ARMS CONTROL GROUP RIPS NNSA FOR LATEST SPATE OF SLIP-UPS

With the National Nuclear Security Administration last week revealing the need for a costly redesign of the Uranium Processing Facility and potential cost and schedule delays on the W76 warhead life extension program, an arms control group asserted that such issues are the “new norm” around the weapons complex. “NNSA’s bad week caps off an equally bad, if not worse, year,” Nick Roth, a policy fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, wrote on the Nukes of Hazard blog Friday, also referencing the expected rise (approximately $2 billion) in the baseline for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, the deferral of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility, a jump in the cost of the B61 refurbishment, and the July security breach at the Y-12 National Security Complex. But Roth offered a unique contributor to the NNSA’s problems: the relative lack of support during the Bush Administration. “Under the Bush administration NNSA was handed billions of dollars, but asked to do very little,” Roth wrote. “Almost all of its major programs—the Reliable Replacement Warhead, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, and the Modern Pit Facility, to name a few—never received approval from Congress. Now that tasks actually need to be completed, NNSA is not capable of getting the job done and, unless something is done, the situation is unlikely to improve.”