In the mid-1990s, Congress directed DOE to develop the Stockpile Stewardship Program to provide a single, highly integrated technical program for maintaining the continued safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile. Stockpile stewardship comprises activities associated with conducting nuclear weapons research, design, and development; maintaining the knowledge base and capabilities to support nuclear weapons testing; and assessing and certifying nuclear weapons safety and reliability. Stockpile stewardship includes operations associated with producing, maintaining, refurbishing, surveilling, and dismantling the nuclear weapons stockpile. The Stockpile Stewardship Program’s objectives were updated as a result of the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which establishes the U.S. nuclear policy for the next 5 to 10 years, including the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile requirements. The Nuclear Posture Review and the Stockpile Stewardship Program reinforce the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia. As part of this treaty, the United States has agreed to reduce the size of its strategic nuclear weapons stockpile from a maximum of 2,200 to 1,550 weapons, with the remaining weapons in the stockpile continuing to be an essential element of U.S. defense strategy. Nuclear stockpile requirements include a pit production capacity that is defined by estimating the number of pits NNSA needs to manufacture annually to effectively support the nuclear weapons stockpile. The demand for pits has fluctuated over the past decade for various reasons. Until 2005, NNSA planned to produce pits in a large-scale manufacturing plant to be built called the Modern Pit Facility, which would have increased pit production capacity per year to a range of 125 to 450 pits. This project was terminated and, at around the same time, NNSA began to study a new approach for modernizing the stockpile, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which would have produced 50 pits per year and which was also short-lived. Through this program, NNSA would have designed new weapon components, including pits, to be safer and easier to manufacture, maintain, dismantle, and certify without nuclear testing. Since 2008, NNSA’s guidance has established pit capacity for future production at about 20 pits per year, with an upper range limit of 80 pits per year. In addition, NNSA has recently determined that pit lifetimes are longer than anticipated and that it may increase the reuse of existing pits, reducing the demand for newly manufactured pits. Currently, pit capacity requirements are uncertain and still in flux. Demand may again fluctuate as a result of the Nuclear Posture Review and changes to the Stockpile Stewardship Program. For example, there are still unknowns in implementing the Nuclear Posture Review and modernization work on each nuclear weapon type may require a varied number of new pits. To execute the activities to maintain and refurbish the nation’s existing nuclear weapons stockpile, NNSA oversees eight sites that comprise its nuclear security enterprise—formerly known as the nuclear weapons complex—which includes three national weapons laboratories, four production plants, and a test site, all of which carry out missions to support NNSA’s programs. One of these sites, Los Alamos National Laboratory, plays a crucial role in carrying out NNSA’s maintenance of the nuclear weapons stockpile, including (1) production of weapons components, (2) assessment and certification of the nuclear weapons stockpile, (3) surveillance of weapons components and weapon systems, (4) assurance of the safe and secure storage of strategic materials, and (5) management of excess plutonium inventories. Los Alamos was established in 1943 during the Manhattan Project in northern New Mexico. It is a multidisciplinary, multipurpose institution primarily engaged in theoretical and experimental research and development. A significant portion of Los Alamos’ work is focused on ensuring that nuclear weapons stockpile needs are met. Since 2000, pit production has been established within the Plutonium Facility Complex at Los Alamos’s Technical Area 55, and certified pits have been produced over the past 5 years in that facility. A particularly important facility at Los Alamos within Technical Area 55 is the nearly 60-year-old Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility. The facility has unique capabilities for performing analytical chemistry, material characterization, and research and development related to plutonium. This includes activities that support the manufacturing, development, and surveillance of nuclear weapons pits; programs to extend the life of nuclear weapons in the stockpile; and nuclear weapon dismantlement efforts. This pit production mission support work was first assigned to Los Alamos in 1996. NNSA also currently maintains some plutonium-related research capabilities at other facilities, such as Livermore’s Superblock facility. These capabilities are necessary components of NNSA’s overall stockpile management strategy. NNSA and DOE also use the unique plutonium-related capabilities located at Los Alamos and Livermore to support the plutonium-related research needs of other national security missions and activities outside of the nuclear weapons stockpile work, including nuclear nonproliferation activities; homeland security activities, such as nuclear forensics and nuclear counterterrorism; waste management; and material recycle and recovery programs. The Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility was initially designed and constructed to comply with building codes in effect during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1992, recognizing that some of the utility systems and structural components were aging, outmoded, and generally deteriorating, DOE began upgrading the facility. These upgrades addressed specific safety, reliability, consolidation, and security issues with the intent of extending the useful life of the facility for an additional 20 to 30 years. However, beginning in about 1997 and continuing to the present, a series of additional operational and safety concerns have surfaced. In particular, a 1998 seismic study identified two small parallel faults beneath the northern portion of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility. The presence of these faults raised concerns about the structural integrity of the building in the event of an earthquake. DOE and NNSA determined that, over the long term, Los Alamos could not continue to operate the mission-critical support capabilities in the existing Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility at an acceptable level of risk to worker safety and health. To ensure that NNSA can fulfill its national security mission for the next 50 years in a safe, secure, and environmentally sound manner, NNSA decided in 2004 to construct a replacement facility, known as the CMRR. Federal agencies, including DOE and NNSA, have experienced long- standing difficulties in completing major projects within cost and on schedule. To provide assistance in preparing high-quality cost and schedule estimates, we compiled best practices used throughout government and industry and, in March 2009, issued a guide outlining the criteria for high-quality cost and schedule estimates. Specifically, our guide identified four characteristics of a high-quality, reliable cost estimate: (1) credible, (2) well-documented, (3) accurate, and (4) comprehensive.should result in high-quality cost estimates and hundreds of best practices drawn from across industry and government for carrying out these steps. For example, one of the key steps includes conducting an independent cost estimate––that is, one generated by an entity that has no stake in the approval of the project but uses the same detailed technical information as the project estimate. Having an independent entity perform such a cost estimate and comparing it to the project team’s estimate provides an unbiased test of whether the project team’s cost estimate is reasonable. In addition, our cost guide lays out 12 key steps that Our guide also identified nine best practices for effectively estimating schedules: (1) capturing key activities, (2) sequencing key activities, (3) assigning resources to key activities, (4) establishing the duration of key activities, (5) integrating key activities horizontally and vertically, (6) establishing the critical path for key activities, (7) identifying total float (i.e., the time that activities can slip before the delay affects the completion date), (8) performing a risk analysis of the schedule, and (9) updating the schedule using logic and durations to determine dates. Many of these practices have also been incorporated into DOE’s recent guidance for establishing performance baselines. GAO-09-3SP. The estimated cost to construct the CMRR, according to estimates prepared in April 2010, is nearly six times higher than the project’s initial cost estimate that was prepared in 2005. The project’s estimated completion date has also been delayed by at least 8 to 12 years. Our review of these most recent detailed cost and schedule estimates for the CMRR project found that the estimates generally reflect best practices, but are not yet entirely reliable. Since CMRR was first proposed, its costs have risen significantly, and its schedule has been repeatedly delayed. Specifically, in 2005, when DOE developed initial plans for CMRR, it estimated that the project would cost from $745 million to $975 million and would be completed between 2013 and 2017. This estimate was prepared using preliminary information— before a detailed project design was substantially under way—and was therefore considered by DOE to be a rough estimate. In April 2010, NNSA estimated that the CMRR will cost between $3.7 and $5.8 billion—a nearly six-fold increase from the initial estimate—and that construction will be complete by 2020—a 3- to 7-year delay. In February 2012, after we had provided NNSA with a draft of this report for its comments, NNSA announced that it had decided to defer CMRR construction by at least an additional 5 years, bringing the total delay from NNSA’s original plans to 8 to 12 years. NNSA officials explained that the majority of the cost increases occurred because of changes to the facility’s design and because of project delays. Specifically, Modifications to the facility’s design.