A bipartisan group of eight Senators wants the Obama Administration to reverse course on the deferred Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility, and they are appealing to the Department of Defense to lead the effort. In a June 29 letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta obtained by NW&M Monitor, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) urged Panetta to keep the multi-billion-dollar project on pace to begin operating in 2024, taking their fight outside the National Nuclear Security Administration and to the agency’s primary nuclear weapons customer. In February, the Administration decided to defer work on the project for at least five years as it pursue an alternative plan to meet the nation’s plutonium needs, but the move triggered backlash in Congress, especially among Republicans in the House and Senate. Some, like Corker, have suggested that the Administration’s pullback on modernization promises made during debate on the New START Treaty endangered support of future treaties, and the Senators reiterated that stance again in the letter to Panetta. “We believe that the administration should begin the necessary planning and include in the FY14 budget and beyond funding for CMRR-NF’s completion. The Department of Defense and NNSA are collectively responsible for maintaining the nuclear deterrent. We therefore urge you to work with the administration and NNSA to continue CMRR-NF design activities this year and build an out-year budget to support construction and operation by 2024,” the Senators wrote, noting that language in the final version of the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act was likely to require the completion of the project under that timeline.
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Article of 6
March 17, 2014
GROUP OF SENS. WANT PENTAGON TO PUSH FOR REVIVAL OF CMRR-NF
In contrast to Congressional appropriators, authorizers in the House and Senate provided funding to keep the project alive in FY2013—though they differed on how that should be done, and the amount of money authorized—while prohibiting money from being spent on the Administration’s alternative plutonium plans. The Senators suggested that action should spur the Pentagon to push to revive the project. “The current NNSA alternative strategy does not meet critical national defense mission requirements,” the Senators wrote. “Given the recent action by the House and the Senate Armed Services Committees, there is clear support for funding and for the administration’s plan, as stated in the 1251 report, to build CMRR-NF and ‘ensure the United States can maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal over the long-term.’ ”