The Sandia National Laboratories’ Weapons Evaluation Test Laboratory (WETL) reached its testing baseline for four of eight U.S. nuclear weapons systems over a three-year period, the Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office said in a report Monday. The primary culprit was unanticipated equipment downtime, along with a new safety program and a change in the lab’s testing cycle, the IG said.
WETL, located at the Pantex Plant in Texas, employs centrifuges and other gear to test the functionality of nuclear warheads, specifically simulating the conditions of launch and atmospheric re-entry. The work supports the mission of DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration to ensure the U.S. nuclear arsenal remains safe, secure, and reliable.
From fiscal 2013 to 2015, WETL carried out 98 laboratory tests, including 88 of 107 of the established baseline – the number of such trials on a given weapon system as set by the NNSA and Sandia within a specific funding level. That was 82 percent of the total baseline.
WETL met the quota for the W76-0 warhead and B83 gravity bomb, conducting 20 and four tests, respectively. It exceeded the baseline for two other weapons, with 25 tests on the W76-1 warhead, two more than the baseline; and 13 tests on the W88 warhead, compared to the baseline of five. However, it missed the baseline for the B61 (12 of 15), W78 (nine of 13), W80 (eight of 14), and W88 (seven of 13).
“Unplanned downtime for the testing equipment at WETL created major disruptions to testing operations and contributed, in large part, to the failure to meet baseline testing goals,” the report says.
The lab had a backlog of 10 tests as of September 2016, according to the IG. All but two of those tests had been carried out by Nov. 30, Sandia spokeswoman Sue Holmes said Monday. “Sandia expects to complete those tests by April, and we’re on track to meet all future schedules,” she said.
