The National Nuclear Security Administration’s modular plutonium strategy planned for Los Alamos National Laboratory received the backing of House and Senate lawmakers in the negotiated version of the Fiscal Year 2014 National Defense Authorization Act. House and Senate leaders last night released details about the expansive legislation, and the bill largely mirrors a provision in the Senate Armed Services Committee-passed version of the bill requiring the Nuclear Weapons Council to verify that the plutonium strategy meets pit production requirements and will achieve full operations for at least two modular facilities by 2027. The modular plutonium strategy has emerged as a leading candidate to replace the deferred Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility, and is expected to be a significantly cheaper alternative to the multi-billion-dollar CMRR-NF. “We are aware that further detail on requirements and plans for the modular approach are being developed and refined,” the bill’s joint explanatory statement said. “We expect the Nuclear Weapons Council to keep Congress informed as the modular approach is developed and implemented to meet requirements for pit production and a responsive infrastructure.”
Overall, the bill authorizes $11.7 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration, a $72.8 million increase from the Obama Administration’s budget request that splits the difference between House and Senate versions of the bill. The bill authorizes $7.9 billion for NNSA’s weapons activities, a $40 million boost over the budget request, and $2.2 billion for the agency’s nonproliferation account, which is also a $40 million increase from the budget request. Among the other provisions in the bill, language requiring the Government Accountability Office to assess the cost savings associated with new NNSA management and operating contract awards emerged from negotiations largely unscathed, though lawmakers doubled GAO’s reporting requirement to 180 days and clarified that the report was not to interfere with any award protests. A House-drafted provision giving the Secretary of Energy the authority to fire federal employees for endangering national security—conceived in the wake of last year’s Y-12 security breach—was stripped from the bill and replaced with language requiring a report by March 15, 2014, on the authorities available to the Secretary of Energy to terminate federal employees.
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