aircraft carriers, the schedule is significantly crunched and 

the only way we could get out of that schedule crunch and be able 

to meet the commitments to the United States Navy for schedule 

is to compress the refueling cycle. To do that we had to put a new 

shipping system in place and the water pit is not prepared to handle fuel from that shipping system. It has to be in place by 2020, 

otherwise I will start either backing fuel up, which I cannot do in 

the shipyards, or have to invest in new container systems at $20 

million a pop to store the fuel onsite, to cask it onsite, before handling in the water pit. 

So, the timing is really driven by the operational needs of the 

United States Navy and it is driven, in some ways, by physics associated with the platforms and with the need to recapitalize the 

SSBN4. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I have been out to Idaho. That is an ongoing cost driver right there. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. It is. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It is. Maybe just the last question before I 

go over to the Ranking Member, Mr. Pastor. The issue of affordability of the new Ohio Class, can you talk about that for a minute? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We have been trying on this committee, as 

you know, to get our hands around it. I think we know we have 

to do what we have to do—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. To be supportive, but the issue 

of affordability is something which the Navy has taken a look at, 

the Department of Defense has taken a look at. You know how 

many programs across the services have been—— 

Admiral DONALD. Absolutely. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We have to have this—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. This new generation of sub. 

How are you proceeding with the design and how is all that working out? 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
179 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. Maybe I can touch on the question 

you asked in the very beginning about the relationship between the 

Navy and the Department of Energy as far as who does what and 

what the shared responsibilities are and I am really at the nexus 

of that because my responsibility, ultimately, is to deliver a propulsion plant. That is the reactor plant which is the reactor itself and 

associated systems that provide the auxiliary systems to support 

that reactor. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And you do that for the Virginia Class now, 

right? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. The ones that we have given you two every 

year, right? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. I have—our program has done that 

since Nautilus went to sea on January 17, 1955. This will be our 

27th design that we do. 

But that reactor plant is the responsibility of the Department of 

Energy, always has been. The rest of the propulsion plant, the 

steam turbines, the reduction gears, all of the other auxiliaries that 

go, that you actually take that power generated by the reactor and 

turn it into propulsion or electricity, that is a responsibility of the 

United States Navy. I execute that responsibility within the United 

States Navy. 

So, the significance of, and the reason the system—this was put 

in place back in the day by Admiral Rickover, was to have one person responsible for that propulsion plant that can coordinate and 

synchronize what is a very complicated undertaking to have it arrive on time, on the ship, ready to support construction of the ship. 

So, that is the relationship and how we do that. 

From a point of view of afford—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We know you follow in the Admiral’s shoes, 

and we are admiring of that. 

Admiral DONALD. I am proud to be. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And you have done, I think, a magnificent 

job under your predecessor. Even growing up I had a chance to 

meet Admiral Rickover. I think I was around—I have my Nautilus 

pin and ribbon and all that. I am supportive. No one fools around 

with submariners. 

But times have changed—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. For a lot of these platforms we 

are talking about here. 

Admiral DONALD. They sure have. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. But this is one that we need. We need to 

get a move on here. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And there has been a debate within the 

Navy, the big Navy, the Department of Defense about, you know, 

cost estimates today are tomorrow’s cost overruns. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And there have been some big numbers associated here. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
180 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And the submariners often get what they 

want but, you know, we have got other parts of the Navy that we 

may need to fund as well and we do not want to—you know, it may 

affect them. 

I want to sort of get back to the design here. We have not been 

able to get our hands around exactly what this new version is going 

to look like and what it is going to cost. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. The program has just recently completed its Milestone A, the Defense Acquisition Board signed off by 

the Undersecretary Dr. Carter. This is the first major program of 

the Navy to go through the revised DoD acquisition process. Having experienced that for the first time, I can assure you it was 

quite rigorous and a number of steps had to be accomplished to get 

there to drive the cost down. 

From the point of view of the Department of Energy, what is different about this propulsion plant and what we are trying to accomplish, I would say, are two key things. The first is—well, three. 

The first is, we are trying to build a life of the ship core for this 

ship. Right now the Ohio Class goes in for a midlife refueling at 

about the 20 or so year—20, 21 year point. We believe that we have 

the technology and the ability to build a core that will last for, in 

excess, of 40 years. 

If we can do that and if we can eliminate that midlife refueling, 

significantly reducing the amount of time the ship has to spend in 

a shipyard, it allows the Navy to buy fewer ships, we believe, assuming they can get the rest of the maintenance for the ship to 

match our maintenance plan and we think we can do that. 

That eliminates that refueling, so instead of, for instance, 14 

SSBNs now, we believe we can meet the requirement for the combatant commander with 12. That is a $10 billion savings assuming 

we are successful in building this core. 

The second technical piece that we are after is stealth is imperative for an SSBN. You have to remain undetected if you are going 

to achieve your mission. Acoustic stealth is critically important. 

The only way, we believe, that we are going to be able to achieve 

the stealth goals to ensure this ship is undetected on mission is we 

need a change in the propulsion system, we need to go to electric 

drive. 

Right now the ship is propelled by a turbine that drives a reduction gear that drives the shaft. We are going to change that to generate electricity to drive a motor that drives the shaft. Significantly 

quieter. We are looking at a ship that is going to be around until 

2080. You need to build the acoustic margin in now to make sure 

that you are able to support that requirement further out in the 

future. 

Those are the key technologies. And then the third is affordability and what we are going after on affordability is—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Where is size in the overall equation here? 

Admiral DONALD. Size is—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Size has a lot to do with what you are carrying on that—its mission. 

Admiral DONALD. It does, and we—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. That is a debate that goes on. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
181 

Admiral DONALD. There is a debate as to how many tubes, missile tubes. Right now the program calls for a 16-tube ship. That 

was a matter of—it was versus 20—that was a trade off that was 

made—the United States Navy made that trade off based on affordability. We thought that was the best that we could do given 

what the demands were for the budget for the rest of the Navy, for 

the rest of the—really, for the American taxpayers. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Who pays for the electric drive, DoE or the 

Navy? 

Admiral DONALD. There will be—the electric drive, for the most 

part, is under a Navy-funded program. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Each year we sort of try to figure out who 

is doing what here. 

Admiral DONALD. Exactly. Reactor plant design, the life of the 

ship core and that work, that is primarily within the DoE. The propulsion system is a Navy-funded responsibility. It does—I would be 

the first to admit to you that there is probably a little bit of murkiness in it because you end up having to do the integration and 

make sure that they fit together, so there has got to be a very close 

coupling, very close coordination among the engineering organizations, to make sure that it will work when we get out to the end 

of it, but that is the basic delineation. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We want to understand the murkiness. We 

also want to know what it is going to cost, if it is going to be affordable. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You know, and what the cost of maintaining the number that we are able to get if we can afford the number 

that you desire. 

Let me yield to Mr. Pastor, and excuse me for going on at such 

length. 

Mr. PASTOR. Not a problem, Mr. Chairman. 

How do you minimize the murkiness? What are you doing, you 

know, if you have propulsion at one end, probably the Navy is controlling that, and you have the core reactor, and you said that you 

would admit yourself that it is murky. How do you minimize that? 

What are you doing to do that? Because that is a hell of a lot of 

money that is being spent, number one, and after the money is 

spent, you do not want to—well, you do not want to have the engineering not be able to fit. 

Admiral DONALD. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR. So, what are we—what are you doing to ensure? Or, 

what are you and the Navy doing to ensure that? 

Admiral DONALD. Well, I guess I would characterize the term 

murky, and murky in the sense that people who—when I am trying 

to explain it or when you are looking at it, I am sure that you 

would ask—you ask, and certainly do, we get a number of questions about how we have answered questions last year about what 

the specific work is that the Department of Energy does versus the 

specific work that the Navy does. That is well defined. 

We have very detailed work programs aligned to funding that 

comes from the Department of Navy and the Department of Energy, so I can go in and—again, we did this last year, provided the 

very detail work of what the dollars are going to buy, line item by 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
182 

line item. It is a technical work plan that we review, a budgeting 

plan that we review twice a year to make sure that the money is 

in the right place, the right work is getting done, and it is being 

done affordably. 

So, I do not want to be mischaracterized in saying that we do not 

know where that money is. We know exactly where that money is 

and we know what it is being spent on, and I can demonstrate to 

you what it takes to do the work. 

But it does take very close collaboration between the Navy and 

a very close synchronization to make sure that all the pieces come 

together at the right time so that the ship construction can occur 

on time. Very elaborate, and often you are shooting very far in the 

future to be able to do this. I mean, I am talking about having to 

do work today to have a component show up in the shipyard in 

2019 within a matter of days. I mean, that is the nature of what 

it is that we are after. 

So, I want to assure you that I can very clearly show you exactly 

where the money goes and what we are doing for affordability on 

this ship. 

If I might, what our approach on this ship has been is that aside 

from the two key technologies that I mentioned to you, the life of 

the ship core and the electric drive, we are, to the greatest extent 

possible, reusing components from the Virginia Class design that 

we have already done, and wherever we can possibly do that, that 

is what we are going to do because those—you know, the mechanical systems, you do not tend to have the obsolescence concerns 

that you have with electronics, for instance, and we feel comfortable with a pump or a valve or something that we have used 

before, using that again and having it around until 2080. You will 

see, we have done that extensively throughout this design. 

And then also with the modular construction work that we 

learned on the Virginia, to increase affordability like we did on Virginia, we will continue to do that on this class of ship. 

So, it has been made clear to me, and as a taxpayer as well, and 

as a member of the United States Navy, that the affordability of 

this thing is critically important because it is going to affect the entire shipbuilding program. 

Mr. PASTOR. You touched on the water pit—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PASTOR. And as I remember, in 2010, I think we—I think 

there was $7 million and this year I think you are requesting $53 

million? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PASTOR. What is the status? What are the activities that are 

going on right now in Idaho in the expenditure of these monies and 

also to further the development of this water pit? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. The work that is going on right now, 

this is a—this will be a major project, obviously—— 

Mr. PASTOR. Right, I understand. 

Admiral DONALD [continuing]. In significant numbers. We are 

following the Department of Energy’s plan for major project management, so there are critical design milestones that we have to 

meet as we are working our way through this. We have done our 

Mission Needs Statement. We are now defining the concept for 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
183 

what this facility needs to look like based on what the capabilities 

are that it has to provide. That work has to all wrap up such that 

we can start the construction by 2015, so it will be a progression 

of concept then into detailed design and then ultimate constructions start in 2015, completion in 2020. 

So, the work that is going on right now is to make sure of one’s 

siting. There is also the Environmental Protection Agency NEPA 

surveys that have to be done to make sure that we are compliant 

there. And then the technical design work to make sure that the 

facility meets the needs of the facility out there. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. If I could add one thing on the project management piece. Admiral Donald mentioned the Department of Energy’s 

project management approach. That approach has changed. Similar 

to what has been going on in the Defense Department with respect 

to looking at affordability and understanding very clearly what 

commitments the Executive Branch is putting itself forward to 

with respect to mortgages, out year mortgages, the same thing happened in project management space. We are going to be asking for 

a very rigorous design process to go through so that we do not commit to a cost scope or a schedule until the 90 percent very significant design stages are met. That way that ensures that when we 

get to the next critical decision, and the critical decision after that 

where we are requesting a commitment of additional resources, we 

absolutely know what we are getting into, how much it is going to 

cost, over what period of time. 

I think with Naval Reactors’ track record in some of their capital 

projects, they are well situated in being able to respond to that. 

So, I am looking forward to getting that next critical decision paperwork through ourselves. 

Mr. PASTOR. The authority on the Idaho water pit just came in— 

maybe I should—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. He is loaded. 

Mr. SIMPSON. I just walked in, eight people walked out. 

Mr. PASTOR. So, we are four years away from beginning construction. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PASTOR. Where are we on the siting? 

Admiral DONALD. The preliminary siting survey has been done. 

We have got—there are two options that we are looking at from a 

siting perspective and what we have to do now is there are surveys 

that have to be done on those sites, for instance, bore holes to determine is the soil construct, is it adequate. 

Mr. PASTOR. Right. 

Admiral DONALD. All of that has to be done. And that is—in fact, 

that is in progress right now as we speak to go and do that and 

determine the correct—— 

Mr. PASTOR. What is your timeline on the siting—making sure 

that you do the borings and make sure you are—from the two sites 

that you are looking at, which one is going to be the best one? 

Admiral DONALD. Well, we know where we would prefer to have 

it. We have got a preferred site—— 

Mr. PASTOR. Sure. 

Admiral DONALD [continuing]. And we will have to come through 

that decision in 2012 to finally decide—— 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
184 

Mr. PASTOR. So, you have maybe about a year, then, to do that. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. To complete that work. 

Mr. PASTOR. But then the siting will be done in 2012. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PASTOR. I don’t know, and Mike can probably tell me, if 

these sites are quite a distance apart or they are relatively close. 

Admiral DONALD. In the sense of Idaho—— 

Mr. PASTOR. The question is this: Obviously you are required to 

do an Environmental Impact Statement. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. NEPA survey. 

Mr. PASTOR. NEPA. Right. And so are you doing one on each site, 

or are we waiting until you get the preferred site? Where are we 

at on that? 

Admiral DONALD. We have got the preliminary work underway 

now, the non-site specific. There is always some baseline work that 

you have to do in support of it. That work is underway right now 

and the environmental survey work is aligned to the site survey 

work so that they synchronize and arrive at the same place at the 

same time. 

So, we are doing the environmental, the NEPA survey, the NEPA 

process, on the specified site once it is decided. So, that is coordinated right now. 

Mr. PASTOR. And the site will be picked 2012. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PASTOR. And how much further environmental studies will 

you need to do before you start construction on 2015? 

Admiral DONALD. It is a standard NEPA process that will follow 

that will take, and I would have to get back to you on the specific 

timeline on when it would be complete, but it obviously has to be 

complete before we commence the construction in 2015. 

Mr. PASTOR. Right. 

Admiral DONALD. So, it is in that timeframe between 2012 and 

2015. 

Mr. PASTOR. Do the site locations cause you any design considerations that are different from each other? 

Admiral DONALD. It could, but at least right now based on the 

two sites that we have selected, the facility would look essentially 

the same. There may be some supporting activities, some supporting services such as rail lines and things of that sort that 

would need to be relocated based on which site we picked, but for 

the most part the facility would be the same. 

Mr. PASTOR. All right, well, I will yield back and wait for the second round. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you, Mr. Pastor. Mr. Alexander, 

thank you for your patience. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And good morning 

to you all. The Chairman was over there with his pen a while ago 

trying to figure out how old he will be in 2080. 

Mr. Administrator, I hope—I know you touched on it a little bit 

during your opening statements and I hope my question is not connected or parallel with some of the questions already asked, but 

the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River 

site is currently scheduled to convert 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel and the Pit Disassembly and 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
185 

Conversion Facility is essential to provide that feedstock. Could 

you tell me when the Department will move forward with the decision on that Pit Disassembly and Conversion facility? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, Mr. Alexander. I will do that. And I might 

ask Ms. Harrington to add as well to my answer, that way you 

have the benefit of getting input from both of us. 

We have—we go through a process, as the Admiral described and 

as I talked about, on critical decision points within the Department 

where we start off with the mission need, which is, is there a mission, a need for this facility, the critical decision zero stage, move 

it forward to critical decision one, where we look at options and we 

start base lining and getting ranges down on our options, what we 

think the most likely—and every time we look at or move forward 

down that process, we always reexamine the previous critical decision to make sure that as time has passed, as clarity comes forward on what a facility costs and what the nation needs, that we 

reexamine the mission need to make sure that the basis for moving 

forward stayed the same. That’s the process we’re undergoing right 

now, and if you can talk a little bit about some specifics and then 

I can add to that if we need to. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Certainly. Several years ago there was a proposal that we looked at an alternative for the original Greenfield 

design for that facility to locate it in the K reactor area at the Savannah River site. We have done that review now, and we are in 

the process as the administrator said of going through the final internal hurdles before moving forward with the decision. Throughout this process, one of the main emphases that we have had internally in the department is how to contain the costs, but still provide the feedstock capacity for the Max Fuel Fabrication Facility 

that’s required. Fortunately, we also have that feedstock issue covered because we already have at Savannah River sufficient plutonium oxide available to begin operations, including testing, of the 

facility when we’re ready to proceed with that. So I think we’re 

confident at this point that we have a good plan, and we hope to 

see that move forward quickly. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Consistent with that, the question of affordability and sustainability that we want to look at, as it drives all 

of our large projects whether they are in naval reactors or the nonproliferation program or in the weapons program, we want to make 

sure that each of these critical decision points we are able to wring 

out as much of that as possible so we have put forward a realistic 

plan. As Anne mentioned, we are in the final stages of that. We 

should be seeing something soon that we can go public with and 

to the Committee as well. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Okay, thank you. Ed, just a couple of questions. 

You said that it would cost about $20 million to dispose of or contain spent fuel oil on sight. How would you do that? What would 

it be? A pit or a tank or what? 

Admiral DONALD. No. What I am referring to in that is if for 

some reason the water pit were not available, the new water pit 

were not available, to accept the new configuration of fuel that is 

coming off the ships in 2020 or if some material problem occurred, 

some equipment problem occurred, in the water pit that would preclude that fuel from being loaded into the water pit, then we would 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
186 

have to manufacture canisters and they are the canisters that we 

are going to be using to ship the fuel from the shipyard to Idaho 

by rail. The same canister system would have to be used, buy more 

of those and just hold those canisters on station in Idaho. In other 

words, the fuel would not be able to be offloaded into the water pit, 

would not be able to be examined, would not be able to be processed through the water pit to dry storage, holding on station. Each 

one of those canisters cost about $20 million. And, for example, on 

USS Enterprise, when she is de-fueled starting in 2012 it takes 

about eight of those to take a load of fuel, a shipload of fuel, off 

of that ship. So that is eight times $20 million. That is how much 

it would cost to temporarily store it in those canisters. We do not 

believe that to be the right way to do business, but that is what 

we are talking about. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Okay. And you expressed the desire to go from 

steam propulsion to electricity—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Would the same power plant propel both? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. It is really a matter of converting the 

energy from—it is still a pressurized water reactor plant. It still 

generates steam. The steam will turn turbines that generate electricity as opposed to turning a mechanical reduction—— 

Mr. ALEXANDER. So the cost to DOE would not be any different? 

Admiral DONALD. Would not be any different, that is correct. 

Yes, sir. 

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Simpson, I think, was next in line. 

Welcome. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. It is nice to be here. Sorry 

I missed yesterday’s hearing. And I just came from one with the 

EPA so let me say first of all, thanks for the work that you do. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Appreciate it. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Bet you did not hear that before. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you. That is a great way to start, 

sir. 

Mr. SIMPSON. No, I have appreciated working with you and the 

work that you do in nonproliferation naval nuclear reactors and 

other types of things. You guys, I think, do a great job. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Admiral Donald, let me ask you first. We talked 

yesterday about what the implication would be if the facility in 

Idaho is not built for the recapitalization for the new storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. What impact would that have on the 

Navy? 

Admiral DONALD. I would characterize it in two parts. The first 

question is why replace this facility and first it is old. It is getting 

old and is starting to show wear and tear. It does not meet the current code for being lined. It is an unlined water pit. So the potential exists that a material problem could result or an equipment 

problem could result that would shut that water pit down, and 

then that would preclude moving fuel out of the shipyards. If you 

cannot move it out of the shipyards, you cannot take it off the 

ships. That means the ships cannot be refueled. That means the 

ships cannot go to sea after the refueling is done. The second part 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
187 

of it is why now, why it has to be done now. And again, part of 

it is age of the facility, but the other part of it is as we reach this 

period of time when there is heel-to-toe aircraft carrier refuelings. 

One comes in, gets refueled, it goes out, another one comes in right 

behind it. We cannot do that unless we change the way we remove 

the fuel from the ships. To be able to do it more efficiently, we had 

to have a new shipping container and a new fuel handling system, 

and that water pit is not ready to accept that type of fuel. It has 

to be ready by 2020 to do that. So if I cannot have it done by 2020, 

I will be restricted in the amount of fuel I can take off the aircraft 

carriers, and that will impact the ability to get those ships refueled 

and get them back out to sea. 

Mr. SIMPSON. And as was mentioned by Mr. Alexander, if that 

is not built, we have to buy some containers? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SIMPSON. What is it, M290 shipping containers? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir, M290—— 

Mr. SIMPSON. What is the cost of each one of those containers? 

Do you know? 

Admiral DONALD. $20 million. 

Mr. SIMPSON. $20 million? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Who pays for that? Whose budget would that come 

out of? 

Admiral DONALD. Those canisters would come out of Navy budget. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Out of the Navy budget. Okay. How many of those 

containers would we end up having to build? Any idea? 

Admiral DONALD. Well, as an example, I used the Enterprise for 

instance, and we have shipping containers to handle the Enterprise 

fuel, but as an example, it takes eight of those canisters to handle 

a shipload of fuel off of the Enterprise. So you would have, granted 

a Nimitz is smaller. It has only two reactors instead of eight, but 

it is still a substantial number of canisters that you would have to 

buy to store that stuff on station. 

Mr. SIMPSON. So if we do not build this facility, it could be the 

prime example of what is penny wise and pound foolish? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SIMPSON. I had something else I wanted to ask, and I cannot 

remember what the heck it was, but I will think about it in just 

a minute. Let me ask you a question about our nonproliferation efforts. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SIMPSON. The money requested in the 2012 budget is lower 

than the nonproliferation money in the 2011 budget, right? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. In the 2011 request, right. 

Mr. SIMPSON. In the 2011 request. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SIMPSON. I would have thought, given the recent agreement 

between Russia and the United States in reducing the stockpile, 

that our nonproliferation budget might actually go up. How did it 

go down? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. It went down for a couple of reasons. Ms. Harrington can provide some of the details, but there are a couple of 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
188 

core reasons. One of the key reasons is the request from ’11 was 

significantly higher in our Global Threat Reduction Initiative because, as you rightly stated, the President laid out a very aggressive nuclear security agenda to secure material around the world 

in four years. We knew four years sounds like a long time, but actually it is not. It goes by quickly, particularly with this kind of 

work. And so we put money in our FY11 request, frontloaded the 

request if you will, in order to get that early work under way. That 

is a big part of why it goes up relative to FY10. The FY12 number 

is very significant, but Anne, if you want to add to that—— 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Yes, sir. The FY12 budget in fact is almost half 

a billion dollars higher than the 2010 request, about 20 percent. 

The FY11 was a significant bump up for all of those reasons. We 

did frontload a lot of activity in calendar year 2010 in Chile, in 

Belarus, in Ukraine. Hundreds of kilograms of nuclear materials 

were removed and secured. In 2012 we feel confident that we can 

continue the pace that we have set with the budget request. The 

main part of the reduction in that budget is the removal of $100 

million for our plutonium disposition effort with Russia. And that 

does not indicate that we are having problems with that effort with 

Russia. What it indicates is that they have not yet provided the 

milestones to us on their progress forward on plutonium disposition 

against which this money would be released. 

Mr. SIMPSON. What type of milestones are you talking about? 

Ms. HARRINGTON. The pace at which they will build their facility 

to produce mixed oxide fuel, the testing and the timing of that. We 

have quite a well-established schedule for South Carolina’s operations right now. They do not have a similar schedule, so we are 

not going to ask Congress for money that we do not know that we 

can spend yet. We will come back to you at a point on that when 

we feel confident that the Russians have provided a reliable schedule. 

Mr. SIMPSON. How has the relationship with Russia been recently? Have they been more cooperative in allowing us access to 

some of the closed cities and other places? 

Ms. HARRINGTON. I have to say that both the combination of the 

new START Agreement and ratification of the 123 Agreement have 

really opened a lot of doors for our cooperation with Russia. Those 

two things were extremely important to them. A lot of activities 

were being held in abeyance while those two actions were considered. But we have a whole series of high-level meetings coming up 

with Russians, particularly looking at opportunities in the commercial energy sector under the 123 Agreement. That is not our area, 

but we work extremely closely with our colleagues in DOE’s Nuclear Energy office because part of our commitment to expanding 

nuclear power worldwide is that it not expand at the expense of security. So that is part of a very close partnership internally in the 

department, and we look forward to coming back and discussing 

our progress with the Russians on that with you. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I might want to add just a little bit on that. On 

the first of April in 2009, President Obama signed an agreement 

with President Medvedev which looked at how do we bring the cooperation of our two great countries together so we can work together on issues that are of import to our nations. So there were 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
189 

a number of bilateral, what I would call groups, underneath that 

agreement that were formed. One in commerce, in the arts, but 

specifically for this area, in nuclear security and civil nuclear 

power, this group is chaired by Deputy Secretary Poneman and Mr. 

Kiriyenko who is the Director of the ROSATOM which has responsibility for all these types of functions. That has been absolutely 

marvelous in providing high-level, focused attention with direct 

milestones to push forward actions, things that we think are important for our equities which is moving forward on these milestones 

and making sure we have those milestones. This group allows us 

to tee that up for decision. You cannot shy away from it when your 

bosses are meeting, and we meet regularly twice a year at the high 

level. So those types of senior-level forcing functions are wonderful 

tools. We take maximum advantage of that and actually, as Anne 

mentioned, just the recent new START Treaty and 123 Agreement 

have really opened up the doors for us. So I think this is going to 

be a great year for our relationship, and we are looking forward to 

what we can do to improve that access, if you will, to insure U.S. 

dollars are being spent wisely. 

Mr. SIMPSON. As you know, we have had concern for a number 

of years about the Russian position relative to Iran and essentially 

helping Iran’s nuclear program. How is that? Is that something you 

can talk about? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. We would love to be able to talk to you in a 

closed session or in classified parry on that, in that area. I think 

you would be pleased. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Okay, I appreciate that. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. But we could add in that area that the Russian negotiation with Iran on provision and take-back of the reactor fuel is extremely important, and as you know we engage in that 

activity on a worldwide basis. But that was a significant step, and 

Russia really pushed very hard for that agreement. So we feel 

there is a better partnership than there was on that issue some 

time ago. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Okay. Let me just state finally, and I suspect 

somebody might have stated it yesterday, as we have looked at reducing the overall spending in our budget, I think everybody in the 

room, everybody realizes, that you cannot borrow $.42 on every dollar you spend, and you are going to have to make some reductions. 

And that we have, at least on our side of the aisle, said that when 

we did HR1 we were going to reduce non-security, non-defense, 

spending. Some people do not understand that the energy and 

water budget includes things that would be considered security 

such as NNSA, naval reactors, some of the other things that we do 

in this budget that ought to be considered as part of the security. 

It is easier just to say it is easy for people that put together these 

numbers for us to have to then make an appropriation to say well, 

we are going to exempt out Defense, we are going to exempt out 

Homeland Security, exempt out Veterans Affairs, and all the rest 

of the budgets will be reduced by X number of dollars without looking at the fact that the energy and water budget does have a national security component of it that ought to be taken into consideration when we are given our 302Bs to look at the reductions because the work you do is just as important as the work, in some 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
190 

ways more important, than the work that we do in some of the 

other areas that we are exempting out of not taking any cuts. So 

I just kind of wanted that on the record and for people to know 

that this is an important function that you do, and you are one of 

the examples that I hold up of a government agency that works, 

that does their job, and I appreciate the work you all do. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Thank you, sir. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Thank you. 

Mr. WOMACK [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Mr. 

Nunnelee. 

Mr. WOMACK. I understand in some previous testimony you have 

been able to determine which alternative to pursue to develop feedstock for MOX. Why have there been so many delays in selecting 

an alternative? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Mr. Womack, I will start and then I will ask 

Ms. Harrington to add to that. Because these are potentially multibillion dollar facilities that we are embarking on, we are very keen 

on making sure that we reexamine the basis, make sure that our 

mission need still exists. In this case it is very clear we do need 

feedstock for the MOX facility. Our plan right now in our FY12 

budget request does go forward and ask for resources to continue 

the design effort. What we are working on in the department is 

moving forward with our next critical decision, our critical decision 

one, on the feedstock for MOX, and that decision is fairly close to 

being finished. Anne, you want to add a little bit to that? 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Specifically on the feedstock issue, because 

there have been some delays, in part to look at an option of combining this function together with other activities dealing with plutonium at the K reactor facility at Savannah River rather than do 

a Greenfield construction, which would be more costly and potentially much more limiting in terms of options and ramp-up availability. We have taken another look at K-Reactor as well as a series of options to both reduce cost and maintain the feedstock. Because there have been some delays, we have looked at the feedstock 

issue very seriously. And we have both available feedstock at Savannah River stored currently in the K-Reactor as well as other 

feedstock that we can get from Los Alamos through their ARIES 

Project which actually belongs to my colleague, Don Cook, who was 

here yesterday. But between those two and some other excess feedstock that we have identified, we can keep the MOX plant running 

for a number of years while the Pit Disassembly and Conversion 

project comes on line. So we are confident that those timelines will 

fit together very well. 

Mr. WOMACK. You spoke a moment ago in reference to another 

question about not requesting certain funds until you can have reasonable assurance that they can be expended. What assurances can 

you give the Committee that you have a plan to execute the funding for this project as you have requested? 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Well, as the administrator said, we have a 

very defined set of critical decision steps for any large construction 

project. As we go forward into the next step, and that would be the 

CD–1 decision, that then moves us into the design phase. We will 

be carefully reviewing the results of the options and the cost savings that can be realized out of those options in this design phase 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
191 

study period. And then as we go forward, if we find that we can 

save money, we will reflect that in future year budgets certainly. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. One thing I would add is in fiscal year 12, of 

course, we are asking for resources for this activity. The activities 

that we plan on doing include some of the finishing off of the design work that has to happen, particularly if we believe we are 

going to end up with this K-Reactor option. But in either case, 

whether it is this K-Reactor option or if it is a new Greenfield site, 

unlikely that it will be because we believe that is much more expensive, we need to have certain components and equipment inside 

that facility in order to convert the plutonium metal into an oxide. 

And that will be needed regardless of approaches, so we want to 

give you the strongest assurances that this request for FY12 does 

support what we need to do in order to put us on track. The critical 

decision piece is an important element of our path forward and decision on moving forward, but it is one that we want to get right. 

And it is worth it for us to take a little bit more time to make sure 

the numbers are right and that we identify options for cost savings 

within that critical decision so we do not obligate the taxpayer 

down a track that could put us in essence heading down a less-affordable track because affordability is very important for us. 

Mr. WOMACK. What are the numbers? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. $220 million or so in fiscal year 12 is what we 

are asking for. It is certainly a significant amount of money, but 

it is money in order to purchase glove boxes and equipment in 

order to make these things go forward. 

Mr. WOMACK. And in relation to the total cost? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, this is part of the critical decision point. 

There are ranges. The previous Greenfield site had a very significant cost range that was draft but that was in the many multi-billions of dollars. We are looking for ways of taking billions of dollars 

off of that, appropriately given the fact that we are going to reuse 

an existing building. We think in general the idea that reusing a 

building that already exists and essentially outfitting the inside of 

it will be cheaper than building a new building that has the same 

type of equipment in it and that ultimately the nation will have to 

take care of that old facility. So in the end the D&D costs will 

hopefully—the overall lifecycle costs we believe are significantly 

lower. And earlier on Ms. Harrington talked about a study that we 

had performed about a year and a half or so ago looking at that, 

and that helps us push toward the K-Reactor approach as being 

the critical decision that will likely come forward in the near future. 

Mr. WOMACK. Okay. Mr. Pastor. 

Mr. PASTOR. I think you have another member who has not had 

a chance to ask a question. 

Mr. WOMACK. He waived his right. 

Mr. PASTOR. Oh, did he? Okay. All right. When you were asked 

the question about the difference in the budgets and how the weapons end is going up, nonproliferation is going down, whether or not 

that was a step back from the Prague Commitment. How do you 

see it? Are we stepping back from Prague? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Absolutely not, sir. We are actually stepping 

forward with the Prague Commitment with both feet. We recognize 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
192 

these are very complicated programs, whether it is naval reactors, 

nonproliferation, or the weapons program, programs are fairly dynamic. They go up and down depending on when we are recapitalizing a facility or what work is coming online when. Early on for 

the nonproliferation activity, we knew we needed to step forward 

fairly quickly in order to meet the President’s four-year commitment. And Anne’s program has a very well-defined set of work that 

is going to get done. And the plan that we have forward, including 

this dip which is very little of that dip is actually due to the security effort which is part of our planned program of work. It is just 

get the work done early because we expect some challenges later 

on as we go off and implement it. So let us start them early, and 

that is what happened in the nonproliferation side. The weapons 

side is the recapitalization of these very large facilities. These just 

so happen to be facilities that serve not only the weapons program, 

but serve the nonproliferation program and actually serve the 

naval reactors program. All the highly enriched uranium that Admiral Donald uses in his submarines or the nation uses in its submarines comes through the Y12 plant and will be coming through 

the uranium processing facility and our highly enriched uranium 

materials facility in Tennessee. So these are facilities even though 

they are in the weapons budget and make it look like we are 

spending more money on weapons, actually it is a nuclear security 

program budget because these are facilities that address that. Because in a recapitalization effort you usually spend some money upfront, figuring out what your design is and then you really get into 

construction with some large dollars later on, we are in that transition mode on these two recapitalization projects. We have been 

shifting. We have been spending a fair amount of money on the design effort, and over the next few years we are going to be shifting 

that design effort into construction so the dollars will look bigger. 

So taken as a one-page standpoint, it looks like more money on 

weapons, less money on nonproliferation. The reality of it is it is 

more money on nuclear security because that is what the President’s agenda was all about. 

Mr. PASTOR. I was very happy to hear this morning that Russia 

with the START Treaty and other agreements had become more cooperative because I was under the impression that some high-level 

Russian officials had less commitment to nuclear security with us. 

And my understanding was that this would have caused us some 

problems, obviously with nuclear security. But in my new understanding I am very hopeful and happy to hear that there is greater 

cooperation. Go ahead. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. I was going to add that Russia unfortunately 

is also a frequent target of terrorist attacks, and that is a common 

theme in our undertakings with them. An explosion at an airport 

is one thing, but an explosion in an airport contaminated with cesium would have been far different. And so these are topics that 

may not make a lot of headlines, but certainly these are issues that 

we discuss in a very serious way. 

Mr. PASTOR. You also spoke about some other countries. I think 

I heard Chile where you had removal and there were some other 

countries. Have we negotiated other cooperative agreements for 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
193 

safeguards or security for removing nuclear materials? Are there 

countries that we have created agreements with? 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Yes. We have a number of countries that we 

are moving forward on, some of which we have already accomplished some of the removals, but have not yet completed the work, 

for example, Belarus and Ukraine. At the end of last year, Belarus 

in particular was a huge breakthrough for us because that is a 

country with which we have not had very positive relationships for 

many years because of the leadership. So the fact that working together with Secretary Clinton and the State Department, we were 

able to execute that agreement and then begin removing materials 

was very significant. Much closer to home we already have an 

agreement with Mexico on removal of material, and I think you understand the immediacy of accomplishing that. Vietnam is another 

country, but basically we have fundamental agreements or have 

moved far toward them for all of the major target countries that 

are under the lockdown program. 

Mr. PASTOR. You mentioned earlier about the $100 million that 

you will not be spending in Russia. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Yet, spending yet. 

Mr. PASTOR. Yet because of the milestones, they have not met 

some of the milestones. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Right. 

Mr. PASTOR. At least in the past it has been my experience that 

because of lack of transparency with the Russians and what they 

are doing, what they want to do, costs, et cetera, that in our budgets we commit X number of dollars, and they get frozen up and 

then it cannot be used for other purposes. So this transparency is 

very important and I am assuming that you are committed more 

and more to develop this transparency so that we are not locking 

up money for these programs which can’t be used for other needed 

purposes? 

Ms. HARRINGTON. That is absolutely correct. I have been working 

in Russia since 1991 and have a lot of lessons learned from that 

experience. So, yes, watching where our dollars go has always been 

one of our very high priorities and that covers the whole scope of 

issues, whether it is insuring that we are not taxed on provision 

of assistance to actually having the opportunity to see where our 

equipment goes and how it is being used and open access to the 

books basically. So, yes, that will not become any less of a focus for 

us. 

Mr. PASTOR. After reading the Nuclear Posture Review, I decided 

to focus more on the GAO studies. In December, GAO came back 

and said that the President has started this initiative and it will 

take many agencies working together. And one of the concerns 

GAO had was that there was not enough detail in terms of how 

these agencies were going to cooperate and be able to implement 

the initiative. They talked about what sites, what facility in those 

sites, et cetera, what the plans were and all that. And yet I guess 

as you develop this budget, it had hopefully looked at the estimated 

costs and timeframes and the scope of work. Were those considerations given in developing your budget or what consideration was 

given to that lack of detail that the GAO pointed out a couple of 

months ago? 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
194 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Well, I am happy to say that the flaw that the 

GAO identified does not exist anymore. There is a very strong 

interagency team that is led by the National Security Staff. We 

meet on a regular basis. We have a system for prioritizing, both 

material risk and country risk, that drives how we schedule our 

programs. And that is not just our programs, but similar efforts out 

of the Department of Defense, Department of State, and so forth. 

In fact, we will be having one of our regular, what we call our 

bridge meetings, with the DOD and Defense Threat Reduction 

Agency folks next week, the sole purpose of which is to coordinate 

our work and to figure out how by working together we can make 

these material removals better and faster. So I would like to reassure you that the interagency cooperation is functioning well on 

this. 

Mr. PASTOR. Does functioning well also include greater detail or 

more specific responsibility and timelines and costs, et cetera. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, we do have a very clear plan because you 

appropriate essentially the largest nonproliferation program the 

country has. In fact, I would say in the world comes out of the support the Subcommittee provides us. We have a very clear four-year 

plan on this. GAO identified some improvements that need to be 

made in the interagency coordination to make sure that we are 

well integrated and complement each other in driving some consistency across the enterprise, and we take that advice very seriously. 

That does need to move forward. I will say there are some areas 

of the report that we did not quite completely agree with the GAO 

on, though the report was helpful. The security upgrades were performed by the NNSA on the civilian research reactor sites. The key 

for us is moving even beyond that as the GAO identified in what 

is known as material consolidation and conversion. We want to convince and I believe have got a good plan with our Russian colleagues to convert their research reactors. And as a result, of 

course, of the GAO’s attention and our attention on this topic, we 

verified the shutdown of three Russian research reactors. We have 

secured commitments to shutdown five more, and we have actually 

started the feasibility studies because these reactor conversions are 

a fairly big deal, turning it from highly enriched uranium to low 

enriched uranium, we started the feasibility studies on the number 

I think are even up to a half a dozen or so on this area. So what 

the GAO study helps us do is make sure that people are aware of 

it, identify some things that we think we did slightly better than 

the GAO report identified, but of course I am a little parochial 

being the administrator. At the same time, I think there is a good 

point on interagency coordination, and that report has helped us 

put some attention on that. 

Mr. PASTOR. Maybe I am wrong, but I recall the number 71 for 

research reactors to convert? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I think 69, not 71, have been converted. 

Mr. PASTOR. There are three in five? Is that what I heard? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. That is right. There will be I think—— 

Ms. HARRINGTON. The feasibility study, which is by the way 

being supported by Argonne, is being undertaken now and the scientists are already working on this to look at six new, six reactor 

conversions in Russia. Part of the challenge with Russia is they 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
195 

have a lot of different types of research reactors. They did not have 

a consistent model. So we are looking specifically at that new set 

of reactors and hope to move forward fairly quickly on that. I 

should note that on the reactor conversions worldwide, Russia already is working with us in terms of taking back the spent fuel 

from reactors that they have built overseas. So when we talk about 

spent fuel or HEU removals from Belarus and Ukraine, for example, those materials are not our burden in the United States. Those 

are going back to the country of origin, which is Russia. So we have 

a very close working relationship already on that front. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Mr. Pastor had it right. There were three that 

were shut down with commitments on five more, which would add 

to the total of 69 or 71 that are currently done. There are many 

tens more that need to be done of different types of research reactors in Russia alone, and this is where what we call the PonemanKiriyenko Working Group will allow us to work with our Russian 

colleagues to drive them to finish the job there in that area. It will 

take years. I will not pretend it is going to be done quickly, but it 

will take years to do this work. 

Mr. PASTOR. I have been informed that GAO has said that the 

studies, the six studies, are delayed right now. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. They have started. They have started. 

Mr. PASTOR. Oh, they have. They were delayed and now they 

have started? 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Correct. Correct, and as the administrator 

said, it is in part to the high-level pressure that we can continue 

to put on these issues through the Poneman-Kiriyenko channel. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. They do not typically happen if it is done at 

staff level because there are always a million excuses that maybe 

both sides might even use if you will and say, well, I have to get 

my boss to agree. But when you have the bosses in the room, you 

can get agreement pretty quickly and that is a wonderful thing. 

Mr. PASTOR. I will let the chairman get resettled and then I will 

yield back. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [presiding]. Okay. Mr. Simpson. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Sometimes we make your 

job more difficult, I’m sure, when you are dealing with Russia and 

other foreign countries. The last time Ed and I were there, watching Ed talk to the Russians in Spanish, and the Russians answering in Russian, and we just sat back and it looked like they understood each other. We thought it was an amazing piece of diplomacy, 

but we had no idea what they said. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Maybe he signed us up for more reactors. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Military diplomacy with Cuba. 

Mr. SIMPSON. That is how we got to 69 instead of 71. Anyway, 

I remembered what—— 

Mr. PASTOR. All of them, whatever the number is. 

Mr. SIMPSON. I remember what I was going to ask, Admiral. We 

have a Governors’ Agreement. The DOE has agreements with most 

states. You come into play because the naval reactors are out at 

Idaho, and we have this spent fuel stored in Idaho. We all know 

that the cave in Nevada is in limbo or off the table or wherever 

it is, it is out there in the ether somewhere. The Blue Ribbon Commission is going to make some recommendations. We all anticipate 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
196 

that reprocessing or recycling of fuel will be one of their recommendations, although we do not know that yet. What are the 

challenges for the Navy in reprocessing their fuel versus commercial fuel that is stored around the country? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. We are not privy to what the Blue 

Ribbon Commission’s final decision is going to be on that, but we 

have briefed them and made them aware of what our system is 

like, what our fuel looks like, and how it is different. And that is 

really the essence of it. Two points. First off, our fuel is very different from what commercial fuel is. And for a closed hearing if you 

would like more details about how that is, I can do that, but it is 

classified at this point. But it is very different. It would require a 

different system for reprocessing if you chose to do that. Essentially, a similar technique, but a different system, a different facility to do it in if you were going to do it in an efficient manner and 

that is very expensive. And the amount of fuel that we are talking 

about in a relative sense, if you look at what Yucca Mountain was, 

it was about 65,000 tons metric tons of fuel would go in that mountain when it was complete. Of that 65,000, we would be 65 metric 

tons so almost negligible if you consider the amount. So the idea 

that reprocessing would be a part of our future in that I would say 

is probably unlikely. So some other type of a long-term storage 

would have to be the solution I would believe. Now, obviously the 

Commission will evaluate that, and we will see where we come out 

on it, but that is—— 

Mr. SIMPSON. So essentially you are talking about a completely 

different reprocessing facility for a very small quantity of the overall fuel, which would make it fiscally impractical to do that? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Which means at some point of time, we are still 

going to have to have a geological repository somewhere? I am not 

suggesting it is Yucca Mountain, but somewhere, to store this at. 

How is that going to affect the Governors’ Agreement that you have 

with the state of Idaho in the year 2035? And I say that in terms 

of we have to remember what the Governors’ Agreement is, that 

there are timelines that have to be met in there and there are penalties that are acquired if we do not meet those timelines and those 

steps along the way. But the overall intent of the Agreement was 

to get both the DOE and the Navy busy in trying to find a permanent repository. To me the year 2035, while I would get the crap 

kicked out of me, I guess, is the best way to put it. To me it is 

not—I do not think it is written in stone. It is that the people of 

Idaho want to see progress toward a permanent repository on 

things, and that to me is the important thing. What do you think 

all of this does to the 2035 deadline with the State of Idaho and 

with the deadlines we might have with other states? Of course, 

those are DoE things. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. As you are aware, I am sure, we had 

some concerns about that 2035 date and what it really meant from 

the beginning because we obviously had a desire, and I believe it 

was a mutual desire with the State of Idaho, that we not leave 

Idaho, that we do have a—there is a function that the Idaho National Laboratory and the naval reactor facility fulfills for national 

security and it is important work. And based on that mutual agreeVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:21 Oct 01, 2011 Jkt 068245 PO 00000 Frm 00196 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A245P2.XXX A245P2

pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
197 

ment we did sign an addendum to the Governor’s agreement that 

provided for a future beyond 2035. It still does not relieve us of our 

responsibility for preparing our fuel, our spent fuel, for ultimate 

disposal, notionally a land repository. That is what it was in the 

beginning. So there is still a significant issue hanging out there 

about what are we going to do with this fuel absent Yucca Mountain or where it turns out to be the right answer. 

What we have tried to do is to the extent that I can control, the 

things that I have control over that we are living up to our obligations of preparing to be among the first, which is a specific requirement of the Governor’s agreement, among the first to move fuel to 

whatever that location may be. We have committed to that. We 

have done that. We built the facility and we are moving fuel into 

dry storage. And I think right now I have something on the order 

of 38 shipping containers of fuel that is ready to go. It is road-ready 

to be shipped. And we will continue that. 

And we are on track, if you look at the trajectory, to get the fuel 

out of the water pit, ready for going. We will meet our obligations 

absent the fact I do not have anywhere to put it right now. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Right. 

Admiral DONALD. And the State has been remarkably patient 

with us and supportive of what it is that we are doing. We as a 

nation have an obligation to come up with the final solution. And 

when that is ready, we will be ready to support it. 

Mr. SIMPSON. And dry storage is safe, secure, and not a threat 

to the aquifer or any of that kind of stuff, isn’t that true? 

Admiral DONALD. Absolutely. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Thank you. One other area that I would like to 

ask, Administrator, is the Middle East, we know, is kind of in a 

turmoil right now. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SIMPSON. We have spent a lot of money on mega ports, our 

second line of defense, in that we wanted to be able to intercept 

nuclear material and other contraband before it got to the United 

States through these mega ports. We visited some in Alexandria 

and in Oman, countries that—well, obviously Alexandria; Oman is 

in that region. 

What is the threat to these mega ports? Are they still working? 

Do we anticipate that? What are we doing to make sure that they 

still function as intended and to ensure that the officials operate 

those ports as intended. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Right. Right. 

Mr. SIMPSON. We just kind of supply the equipment and stuff. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir, we do, but we also have agreements, 

operating agreements, with those countries to make sure over a period of time that they are maintaining the equipment. It is U.S.- 

supplied equipment, so we have an interest in making sure the operations continue, make sure they are maintaining equipment. If it 

is part of the Secure Freight Initiative and Container Security Initiative, that information comes in actively on a regular basis in— 

and I don’t know if these two particular ports are—it comes into 

a central location here in the U.S. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
198 

Because of the types of programs these are that require active involvement of folks in Anne’s program, we have essentially regular 

communication with folks. 

As I mentioned earlier, we operate in over 100 countries around 

the world. The fact that these folks are kind of engineers or technicians or experts, you know, when the political conditions change, 

they go up and down, but it is very well understood at the ground 

floor of the deck plates we say in the Navy that this is an important thing to keep up. So what we found is the people, our colleagues, if you will, in these other nations that maintain this 

equipment, love to get this kind of cooperation, want to maintain 

it. They have a strong interest in doing so. I don’t have any specific 

information in the last two weeks or so that say we have a problem, yet that is probably something that we should check on. 

Mr. SIMPSON. If we were to find out in one of these countries 

that, for some reason, due to the turmoil or whatever, that they 

stopped doing these inspections and stuff would we then reject any 

shipments that came from those ports? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, that is—— 

Mr. SIMPSON. I mean, some of them, if you look at Salalah and 

it is huge, you know. Essentially you are going to stop commerce. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Yeah. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. That is a great question. But Anne, and then 

I will jump in, okay? 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Well—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I can do that since I—— 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Thank you. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. And she has to like it. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Now, Bill, as you know, you know, very few 

shipments come to us directly from these ports. Most of those shipments would be transshipped through another port. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Right. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. So because we have a fair amount of outreach 

and excellent cooperation, for example, in the major transshipment 

ports, you know, in Europe, in Asia, et cetera, those shipments if 

we have suspicions even that they are not being properly inspected, 

we can always alert other ports to increase their inspection of the 

cargo. 

I would just like to illustrate, though, that, you know, by working 

as a team across NNSA we helped build this community of, you 

know, really quite dedicated officials throughout the world. I mean, 

these people understand what the risks are because many of their 

countries have been subject to terrorism and many lives have been 

lost. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Right. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Yesterday, I had a conversation with Admiral 

Krol, who heads our Emergency Operations Group, and he had just 

been out on a training mission. We do joint training missions together, you know, for port security and emergency response. And, 

you know, was doing basically refresher course, reminding people 

of the proper use of the equipment. And, you know, he came back 

and saying, okay, I have a whole new approach how we are going 

to do this the next time out. So this is a constant renewal process 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
199 

that we have. Once—you know, and the sustainment of these facilities and of these networks is absolutely critical. 

Mr. SIMPSON. How much do we spend in our budget maintaining 

these facilities and these mega ports? And is there a point in time 

when it becomes the responsibility of the host country to maintain 

these facilities? And, I mean, we provide the equipment and stuff 

and a lot of the training and other things. And I understand we 

do it because it is in our own best interest to do so. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Right. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Will it always be a part of our budget? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, what I would say on that is sustainability 

and partnership is a key element of this, so there is—you know, 

we do provide the equipment and the operating protocols. There is 

a commitment on the part of the incoming nation to operate the 

equipment, to provide data, to work cooperatively with us. In Russia, for example, just as an example, in our second line of defense 

core program we have an agreement to install well over 300 radiation detectors at key border crossings around Russia. Russia has 

agreed to pick up all of that responsibility to maintain these facilities, a hundred percent their cost associated with doing that. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Just out of curiosity let me ask you, why do we pay 

for that? I mean, as you said, Russia has been the subject of attacks and so forth. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. Right. 

Mr. SIMPSON. And it is in their best interest to do that. Are we 

doing it just because they cannot afford it? And obviously, we cannot either. Is that how that works? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. No, no, that is not—well, how it works is to ensure to—you know, we do want to lead. We are the United States. 

We are—we believe—and I think—and this is one of the key elements of the Prague speech is to make sure—and the Nuclear Security Summit we had last year, is we want to lead, but we also 

want to say that this is not—we are not going at this alone. This 

is not our job. This is not our complete responsibility. Obviously, 

we have a great interest in making sure there is not an RDD, radioactive dirty device or an improvised nuclear device that goes off 

anywhere in the world. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Right. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Certainly not in the United States. And from 

that standpoint, leading in—you know, I would say obligates us to 

a certain extent. And we have taken that obligation for a number 

of years in saying we have got the equipment, we have the technology, we want to share it with you because it is important. We 

want you to install this and then we want you to pick up the load. 

And that is where we are right now with Russia and with other 

countries. 

And this is the whole point of the second-line of defense programs is equipment is relatively inexpensive. So usually the longer 

costs are the year-to-year-to-year operating costs associated with it 

because you have to have people and you have to train them and 

you have to exercise them. And so what we want to do is provide 

this relatively inexpensive part of this very complex job and have 

other nation states pick up the responsibility. And we are seeing 

that come into play. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
200 

Are we completely absolved of our financial or what we believe 

our financial obligations here? Not yet. I think this is a transition 

period that has to happen. I am a firm believer in we have to get 

these 47 nations and hundreds of other nations that we—or a hundred other nations that we work with to get to that point. 

Anne, you might have more to add on that. 

Ms. HARRINGTON. I think another essential element of this is for 

us to feel comfortable that what is being sent through these ports 

or coming across these border crossings is actually being detected 

properly. We want to understand what the system architecture is, 

maybe have a hand in helping design that system architecture, understand how capable their response forces are, their analytical capabilities, et cetera. 

It is one thing to just hand over equipment, but it is another 

thing to then come back here and feel confident that what is coming through those ports is actually being properly screened. And 

that really is the long-term objective is to have that insurance for 

us. 

So if that means, in some cases, we might do a little bit more 

training because we feel there are still some gaps, that could be 

possible. But the bottom line is that in a three-year transition period we should go from our role being major to being very minor 

and just being in sustainment mode. 

Mr. SIMPSON. Okay, thank you. Sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Mr. Womack, 

thank you for standing in for me. I had a chance to—— 

Mr. WOMACK. My honor, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. Mix it up with the Secretary of 

Defense and Admiral Mullen. I could not resist, so—— 

Mr. WOMACK. Well, you came back quickly. I am fearful that 

maybe you were unsuccessful. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. The time is yours. 

Mr. WOMACK. Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Great. 

Mr. WOMACK. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I asked some questions about Libya and nofly zones and evidently it got some feathers ruffled. 

Admiral, I want to get back to where we left off, and I apologize 

for my absence. I sort of want to understand where we stand on 

the final design for the reactor technologies that are going into the 

new Ohio class. And what is the timeline here? And what is the 

final design going to look like? We have talked about it. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. We are—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. In other words—— 

Admiral DONALD. Sure. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. You own the reactor technology for everything we have now—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir, we do. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. That the Navy has. 

Admiral DONALD. We do. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You know, you have the experts. You have 

talked about the workforce and the need to keep it up to speed, but 

where are we? 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
201 

Admiral DONALD. We are, right now, in the—it is the concept development and preliminary design work that is going on right now. 

For instance, if you look at the reactor itself, we have to make a 

decision here in 2012 on materials that would be used in that reactor itself. And that is a key decision because the material choice 

will determine whether or not we can achieve a 40-year lifetime on 

that core. 

Once that material selection is made, then you start going 

through the qualifications of those materials to ensure that you can 

manufacture it. You go through the thermal hydraulic testing. You 

have to prove that the dimensions are correct in the core, all very 

finely set. But that piece of it is going on right now. 

At the same time, we are working on arrangements within the 

ship itself, and that is very important. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This is the narrowing—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. To the ship’s—— 

Admiral DONALD. Exactly. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. The design of—yeah. 

Admiral DONALD. You have a certain constraint in size, so you 

have got to fit this thing in the size. You also have to size the reactor plant for whatever the speed requirement is that the ship has 

to go, whatever the acoustic quieting piece has to be. And then you 

have got to—in the end you have to got to fit it all in the ship, and 

that is no small feat in a submarine as confined as the spaces are. 

So that arrangement piece is very important and that will be a key 

part of what we do over the next year. 

Ultimately, we will have to have the individual equipments designed sufficiently mature so that when we go and start ordering 

materials, we start ordering the components themselves, such that 

they can actually arrive in the shipyard on time between 2017 and 

2019, we are ready to do that. And the timeframe for all of that, 

that early design work, is right now. That is when we have to settle all of these key issues and essentially lock in the design and the 

capability of that ship really over the next year. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. How do you know—and this is the life of 

the ship-type core—that you are actually going to get what you 

want to get? 

Admiral DONALD. We—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You have explained why you are going to 

achieve savings. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. But in reality, how are you going to make 

what is, you know, a considerable leap here? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We understand the rationale behind it. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. There are two pieces to it. The first 

is there is a physics element of it that we have had great experience in the cores that we have built previously. For example, if you 

look at the Nautilus when it was built, it went to sea in 1955. That 

core lasted for two years. The Virginia that is at sea, the class is 

at sea right now, that core will last for 33 years. So we understand 

the physics associated with it and we have also got experience with 

all of the materials. Maybe for this particular core not all these maVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:21 Oct 01, 2011 Jkt 068245 PO 00000 Frm 00201 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A245P2.XXX A245P2

pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
202 

terials in the same combinations, but at least in the sense of we 

have worked with these materials before and we are very confident 

that we can get the proper amount of fuel, the physics performance, and the thermal hydraulic performance out of this core that 

will last for 40 years based on experience and on the science itself. 

Mr. SIMPSON. So are there alternatives within the areas that you 

are examining, to the materials that you are contemplating using? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. As with any engineering decision that 

you make there are tradeoffs. There are tradeoffs between capability, between cost, and certainly that is a matter of importance 

to us. There is a tradeoff on manufacture ability. Can you actually 

make it in a production sense in an affordable way? All of those 

trades are what are being considered right now in this early stage 

of the design work. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We still mint Virginia-class submarines. 

We have given you a green light to go ahead. I mean—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir, you have. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I mean, and I think people were generally 

happy about that. 

Admiral DONALD. Sure, it worked. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It maintained the industrial base. It keeps 

a lot of people working. What is the mix for this new generation 

of Ohio sub? You have some of the same workforce needs, right? 

Is there any transferability of people? 

Admiral DONALD. There is, yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It is a little bit of a mystery to me why 

some of the good people that have been working in the uniform as 

well as our industrial base can’t sort of, should we say, recommit 

their intelligence and institutional knowledge to what you are 

doing. 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We are not talking about a separate—setting up a new industrial base here, are we? 

Admiral DONALD. No, absolutely not. In fact, there is a—one of 

the—in the early stages of decision-making to start this design, one 

of the key considerations was the industrial base and the engineering and design workforce because we were coming off of the Virginia design at that time. We were starting to come off of the design work that is being done on the Ford-class aircraft carrier reactor plant. 

And there was a genuine concern back in the early, you know, 

2004/2005 timeframe that if we did not have work for these folks 

to do, that we would lose them and that would be a very difficult 

thing and very expensive thing to reconstitute. So we looked at 

that very carefully. And there will be a significant transfer of talent, engineering and design talent, between those projects that will 

move over and start working on the Ohio replacement program. We 

will have to deal with, again, that aging demographic that we 

talked about. Some of these folks are going to retire and not be 

around. 

And then the second thing, there is a ramp-up, a natural rampup in the number of people that it takes to actually do the design 

itself. But it is less than what it would have been had we waited 

much longer and allowed the design force to decay. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
203 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Your budget request indicates that naval 

reactors intends to hire 800 contractors this year? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And program direction for Federal employees continues to increase? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This is over and above the existing workforce that has many of these same—— 

Admiral DONALD. Some of that—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. You know, talents and expertise and—— 

Admiral DONALD. There is a combination. Some of that is a 

ramp-up for the new work. There is also some hiring associated 

with accounting for attrition and for retirement. but there is, in 

fact, an increase in personnel needed to support the new design 

work. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. All right. 

STAFF. I believe that you wanted to wrap up the hearing by 12 

o’clock. Could you talk about the pensions? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Certainly. Absolutely. 

STAFF. You have I think 71 million in this budget, another 168 

in weapons activity, and most of these are monies to pay pensions 

for legacy employees, for the people who work for University of 

California, as I understand. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. That is right, sir. Yes, there is—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Well, if you would like to explain it because 

I—— 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Absolutely. It is a little complicated, for sure. 

I mean, the—— 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. But as bright as you are you can do it in 

a few minutes. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Absolutely. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You have got 10 minutes. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Hopefully, I will do it in less, sir. 

Well, pensions have become—it used to be a topic we did not 

spend a lot of time talking about, but because of a combination of 

a couple of events together got us on this topic about two years ago 

and it really ramped up. Basically the events were the financial 

markets’ reduction in equity—in the financial markets, the value 

of the financial markets, combined with low interests rates because 

that has an impact on how actuaries take a look at how much 

needs to be in the fund in order to pay forward. And if you don’t 

have the growth that you expect, then you have got to put more 

money in. 

Combined, the third thing, it is like the perfect storm. The third 

thing is putting the Pension Protection Act requirements on—as a 

liability on to these particular contracts. So those three things together got us on the topic in the Department on the subject of pensions. 

At the same time, a few years ago, if you recall, we had 

transitioned the University of California out of being the sole management and operator of two of our major laboratories. And so that 

caused us to separate our pension pools, but still there was a liability in order to make sure that the UC part of the pension pool that 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
204 

had former Department of Energy workers that it be maintained. 

And that maintenance gets spread across. Normally, pension costs 

and in the case of the NNSA we still have our pension costs as an 

indirect cost that gets attributed across because it is the cost of 

doing business, but because these were split out separately into 

this other pool, we had to—and the liability was in the couple hundred million dollar range, as you have described, we had to assign 

that responsibility to two particular program lines: one in the nonproliferation account based on the ratio of work that they had done 

there and the other in the weapons activities account. And that 

goes into describe why we had this hundred-plus liability in one 

program and this $75 million liability or so in the nonproliferation 

program. 

So that essentially is how that looks. You would not have normally seen kind of a specific call-out. Normally, you would not— 

normally it is in there, if you will, as an indirect cost. And the rest 

of the liability, of course, is in there as an indirect cost because we 

still have ongoing employees and we have employees that have retired outside of the UC system. 

Thank you, sir. 

Admiral DONALD. Mr. Pastor. 

Mr. PASTOR. Yes. 

Admiral DONALD. Could I just go back to—no, it is just I wanted 

to loop back on a question you had asked me earlier about the environmental impact statement for the—— 

Mr. PASTOR. Right, in Idaho. 

Admiral DONALD [continuing]. Idaho facility. Between now and 

the end of 2012, we will have completed the site selection and submitted the draft environmental impact statement for public comment. So we will be well into the impact statement by the end of 

fiscal year ’12. 

And there was one other issue I just wanted to clarify. I 

misspoke when I mentioned the M290s, the number that it would 

take the shipping containers that we would take. On the Enterprise it takes 16—or, excuse me, it takes 16 shipping containers for 

Enterprise. We have bought or are buying a total of 25 of these 

shipping containers to just deal with the refuel handling for the 

aircraft fleet and the submarine fleet for the future of the force. If 

we were to have to task fuel from aircraft carriers at Idaho because 

the facility was not available, for each one of the Nimitz class that 

is nine shipping containers. So you would need nine of those to put 

on the rail side just to hold that fuel at $20 million apiece. So I 

wanted to make sure I got that correct. 

Mr. PASTOR. Thank you. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I just want to get clarity on the payment 

of pensions for contractor employees. Why is it a responsibility of 

the nonproliferation program? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Because associated with the work that goes on 

at the UC laboratories, that had gone on at the UC laboratories, 

we felt that this was the right splitting up of liabilities between the 

two programs. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And heretofore it had been where? 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Well, heretofore it had been part of our—one of 

the indirect charges that get assigned to all of the programs lines. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
205 

So about—so the majority of the costs—normally we would not 

even be—we would not talk about this because the pension funds 

would be fully funded. And so they would be assigned, if you will, 

as part of an element of every dollar that gets spent goes to pay 

for, you know, the pensions and health care and things like that. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So we have more transparency. 

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, sir, and in this case, because of the economic times, this has driven us to spend a lot more time in this 

area. In fact, I think that is actually trying to find the good out 

of a very challenging time. Because of the increased focus on the 

topic of pensions, the Department’s CFO—chief financial officer— 

and the team there have spent a lot of time looking at are we reporting data consistently across all of our MNOs. And, you know, 

maybe at the time we were not and now we are. We are using the 

same terminology, so we have a much better sense and understanding of what goes on in that particular area. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And lastly, to Admiral Donald, the refueling of the nuclear prototype which is used as a training platform 

for the Navy’s nuclear operators has been directly linked to the 

R&D efforts of the Ohio replacement. Can you explain to the Committee how these two programs are linked? 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. What we are going to do with the refueling of the prototype, just for context, what this really is is if 

you took the reactor plant and basically the engine room out of the 

Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine and put it ashore. That is 

what this is. It was built back in the late 1970s really as the prototype of that ship. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You explained to me this is the updated 

version. 

Admiral DONALD. That is what is there right now and it has got 

a nuclear reactor in it and it has been steaming and it is almost 

depleted of fuel. So when we go to refuel this, we are going to use 

technology, materials, and construction techniques to prove that we 

can manufacture this life-of-the-ship core in an affordable manner 

to prove that we can do that before we actually get into final production on the Ohio-class replacement core. So we will use materials, we will use production techniques, welding techniques, inspection techniques. All of that will go into building this core and 

it will go into the prototype, and then we will use that not only for 

R&D over the life of the really 20-year life of the platform, but it 

will also provide one-third of our training capacity for our Navy 

sailors that go out into the fleet. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. So it is directly related to the Ohio replacement, but it also is there to maximize knowledge for every 

other—— 

Admiral DONALD. It is. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. Nuclear reactor—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. That we have, whether it be, 

you know, aircraft carrier—— 

Admiral DONALD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN [continuing]. Or any of the other subs, so 

Sea Wolf and, you know, Virginia class, and so forth, right? 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
206 

Admiral DONALD. Every one of our operators goes through our 

training program and will spend six months operating a live reactor. Mr. D’Agostino did it. I did it. Everyone will do that. This is 

one of the three that will remain to provide that critical training 

for our reactor operators. And I think you would be impressed if 

you walked out onboard a ship and you walk up to the reactor operator himself and say how old are you? And he will tell you he 

is 21 years old operating a nuclear reactor. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Well, you took me under the ice on the USS 

Annapolis and I was surprised how young they are. 

Admiral DONALD. And they are really good. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And you have women in the submarine 

service now, too. I met—I am on the—— 

Admiral DONALD. They are heading that way. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Yeah, I am on the board of the Naval Academy, and I must say I met some very sharp young women who anticipate, I guess, being aboard some of our larger subs. And I can 

tell you they are highly qualified, highly interested, highly motivated. And it may have been a difficult cultural decision, but I 

think it is a good thing. 

Admiral DONALD. Not difficult at all. In fact, the first group just 

graduated from nuclear power school a week ago. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Not difficult for me, but sometimes difficult 

for others. [Laughter.] 

And on that happy note, any further questions? 

Mr. SIMPSON. I think we better leave it there. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Thank you very much everybody. 

VOICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We are adjourned. 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARING
207 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 318 here 68245A.130
208 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 319 here 68245A.131
209 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 320 here 68245A.132
210 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 321 here 68245A.133
211 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 322 here 68245A.134
212 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 323 here 68245A.135
213 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 324 here 68245A.136
214 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 325 here 68245A.137
215 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 326 here 68245A.138
216 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 327 here 68245A.139
217 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 328 here 68245A.140
218 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 329 here 68245A.141
219 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 330 here 68245A.142
220 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 331 here 68245A.143
221 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 332 here 68245A.144
222 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 333 here 68245A.145
223 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 334 here 68245A.146
224 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 335 here 68245A.147
225 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 336 here 68245A.148
226 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 337 here 68245A.149
227 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 338 here 68245A.150
228 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 339 here 68245A.151
229 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 340 here 68245A.152
230 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 341 here 68245A.153
231 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 342 here 68245A.154
232 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 343 here 68245A.155
233 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 344 here 68245A.156
234 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 345 here 68245A.157
235 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 346 here 68245A.158
236 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 347 here 68245A.159
237 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 348 here 68245A.160
238 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 349 here 68245A.161
239 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 350 here 68245A.162
240 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 351 here 68245A.163
241 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 352 here 68245A.164
242 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 353 here 68245A.165
243 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 354 here 68245A.166
244 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 355 here 68245A.167
245 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 356 here 68245A.168
246 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 357 here 68245A.169
247 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 358 here 68245A.170
248 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 359 here 68245A.171
249 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 360 here 68245A.172
250 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 361 here 68245A.173
251 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 362 here 68245A.174
252 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 363 here 68245A.175
253 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 364 here 68245A.176
254 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 365 here 68245A.177
255 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 366 here 68245A.178
256 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 367 here 68245A.179
257 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 368 here 68245A.180
258 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 369 here 68245A.181
259 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 370 here 68245A.182
260 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 371 here 68245A.183
261 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 372 here 68245A.184
262 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 373 here 68245A.185
263 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 374 here 68245A.186
264 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 375 here 68245A.187
265 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 376 here 68245A.188
266 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 377 here 68245A.189
267 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 378 here 68245A.190
268 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 379 here 68245A.191
269 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 380 here 68245A.192
270 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 381 here 68245A.193
271 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 382 here 68245A.194
272 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 383 here 68245A.195
273 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 384 here 68245A.196
274 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 385 here 68245A.197
275 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 386 here 68245A.198
276 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 387 here 68245A.199
277 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 388 here 68245A.200
278 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 389 here 68245A.201
279 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 390 here 68245A.202
280 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 391 here 68245A.203
281 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 392 here 68245A.204
282 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 393 here 68245A.205
283 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 394 here 68245A.206
284 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 395 here 68245A.207
285 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 396 here 68245A.208
286 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 397 here 68245A.209
287 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 398 here 68245A.210
288 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 399 here 68245A.211
289 


pwalker on DSK5TPTVN1PROD with HEARINGInsert offset folio 400/600 here 68245A.212
(i) 

W I T N E S S E S 

Page 

Cook, Dr. D. L .......................................................................................................... 1 

D’Agostino, Thomas ................................................................................................. 1, 127 

Donald, Admiral K. H ............................................................................................. 127 

Finan, Brig. Gen. S. E ............................................................................................. 1 

Harrington, Anne ..................................................................................................... 127 

Æ 


smartinez on DSK6TPTVN1PROD with HEARING