William Goldstein confirmed Tuesday he will retire as director of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as soon as the nation’s second nuclear-design facility finishes the potentially lengthy search for a replacement.
Goldstein became the Livermore, Calif., lab’s 12th director on March 31, 2014. He joined the laboratory’s Physics Directorate in 1984 and remained at Livermore for 36 years, according to the press release announcing his retirement. Linda Bauer is the current deputy director.
The nationwide search for Goldstein’s replacement “will take some time,” a lab spokesperson said Tuesday afternoon by email.
Lab prime Lawrence Livermore National Security will be on the job at the Bay Area design operation until at least Sept. 30, 2024, under the roughly $2-billion-per-year contract awarded in 2007 by DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The team, led by the University of California and Bechtel National, earned that one-year contract option in fiscal 2019 and can earn another two: one each in 2020 and 2021, potentially stretching the contract out as far as Sept. 30, 2026.
Among a number of roles at Livermore, Goldstein has led the site’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program, its Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, its Physical Data Research Program — which he established, the lab said in Tuesday’s release — and creation of the Jupiter Laser Facility that scientists can book to study the behavior of materials in nuclear-weapon-like conditions. He also currently serves as president of Lawrence Livermore National Security.
Livermore has two major weapons-modernization programs coming down the pike in the twilight of Goldstein’s leadership: the W87-1 warhead that will tip future Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missiles; and the W80-4 warhead slated for use on the Long-Range Standoff weapon, which will replace the AGM-86b air-launched cruise missile now carried by B-52H bombers. The Air Force wants to deploy both new missiles around 2030.
The W80-4, a refurbishment of the W80-1, will be up first for Livermore, with a first production unit slated for 2025: the second to last year of the current prime contract, assuming the NNSA picks up all the options. The agency’s Office of Cost Estimating and Program Evaluation has warned the first production unit for the new air-launched cruise-missile warhead could stretch into 2026. The W80-1 now tips the current generation of cruise missiles.
The NNSA expects to spend between $7.5 billion and $11.5 billion to build the W80-4 over the 17 years spanning 2015 through 2032. The Air Force plans to buy about 1,000 Long-Range Standoff weapon missiles.
Next, Livermore has the W87-1, the first production unit of which it expects to finish in 2030, according to the NNSA’s 2020 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan. That warhead will use brand new plutonium-pit cores designed at Livermore, the first war-ready versions of which are supposed to be cast at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in fiscal 2024. In an early stage, inflation-adjusted estimate from its 2020 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, the NNSA projected the revamped warhead could cost about $12.5 billion to complete.
The first batch of the GBSD might use current-generation W87-0 warheads from existing Minuteman III missiles, though the Air Force would first have to qualify the payloads for use on the replacements. The Air Force plans to buy more than 650 Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent missiles, which will replace the current ICBM fleet on a one-for-one basis. The service has about 400 Minuteman III missiles on alert and expects the GBSD to cost about $100 billion over its lifetime into the 2080s.
