Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
5/23/2014
A new report by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability calls for a massive change to U.S. nuclear modernization plans, again recommending a “curatorship” approach that would halt current life extension efforts. “Rather than introduce uncertainty into the stockpile through unnecessary Life Extension Programs, NNSA should maintain the currently reliable US weapons stockpile in a safe and secure status until weapons are retired,” says the report released this week, which is titled “Billion Dollar Boondoggles: Challenging the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Plan to Spend More Money for Less Security.”
What “curatorship” would mean, according to the anti-nuclear group, is stopping Fiscal Year 2015 funding for the B61 life extension program, cancelling plans for a trio of interoperable warheads, and abandoning the “3+2” strategy for modernizing the stockpile. The report also called on the NNSA to retire the W78 warhead “since the more modern W87 is already available to sit atop Minuteman III ICBMs for as long as ICBMs remain in the stockpile.”
Group Calls ‘Curatorship’ Safer, Cheaper Approach
At the same time, surveillance of the existing nuclear stockpile would continue and components would be replaced only if it was shown they had degraded so much as to compromise safety and reliability. “Curatorship will preserve a safer, more reliable arsenal and save taxpayers billions of dollars,” the group said. “While curatorship is not in and of itself the disarmament called for under the NPT, foreswearing novel designs and features is more consistent with our treaty obligations and more supportive of our global nonproliferation objectives than the current program.”
Curatorship would also allow the NNSA to align its infrastructure needs with its new mission requirements and would negate the need for a new Uranium Processing Facility, and the report called on more limited life component replacement work to take place at the Pantex Plant rather than at the Y-12 National Security Complex. Another major infrastructure project, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, should be halted, the group said.
Group Recommends Strengthened Federal Oversight of NNSA
With several Congressionally mandated panels taking a look at the NNSA’s future, the group recommended that oversight of the agency should be beefed up, rather than lessened, as some have suggested. “Unnecessary red tape should be cut when possible, but federal oversight should be stronger, not weaker,” the group said, noting that the reviews should “take a hard look at meaningful reform, including consolidation and realignment of NNSA sites.”
The group also suggested that the directors of the NNSA’s three weapons laboratories—as the presidents of the limited liability corporations that run the labs—have a financial interest in proposing more life extension work for the nation’s nuclear stockpile and it recommended stripping the directors of their role as the head of the contractor organizations. “The three weapons lab directors have a statutory responsibility to annually certify that the U.S. stockpile is safe and reliable,” the group wrote. “At the same time, they are proposing a never-ending cycle of Life Extension Programs that will profit their corporations but could undermine reliability through changes made to existing nuclear weapons. The lab directors’ roles should be separated to eliminate any possible question of conflicts-of-interest.”
