The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation is considering a massive reorganization, reshuffling its six offices into a more functional approach that reduces overlap between different program areas, NW&M Monitor has learned. While the NNSA declined to comment on its plans, the timing may be right to examine how the nonproliferation account is structured. NNSA nonproliferation work is at a crossroads, with the President’s four-year goal to lockdown vulnerable nuclear material around the world ending, the scope of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program changing, and the Office of Fissile Materials Disposition undergoing a review of alternatives to the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
Though funding for the program is decreasing, the agency is still expecting to play a major role in the Obama Administration’s nuclear security agenda, but because the nonproliferation account grew quickly as the importance of its mission increased over the last two decades, there was never a broad strategy for how the office could be organized in the most effective and efficient manner. With funding decreasing for the program, NNSA officials have pushed to make the program do more with less resources, proposing a more streamlined organizational structure based on the different functions of the office.
One concept being considered, NW&M Monitor has learned, would create an Office of Material Protection responsible for safeguarding and securing nuclear materials and a separate Office of Material Elimination in charge of decreasing stocks of weapons-usable nuclear materials. Other offices would include an Office of Detection and Interdiction, an Office of Research and Development, and an Office of Policy Planning. Another concept being considered would create an Office of Global Material Security responsible for securing nuclear and radiological materials and an Office of Material Elimination and Disposition in addition to R&D and Policy offices. The nonproliferation account is currently divided into an Office of Global Threat Reduction, an Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development, an Office of Nonproliferation and International Security, an Office of International Material Protection and Cooperation, and an Office of Fissile Materials Disposition. While no decisions have been made about the reorganization, NW&M Monitor has learned that NNSA nonproliferation officials are hoping to have a plan finalized as part of the Fiscal Year 2015 budget process. NNSA spokesman Robert Middaugh declined to comment on the agency’s plans.
