The Senate this week marked a major milestone toward passing its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2018, which would set reporting requirements for unmet Energy Department nuclear-weapons needs, and encourage appropriators to fund research on a new intermediate-range missile.
The Senate voted to end debate Thursday, setting up floor action on the bill as early as Monday.
The annual defense policy bill authorizes DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to continue building the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.: something the Donald Trump administration opposes.
The administration also opposes inclusions of $65 million to start research and development for a dual-capable, road-mobile, ground-launched missile system within the range prohibited by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987.
Unremarked upon by the administration, at least so far, is the Senate bill’s requirement that the NNSA administrator report annually to Congress on the agency’s unfunded priorities. The report would be due 10 days after the White House submits its yearly funding federal request to Congress.
After the Senate passes its bill, it must conference with the House to iron out the differences between the two 2018 National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA) the chambers hammered out this summer.
The House’s version of the NDAA also would fund the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and provide money for a new intermediate range missile. As with the Senate, authorizing the new missile system was a response to Russia’s alleged violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty starting no later than 2014.
The White House, in official statements of administration policy, has rejected both the House and Senate missile proposals on the grounds that it does not want to be legally committed to pursuing any single response to Russia’s alleged violation.
“In short, they oppose being told what to do, but would welcome ‘broad authorization’ (e.g., a blank check) for research and development into a range of missile options,” Stephen Young, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, wrote in an email. Young called the Senate bill’s proposal for a new missile system “a misguided and dangerous response to Russia’s violation of the INF Treaty.”
The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, meanwhile, has been in the White House’s crosshairs since the administration asked congressional appropriators to kill the project as part of the 2018 budget request delivered to the Hill in May. The facility is being built to turn 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial reactors. The Trump administration, like the Barack Obama administration before it, wants instead to dilute the plutonium, blend it with concrete-like grout, and bury the mixture at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
Senate appropriators have suppored the administration’s request for $270 million to wind down the MOX project, while the House has backed $340 million to continue construction. The project, for now, will remain alive under the fiscal 2018 continuing resolution that will keep the government running for the first two months and change of the budget year starting Oct. 1.
The Senate managed to nudge the 2018 NDAA closer to passage after a tumultuous week that included the threat of a filibuster from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who demanded — and received — a vote on his amendment to cancel the authorized use of military force approved after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Senators voted the amendment down 61-36.
Other amendments that failed to pass included one co-sponsored by Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) that would have required the NNSA administrator and the secretary of defense to report to Congress within 30 days of the Senate NDAA becoming law on the White House’s plans for rebuilding U.S. plutonium production capabilities.
Under the nuclear triad modernization plan started by the Barack Obama administration — a plan that could be altered by the Trump administration’s ongoing Nuclear Posture Review — the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico would produce the plutonium pits that are the cores of nuclear weapons. The Plutonium Production facility at Los Alamos needs repairs and upgrades before it can do that. The New Mexico facility is supposed to produce 30 nuclear-warhead pits per year by 2026.
In total, the Senate NDAA authorizes congressional appropriations committees to give NNSA up to $14.5 billion for U.S. nuclear-weapon and nonproliferation programs in fiscal 2018. The House’s NDAA authorizes $14.2 billion for the NNSA in 2018. The agency requested $13.9 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, $1 billion over its current funding level.
Authorization bills are, practically speaking, policy bills. They do not provide funding for agency as appropriations bills do, though they are considered guidelines for appropriators.
