The Obama Administration should drastically scale back its plans to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and arsenal and scuttle plans to build major facilities and pursue a new warhead modernization strategy, according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. The recommendations in the 81-page report, “Making Smart Security Choices,” would mark a stark reversal from many of the Administration’s policies, including its plans to build a new Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex. The report, which was released last week, suggests that the Administration should reanalyze its needs to produce new canned subassemblies—one of the primary missions of UPF—to see whether the facility is truly needed. Y-12 “may have more capacity than needed to produce new canned subassemblies,” the report suggests. One of the drivers for new canned subassemblies could be the Administration’s “3+2” strategy to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal, which would rely on two air-launched nuclear weapons and three interoperable warheads. According to the report, the strategy could create political and diplomatic problems for the Administration—the UCS report suggests it could be interpreted internationally as building new warheads—as well as technical issues. “The NNSA can vouch for the safety and reliability of currently deployed or refurbished warheads, but the same level of confidence may not be possible if the agency makes substantial modifications,” said former White House Office of Science and Technology Policy official Steve Fetter, one of the report’s co-authors.
REPORT RECOMMENDS MAJOR CUTS TO NUCLEAR MODERNIZATION PLANS
The report also recommends abandoning two major projects that are already under heavy scrutiny from the Administration: the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility that had been planned for Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction at the Savannah River Site. The CMRR-NF project has been deferred, and Los Alamos is currently exploring an approach to maintaining its plutonium mission that centers on building smaller, modular facilities, and the Administration has slowed work on the MOX project and is analyzing its plutonium disposition options.
Groups seek NEPA review of plan to issue surplus plutonium to private companies
The South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) is demanding the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) conduct a public environmental review of plans to provide 19.7 metric tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium to private nuclear companies. SCELP published the letter of demand Sept. 8 on behalf of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, […]