1.  Sandia has a branch facility next to LLNL in Livermore, with about 1,050 employees. 

2.  Jon Medalia, Congressional Research Service, personal communication. 

3.  See Chapter 10 in the 1994 JASON report (Drell, Sidney, et. al, "Science Based Stockpile Stewardship," MITRE Corporation). This chapter strongly recommends a strict curatorship approach to plutonium weapons components on p. 81: 

...the primary -- if not the sole -- nuclear weapons manufacturing capacity that must be provided for in an era of no nuclear testing is the remanufacturing of copies of existing (tested) stockpile weapons...the ultimate goal should be to retain the capability of remanufacturing SNM [special nuclear material, plutonium and uranium in this context] components that are as identical as possible to those of the original manufacturing process and not to "improve" those components.  This is especially important for pits... 

See also Katz, J.I., 1994 "The Case Against Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship," Washington University; Medalia, Jon, 1995, "Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship:  Alternatives for Congress," Congressional Research Service 96-11F; and Markusen, Ann, et. al., 1995, "Coming In From the Cold:  the Future of Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories," Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University. 

4.  Compare, after correction for inflation, the mid-1970s "detente trough" in spending for Atomic Energy Defense Activities (see Cochran, et.al., 1987, Nuclear Weapons Databook, Vol. II: U.S. Nuclear Warhead Production, Natural Resources Defense Council, Table 1.1) with the FY1997 Congressional Budget Request from the DOE for the same budget line.  Even after subtracting the environmental remediation (ER) portion of this amount, the 1997 request ($10.87 B, minus $1.77 B for ER, equals $9.1 B) still exceeds the inflated 1975 expenditure ($4.32 B) by $4.78 B, i.e. it is more than twice as much in real dollars. 

5.  Reliability in this context means the probability, after exposure to the stockpile-to-target sequence of conditions, that a nuclear weapon will explode within the certified yield range.  For further information see Mello, 1995, "No Serious Problems, Reliability Issues and Stockpile Management," Tri-Valley CAREs, Livermore, CA. 

6.  "Safe," in this context, means safe from accidental nuclear detonation.  Nuclear weapons are in most but not all cases extremely resistant to accidental chemical detonation as well.  The relevant literature and testimony is summarized in Mello, 1995, "Nuclear Weapons Safety: No Design Changes are Warranted," Tri-Valley CAREs, Livermore, CA. 

7.  Drell, Sidney, et. al, 1995, "Nuclear Testing: Summary and Conclusions."  Report of JASON panel to DOE Defense Programs. 

8.  See DOE, 1996, "Draft Stockpile Management Preferred Alternatives Report," p. 17. 

9.  Assistant Secretary Reis, before the House Energy And Water Appropriations Subcommittee, March 15, 1994. 

10.  Retaining the capability to design new nuclear weapons is an important goal of the stockpile stewardship program, as attested by numerous DOE and Pentagon documents.  In public relations practice, however, the development of new weapons is presently not going on.  Hence the emphasis in this paper is the DOE's own, i.e. on the role of stockpile stewardship in the retention and training of staff.  In fact, new weapons are a present goal at the labs.  This is the subject of another paper, which is forthcoming. 

DOE's contention that a large stockpile stewardship program is substantively necessary to maintain the stockpile is false.  This is the subject of the paper cited in note 5 above. 

11.  This power is summarized in Safeguard F of President Clinton's August 11, 1995 announcement that he would seek a "zero-yield" nuclear test ban.  In that announcement, he essentially gave to the Secretaries of Energy and Defense the power to call for nuclear testing, should they believe it warranted to retain confidence in the U.S. deterrent.  In practice, the lab directors must certify, each year, their confidence in the reliability of each weapon type in the arsenal, without external peer review, and for the physics labs -- without objective test data.  The lab directors have an enormous conflict of interest in this determination.  If history is any guide, they can be expected to use this power to assure funding for their institutions at continuing grandiose levels. 

12.  See Greg Mello and Marylia Kelley, 1994, "An Alternative Budget for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and How to Get There," Tri-Valley CAREs, Livermore. 

13.  See Markusen, et. al., op. cit., p. 111-112: 

Hard hit by both military and commercial downturns, Boeing shrank from 90,000 to around 30,000 employees in the early 1970s.  Many engineers at Boeing decided to strike out on their own, starting companies in medical instruments, computer software and business services.  As a result, Seattle is a much more diversified economy today...Hard times were just the push that many needed to try something new.  Just as at the labs, salaries and job security had previously been too good to leave.