Sandia Lab Misses Testing Baseline for 4 of 8 Nuke Systems

The Sandia National Laboratories’ Weapons Evaluation Test Laboratory (WETL) reached its testing baseline for just 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 major equipment failure involved a large centrifuge that was taken offline for close to two years in the wake of noise and vibration problems and a separate fire in its drive system, the IG said. A safety program to consolidate explosives at WETL also slowed the testing schedule “by limiting the staff authorized to handle explosives and requiring prior approval before conducting explosives operations,” the report says.

In addition, the shift from a 12-month to an 18-month testing cycle meant that the same number of tests would be conducted every three years, but not all the tests would be represented in the reports submitted annually to the NNSA, Sandia spokeswoman Sue Holmes said Monday.

The lab had a baseline 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, Holmes said: “Sandia expects to complete those tests by April, and we’re on track to meet all future schedules.”

The IG acknowledged Sandia’s schedule for eliminating the backlog, but warned that “because of the age and uniqueness of the centrifuges, we believe there is an increased risk of further operational delays and unplanned equipment outages.”

The Inspector General’s Office report was precipitated by an anonymous complaint in December 2013 that Sandia was diverting equipment from its Integrated Stockpile Evaluation Group to separate programs and was not paying for preventive maintenance at WETL. The IG did not substantiate the first claim, and did not find any cases in which maintenance needs were not funded.

WETL does not have a specific maintenance budget, instead breaking down its operational budget into labor and other costs. The operations budget shrank from $4.3 million in fiscal 2012 to $3.8 million in fiscal 2015. The Weapons Evaluation Test Laboratory in total received $15.8 million from fiscal 2012 to fiscal 2015.

The report also emphasizes the need for clear communication between the NNSA and Sandia regarding any changes to the testing baseline: Its only recommendation is that “NNSA clearly communicates and fully implements its formal baseline change control process requirements to ensure consistency and transparency in surveillance testing.”

In a letter attached to the report, NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz said the agency agrees with the need for improved communication on its requirements for changes to baseline controls. The NNSA has taken a number of steps to meet the recommendation, including “clarifying key definitions and developing a single change control approval form that clearly communicates the disposition of each change request.”