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Disarmament DiplomacyIssue No. 57, May 2001Documents and SourcesUS Energy Secretary Testimony Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Statement to the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, May 2, 2001; Department of Energy text, http://www.energy.gov/HQDocs/testimony/2001/20010502.htm. "This budget...maintains the administration's flexibility to respond to government-wide policy reviews now underway. The Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review...[and] the National Security Council reviews of US deterrence requirements and non-proliferation programs...figure heavily in the Department's current budget and its future year planning. Pending future decisions as a result of the reviews, the budget seeks to preserve program options by maintaining core requirements in areas under review unless a change was dictated by a Presidential commitment. ... FY 2002 Funding Request for National Security Programs The Department of Energy preserves US national security by managing our nation's nuclear arsenal and working to reduce the global danger from the proliferation of nuclear materials and other weapons of mass destruction. A total of $7.2 billion is requested in FY 2002 for DOE National Security programs, an increase of $180.5 million from the FY 2001 appropriated level. The FY 2002 request refocuses funding priorities to meet critical national security needs. This budget protects the operational readiness of the nuclear weapons stockpile. We are conducting surveillance, experiments, and simulations for individual weapons and weapon systems. At the same time, we are investing in advanced scientific and manufacturing capabilities for the future to ensure the capability to accurately assess weapon status, extend weapon life, and certify that the stockpile remains safe and reliable. We are also emphasizing Safeguards and Security throughout the DOE complex. This budget provides $1.03 billion for these activities across major program budgets, an increase of $100.6 million. Protection of the DOE complex from physical and cyber intrusions is a top priority. This request clarifies accountability and responsibility by providing Safeguards and Security funding within the program office requests. These activities will be managed by the responsible program offices and overall policies will be determined through the Office of Security and Emergency Operations. National Nuclear Security Administration The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is in its second year of implementation. It was created by the Congress to respond to the changing and complex set of challenges in the national security environment. The FY 2002 funding request for the NNSA addresses these challenges by making significant investments to maintain our nation's nuclear weapons arsenal, shore up an aging weapons infrastructure, and improve safeguards and security throughout the DOE complex. The FY 2002 budget request for programs within the National Nuclear Security Administration total $6.8 billion, a $136.1 million increase over the FY 2001 appropriation, including:
Within this total, funding has been shifted to Weapons Activities to increase support for the critical needs of our nuclear weapons stockpile. Weapons Activities As I have stated on several occasions, I believe my most sobering and important responsibility as the Secretary of Energy is to certify to the President each year that the US nuclear arsenal remains safe, secure and reliable. Annual certifications, the fifth completed in January of this year, are a measure of the success of National Nuclear Security Administration's Stockpile Stewardship Program. The success of that program is a tribute to the excellent work of the men and women who carry out the various stockpile stewardship activities - from surveillance and evaluation to research and development. I've talked to many of them since becoming Secretary, and I already have started travelling to the labs, plants, and field offices to meet these dedicated professionals. We must be careful not to take actions which might hinder these people from performing their best work or we risk jeopardizing our confidence in this nation's nuclear deterrence, the cornerstone of our national security strategy. The Administration is now conducting reviews to determine an appropriate national security strategy for this country and will include the role of nuclear deterrence and possibly a position on the size of the future nuclear stockpile. In the case of DoD, the Administration plans to determine final FY 2002 and outyear funding needs when these reviews are complete. This review could also impact DOE's NNSA weapons related programs. ... Reducing the size of our active stockpile, without the complete retirement of a weapon system or the dismantlement of a significant number of warheads in the inactive stockpile, will not have a significant impact on the requirements and costs of the Stockpile Stewardship Program for the outyears. It is not well understood that, even if the strategic review concludes that a weapon system can be retired from the stockpile, the workload at select facilities will increase dramatically. Furthermore, a smaller, less diverse stockpile may require a more aggressive surveillance program to identify and fix any problems in the stockpile. As our stockpile continues to age, the significant investments in experimental and computational tools, as well as production infrastructure, must continue to allow our scientists and engineers to perform the required maintenance, assessments for certification, and refurbishments. I believe that the current stockpile age, and the potential reduction in numbers, dictate the need for these new capabilities, even if we were doing underground nuclear testing. Our pursuit of these capabilities has undoubtedly been hastened by the moratorium on underground testing. The nuclear weapons program in this country has always been on the cutting edge of science, helping us to attract the best and the brightest of our nation's scientists and engineers. The current budget request for Defense Programs of $5.3 billion supports all scheduled maintenance, evaluation, and certification activities during fiscal year 2003 for the current stockpile; supports the continuation of life extension activities for the W87; allows us to proceed with the refurbishment of the B61; and makes preparation for the potential refurbishments of the W76 and W80 systems. Overall, these refurbishments represent work on more than half of the stockpile; they are divided into blocks, rebuilding only limited groups of warheads at a time, and allowing for future decisions to continue with the remaining blocks, or retire given systems altogether. It is important to note that significant initial investments are required regardless of the final quantity of weapons to be refurbished and funds are included in our budget for many of these investments. The current budget request also supports the continued restoration of critical production capabilities, the manufacture of a certifiable W88 pit in FY 2003 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the production of tritium using Tennessee Valley Authority reactors beginning as early as October 2003. This request continues to support the development of some of our experimental and computational tools. The new schedule for the completion of the full National Ignition Facility design of 192 beams in FY 2008 as submitted to Congress last year, will be maintained. Construction of the second axis of the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrotest Facility (DARHT) will continue, with completion expected in the first quarter of FY 2003. The first axis of DARHT is already providing valuable weapons related data. Subcritical experiments at the Nevada Test Site will continue providing data on aging plutonium. Under this request, the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) will also continue to build on its extensive record of accomplishments. In FY 2002, the ASCI teams are expected to complete a first ever three-dimensional full weapon simulation. This budget request for Defense Programs will provide for the continued safe transportation of nuclear warheads, components and other Departmental materials. It will allow us to maintain the physical security of our facilities consistent with current requirements, begin to improve our cyber security in response to evolving threats, and provide maintenance funding for all facilities and sites at the current level. The Office of Defense Programs has conducted a strategic review of our facilities and is developing management tools to better manage our facilities infrastructure. Over the years, our nuclear weapons production plants degraded, leaving a tremendous backlog of deferred maintenance and modernization. The deterioration of existing facilities is a very serious threat to our mission readiness as well as overall safety. We must begin to address this problem by putting in place the management systems that allow us to identify funding and implement unified priorities for facilities maintenance. The current budget request will maintain our federal staffing levels at the current on-board level, including consolidation of the NNSA federal landlord and safeguards and security staffs, and will allow us to maintain current...employment levels. It is so important to recruit and retain the critical skills we desperately need as our cadre of experienced scientists, engineers, and manufacturing personnel reach retirement, and a new generation must be prepared to confidently take over the vital stewardship of our nation's nuclear deterrent. Defense Nuclear Non-Proliferation A total of $773.7 million is requested for Defense Nuclear Non-Proliferation programs. Although this is 11 percent below the FY 2001 appropriated level, it represents a $61.0 million or nine percent increase over the FY 2000 appropriation. The Office of Defense Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NN) supports US efforts to reduce the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Office works to: 1) detect the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction worldwide; 2) prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction material, technology and expertise; and 3) reverse the proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities. As you know, the Administration is in the process of developing a strategy to guide our interaction with Russia as well as performing a government-wide review of the non-proliferation programs with Russia. The request for Defense Nuclear Non-Proliferation activities allows flexibility to respond to these recommendations by maintaining core activities in the following areas:
The $206.0 million request for Research and Development includes: $38.2 million for Chemical and Biological national security to continue to develop technologies that respond to the potential use of chemical and biological weapons; $102.0 million for radiation and nuclear materials detection, micro-technologies, and satellite and ground-based nuclear explosion monitoring; and $40.1 million for Proliferation Detection activities to develop technologies - sensors for example - for remote monitoring of effluents such as gases that might be emitted from some proliferation activities, and to develop technologies for detecting physical features, such as the footprint of a facility that might be involved in proliferation activity. The $101.1 million FY 2002 request for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation activities includes $6.6 million for the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI) to create civilian ventures in one of Russia's 10 closed nuclear cities; $22.1 million for the International Proliferation Program (IPP) to promote employment and economic development opportunities for displaced nuclear weapons scientists and engineers who were part of the Russian nuclear weapons complex; $4.0 million for the Second Line of Defense program, to help the Russian State Customs Committee detect and deter illicit trafficking of nuclear materials; $16.7 million for the International Safeguards program to develop verification capabilities for monitoring the spent nuclear fuel placed in cans at Nyongbyon, North Korea, and support sustainability at 13 sites in the New Independent States where MPC&A [Materials Protection, Control & Accounting] upgrades have been completed; and $11.0 million for International Security for technical assistance to Kazakhstan to monitor and prepare for long-term security and storage requirements for plutonium-bearing spent fuel located at the BN-350 breeder reactor at Aktau. The Department will also provide technical expertise to work with North Korea to minimize corrosion of spent nuclear fuel cans at Nyongbyon. The FY 2002 request includes $138.8 million to continue International Materials Protection, Control and Accounting activities. In FY 2002, efforts to consolidate material and blend-down HEU at Russian civilian sites will be increased, offset by decreases in activities at Navy sites. The FY 2002 request includes $187.1 million for US and Russian surplus plutonium disposition activities, primarily to complete the MOX facility design. In FY 2002, work on the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility continues at a reduced rate, and work on the design of the Plutonium Immobilization and Associated Processing Facility is suspended. This request maintains commitments under the government-to-government agreement with Russia on Plutonium Disposition. The Administration policy review will take into account some of the changes that have occurred in Russia since our program began. The request includes $50 million for the Highly-Enriched Uranium Blend Down Project at the Savannah River Site to provide the capability to stabilize surplus uranium material at the site and ship it to commercial vendors for use in fabricating nuclear fuel for Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) reactors. In FY 2002, the HEU Transparency Implementation program will continue to convert Russian civilian highly-enriched uranium...to low-enriched uranium (LEU), and monitor the blend-down of Russian weapons-usable HEU for sale in the US for use in domestic nuclear power reactors. This program monitors the non-proliferation aspects of a February 1993 agreement between the US and the Russian Federation covering the US purchase, over twenty years, of LEU derived from at least 500 metric tons of HEU removed from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons. The FY 2002 request includes $14 million to continue to collect and analyze data to help provide overall confidence that the Russians are converting HEU from dismantled nuclear weapons into LEU. International Nuclear Safety and Cooperation implements lasting improvements in the nuclear safety culture and regulatory infrastructure for Soviet-design reactor operations in nine former Soviet Union countries. In FY 2002, the request includes $13.8 million for safety parameter display systems for the Ignalina and Novovoronezh nuclear power plants in Lithuania and Russia, respectively, and for operational safety improvements at plants in Ukraine. This program was instrumental in helping Ukraine shut-down the last operating reactor at the Chernobyl power plant and we anticipate helping other countries with Soviet-designed reactors to do the same. ..." © 2001 The Acronym Institute. |