National security agencies doing business with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons laboratories should establish a “formally recognized” strategic partnership with the Department of Energy, a National Academy of Sciences panel said in a recently released report that stops short of advocating major upheaval to the governance model for the labs. The Committee on Assessment of the Governance Structure of the NNSA National Security Laboratories, chaired by former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard Meserve, suggested the strategic partnership would give agencies like the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence a “seat at the governance table for the laboratories,” which it called a “more modest approach” that would strengthen the governance structure already in place. “As strategic partners, the national security agencies would have the responsibility to help the laboratories and their sponsor understand the larger national security agenda and enable the laboratories to meet future national security needs beyond nuclear weapons,” the panel said. “This strategic partnership relationship stems from the national security agencies’ vested interest in the laboratories’ performance and development of capabilities to support the agencies’ future mission needs.”
Other agencies poured $1.66 billion into the weapons complex in Fiscal Year 2013, with Work For Others representing 36 percent of Sandia National Laboratories’ budget and 9 percent of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s budget, the commission said. A Mission Executive Council currently helps oversee work for other agencies at the lab through a 2010 Memorandum of Understanding between DOE, DHS, DoD and the Director of National Intelligence, and the panel recommended strengthening the MEC and tasking it with coordinating investments from other agencies in the labs. While admittedly modest, the panel’s recommendations are “designed to create a sustainably successful collaborative relationship among DOE, the other national security agencies, and the national security laboratories,” the panel said. “Implementing these recommendations would increase the probability that critical NNSA laboratory capabilities to support the national security of the United States will be available when needed in the future.”
Jobs