U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

i

28–991 2007

[H.A.S.C. No. 109–58]

FUTURE PLANS FOR THE DEPARTMENT

OF ENERGY’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS COMPLEX INFRASTRUCTURE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

STRATEGIC FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

HEARING HELD

APRIL 5, 2006
(II)

STRATEGIC FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama, Chairman

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona

MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama

JOE SCHWARZ, Michigan

CATHY MCMORRIS, Washington

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

RICK LARSEN, Washington

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

BILL OSTENDORFF, Professional Staff Member

BOB DEGRASSE, Professional Staff Member

KATHERINE CROFT, Staff Assistant
(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2006

Page

HEARING:

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 ....................................................................................... 1

APPENDIX:

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 ....................................................................................... 31

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2006

FUTURE PLANS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S NUCLEAR

WEAPONS COMPLEX INFRASTRUCTURE

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Everett, Hon. Terry, a Representative from Alabama, Chairman, Strategic

Forces Subcommittee ........................................................................................... 1

Reyes, Hon. Silvestre, a Representative from Texas, Ranking Member, Strategic Forces Subcommittee ..................................................................................... 2

WITNESSES

Anderson, Charles E., Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office

of Environmental Management .......................................................................... 21

D’Agostino, Thomas P., Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, National

Nuclear Security Administration ........................................................................ 18

Overskei, Dr. David O., Chairman of the Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task Force of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board ................... 4

Stockton, Peter D.H., Senior Investigator, Project on Government Oversight

(POGO) .................................................................................................................. 9

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Anderson, Charles E. ....................................................................................... 86

D’Agostino, Thomas P. ..................................................................................... 73

Everett, Hon. Terry .......................................................................................... 35

Overskei, Dr. David O. ..................................................................................... 49

Reyes, Hon. Silvestre ....................................................................................... 40

Stockton, Peter D.H. ......................................................................................... 61

Tauscher, Hon. Ellen O., a Representative from California ......................... 46

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

POGOs Report on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Homeland Security

Opportunities dated May 2005 [This report is retained in the Committee files and can be viewed upon request.]

Project on Government Oversight (POGO) Internal E-mails submitted

by Peter D.H. Stockton ................................................................................. 95
Page

IV

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD—CONTINUED

Report of the Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task Force, Recommendations for the Nuclear Weapons Complex of the Future dated

July 13, 2005, Final Report [This report is retained in the Committee

files and can be viewed upon request.]

Sandia Report, Change and the Nuclear Weapons Complex, Key Studies

and Outcomes in the Final Decades of the 20th Century (U) [This

report is retained in the Committee files and can be viewed upon

request.]

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Mr. Everett ........................................................................................................ 103

Mr. Skelton ....................................................................................................... 107

Ms. Tauscher ..................................................................................................... 108
(1)

FUTURE PLANS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S

NUCLEAR WEAPONS COMPLEX INFRASTRUCTURE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, STRATEGIC FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Wednesday, April 5, 2006.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:30 p.m., in room

2237, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Terry Everett (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TERRY EVERETT, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ALABAMA, CHAIRMAN, STRATEGIC

FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. EVERETT. The hearing will come to order.

The Strategic Forces Subcommittee meets today to receive testimony on plans for transforming the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex.

Thank you all for coming.

I would like to welcome our first panel of witnesses: Dr. David

Overskei, Chairman of the Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task Force; and Mr. Peter Stockton, Senior Investigator,

Project on Government Oversight (POGO); Mr. Tom D’Agostino,

Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); and Mr. Charles Anderson,

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Environmental Management (EM) in the Department of Energy (DOE).

The subject of how to transform the nuclear weapons complex is

not new, nor is it easy. There have been many studies conducted

over the last 20 years on how best to modernize our Cold War era

weapons complex. In spite of the numerous studies, there has been

little change and almost no actual transformation. We cannot continue to proceed down the same path year after year. Doing so will

put at risk a key attribute of our national defense: our strategic nuclear deterrent.

In last year’s defense authorization bill, this subcommittee drafted and enacted, with bipartisan support, legislation setting forth

the objectives of the Reliable Replacement Warhead or RRW program. That legislation was accepted by our Senate colleagues and

is now established law. At the time, we saw the RRW program as

laying down a foundation for the required capabilities of the future

weapons complex infrastructure.

Today, with the RRW program concept in place, we will hear

from our witnesses on what steps could or should be taken to modernize our complex, consolidate nuclear material and reduce security costs. There are many different opinions on how best to accom-
2

plish transformation. Along with my subcommittee colleagues, I

look forward to hearing from our witnesses today on this critically

important issue.

We have a lot of ground to cover today, and I want to allow each

of our Members as much opportunity as possible to ask questions.

I would ask our witnesses to please be brief with their prepared remarks. The entirety of your written testimony will be included in

the record.

Let me also say if you see me up here wiping the tears, it has

nothing to do with your testimony. It is the fact that my allergies

have gone crazy.

Let me now introduce my good friend and colleague, Mr. Reyes,

the Ranking Member of our subcommittee. Mr. Reyes.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Everett can be found in the Appendix on page 35.]

STATEMENT OF HON. SILVESTRE REYES, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM TEXAS, RANKING MEMBER, STRATEGIC FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

If you have forgotten how hard we work, when it brings the

chairman to tears, you know we are working hard.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I join you in welcoming our witnesses to this very important hearing.

I want to thank each of our distinguished witnesses for taking

time from their busy schedules to be with us today.

I also want to thank my friend, our chairman, Mr. Everett, for

providing me with the opportunity to set the stage for the hearing

today from my own personal perspective.

Nuclear weapons and our nuclear weapons complex play a very

different role in our national security posture than they did during

the Cold War. Almost 15 years have passed since the collapse of

the old Soviet Union and almost 14 years since the last nuclear

weapons test on September 23, 1992. Much has changed since that

time.

The legacy of our nuclear weapons competition with the former

Soviet Union lives on in the weapons, facilities and materials that

remain, however.

While Russia and the United States agreed in the Moscow Treaty

of 2002 to limit deployed nuclear warheads to a level of 1,700 to

2,200 each by the end of 2012, the United States maintains a significant stockpile of old weapons in reserve. DOE’s life extension

programs for deployed weapons have not convinced the Department

of Defense to part with these reserves. The stockpile of old weapons

is retained based on concerns that we might find a fatal defect in

one or more of our deployed systems and that we cannot rapidly

produce new systems.

And while the two nations agreed in June of 2000 to dispose of

at least 34 metric tons of plutonium each beginning next year in

2007, this program has been stalled for years over the issue of liability and may face additional hurdles, according to the recent

briefings by the administration.

Finally, even in this post-9/11 era, when stocks of nuclear weapons and materials represent particularly attractive targets, weap-
3

ons-grade nuclear materials remain in storage at facilities such as

Hanford, Washington, that no longer perform any nuclear weaponsrelated activity.

In terms about the safety, security and reliability and the cost

of the nuclear weapons enterprise have been of continuing interest

for this particular subcommittee. The hearing today allows us to

explore the administration’s plans for maintaining our nuclear deterrent without returning to testing and for securing nuclear materials within our own borders without further busting our budget.

In January of 2005, the Secretary of Energy established a task

force to ‘‘gather data, define options and develop recommendations

that, if implemented, will create a smaller, modern, complex infrastructure that is responsive to post-Cold War mission requirements.’’ Dr. Overskei chaired that task force, and he is here today

to discuss that task force’s final report, which was transmitted to

the Secretary last October. The task force delivered a bold report

that made numerous recommendations, but its key proposals focused on revitalizing the nation’s nuclear weapons conflicts

through, one, pursuing development of reliable replacement warheads and, two, consolidating all production and storage involving

weapons-grade nuclear materials in one underground location.

The NNSA administrator, Ambassador Brooks, assigned Deputy

Administrator Tom D’Agostino responsibility for evaluating the

task force’s recommendations and preparing NNSA’s plans for creating a responsive nuclear weapons infrastructure. Mr. D’Agostino

will describe those plans for us this afternoon.

The Department of Energy stores weapons-grade nuclear materials at 13 sites around our nation, some of which have no current

relationship with nuclear weapons business. After the 9/11 attack,

the agency reevaluated its security posture. The department concluded that significant improvements should be made based primarily on the risk of a terrorist being able to fabricate an improvised nuclear device by gaining access to some of these materials.

The new security posture requires expensive upgrades, yet DOE’s

current security costs are already substantial. The fiscal year 2007

request for nuclear security activities, including both NNSA and

the Environmental Management Program, exceeds $1 billion.

The project on government oversight, POGO, conducted an investigation in 2005 evaluating the department’s plans for protecting

weapons-grade material. They found that disposing of excess nuclear materials and consolidating the remaining materials in fewer

and more easily defendable locations, could save our government

billions of dollars over three years while also better protecting the

public from potential nuclear terrorism. Mr. Stockton is here today

to discuss POGO’s recommendation.

While the department’s efforts to consolidate nuclear materials

are intimately related to improving security and reducing costs, it

is notable that consolidation plans have been slow in developing. It

was not until this past November that the Secretary appointed

Charles Anderson the chair of the Department of Nuclear Materials Disposition Consolidation Coordination Committee. Mr. Anderson is here this afternoon to discuss with this subcommittee the

department’s plans for moving forward with disposition and consolidation efforts.
4

So we have a busy afternoon, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, again, for the opportunity to offer these observations,

and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. With that, I yield

back my time, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Reyes can be found in the Appendix on page 40.]

Mr. EVERETT. And I thank my friend.

We will start with the first panel, of course.

Dr. Overskei, the floor is yours.

STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID O. OVERSKEI, CHAIRMAN OF THE

NUCLEAR WEAPONS COMPLEX INFRASTRUCTURE TASK

FORCE OF THE SECRETARY OF ENERGY ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. OVERSKEI. Thank you.

Chairman Everett, Representative Reyes and Members of the

committee, thank you very much for inviting me to appear before

you today to discuss the work of our task force on the Nuclear

Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task Study.

I understand that my written testimony will be accepted for the

record.

Mr. EVERETT. Without objection.

Dr. OVERSKEI. Thank you.

I will just spend a few seconds giving you some context about our

study and how we went about doing it.

As you have already been informed, this came up as the Secretary of Energy made a commitment to Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee in March 2004. This was memorialized in

legislation in the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill of 2005.

The Secretary requested the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board

(SEAB) to set up this task force, and we were set up in January

of 2005. We commenced our work in February and submitted our

report for public comment in July. It was submitted to the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board in October of 2005 and then accepted by them and submitted to the Secretary of Energy.

It is important to understand that we wanted to understand the

landscape and all the constraints and the diversity of requirements

that was being placed on the nuclear weapons complex. And we

began our efforts by talking to senior members of the National Security Council, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Nuclear

Weapons Council, the executive officers in both the Air Force and

the Navy who are responsible for the delivery systems for nuclear

weapons in those respective services, the Office of Management

and Budget, the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Members

of Congress that are responsible for the oversight committees that

authorize and appropriate funds for the Department of Energy in

both the Congress and the Senate, and also the National Nuclear

Security Administration personnel.

Then we also reviewed the context in which the President established new conditions with regards to a directive for a reconstitution and a new level for the stockpile, and the new weapons level

of 2010 of 1,700 and 2,000 weapons—and 2,200 nuclear weapons.

And that defined a reduced capacity requirement for the complex.

In addition, the Department of Defense had undergone a new

evaluation of how they were going to represent deterrence for the
5

United States and defenses for national security purposes, and they

had a new triad. And this established near-term mission objectives

and performance metrics for the Department of Energy and the nuclear weapons complex as an element of this triad.

So with that as background, we began our study, and just to

make sure that we know that we are cognizant of the fact, numerous other reports and studies had been conducted since 1980, and

we had requested that the Department of Energy give to us a presentation of the major recommendations of the previous studies, of

which there were 12 major ones. We requested the recommendation

and the outcome of those studies and a perspective as to why those

recommendations were not implemented so that we had that as a

context. And, ladies and gentlemen, this was a very sobering experience. We found that the recommendations were very substantive

and extensive and it gave us great pause as to whether or not our

committee was going to have the ability to actually implement

change.

With that, we began our review of the complex, and we noted

that the complex is currently struggling to transition from the old

Cold War approach, with the Cold War weapons, into a new and

more agile complex. We did not find that the complex was integrated, and it wasn’t operating as a unified enterprise. It was a set

of independent design laboratories who were operating independently of the production facilities and the production sites. And all

were striving to sustain their past legacy and their past funding

rather than preparing for a different future.

The DOD, who is the primary customer, did not consider the

complex productive or responsive, and the stakeholders that we

interviewed did not find the complex as being responsive in the

context of the new triad that was coming out of the Department

of Defense.

From a capability perspective, enormous investments in stockpile

stewardship we found were starting to bear fruit. We now have superior characterization of the weapons materials and understanding of the nuclear physics processes. However, the design laboratories have not produced a new design in over 15 years and the design laboratories were struggling to resolve some current stockpile

issues in a timely fashion.

The production complex was largely old, operating World War II

era or early 1950’s facilities and did not employ modern production

quality control or production processes and techniques. And the

production part of the complex was routinely failing to meet the

current weapon refurbishment requirements and schedules that

were set by the Department of Defense.

From a security perspective, the plutonium and highly-enriched

uranium special nuclear materials that were located at six to eight

complex sites were rapidly draining the budget of operating funds

via security requirements, and this was rapidly approaching the

level of about a billion dollars a year. And this was largely because

of what we would consider to be arbitrary mandated requirements

and methodologies to meet the design basis threat (DBT) that was

established by the Administration and the Department of Energy.

There was also some other aspects associated with the geographical constraints and the physical site constraints of these facilities,
6

which I will address later, but they were never designed to provide

the sort of security requirements that we were seeking of our complex sites today.

From a management perspective, the nuclear weapons complex

that during the 1980’s demonstrated great leadership and decisive

decision-making was no longer doing that. The DOD was not operating as a partner. The DOE management was burdening the

NNSA with rules and regulations that were inconsistent with mission requirements of the NNSA. And the complex, as I have already said, was not operating as an integrated enterprise with a

shared purpose.

The Cold War stockpile, although it be safe and reliable, does not

represent now the surety controls and use controls, nor the operating margins the DOD requires and the complex is capable of producing. And this stockpile is being sustained through a very expensive life extension program which will still result in old weapons,

albeit with some modern components, and many of these weapons

will be, by 2030, will be of a 50- or 60-year-old design. This stockpile is a legacy that has a future maintenance and surveillance cost

liability that we believe is unbounded.

Now, we have a vision for the complex of the future. And it

would be for a sustained role of nuclear weapons, an important

part of our current and future deterrence posture. We would envision a complex that would evolve to a smaller stockpile, consistent

with the President’s level that he put in the Moscow Treaty for

2012 of 1,700 to 2,200 deployed weapons with some modest reserve.

In our analysis, we assumed there would be a reserve of about

1,000 weapons.

We assume comparable ratios between Intercontinental Ballistic

Missiles (ICBM) and Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles

(SLBM) and air-delivered warheads, as we have today, but only for

the purposes of analysis, and we assume in discussions with the

Air Force, Navy and Strategic Command, that the complex would

need to be in a position to produce annually up to 125 weapons for

the stockpile as a demonstration of productivity, which is important in the capability aspect of deterrence.

Our vision for the complex is that it would provide these weapons, through continuous design, production and dismantlement,

and that this continuity of demonstration of capability is an essential element of deterrence, and it is this type of deterrence that will

result in a reliable stockpile. But more than that, it is this deterrence capability that is in the complex that will allow us to meet

uncertainty and threats to the future. It is not the stockpile. It is

the complex that can address this.

With that, I want to point out several attributes that we would

associate and would aspire that would be in the complex of the future.

The first is agility. This is agility in the scientific engineering

and technical capital base of the complex that we think is fundamentally the most important. It is that area that will innovate,

conceive and develop feasible solutions that then can get produced.

The automated production aspect of the complex would be employing concurrent engineering, which is something that is used

now by state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and market seg-
7

ments throughout the world, and this automated concurrent engineering production complex would be in a position to rapidly transition from prototype to production.

And responsiveness. We have metrics that are submitted in the

written report of 12 months to fix the problem, 18 months to develop a solution for new needs, 36 months to a prototype, 48

months to production and 18 months to resume testing. While we

believe that these numbers are very technically credible and can be

achieved within the complex, we believe that there is a credible approach where these numbers could be halved.

One of the other requirements here is that in order to achieve

all of this it will require a management and leadership organization that is capable of making timely decisions that balance risks,

benefits, performance and cost. We feel that such a complex is possible and desirable, and that such a complex can replace and dismantle the entire Cold War weapons stockpile and replace it with

the comparable amount of 2,200 or less sustainable nuclear weapons of equivalent military characteristics, and this can be done by

2030.

Now, I wanted to discuss a couple of recommendations that we

believe are important to get started immediately to realize this vision.

The first is the immediate design of a reliable replacement warhead, and we are pleased to see that the Administration is doing

that and that the DOD is endorsing it. It is important to identify

that this is not a weapon as much as this is a new process that

gets applied to designing weapons. It is a process where you look

for advanced surety and use control, higher margins, utilization of

commercial components wherever possible to eliminate the unique

production capabilities and you design for cost and reliability over

a lifecycle. And that there would be successive versions of an RRW

so that over time, in a controlled manner, you can replace the

stockpile. And, second, because we would submit that you would go

through planned lifecycles of about five years per version, this allows you then to accommodate and incorporate new technology to

meet evolving threats, and you can incorporate that into your

stockpile solution.

The second element is the CNPC, the Consolidated Nuclear Production Center. And this is where you would consolidate all nuclear

explosive package, production, assembly and disassembly activities

in one location. It will be cutting-edge production and manufacturing capability. And it would be designed to produce 125 weapons

to the stockpile every year and dismantle 125 weapons, so that we

are in a steady state.

This site—and this is an important element—this site should not

be selected competitively. There are a number of locations in the

United States where this site could be placed. It should be selected

by the President with advice based on national security needs from

the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of Defense and in consultation with the Congress. This is a issue of national security.

This should not be an issue of jobs.

The third element of our proposal is the consolidation of special

nuclear materials (SNM). This will be the only way that we can address the continuously escalating security cost of the complex and
8

reduce exposure of the current and the future terrorist threat to

the complex.

This consolidation would be done at the CNPC and we believe

that one of the most effective approaches—but there are other ways

of doing this—but one of the most effective approaches would be to

have the CNPC underground, because that is one of the most sure

ways of capping the potential security threat. We also point out

that this consolidation of all of the SNM materials cannot and will

not likely be realized until the Cold War stockpile is dismantled.

Dismantlement is another element. This is important to demonstrate to the world that we are not entering into new arms building. We would point out that we believe Pantex is well positioned

to aggressively dismantle the existing Cold War stockpile and the

same with Y–12. And at the conclusion of the dismantlement of the

last of the Cold War weapons, then Pantex and Y–12 could be remediated and all of the SNM materials and components could be

relocated to the CNPC or at other DOE complex locations for remediation and disposition.

Office of Transformations is the last of our recommendations.

This office is responsible to guide the transformation of the department in areas of leadership, establishing interdependence and

teamwork, like establishing contracting incentives and linking

deliverables across the complex. It would also be responsible for

rationalizing operating decisions and management options and,

last, this would be an organization that would provide some insight

into the leadership and management of the NNSA. We would like

to point out that this is not—this management aspect is not an

issue of architecture or organization. It is rather an issue of leadership and empowerment.

The consequences of our recommendations are this: We believe

that you can achieve a safe, reliable stockpile of 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear weapons by 2012 and convert that to the new sustainable

stockpile by 2030. The complex will evolve into an organization

that is far more agile and responsive and will constitute one of the

critical elements of the new triad.

We looked at the cost analysis of doing it. Our analysis was by

no means complete, nor was it as detailed as we would like, but

we did find that with little or no budget increase and excepting reduced diversity in the stockpile, reduced redundancy in the complex, reducing employment within the complex and taking on some

future risks, you can make the transition.

On the other hand, with budget increases in the next 10 years,

largely for the dismantlement and the construction of the CNPC,

you can achieve the transition with no compromise in the current

stockpile, no compromise or reduction in the employment at the

current sites, and no or very little future risk. And, of course, there

is a large continuum between these two options.

Furthermore, we would submit that the status quo is not an option and it is not technically credible nor financially sustainable.

So I submit that this Administration can implement the transformation of the complex if the Congress agrees to support this. We

have found, going back to my initial comments, where we had

looked at these 12 previous studies, we have found that the things

that we are proposing are not dramatically different from steps
9

that have been proposed in the past, but one of the elements that

was missing was congressional legislation to support a lot of those

recommendations. And we would submit that at this point, to

achieve these transforming actions, it is going to require congressional legislative support for the Administration to actually implement.

In closing, I would say, we have the money and the ability to establish a modern nuclear deterrent complex and it only requires

the support of Congress and the Administration and the decision

to do so.

This concludes my testimony.

There was a request for me to address a specific question associated with the cost of the CNPC and alternative approaches to the

CNPC, which at this point I am capable and willing to do, but I

will defer that to questions.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Overskei can be found in the Appendix on page 49.]

Mr. EVERETT. Thank you, Dr. Overskei.

I think we will proceed with Mr. Stockton and then come back.

STATEMENT OF PETER D.H. STOCKTON, SENIOR

INVESTIGATOR, PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT

Mr. STOCKTON. Chairman Everett and Mr. Reyes, thank you for

inviting POGO to your hearing on future plans for the nuclear

weapons complex.

The Project on Government Oversight is an independent organization that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more accountable Federal Government.

We think the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board report, headed by Dr. David Overskei, was very thoughtful, looking at the nuclear weapons complex over the next 25 years. However, POGO’s

approach is focused on the near term because of the enormous

amount of money that will be spent protecting the nuclear material

where there is either a redundant mission or no mission at all.

In consultation with security experts throughout the Federal

Government, POGO conducted an investigation to determine how

nuclear weapons sites could best meet the new security requirements, the DBT, while also lessening the enormous financial burden of trying to protect the materials at 13 separate sites.

This investigation has found that disposing of excess nuclear materials and consolidating remaining materials in fewer and more

easily-defended locations could save the government billions of dollars over the next three years while also better protecting the public from nuclear terrorism. In this post-9/11 world, it is unconscionable that we continue to store plutonium and highly-enriched uranium, the nuclear material most attractive to terrorists, in World

War II era buildings, some of which are built of wood.

This material is stored at great cost to the taxpayer, and some

of the sites are in highly populated areas. It is incumbent upon the

Department of Energy and the Congress to force change, as uncomfortable as that process could be. I think you have maps attached

to our testimony there of what the complex looks like now and

what we recommend.
10

There are 13 sites across the country that store large quantities

of weapons-grade special nuclear material. The responsibility for

these sites is divided between the DOE’s NNSA and Environment,

Science and Engineering (ESE), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

POGO’s 2005 report recommended ways in which DOE should

de-inventory six sites of SNM and consolidate these materials at

more secure sites in the next three years. In addition, POGO encouraged accelerating the process of blending-down of excess highly-enriched uranium (HEU) and immobilizing excess plutonium.

We were in no way suggesting shutting down sites. We are simply stating that these six sites pose unnecessary homeland security

risks and budgetary pressures by continuing to store SNM.

In discussions with NNSA, we have learned that they now have

a plan that will significantly consolidate their SNM. They should

be congratulated for taking this step. The problem remains however, that they are looking too far into the future to accomplish this

plan; at least two administrations into the future. In the meantime,

we are spending billions of dollars to protect this material.

The proposed timelines for consolidation are so far into the future that they are easy to accept because the hard work is left for

future administrations and other policy makers. Secretary Bodman

needs to inject immediacy into this plan to make it successful.

We know from experience that officials throughout the nuclear

weapons complex have and will strongly resist any change. Those

inside the complex have seen that they can just out-wait any new

directives until the current Secretary has moved on, and the status

quo can be maintained. And I am sorry I don’t have enough time

to explain the

That happened to Secretary Richardson as well as Secretary

Abraham and Deputy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow. The major reason

for the TA–18 move, which I spend half my life on it seems.

An array of concerns arises when it comes to securing America’s

nuclear material, but security experts’ greatest fear is very distinct:

the terrorist group successfully reaches its target at one of the facilities and within an extraordinarily short time, within minutes,

uses the HEU to create an improvised nuclear device (IND). It only

takes a critical mass of HEU of about 100 pounds or potentially

less to create an IND.

To put this in perspective, one site alone stores about 400 metric

tons of HEU, enough for 14,000 nuclear warheads. NNSA is now

struggling to resolve the growing tension that exists between budget constraints and security requirements as long as the material remain spread across the complex. It appears ESE does not even recognize the problem.

POGO has internal emails that indicate that they are engaged in

what I can only call the mating dance of the prairie chick about

what to report to your committee. I would like to submit them for

the record. I have a copy of them right here.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on

page 95.]

Mr. EVERETT. Without objection.

Mr. STOCKTON. Thank you.
11

DOE sites cannot meet the 2003 DBT, which is far less robust

than most of the recent—several DOE sites, I am sorry. Several

DOE sites cannot meet the 2003 DBT, which is far less robust than

the most recent DBT.

The Office of Management and Budget cut the fiscal year 2007 DOE security budget by $200 million, mostly because they were

disappointed in the lack of progress in DOE’s consolidation efforts.

Ambassador Linton Brooks writes that he can’t reveal the cut in

security funding because he has to defend the President’s budget.

DOE’s Office of Security and Safety Performance Assurance Director Glen Podonsky pointed out that the way out of this morass is

to consolidate the SNM and reduce the security cost.

Some sites, as you probably know, are preparing to request waivers from the Secretary to exempt them from the 2003 DBT. One

site at Y–12 has already been granted waiver. Hanford and Oak

Ridge National Laboratory are in the process of receiving waivers.

I ask that our complete report be submitted for the record. I will

focus my testimony on the most urgent priorities for the committee

to consider.

[The information referred to is retained in the Committee files

and can be viewed upon request.]

Mr. STOCKTON. The first is sites that should be de-inventoried

immediately. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. When it

was built, it was located in the middle of a desert. Since that time,

a residential neighborhood has encroached to the fence line of the

lab, with houses and athletic fields literally across the street. Nearly 7 million people reside within a 50-mile radius of the lab. Super

Block, where the plutonium and highly-enriched uranium is located, is only approximately 900 yards from these houses.

Securing these materials creates a unique problem. How do you

adequately protect these materials without unduly endangering the

surrounding population? The security forces at Livermore are constrained in a way that no other NNSA security forces are. It is precisely because of these residential neighborhoods that the Livermore security force cannot use the same weapons used by security

forces at the other sites.

Despite earlier assurances from DOE that these restrictions on

Livermore’s defensive measures pose no problems, DOE has reversed course and decided that the restrictions are indeed a problem.

DOE has lifted those restrictions to a degree and is now planning

to deploy Gatling Guns that fire 30,000 rounds a minute. The military kill range for such a gun is one mile, but it can kill up to two

miles. Within that one-mile range, there are two elementary

schools, a preschool, middle school, senior center and athletic fields.

Even in an accidental firing, the lab would be spraying lethal bullets into the neighborhoods.

Mr. EVERETT. Mr. Stockton, you are doing so good, I really hate

to do this. But if you will put a checkmark where you are, we have

about seven minutes to get over to the floor to vote. We have a 15-

minute vote, a 5-minute vote and another 15-minute vote, which

we don’t have to stay for all of it. I am anticipating that we will

have probably a 20- to 25-minute recess. And I apologize again, but

these kinds of things are out of our control.
12

The hearing is recessed.

[Recess.]

Mr. THORNBERRY [presiding]. If the hearing will come back to

order, the chairman will return momentarily. But he has asked us

to go ahead and start. He will be here in just a moment.

Mr. Stockton, if you could conclude your testimony, please, sir,

and then we will go to questions.

Mr. STOCKTON. Currently the only mission for SNM at Livermore

is for studying the aging of plutonium and studying cracked plutonium pits for nuclear warheads. This same work is conducted at

Los Alamos.

DOE has finally acknowledged that Livermore should be deinventoried of its category I and II SNM. The lab could retain category III and IV quantities for their experiments, as those quantities would be of no use to terrorists.

However, DOE doesn’t propose to accomplish this very important

step until 2014. It is important to point out that the plan is to wait

to move the materials until Chemistry and Metallurgy Research

Replacement (CMRR) is built at Los Alamos, a total of at least

eight years. And then all of Los Alamos’ and Livermore’s material

is scheduled to move again by 2025 to the Nevada test site. Why

build a new building at Los Alamos if only a decade later it is expected to be de-inventoried?

We have, and I think it is attached to the testimony you have,

a picture of what is going on around Livermore and the encroaching neighborhood.

POGO’s recommendation: If it is determined by NNSA that it

wants to continue the redundant mission at Livermore, the material could be moved to the device assembly facility at the Nevada

Test Site. The Livermore glove boxes and any necessary equipment

could be shipped to the Device Assembly Facility (DAF). The scientists could easily take the one-hour flight to the DAF as they did

for years during the nuclear test program when they need to conduct experiments with larger quantities of SNM.

I will go quickly through Oak Ridge National Laboratory

(ORNL). The decision about what to do with 1,000 cans of U–233

at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been difficult to make because the material at ORNL is utterly orphaned. ESE says NNSA

owns the material, so they don’t have to pay to deal with it. NNSA

says it does not own it and it is ESE’s problem. This stovepiping

is a real problem within DOE. We understand that DOE’s ESE is

trying to get exempted from the 2003 DBT.

There is also similarly orphaned special nuclear material at Hanford that neither ESE or NNSA are taking responsibility for. If

these special nuclear materials were removed from these two sites,

both Oak Ridge and Hanford would gain by significantly reducing

security needs as well as massive financial costs that go along with

them.

On onsite consolidation, Highly-Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) at Y–12, DOE is currently constructing an aboveground building, known as HEUMF, to store the plant’s hundreds

of tons of HEU. DOE inspector general has criticized both the design and the cost of this new building, including that it will cost
13

more and be less secure than the original plan for a bermed facility.

In 2004, Sandia National Laboratory was asked by NNSA to

evaluate HEUMF plans. It was ultimately Sandia’s approval of this

design that persuaded DOE headquarters to give the green light

for the aboveground building. POGO has learned, however, that the

Sandia study never compared HEUMF design with an underground

or bermed design, explaining in small print that they did not want

to have to consider an entire redesign for the building.

Ironically, it was an earlier Sandia study that had recommended

using existing designs from two other government-owned underground facilities to solve the Y–12 storage problem, the DAF and

Kirkland Underground Munitions Storage Complex (KUMSC) at

Kirtland Air Force Base, which is totally underground.

There is an opportunity, however, to take advantage of the current debacle in the HEUMF construction. As you know, construction was halted about a month and a half ago on HEUMF at Y–

12 because the amount of rebar in the concrete does not meet specifications. There is now talk of starting from scratch.

POGO recommendation: We suggest that you take this opportunity to stop throwing good money after bad, dramatically upgrade security at far less cost than the current plan, stop the

aboveground design and take the design of the DAF, which the

Corps of Engineers built for less than $100 million, far less than

the $380 million that is currently estimated for HEUMF.

A second option would be to incorporate berming into the current

design. DOE officials have privately suggested that berming would

be an important security improvement to the building.

Pantex. Pantex stores thousands of plutonium pits, some for over

40- to 50-year-old weapons, in World War II-era bunkers in an area

called Zone 4. Zone 4 is located at the end of an Amarillo airport

runway.

Plutonium in Zone 4 should be moved onsite to the more appropriately located and secured Zone 12. I will skip—there are two

under-utilized facilities that are terrific to store, especially nuclear

material, and one is the DAF, which is hardly used, and the other

is building 691 at Idaho National Lab. There was $10 million appropriated for that, but apparently it stalled.

The sites that have inadequate security standards: BWXT and

Nuclear Fuel Services. Two facilities that should be of interest to

the committee: BWXT in Lynchburg, Virginia and NFS in Erwin,

Tennessee. They are commercially operated and primarily funded

by the Office of Naval Reactors of the DOE. They house tens of

tons of HEU that is owned by DOE’s NNSA.

NRC regulates the facilities and is responsible for setting the

DBT and to test security at these sites. However, we understand

that the DBT at these two sites is significantly lower than the DOE

DBT to protect the same dangerous material, HEU.

The recommendation is that POGO recommends transferring authority for security at these sites to the Department of Energy.

Even with the strongest leadership from the Secretary’s office, the

only way these initiatives can be enacted is with your committee’s

continued vigilance.
14

DOE’s history has shown that without constant pressure from

Congress and specifically from this subcommittee, these consolidation initiatives will likely fail.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stockton can be found in the Appendix on page 61.]

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you both for your testimony.

I yield to the gentlelady from California for five minutes.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Overskei, thank you very much for your very thoughtful testimony.

I am impressed that when your commission was put together,

that you had the foresight to look back behind you. No one in

Washington ever does that. And that you found, I think you said

a dozen other assemblages of high ranking, smart people who had

come forward with recommendations, and virtually nothing had

been done over many years.

Well, I commit to you that that will not be the state of your endeavor. I think that it is well time that we take a good look at this.

I think that your comments were important, specifically because

I think you really put a bead on something that I have focused on

for quite a long time, which is that RRW in and of itself is not a

weapon. It is a concept, and it is an attempt to do what I think

has been necessary for quite a long time.

I do represent Livermore and Sandia Lab in California. It is a

beautiful place, and we have, I think, some of the smartest people

in the world that have worked there for over 50 years and have

been silent soldiers in winning the Cold War and doing a fabulous

job.

But we do need a complex that is 21st-century, that is revolutionary, and that is really applying the best asset we have, which

is thinking people. And I think that the reason to look at RRW specifically is because we need refurbishment and we need reinvestment, we need rejuvenation, and we need to be able to understand

how to get the weapons from a state where they are perhaps more

dangerous than they need to be, although reliable, and not necessarily the safest places, but safe, and really maximize the opportunity to have everything we can have, including a durable and

safe deterrence for the American people.

So I think that I can commit to you from my personal point of

view that it has been a long time coming, but perhaps this is the

time that has arrived that we can work together.

And, Mr. Stockton, I appreciate your comments, and I think that

what you are reflecting is obviously everybody’s sense that it is

time to take a lot of this material that has been unfortunately

spread across a far-reaching complex, and move it into much safer

and secure ways, where we can still have use of it, but we can use

21st-century technology to be able to do that and not have it exposed to either my beautiful encroaching suburbs or to bad guys.

So I appreciate POGO’s work. I know that you have been a longtime soldier in this field, and I appreciate the fact that you came

in today to testify.

Mr. Chairman, I don’t have a specific question. I am looking forward to engaging Mr. D’Agostino in the future when he testifies,
15

but I want to—in a very positive way. In a very positive way, because I am very happy with his appointment. But I just wanted to

tell—I have an opening statement I also would like to have sent

into the record, if you don’t mind, Mr. Chairman, because I know

that we are going to move on to testimony.

And I appreciate the time to engage both of you.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Tauscher can be found in the Appendix on page 46.]

Mr. EVERETT [presiding]. Mr. Thornberry, you are very good at

that.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, I was just trying it out to see if it

worked.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me just ask briefly, Dr. Overskei, of the reports you talked

about, was one of them the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board report from about 1996 or so, chaired by Senator Rudman?

Dr. OVERSKEI. Well, I don’t know if it was about 1996.

Mr. THORNBERRY. 1999? In that ballpark?

Dr. OVERSKEI. It was one of the ones that——

Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, I guess I beg to differ with you a little

bit, because Congress acted very strongly on that, and actually enacted one of its recommendations, which was to create the NNSA

to begin with. And most of the reasons, most of the concern in that

report was a lot of the things that you are still talking about: not

having an integrated, independent enterprise; not managing risks

effectively.

So, you know, I am left somewhat with the view that we have

acted but it has at least not yet—and there will be different views

about why—accomplished the hopes and aspirations of the legislation or that report.

The other thing I am just struck by is that the NNSA has compiled just a chart summarizing your seven major recommendations.

The first five are things that they agree need to be done and are

in their recommendations. Have you glanced at what they intend

to do?

Dr. OVERSKEI. Well, they have shared with me their testimony.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Okay.

Dr. OVERSKEI. And I know that there are a number of items that

they are proposing to do, but I have not been privy to the details.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Okay. Well, I am just struck by the fact that

many of the things, five of the seven, are basically they say yes.

The differences are more in degree, from both of you. But it

seems like everybody says we have got to consolidate production,

consolidate materials, and if there is a strong message I am hearing from both of you and from NNSA testimony, it is that they

have some differences from you on how much to consolidate.

I think they are very much in line with the POGO testimony

about a lot of the consolidation and I think that to me is the

strongest thing to come out of that, so we are left with, okay, everybody agrees with this trend. Now we have a certain number of dollars to work with and various things, and we have got to try to figure out how to move down that road.
16

And that seems to me to kind of be a summary of where all of

this wraps up. Do you disagree?

Dr. OVERSKEI. No, sir, I do not. And if I could elaborate, probably

the fundamental area of disagreement is associated with the

CNPC. I would believe and I would represent and be glad to go

through the logic—and some of this is in the written testimony—

that in fact, if you upgrade and refurbish the infrastructure in the

existing sites, I will represent that it will exceed the cost of CNPC.

And the second element is that there has been some representation that CNPC is a distraction from the obligation that the complex has to sustain and maintain the current stockpile. And again,

I would represent that if you have a CNPC where you are not having ongoing construction and modernization at the existing complex, those organizations like Pantex and Y–12, Sandia and the design labs can focus on maintaining the existing stockpile and focus

on the RRW, where you build a new CNPC for production. And you

will retain the focus and the intensity that will give you enormous

benefits as far as productivity and efficiency.

Mr. THORNBERRY. And I appreciate your point of view. I think

there are some other elements—people-related elements, among

other things—that could be brought into it, but I don’t really want

to get into a debate on it.

Mr. Stockton, from what you have seen and what you have

learned about the general direction NNSA proposes to take on consolidation, it seems to me to be consistent with what you had said

too. Do you agree?

Mr. STOCKTON. I haven’t seen all of their recommendations, I

have to tell you.

Clearly, at Livermore we are not overwhelmed with the schedule

there, and from my experience, if the Secretary doesn’t say ‘‘I want

it done’’ and introduce immediacy to it and have a schedule, you

know—as we have mentioned in the testimony, this is two administrations from now. It could be four Secretaries of Energy from now.

And everything changes. And I think that, you know, they made

the decisions.

I mean, we don’t know. We don’t understand why they have the

material there in the first place under the conditions they have it.

Mr. THORNBERRY. But you would want to push harder, and I

think you have made that clear, and I appreciate that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. EVERETT. Mr. Schwarz.

Dr. SCHWARZ. I have no specific questions, but I have an interest,

and I will just kind of state the interest, which probably is a universal interest, and then I have personal interest in the next two

gentlemen who will testify.

But I assume what we want here is the most efficient, most secure facility we can possibly have to store existing warheads, to get

on with the reliable replacement warhead, store uranium, see if

plutonium and uranium should be stored in the same facility,

should they be separated, and to make that facility as secure as

possible.

Which brings up the question, why, if security is paramount,

would we have one facility and one facility only for storage? That

is a little bit of a mystery to me. And I know that if in fact that
17

is what at least one of you seems to advocate, you can explain why.

It seems to me it would make it terribly vulnerable, even if it were

underground and hardened, someone could drop a GPS-controlled,

Ms. Tauscher’s favorite weapon, on it.

Ms. TAUSCHER. We killed that.

Dr. SCHWARZ. And take that facility out, at which point we have

no further nuclear deterrent.

So I have lots of questions. I don’t have the answers. My learning

curve on this is very steep. But if you get to any of that as you

respond to questions, I would be most interested in those responses.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. OVERSKEI. May I have a quick response to that?

Mr. EVERETT. Certainly.

Dr. OVERSKEI. Let me point out that we are not proposing that

the nuclear weapons, full up weapons, be stored at the CNPC.

Rather, these are deployed and they are in the custody of DOD and

they are stored at distributed locations. Number one.

Number two, it is important to understand that there are already

four, at least four single points of failure in the complex. There is

only one location that does tritium. There is only one location that

does assembly. There is only one location that does pits, and actually, it doesn’t produce pits, unfortunately. And there is only one

location that does secondaries and the uranium.

So if you take out any one of those locations, you have taken out

the capability of producing a weapon. And if this country runs into

a situation where we have deployed, where we have utilized the entire deployed stockpile plus the reserves and failed for want of one

additional weapon out of the complex, then we have other issues

that are of greater severity.

Mr. EVERETT. Thank you.

I would say the learning curve here is really steep.

Dr. Overskei, you wanted to talk about some costs earlier, and

I want to use my time to allow you to do that.

Dr. OVERSKEI. One of the elements about the cost, and I would

refer to—we are talking about the cost of the CNPC, for example,

because that is one of the big driver elements.

If you look at the infrastructure investment costs that have to go

in—let me back up. Pantex, Y–12, our two main production facilities, are very old. Both of them require substantial investment in

the infrastructure, the electricity, the steam, other support services

and utilities, in addition to rebuilding the actual physical structures. And the infrastructure investment in those two locations

alone are a substantial portion, greater than 50 percent, of the cost

of a CNPC. But they are going to be retrofit, so you will be putting

in security systems and production systems that would only meet

requirements, but it is a retrofit.

And any of you that have had any real property where you have

had to modernize, you realize that the cost of building something

and building it to design is far cheaper than refurbishment of existing infrastructure. So we would represent that the infrastructure

costs at Pantex, Y–12, are already a major portion of the cost of

the CNPC.
18

And then as you go to Los Alamos National Laboratory, it is

going to cost—and these numbers are very speculative in the sense

that I don’t have the accurate numbers that the Department of Energy and the NNSA is working on. But our estimation of, if you put

a CMRR that is capable of doing class one and two work at LANL

and if you put in the security system at LANL that they are talking about, which is a quarter of a billion dollars alone for the pit

production, and about $1 billion to $1.5 billion of modernization of

the pit production at LANL, and you still won’t have the capacity

that DOD requires, when you aggregate that with the infrastructure investments of Pantex and Y–12, you have paid for the CNPC

and you will just have refurbished buildings at old World War II

sites, and they will not have the security requirements that you

will need in the future.

I could go into much greater detail, but I feel quite passionate

about this.

Mr. EVERETT. Ms. Tauscher, have you another question?

Ms. TAUSCHER. I don’t of these witnesses. I do want to get to Mr.

D’Agostino, the deputy director. Why does everybody think that

that is such an ominous thing? It is a good thing.

Mr. EVERETT. Let me thank this panel for being here today. We

appreciate you showing up, and we also invite you to stay if you

would like for the next panel.

Thank you, again. And I dismiss you at this time.

Mr. D’Agostino, I believe it is your turn at bat. You may proceed

at any time. Your complete testimony will be made a part of the

record.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS P. D’AGOSTINO, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR DEFENSE PROGRAMS, NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Chairman Everett, Members of the committee,

thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss

our plans to revitalize and transform nuclear weapons complex infrastructure.

I have submitted my full testimony for the record. I would like

to briefly summarize it here.

In this effort, we have benefited greatly from the work of the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board Task Force on the Nuclear

Weapons Complex Infrastructure, subsequently referred to as the

task force, and chaired by Dr. David Overskei. Today I will describe the concrete actions that our department is taking to realize

our vision for the future of the complex.

The chart that you have before you, which was referred to previously, compares our path forward with the recommendations of

the task force. We agree with the task force’s recommendation for

the immediate design of a reliable replacement warhead or RRW.

And we really believe the RRW is an enabler, providing enormous

leverage for a more efficient and responsive infrastructure and opportunities for a smaller stockpile.

In addition, the greater performance margins of RRW concepts

are expected to significantly reduce the possibility of the United

States ever needing a return to nuclear testing.
19

The task force recommends that NNSA aggressively pursue dismantlement. We agree and we are. Dismantlements will increase

by 50 percent next year.

The task force also recommends that the department establish

an Office of Transformation to serve as an agent for change. We

are creating such an office.

The task force contributed valuable insights relative to the way

we manage risks and called for a more integrated and interdependent nuclear weapons complex. Already under way, we are creating

multi-site key incentives and more uniformity in technical and

business practices to achieve such an enterprise.

There are two key recommendations from the task force with

which we partially agree but differ on specifics. The most sweeping

recommendation was to establish by 2015 a consolidated nuclear

production center, or CNPC, to be the single site for all production

involving large amounts of special nuclear material, or SNM, that

require very high levels of security.

Our approach is to establish distributed production centers of excellence which take advantage of expertise imbedded in the workforce and leverage significant prior investment in the infrastructure at these production centers. The task force also urges consolidation of large quantities of SNM to the CNPC. We strongly agree

with the principle of SNM consolidation and we have proposed an

approach that will move from our national laboratories large quantities of SNM requiring costly security.

Our 2030 vision will drive SNM to fewer sites and fewer locations within sites, but not to a single site.

The second chart that you have summarizes the key aspects of

transformation to complex 2030. Our future complex retains two

independent centers of excellence for nuclear physics located at Los

Alamos and Livermore, each supported by Sandia for non-nuclear

component design and a site in Nevada for testing.

Consistent with the recommendation of the task force, we plan

to eliminate duplicative capabilities and activities and operate our

major laboratory research capabilities and user facilities to support

the entire complex. All research, development and production involving large quantities of highly enriched uranium would be carried out at Y–12. When the new uranium storage and processing

facilities are operating, they will permit a major consolidation of

activities and a reduction in the high security footprint by nearly

90 percent, thus lowering costs.

All activities involving large quantities of plutonium will be

transferred to a consolidated production center by the early 2020’s.

The existing plutonium facility at Los Alamos will provide an interim capability until the new center is operational. The consolidated plutonium center is not a repackaged modern pit facility but

a center that would consolidate into a single site all of the plutonium research development, production and surveillance activities

that require costly security.

The location of the center remains to be determined in compliance with any required national environmental policy act process,

but it would be situated at an existing DOE site having security

capabilities for large quantities of SNM. We won’t be creating a

new site.
20

A new modern and efficient non-nuclear production facility building for the Kansas City plant would be in operation by 2012 and

sized to produce components and conduct operations that cannot be

procured from commercial vendors.

While we agree with much of what the task force recommends,

we cannot commit to a CNPC. Let me explain why.

Investments in an accelerated CNPC would be in conflict with

our ability to support the existing stockpile. Further, based on a review of other large one-of-a-kind projects, it is not plausible for the

CNPC to be designed, built and operating on the short timeline

proposed by the task force necessary to realize subjective benefits.

Also, the challenges of transitioning the highly-skilled workforce to

a new location, particularly in the unique and highly-skilled jobs

involving uranium and plutonium are often underestimated.

Our approach achieves the benefits of the task force approach,

consolidation of SNM and facilities, integrating research and development and production, aggressive dismantlement, but it does so in

a way that supports near-term national security needs, is technically feasible and is affordable over both the near and the longer

term.

We recognize that business as usual is not sustainable, will not

be successful and it cannot be the path we choose. Indeed, our complex 2030 vision represents a significant departure from the current strategy. Working closely with Charlie Anderson and the Nuclear Materials Disposition and Consolidation Coordination Committee, SNM will be consolidated to fewer sites and fewer locations

within sites.

Nuclear production will take place at centers of excellence for

uranium, plutonium and assembly/disassembly in modern, non-nuclear component production facilities would significantly reduce

costs associated with non-nuclear production. Focused design and

certification activities will take place at national laboratories that

are not encumbered by responsibilities for nuclear production or security requirements for large quantities of SNM.

The Nevada Test Site would become the single site for all testing

involving large quantities of SNM. As a result of these activities,

the physical footprint of the weapons complex will be substantially

reduced.

Finally, accelerated dismantlement of retired warheads and

fewer deployed warheads based on RRW concepts that reduce the

need for nuclear testing ensure the stockpile and infrastructure

transformation is not misperceived as restarting the arms race.

Over the next 18 months, I seek to demonstrate that the transformation path that I described here today is fully viable and

through the list of commitments on the third chart show that we

are getting the job done. By 2030, the vision I set forth is of a

world where a smaller, safer, more secure stockpile with assured

reliability over the long term is backed by an industrial and design

capability to respond to changing technical, geopolitical or military

needs. It offers the best hope of achieving the President’s vision of

a small stockpile consistent with our national security needs.

Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to your questions.
21

[The prepared statement of Mr. D’Agostino can be found in the

Appendix on page 73.]

Mr. EVERETT. Thank you.

Mr. Anderson.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES E. ANDERSON, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR THE OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

Mr. ANDERSON. Good afternoon. My name is Charlie Anderson.

I am the Chairman of the Department’s Nuclear Materials Disposition and Consolidation Coordination Committee (NMDCCC), quite

a mouth full.

I am pleased to be here today with Deputy Administrator

D’Agostino to provide you an update and answer your questions on

the Department’s efforts to consolidate and disposition its nuclear

materials.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and your subcommittee for

your interest in this complex challenge. It is vital to our nation’s

security.

Last year Secretary Bodman formally chartered the Nuclear Materials Disposition and Consolidation Coordination Committee.

While individual programs, such as the NNSA, as addressed by

Tom a moment ago, the Office of Nuclear Energy and Environmental Management have their own disposition and consolidation

projects, the purpose of the Department’s committee is to ensure

integration of individual program efforts thus identifying opportunities for resource sharing.

The principal mission of our committee is to provide a forum to

perform cross-cutting nuclear materials disposition and consolidation planning with the objective of developing implementation

plans for consolidation and disposition, as appropriate.

I have personally been involved in nuclear material management

for a number of years, currently with the Office of Environmental

Management and previous positions, including with NNSA.

Nuclear material disposition and consolidation is important to

the Department and while progress on intra-site consolidation has

been made, the Department has been less successful in transferring nuclear materials from one site to another. But some progress

has been made.

As illustrated by a few charts that I have brought today, currently we have our nuclear materials in category I facilities at 10

sites across the DOE complex. Category I materials are typically

those materials, types and amounts that are stored in one location

that could easily be made into a nuclear weapon.

In 1995 there were 36 category I facilities across the complex. As

noted on the chart here, it is a different location. I will note the

ESE designation there for environment, science and energy is basically just to show the non-NNSA locations versus the NNSA. And

then, also, then, as we show, in Tennessee, where we have both interests.

As the next chart will show, in 2006 we are down to 21 category

I facilities. I won’t go into each one of those, but the charts are

available for you and we can follow up with questions related to

that later.
22

Since becoming Chairman of the committee in November 2005,

meetings have occurred at least once a month, and have included

representatives from each of the DOE organization that are responsible for nuclear materials, as well as senior advisors from other organizations within the department. I am also briefed with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board monthly since my appointment on the progress of the committee.

It is made clear to me that the Secretary expects the NMDCCC

to make progress. Our committee needed a streamlined approached

to and a clear understanding of the challenges it faced. I indicated

in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation in October 2005 that the committee was about a year and a half away from delivering a strategic plan. We are making progress on a strategic plan and it sets

the stage for my committee to develop individual implementation

plans.

An individual implementation plan will consist of: a clear, concise statement of the problem; a listing of all known pertinent

facts, including source documents for those facts; a listing of alternatives; cost evaluation of viable alternatives; and a recommended

path forward. I refer to this a lot as the scientific approach to solving our disposition and consolidation problem.

Implementation plans will be transmitted, as appropriate, to the

Secretary for final decision after approval by the committee.

Through our work on the strategic plan, the committee has identified eight near-term issues we need to address. Consolidation of

excess plutonium-239, which you have heard some discussion about

today. I will note that some of these issues have some overlap,

which I will try to address either in questions or through some of

the discussion here.

This consolidation of plutonium-239 is particularly noted in relation to the material in Hanford, the material at Lawrence Livermore and the material at Los Alamos.

The removal of surplus weapon pits from zone 4 at Pantex. Plutonium-239 material, the surplus material destined mostly for the

mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility we constructed at the

Savannah River site. Removal of all category I and II material from

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I speak to this as not all

the material there is just plutonium-239, but we have to look at all

of the special nuclear material there that needs to be removed and

relocated to another area.

Disposition of the uranium-233 from the Oak Ridge National

Laboratory. Removal of surplus material from Y–12, including material like the Aberdeen material. Removal of surplus material

from Los Alamos National Laboratory. Removal of the Sandia National Laboratory nuclear materials. And consolidation of plutonium-238.

As you can see from this list, a lot of it overlaps both the needs

of the consolidation or the complex 2030 program that Tom

D’Agostino talked about here, as well as some programs with Nuclear Energy and the Office of Science.

We have concluded the top priority currently facing our committee was to identify a path forward for the plutonium-239 at our

Hanford site, determined to be the highest priority at this point
23

chiefly because of the urgency associated with removal of this material in order to avoid the expenditure of significant funding at

Hanford to meet the latest security requirements, which would require a new facility at Hanford.

While developing the implementation plan of consolidation of

plutonium-239, the committee has identified three alternatives primarily and is currently evaluating each. That would be the continued storage at the current sites, consolidation and storage at an interim site and consolidation and storage at the disposition site.

Consolidation of this material is being encouraged by Members

of Congress, stakeholders, the Government Accountability Office,

and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Our committee is

currently reviewing the pertinent facts and evaluating the cost associated with the alternatives, including looking at previous reports

and studies that have been done over the past decade about this

material, ever since the end of the Cold War.

These facts include the necessary steps that need to be taken to

meet applicable statutory requirements, before developing the recommended path forward.

In closing, it is very important to keep in mind that, while the

Department has not yet made a decision to further consolidate nuclear materials, the committee is very active, and our activities are

initially focused on completing the strategic plan and the implementation plan for the plutonium-239 material.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to testify, and at this

time I would like to submit my full statement for the record.

Mr. EVERETT. Without objection.

Mr. ANDERSON. And I would be pleased to answer any questions

related to consolidation and disposition efforts.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson can be found in the

Appendix on page 86.]

Mr. EVERETT. Thank you.

Mr. D’Agostino, perhaps you can help me understand something.

Around here, we know if we postpone something for a year, then

by X factor it is more expensive the next year and then the next

year and then the next year.

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. EVERETT. There are those who say that the life expectancy

of these warheads is 40 or 50 years, and then there are those who

say it is anywhere from 70 to 80 and perhaps 90 years. Can you

give me an idea of how long the life expectancy may be? And if the

life expectancy is longer than we have been given by NNSA, are

we better suited to go ahead and start replacement because of the

increase in cost that we will incur later on?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I will take the question, and the answer to the

first question will then get into the second question. And if I miss

the intent of the second question, I would ask you to repeat the

question.

The history of the weapons program was such that the nuclear

weapons complex during the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s was always

in a mode, as Dr. Overskei described, of continually exercising the

various legs of design, development, production, certification, testing and back around again. So we were constantly in a mode of cycling just the nature of where we were at the time.
24

And so, in essence, we were going through a cycle of where warheads would be cycled through, depending on the specific military

need and the design cycle, in 50- and 30-year cycles. So, in essence,

the original design life, and again, the weapons were based around

that type of a flow rate.

In the early 1990’s, when we shifted into a stockpile stewardship

program, where requirements essentially stopped, we realized that

we needed to ensure through stockpile stewardship and the tools

we developed, that we understood exactly the aging mechanisms,

because we figured we don’t have a history beyond 30 years typically on many of these components.

And so we went through a system-by-system, component-by-component and part-by-part analysis across the whole set of warheads

and legacy stockpile to determine which parts need to be replaced

exactly the way they were previously designed in order to ensure

ourselves that we were maintaining that stockpile out into the future. And we call this the life extension program. And we gather

these types of activities in blocks.

We completed the life extension program for the W87 warhead

and we are in the process, as you know, sir, on the B62 warhead,

the W76 warhead and the W80 warhead life extension activity. So

the path we are on right now continues on with the idea that every

20 to 30 years or so we would cycle warheads through a successive

series of life extension, as Dr. Overskei describes. The key is that

the life extension process that I have just described replaces components exactly the way that they were designed before. It is an exact

replica.

The difference with RRW is to build robustness into the components themselves, instead of just replacing the exact internals, we

would ensure that we have the right components, that are sustainable over the long term, that are easier to manufacture, that drive

safety and security into the system itself.

So there is no magic number that says after a certain period of

time the weapon is essentially not useable anymore, because our

approach over the last 15 years has been to employ the stockpile

stewardship, and we were in the process of continuing that stockpile stewardship lifecycle of LEPs.

But now we are entering into a new phase, and with the concepts

that Ms. Tauscher described earlier and Dr. Overskei described

earlier, there is an opportunity to drive the complex in a different

direction, one we feel that has better long-term sustainability for

the complex in addition to ensuring that our design margins over

time remain sufficiently far away so we will never need to come

back to nuclear testing.

In that long answer, I probably forgot your second question. I

apologize, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. EVERETT. No. I was just concerned that the cycle is every 30

years, and we know that the warheads last for 50 years. Should we

be on a 50-year cycle of replacement? Or should we be continuing

on a 30-year cycle of replacement when we put RRW into effect?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The danger, of course, even with a 30-year

cycle, and Dr. Overskei talked about it, we agree, is this concept

of exercising the workforce. We need to get the workforce commensurate with the size of the stockpile, get it focused, and exercise
25

our design and production complex so we don’t go through periods

similar to where we are right now, where for essentially the last

15 years we have not exercised our production complex the way you

would exercise when you are maintaining an automobile vehicle,

which is to keep it exercised so that we know that it works.

So even if some say that the warhead would last 50 years, the

problem is that if it lasts 50 years with a design that is 50 years—

that was done 50 years ago and it doesn’t introduce modern surety

and safety features into the weapon itself and allows us to make

sure that that weapon is protected.

So the concept of exercising the complex, whether it is on a 15-

year cycle or a 20-year cycle, I think we are going to be running

through some detailed cost studies to figure out what the optimum

cycle is to maintain the smallest, most cost efficient production

complex and at the same time ensure that we have a workforce

that feels that they are engaged in the program and are there for

a reason, and they are not just waiting for 15 years for that next

system to come through.

I cannot overestimate the importance of the workforce in the

weapons complex. These are folks that are committed professionals.

They have very unique skills. They know what they have been

doing. They have passed on these skills to successive workers that

have come through behind them, and it is really not just the facilities and the infrastructure that we talked about, which we think

of as a lot of bricks and mortar and maybe special tools that Congress authorizes and we go off and build. But it is actually the

workers that know how to use these tools that really make these

things happen.

Mr. EVERETT. Thank you.

Mr. Anderson, my time is up, but I want to come up to you a

little later. Right now I am going to give Ms. Tauscher 5 minutes.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Deputy Administrator D’Agostino, welcome. This is your maiden

voyage——

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Yes, it is. Thank you, Ms. Tauscher.

Ms. TAUSCHER [continuing]. After your confirmation and your

swearing in.

Mr. Anderson, welcome too.

Let me see, Mr. D’Agostino. This plan to consolidate the plutonium from Livermore over to CMRR at Los Alamos, I just want to

have some assurances that Lawrence Livermore scientists that actually go to Los Alamos will have, you know, significant enough

peer review ability and that won’t be impacted, that there will be

protocols developed to ensure that they can really effectively and

safely operate at CMRR. I mean, this is part of what a congresswoman representing Livermore would do. But I think that this is

an important issue, that these assurances are made clear and on

the record and I assume that you would make them.

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Absolutely. I will wholeheartedly agree with

your position and your points. I think it is consistent with the idea

of an integrated and interdependent enterprise. The concept of

interdependency is one that we haven’t capitalized on and we need

to, and part of that recognizes the fact that scientists at Lawrence
26

Livermore are interdependent on the facilities and capabilities the

Nation has placed at Los Alamos.

That doesn’t mean that one laboratory gets a precedent over the

other laboratory. Peer review is critically important here and I

agree completely with the concept. I support it 100 percent.

Ms. TAUSCHER. I am very impressed by your statements today

and your testimony and our private conversations.

I think that it is very important to recognize the partnership

here between the intellectual asset base that we have in our scientists in these jewels in the crown in the national labs, and also

that we have a very deteriorated complex that has ill-served everyone for a while, and that it is important to maximize their capabilities by now refurbishing the complex and bringing it up to not only

code, but certainly to deliver for them and for the American people

the kind of assurances that we have them doing the work that they

need to do.

Coming off of the chairman’s question about the utility and the

age of weapons, I think the pits are the real issue here, and I think

that you and I have had a conversation before. There seems to be—

and I know you are doing a study—there seems to be widely varying estimation of how pits age and actually are we at the half-life

of pits at 50 years or are they really, really old and have to be replaced, or actually were the scientists and the designers so conservative over the last 30 years that actually—this would not surprise

me, by the way—that actually they can go for 2X more time. They

actually could go a lot longer.

And I know you are doing a study to take a look at that. I think

this is an important piece of our decision on investment policy

going forward, because the pits—could either be a big thing, which

I am not for right now, intellectually.

But can you just talk, very briefly, or even answer us, to the staff

specifically, in writing, your concept of what, depending on the answer for this study, what you think the opportunities are going forward on the pit facility and how that kind of goes into everything

else?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Absolutely. I would like to do both, actually, respond orally and then follow it up with writing to the subcommittee. I think it is important that you have a written down answer

to that question.

But let me talk a little bit about plutonium. Plutonium, as you

know, is a manmade material. The oldest bit of plutonium we have

dates back, obviously, many decades ago, but that is it. That is as

far as we know about the aging of plutonium, and we are conducting accelerated aging studies, as you have described in your question.

We do have what we call a level 1 milestone, which is a milestone that we track, which we feel has got significant importance

not only within the program, but within the department, and has

interest across government agencies, including the legislative

branch of the government itself, and that level 1 milestone has to

do with determining, getting a system specific pit age characteristic

for each of our systems. Since our systems are different, it is not

just a matter of taking a number like, maybe 45 years, for example,
27

and saying, well, that is it for everybody. Because each system is

different.

And you are right, there have been a wide variety of years that

have been out in the press and in discussions over a wide range,

describing what this would be. Our level 1 milestone is due to be

complete at the end of this fiscal year and it will be independently

reviewed by the group that you are aware of, a technically competent, independent group. And in all likelihood, they will probably

ask for more data, but we do have information that we will be able

to provide.

But even looking at the concept of, let’s say, for example, that the

age is 2X or maybe even 3X, whatever the case may be, it is important to recognize that the reason why—responsive infrastructure is

one of the legs of the nuclear posture review, an important element, an important part of assuring not only ourselves but our allies that we have a nuclear weapons enterprise that is responsive,

that serves as an effective deterrent. Because essentially we want

our deterrent to reside in our complex itself, not necessarily in the

number of warheads we would have. And that helps us drive the

stockpile numbers down.

So by not having a plutonium capability, it gives our customer

in the Defense Department and ourselves pause on whether we

truly have a responsive infrastructure. But even setting responsive

infrastructure aside, I would even submit that the idea behind the

RRW, reliable replacement warhead concept, is to design in margin

into the pit itself in order to ensure that we push our way further

away from nuclear testing and get ourselves away and design a

sustainable nuclear weapons stockpile.

In addition to the sustainability question, we want to be able to

design in features that enhance the security and surety of the

weapon itself, so that the weapon itself is safer, easier to handle,

easier to manufacture, gets us further away from design margins

and reduces our chances of testing, and is in a situation where if

somebody should happen—if we happen to lose control of a weapon

itself, it would essentially not be a weapon because of the types of

technology features we have inserted, and that is a very important

part of RRW concept that we talked about.

I will follow up with a written answer——

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 108.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. I appreciate that.

Mr. D’AGOSTINO [continuing]. On the numbers themselves on

pits, if I could, please.

Ms. TAUSCHER. That is right, and we can share it with the committee.

And, Mr. Anderson, thank you for a good job at EM. I don’t have

a question for you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. EVERETT. Dr. Schwarz.

Dr. SCHWARZ. I never thought that I would have to deal with

physics again, because that is why I became a surgeon, because

they kind of lost me after the incline plane and the mechanical advantage of pulleys in physics. So here we go.
28

What I think would be best, Mr. D’Agostino, is perhaps if you

could arrange some kind of a private tutorial for me, especially on

the characteristics of the isotopes about which you speak. I was

more conversant with them at one time. I did know a little bit

about plutonium-238 and plutonium-239 and the various isotopes

in uranium and what their qualities are, their half-lives, their applicability in atomic weapons. I do not anymore. It has long since

been forgotten.

And so I am not, Mr. Chairman, going to ask any questions, unless you would like to do a real quick couple of minutes on the

characteristics of these isotopes. But I think I need to spend a little

time with yourself or someone that you have appointed to come in

and reacquaint someone who has been out of any sort of physics

and only had just a smattering, a smidgeon of nuclear physics,

when I was a student. It would help to understand this a lot more,

and I want to understand it. I don’t want to sit on this subcommittee or on the full committee not precisely understanding what you

are doing.

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Mr. Schwarz, I would love to come in with some

folks and bring you up to speed on some of your questions. And we

will be able to set that up with the staff.

Dr. SCHWARZ. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. EVERETT. I promised, Mr. Anderson, I would come back to

you, and here I am.

We spent an awful lot of money on—I will get it out in a

minute—plutonium, especially at Hanford. Can you give us an idea

of what obstacles you face, particularly state obstacles in Washington state and South Carolina, that has caused us not to move perhaps as quick as we should?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, sir.

First of all, as we are looking at the alternatives, one of the mistakes we did not want to repeat previously is to make sure we

clearly laid out all of the alternatives. So in doing so, in going

through the alternatives, we look at what some of the obstacles are.

Some of those being dealing with a couple of the public laws that

exist, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002,

commonly referred to as Public Law 107–107, which requires a

clear identification of the disposition path for all plutonium received at Savannah River site after a date in 2002.

That is for material that was not—that is for all of the plutonium

material. There is another, the National Defense Authorization Act

for Fiscal Year 2003, which has certain requirements related to the

performance objectives for the mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility,

for those materials that are planned to be processed through the

mixed oxide fuel fab process. We have to make sure that we satisfy

those. Some of those are reports that are required to Congress. The

first one is a report that is required for disposition for all of the

material that is received into Savannah River site.

Obviously, there is a need for analysis that we are reviewing to

make sure we are covered and make sure we both have the analysis and also determine where we would have to amend any

Record’s of Decision (ROD’s) for a decision that we would make.
29

And in this case, almost any decision we are going to make here

would require some amended ROD, at a minimum.

Those would be the primary things that we are looking at. I

mean, we are looking hard to see if there is anything else, because

we don’t want to go down a path and find that we missed a law.

Some of these also have to do with shipping containers, shipping

casks. Not all of this material is in one form. In fact, most of it is

in varied forms, and that is why I alluded to some overlap from the

issues that we have.

I mean, a lot of times, when we are questioned in relation to removing material, people will be discussing the majority of the material, which may already be in a form or in a container that is

pretty straightforward, but there will be substantial other material

that has to have some work done on it, or a special shipping container if we are going to ship it. And those are the primary barriers

that we have looked at.

Mr. EVERETT. Ms. Tauscher.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Mr. Chairman, I have nothing else to ask. Thank

you for offering, though.

Mr. EVERETT. Dr. Schwarz.

Dr. SCHWARZ. I said my piece and now I need to be taught.

Mr. EVERETT. Gentlemen, thank you very much.

We may have, for both panels, we may have some questions for

the record, which we would ask you to respond to in real-time rather than Washington time, and I am talking about maybe 30 to 45

days, and we will make that distinction a little plainer in our request.

Thank you again for coming.

And the hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:58 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

APRIL 5, 2006

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

APRIL 5, 2006

(35)
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

APRIL 5, 2006

(95)
96
97
98
99
100
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE

RECORD

APRIL 5, 2006

(103)

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. EVERETT

Mr. EVERETT. In your testimony you indicate that the Department of Defense has

not operated as a partner with the Department of Energy in matters associated with

the vision of the nuclear weapons complex of the future.

What is your sense as to why DOD is not fully engaged with DOE?

Dr. OVERSKEI. There are several aspects:

First, no particular vision of the nuclear weapons complex of the future, including

the vision recommended by the SEAB Task Force, is widely held, either within

NNSA or within the units of the DOD that interact with NNSA. Therefore, it should

not be surprising that partnering between NNSA and DOD in the implementation

of any vision is lacking when a common vision has not yet been adopted. NNSA will

have to earn that partnering through two actions: (1) a clear articulation of their

vision of the nuclear weapons complex of the future, and (2) performance in the execution of a plan to achieve that vision. The NNSA performance over the past decade

has led to reduced DOD confidence in the capability of the Complex to achieve routine metrics, let alone a vision that requires nuclear weapons stockpile transformation. On the other side of the partnering equation, the DOD will have to allow

the NNSA some elasticity to transform, through the RRW and some relaxation on

the current stockpile obligations. The RRW becomes the enabler of a new partnership.

Second, and related to the above, in the fifteen years since the demise of the Soviet Union as a threat to the United States, DOD expectations from the Complex

have diminished, with a corresponding effect on the partnership. Currently, no other

adversarial national force in the world has the capability to use nuclear weapons

to challenge the very survival of the US. Now, many of the threats to the US come

from non-nation entities. In such cases, nuclear weapons may not be an effective

deterrent. Thus, the absence of a current, well articulated nuclear policy that incorporates the role of nuclear weapons in today’s world is necessary for DOD and DOE

to again be engaged partners in the nuclear weapons complex of the future.

Third, in addition, the DOD does not have to deal with the budget issues/consequences that DOE must address to fulfill the DOD requirements.

Mr. EVERETT. In your opinion, are the existing organizational relationships between the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense in the area of nuclear weapons matters working as intended?

Dr. OVERSKEI. As indicated above, the relationship was very effective and functional when the threat to the US was another nation that was also a large scale

nuclear threat. Times have changed. In the last 15 years the DOD interest in the

role of nuclear weapons in policy and planning activities has diminished. The role

of nuclear weapons, including the size and composition of the stockpile, must be addressed at a high national policy level for the two agencies to again work together

effectively.

Mr. EVERETT. One of the objectives of the Reliable Replacement Warhead program

is to design and certify new warheads without the need to conduct underground nuclear testing.

During your task force study, were you able to reach any conclusions on whether

NNSA could proceed with a Reliable Replacement Warhead program that does not

require the resumption of testing?

Dr. OVERSKEI. Yes, we concluded that the design laboratories are definitely capable of designing and certifying a Reliable Replacement Warhead without the resumption of underground nuclear testing.

Mr. EVERETT. If so, please explain the basis for your conclusion.

Dr. OVERSKEI. I requested a member of the task force, with one of our support

staff, to question the designers at LLNL and LANL on this specific question. The

head of the design groups at each of the two laboratories was individually queried

on this exact question. Both design group heads agreed that a RRW with enhanced

surety and use control features and higher margins could be designed without resumption of underground nuclear explosive testing, if the RRW design did not have

to meet the previous yield/weight and yield/size requirements. This has also been
104

reconfirmed to me in subsequent post SEAB discussions with the same laboratory

design heads.

With these relaxed requirements, the warhead design space is much more tractable. The breadth of understanding developed in the last 15 years through the investment in the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program provides the basis

for the designer confidence. The Labs have used this investment to develop modern

computational tools, validated against data from previous nuclear test results. Many

of the surety and use control mechanisms can be tested with new conventional test

apparatus available at the three design laboratories without a nuclear explosive

package test. These tools can now be used to design future systems. The combination of improved computational tools validated by existing test data, less restrictive

design constraints, and higher operating margins, coupled with designers’ confidence convinced our panel that the RRW can be implemented without a resumption of nuclear testing.

Mr. EVERETT. In your testimony you highlight the fact that security costs within the Complex are approaching $1.0 billion a year. What is your assessment of how

the DBT is being implemented at existing NNSA sites?

Dr. OVERSKEI. The DBT is being implemented without uniformity. This, in principle, is laudable, since the potential security threats, the terrain and the target material vary from site to site, and each site should not be considered to have the same

risk profile. Thus, an informed, ‘‘graded’’ approach to site security is reasonable.

However, during the SEAB visits to the Complex sites last year, no graded approach to DBT implementation was evident. All sites appeared to be treated as having the same level of risk. Furthermore, threat frequency (i.e., the probability of occurrence of particular threat scenarios) did not appear to be taken into account. We

recognized that assuming all threat scenarios to have a probability of occurrence of

unity is conservative, and that the postulation of actual threat frequencies is very

uncertain. Nevertheless, more realistic assumptions about the capability of adversaries to plan, stage, and execute various scenarios should be developed, perhaps

as a joint effort with the DOD.

In addition, the requirement placed on site defenders to completely ‘‘deny access’’—a zero probability of having the attacking force gain access to one or more

targets, even for a brief period—is extremely unrealistic and exponentially increases

the cost. Alternative strategies should be considered that incapacitate or eliminate

the attacking force prior to any effective use of the target material. It is recognized

that the deployment of systems to incapacitate or eliminate unauthorized intruders

have the potential for inadvertent actuation, so that a potential safety risk might

be incurred in order to reduce security risk. Modern risk-informed decision analysis

is quite capable of examining the benefits of security risk reduction and any associated safety risk penalties, and comparing those benefits and penalties with the deployment and operational costs of the system along with any reductions in overall

site efficiency and productivity in the conduct of their primary work mission. Capital

and operational security costs at certain DOE sites may far outweigh the value of

the work performed at those sites, work that could be performed elsewhere equally

well, and be secured for far less money.

Mr. EVERETT. With respect to NNSA and DOE security plans and compliance with

the Design Basis Threat, what are your principal concerns? What, if anything, aside

from material consolidation would you change in the area of current security practices within the current DOE complex?

Mr. STOCKTON. POGO has a number of concerns about security at the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. In addition to the urgent need to deinventory sites containing Special Nuclear Materials in highly-populated areas, such as Lawrence Livermore Lab, the following items remain our primary concerns:

- The 2003 DBT is to be fully implemented by October 2006. This is five years after

9/11. We believe there are several sites that will not be able to meet the 2003 DBT.

The GAO has the same concerns. We understand that some sites are already requesting waivers because they can not meet the DBT—Hanford, Oak Ridge National

Laboratory (ORNL), and one building at Y–12 has already received a waiver. The

only way to determine whether a site meets the DBT is with performance tests—

full up force-on-force (FOF). Generally when protective forces ‘‘win’’ a FOF they lose

a high percentage of their force. Those results raise questions about combat effectiveness. It is important to keep in mind that the three major advantages that a

terrorist group has in an attack is surprise, speed, and violence of action—none of

which are tested in a FOF. POGO believes the site should be able to win a FOF

test decisively—they don’t.

- There is one critical site that requires a denial strategy—we believe the site has

the wrong protective force on the target. We would be happy to supply the identity

of the site to the committee, but do not want to identify it in a public document.
105

- Building 3019 at ORNL that houses weapons quantities of U–233 (that could be

used to create an Improvised Nuclear Device (IND) or nulear detonation) has no Perimeter Intrusion Defense Assessment System (PIDAS) or stand-off truck bomb barriers. Their security plans still depend on deploying SRT’s from Y–12 to save the

day at ORNL, leaving Y–12 vulnerable in case the attack at ORNL is a diversion.

In fact, the SRT’s would arrive long after the battle is over. Recently there was an

independent security inspection by DOE headquarters of ORNL—they did not even

bother to run a force-on-force test. Several years ago, ORNL ran a self-assessment

FOF where the adversaries ‘‘killed’’ the entire ORNL guard force in 90 seconds. Because of Building 3019’s location at the lab it is not clear they could protect the U–

233, no matter what they did. It appears the only solution is to blend down the U–

233 immediately.

- DOE is in the process of spending millions of dollars on high-tech weapons, and

detection technologies. In a number of cases, there are questions about the demonstrated effectiveness of these technologies. DOE should not spend millions of dollars deploying these technologies until they are proven effective.

- Admiral Meis’ recent report to NNSA raises very basic questions about DOE’s inability to develop their security plans. Issues of concern include: capability to develop vulnerability assessments; realism of limited scope force-on-force and full up

FOF tests; development of Site Specific Security Plans (SSSP); DOE Headquarters’

inability to review the SSSP’s; quality of the adversary force being used in the

Headquarters FOF tests; the lack of NNSA headquarters’ oversight of security; and

other deficiencies. We would encourage the Subcommittee to be briefed by Admiral

Meis and his staff, if it has not already done so.

- The Y–12 Highly-Enriched Uranium Material Facility (HEUMF): Most security

experts believe that modern nuclear facilities, and particularly SNM storage facilities should be underground or bermed, where only one side has to be protected.

HEUMF was changed from a bermed facility to above ground, with five sides to protect. The costs for construction have ballooned from $90 million to close to $400 million. They are currently experiencing construction problems because of the

misreading of blue prints. We believe it is not too late to change the design, and

require that it be at least bermed, if not underground.

- There are tens of tons of NNSA’s Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU) at two Nuclear

Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulated facilities—Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS) in

Tennessee and the BWXT facility in Lynchburg, Virginia—which fabricate fuel for

the naval reactor programs. These sites are protected to a significantly lower security standard than DOE sites with the same HEU. A major concern about HEU is

how quickly and easily an IND can be detonated using HEU. The IND issue is a

Special Access Program (SAP) at DOE. NRC staff are not read into the SAP, because the Commission does not allow NRC personal to be polygraphed—a DOE requirement for learning about IND’s.

Therefore, the NRC does not understand the full risk posed by these two Category

I facilities.

Mr. EVERETT. With respect to the overall weapons design work at the three national labs and the shifts in Work for Others efforts for the intelligence community

and for homeland security, is it time to take a fresh look at all (not just ‘‘weapons

design’’) work done at the three labs and make some strategic decisions for reallocating the nature of work done let’s say 10 years from now so as to achieve a

healthy balance between the labs while retaining the ‘‘peer review’’ concept?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. Our plans for ‘‘Complex 2030’’ assume that we will continuously

evolve the work of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) design

laboratories over the next 10–15 years. While the future research and development

complex would retain two independent centers of excellence for nuclear weapons

work at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (each supported by Sandia National Laboratories for non-nuclear component

design) we may make changes that will reallocate the nature of work done at an

individual lab to achieve a healthy balance among the labs. At the same time, we

plan to eliminate redundant capabilities and programs reflected in today’s complex.

In eliminating redundancies, however, we must ensure that intellectual competition

required for truly independent peer review and assessment (critically important for

an anticipated continued moratorium on nuclear tests), and essential capabilities for

nuclear weapons science and technology are preserved.

Further, we intend to identify and pursue additional strategic collaboration with

other agency programs that provide technical challenges, enabling stewardship missions and national security. That process of strategic planning with other agencies

will include intelligence and homeland security communities and should provide

broader knowledge of overall program character and balance for the NNSA and

other agencies in part to keep broad peer review enabled.
106

Mr. EVERETT. At what point in the future do you think NNSA will realistically

know whether you will be able to shift from the existing Life Extension Programs

for our legacy weapons to the new Reliable Replacement Warhead program? What

specific aspects of the complex would be most impacted by a potential future shift

to an RRW-only nuclear stockpile?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is working in partnership with the Department of Defense (DOD) to define the most efficient stockpile transformation strategy. It is our desire to establish this transformation plan in a timely manner. Thus, our objective is to establish an all-Reliable

Replacement Warhead stockpile plan as soon as practical after the benefits of the

RRW have been confirmed and engineering development of the first warhead has

been authorized by the Nuclear Weapons Council.

NNSA and DOD are evaluating how to achieve an objective where RRW warheads

comprise the majority of the stockpile by 2030. Early planning indicates that some

refurbished (e.g., W76–1) and long-life (e.g., B83) legacy weapons will remain in the

stockpile for augmentation until the mid to late 2030s. Every part of the nuclear

weapons complex will be involved and made more efficient in a transformation to

an RRW-only nuclear weapons stockpile. Transformation to a responsive infrastructure, as outlined in the ‘‘Complex 2030’’ vision, is enabled through transformation

of the stockpile with RRW concepts.

Mr. EVERETT. The Overskei Task Force recommended that new storage facilities

for storage of Category I/II nuclear materials should be constructed underground.

Given the design and construction problems that NNSA has experienced on the

HEUMF project at Y–12, has NNSA considered starting over with a new, more robust design for an underground facility as has been suggested by POGO?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. None of the recent developments suggest a weakness in the current facility for the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF). We

have found no problems with the current design and the construction subcontractor’s performance problems were resolved within a few months. Construction has resumed.

The choice between an underground and an aboveground design involves balancing many factors and all relevant factors were considered during validation of

HEUMF’s requirements. Each alternative offers unique advantages and disadvantages. Although some believe an underground design is inherently more secure,

modern military technology for penetration of defenses weakens the case for the underground design and modern defensive technology strengthens the case for the

aboveground design. The final choice has to balance all relevant factors to select the

design that balances all considerations.

Over two years before the Task Force’s report, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had evaluated the aboveground and underground alternatives

found the aboveground alternative to meet the Design Basis Threat (DBT) with an

adequate performance margin at a lower construction costs. The HEUMF project

began construction in 2004, well before the Task Force prepared its recommendation.

NNSA routinely evaluates its projects in light of new developments, however postconstruction design changes such as those recommended by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) will be very expensive and are not feasible. The 2004

changes to the DBT required extending the highest security features to an additional part of the facility. Making even this relatively modest design after start of

construction has delayed the project by over eight months at a considerable increase

in costs. A more fundamental change such as the addition of berms around the facility walls would require a major redesign of the entire facility and delay the project

by one or more years. Addition of the berm’s weight (a less significant structural

change than total burial per POGO’s recommendation) requires significantly more

complex and expensive construction to meet nuclear seismic requirements. The significant delays and additional costs would not provide a commensurate improvement

in security response over the robust security response already provided by the less

complicated and inherently less expensive aboveground design.

NNSA will not approach the design of future high security nuclear materials facilities with any preconceived notions or a priori constraints on the design, but will

instead continue to evaluate the full range of alternatives.

Mr. EVERETT. Recently, we have heard that the Russian Federation may not be

inclined to support Russian funding for construction of a Russian Mixed Oxide or

MOX facility for the disposition of excess weapons grade plutonium under the 2000

agreement signed by Russia and the United States. Assuming for a moment that

the Russians did not proceed with a program to dispose of their excess plutonium

under this agreement, would the Department of Energy nevertheless recommend

that the United States proceed with the South Carolina MOX facility to dispose of
107

excess U.S. weapons-grade plutonium as a domestic plutonium disposition project?

Aside from MOX, what are our other options for plutonium disposition in the United

States?

Mr. ANDERSON. Although officials from the Russian Federation have informed the

United States that they will use light water reactor technology to dispose of plutonium only if the costs are fully funded by international contributions, they have repeatedly stated that they remain committed to the 2000 agreement, in which both

countries agreed to dispose of 34 tons of excess plutonium. We expect the Russian

Federation to live up to its commitment. While discussions continue about the type

of technology the Russians may use for plutonium disposition, the Department of

Energy has decided to begin construction of the MOX facility in South Carolina this

fall. Construction in South Carolina will proceed irrespective of the timing of Russian decisions about plutonium disposition.

As part of a 2002 review of non-proliferation programs, DOE considered more

than forty approaches with twelve distinct options, which were considered for more

detailed analysis for plutonium disposition. A list of the options that were examined

is available in the February 15, 2002 ‘‘Report to Congress: Disposition of Surplus

Defense Plutonium at Savannah River Site.’’ As a result of the review, DOE confirms its decision to pursue a disposition approach that involves irradiating plutonium as mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in nuclear reactors.

Mr. EVERETT. You were just assigned to serve as Chairman of the Nuclear Materials Disposition and Consolidation Coordination Committee last November. However, this committee is aware of similar efforts that preceded your current committee’s tasking although it does not appear that previous efforts have actually developed a consolidation plan. What is your understanding of why it has taken so long

for the Department to get where it is today on the issue of material consolidation?

Mr. ANDERSON. Prior to the end of the Cold War, responsibility for management

of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) nuclear materials resided with a single entity,

the Nuclear Materials Production program. Following the end of the Cold War, national priorities shifted from producing the nuclear materials necessary to support

our national security to non-proliferation and cleaning up the weapons complex.

Thus, responsibility for management of the DOE’s existing nuclear materials was

re-assigned to the individual programs that needed to use the materials. These programs have diverse missions (national security, science, energy production, and environmental cleanup) and the sequence of consolidation and disposition activities

must be carefully considered to assess the effects on a range of programs to avoid

hindering mission objectives, and to comply with all applicable laws and regulations.

To address these cross-organizational issues, the restructured Nuclear Materials

Disposition and Consolidation Coordination Committee has representatives from all

affected organizations to formulate and implement integrated consolidation solutions.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SKELTON

Mr. SKELTON. People are always the key to any successful transformation. And

it is the people working at the Kansas City Plant that deserve the credit for its reputation for delivering on commitments. That sustained excellence and value would

be jeopardized by moving the mission away from the skilled people and the region.

Do you acknowledge the risk to the mission of moving operations to another site?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. I acknowledge that there are risks to the mission of moving operations to another site. Throughout the history of the nuclear weapons program

there have been mission shifts that have resulted in cessation of operations at one

site and movement of work, and people, to other sites. The end of the Cold War

started a transformation of the nuclear weapons complex that resulted in shifting

missions from facilities in Mound, Ohio, and Pinellas, Florida. Similarly, problems

with the operation of the Rocky Flats Plant resulted in its closure and subsequent

movement of some of its operations to other sites. The Kansas City Plant was a beneficiary of past mission reassignments, such as its current reservoir work and secure

transport work. In addition, we also acknowledge that people frequently underestimate the challenges of transferred a skilled workforce to a different location. We intend to weigh these risks as we plan for continuing the transformation of the weapons complex.

Mr. SKELTON. Currently, the Kansas City Plant contracts with commercial firms

for about 50 percent of the non-nuclear parts for our nation’s nuclear weapons. Is

outsourcing this large a part of our nuclear weapons production base strategically

wise? How can we be assured of the pedigree of the firms and the parts if you expand the share of our nuclear weapons parts that are outsourced?
108

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The degree of outsourcing is both strategically wise and economically essential. Most of the military technology that the Department of Defense acquires comes from the defense industrial base, as does a substantial amount of the

equipment purchased by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and

other agencies with national security responsibilities, such as the Department of

Homeland Security. In our vision of the future, we plan to procure non-nuclear components from commercial suppliers through a supply chain management center

when this is technically and economically the best solution. We will make non-nuclear parts when this is the best choice for cost or security reasons. One of the key

capabilities that have evolved at the Kansas City Plant is in this area of supply

chain management, in addition to maintaining the in-house design and manufacturing capability for selected parts, components, and subsystems.

Mr. SKELTON. I understand that the contractors for NNSA’s Pantex and Y–12

Plants both received 5-year contract extensions recently. In light of these decisions,

can you explain why the Kansas City Plant contractor received only a 2-year extension?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The decision on the more limited contract extension was taken

after a thorough review and extensive consideration. It was not a reflection on the

performance of the managing and operating contractor, Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technology. We are addressing the changing requirements within the

nuclear weapons program. We have been concerned about the costs of maintaining

both aging facilities and larger facility footprints than we believe are currently required. Unlike the nuclear facilities, which are also undergoing significant footprint

reduction involving large acreage and many buildings, the Kansas City Plant is located in a portion of one very large building—originally intended to produce military

aircraft engines for World War II. We limited the extension to two years as part

of a broader strategy to look at options to reduce the footprint in place, to identify

an attractive local alternative, or to consider mission relocation. As the Congress is

aware, the Department of Energy has been encouraged to look at the overall makeup of the nuclear weapons complex during this period and there was an Infrastructure Task Force of the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board that performed a specific study in response to Congressional direction. This two-year extension also provides the National Nuclear Security Administration with management flexibility to

respond appropriately to Secretary of Energy guidance stemming from the Task

Force report and other considerations. It should also be noted that the Department

of Energy retains the option to extend the contract further.

Mr. SKELTON. I understand part of your plan for consolidating the nuclear weapons complex includes creating a new non-nuclear production facility by 2012. What

are the advantages of building a new facility over modifying the current KCP and

how do you plan to finance this new facility?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. The National Nuclear Security Administration is carefully considering options for non-nuclear production over the long-term. We are considering

the pros and cons of a new production facility—one that is modern, safer, appropriately secure, more energy efficient and environmentally sensitive, and right-sized

for the known and projected workload. The current Kansas City Plant is old, has

environmental issues, is bigger than our current needs require, does not have an

optimal energy profile, is costly to operate and maintain, and would be expensive

to refurbish. Current analyses indicate that a new non-nuclear production facility

designed according to modern manufacturing principles would be more cost-effective

to operate. A new facility, properly designed for the mission, would be easily

reconfigurable to meet current and future production requirements, use modern

open layouts to minimize barriers to product flow, and would incorporate technology-enabled business practices. The financing of either a major refurbishment or

new facility is a challenge—one that will be addressed as part of our planning and

budgeting.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. TAUSCHER

Ms. TAUSCHER. Can you give us your concept of what, depending on the answer

for this study, what you think the opportunities are going forward on the pit facility

and how that kind of goes into everything else?

Mr. D’AGOSTINO. An understanding of the changes in the mechanical properties

of plutonium with age remains essential to our ability to design and certify a nuclear weapons stockpile that is sustainable for the long-term absent nuclear testing.

Along these lines, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has been

working closely with the Department of Defense to understand plausible future

stockpile compositions and sizes and their implications for required pit production
109

capability and capacity. Specifically, stockpile scenarios have been evaluated with

respect to weapon lifetimes, production rates, and transforming the stockpile by the

2030s to determine the component production capacity that best balances the trades

between these parameters. These considerations led to our plan for pit production

in the near-term at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) TA–55 facility and

in the longer term, at a new consolidated plutonium center for pit production and

plutonium research and development requiring significant plutonium quantities.

The production capacity that can be established at TA–55 beginning in 2012—

about 30–50 pits per year—is not sufficient to meet anticipated future needs. There

are three reasons why we believe this to be true. First, our best estimate of minimum pit lifetime is 45–60 years. That estimate is under review at our national laboratories and we anticipate that by the end of FY 2006, the NNSA will complete

an extensive effort to provide system-specific pit lifetime estimates. Nonetheless, we

must anticipate that, as the stockpile ages, we will need to replace substantial numbers of plutonium pits in stockpiled warheads. Second, even if pits were to live forever, we will require substantial production capacity in order to introduce, once feasibility is established, significant numbers of Reliable Replacement Warheads

(RRW) into the stockpile by 2030. We should not assume that RRW could employ

existing pits and still provide important efficiencies for stockpile and infrastructure

transformation. Finally, at significantly smaller stockpile levels than today, we must

anticipate that an adverse change in the geopolitical threat environment, or a technical problem with warheads in the operationally-deployed force, could require us

to manufacture and deploy additional warheads on a relatively rapid timescale.

All this argues for a production capacity that exceeds that planned for TA–55. For

planning purposes, an annual production capacity of about 125 war reserve pits per

year is about right. This capacity assumes nominal single shift production rates and

provides a surge capacity with multiple shifts to support short-term unexpected

threats.

Æ