US Nuclear Deterrent Jeopardized by Weak Infrastructure

By John Rossomando   |   Thursday, 05 January 2023 07:43 AM EST

America's renewed need to modernize its aged nuclear deterrent faces significant hurdles, and government officials warn that there's "no margin for further delay."

The nation's nuclear weapons infrastructure is far behind the modernization and buildup efforts of its rivals. The average American nuclear weapon was built between the 1960s to the 1980s, making them between 40 and 50 years old.

"Over the past several decades, the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure has suffered the effects of age and underfunding. Over half of [National Nuclear Security Administration]'s infrastructure is over 40 years old, and a quarter dates back to the Manhattan Project era," the Trump administration said in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. "There now is no margin for further delay in recapitalizing the physical infrastructure needed to produce strategic materials and components for U.S. nuclear weapons.

"Just as our nuclear forces are an affordable priority, so is a resilient and effective nuclear weapons infrastructure, without which our nuclear deterrent cannot exist."

Production of enriched uranium and other raw materials was so bad that the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review said retired warheads were being cannibalized to obtain lithium, needed to sustain and produce deployable nuclear weapons. This material is a critical part of the nuclear-weapon manufacturing process. The U.S. has not designed a new nuclear warhead since 1992.

The U.S. has significant stockpiles of nuclear material; however, much of it is approaching the 50-year mark, when fissile material starts losing its potency for weapons production.

Not that long ago, the threat of nuclear war seemed like a distant memory and one that ended with the Cold War.

Today, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens his neighbors with nuclear annihilation if they get too close. Russia has embarked on a massive update of its nuclear arsenal.

President Xi Jinping's China, meanwhile, has embarked on an unprecedented nuclear buildup. The Pentagon estimated in its latest assessment of Chinese military power that China could have 1,500 nuclear weapons in the next decade.

The Clinton administration slashed the nation's nuclear production capacity amid the euphoria of the end of the Cold War, but those decisions have hampered the nation's ability to adapt to these threats.

This creates added urgency to reconstitute the nation's nuclear infrastructure, and Congress has made that a priority.

The Biden administration's 2022 Nuclear Posture Review continued the Trump administration's focus on reconstituting the nuclear weapons production infrastructure. The posture review makes the production of new plutonium pits needed for the building of new nuclear warheads a top priority.

"Right now, we don't have a dedicated [plutonium] pit manufacturing facility, so if we ever needed to surge the number of weapons we needed or build a new weapon with a plutonium pit design, or a new weapon we couldn't do it," Jeff Crater, president and CEO of the Edmondson Hopkins Group, LLC., a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm and expert on the U.S. nuclear infrastructure, told Newsmax. "We have also lost our capability to manufacture enriched uranium into high-enriched uranium. We have vast stockpiles of it, but a lot of that is reserved for the Navy for its nuclear propulsion program to power our submarines and aircraft carriers.

"The concern is, if you had to go and increase the number of nuclear weapons then you would be in a tough spot."

This capability was lost with the closure of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons manufacturing facility, which stopped producing components for nuclear weapons in 1992. A two-site strategy was drawn up in its place, with production at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and at the Savannah River Site in Georgia.

Los Alamos can produce 30 plutonium pits annually, according to a 2018 estimate. This is nowhere nearly on the scale of Rocky Flats, or the similarly defunct facility in Hanford, Washington. Another 50 can be produced annually at the Savannah River Site.

The recently passed 2023 National Defense Authorization Act allocates $5.1 billion for modernizing the nation's nuclear production infrastructure. It allocates $506 million to produce raw materials needed to build new nuclear bombs and warheads.

This includes funds for the modernization of the nation's ability to manufacture tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen essential for modern nuclear weapons. Tritium has a short half-life that requires continuous manufacture. A 1994 report to Congress amid the post-Cold War downsizing of America's nuclear stockpile warned that "we have to face the issue of how we replace the tritium supply" regardless of whether the nation has 6,000 nuclear weapons or 3,000.

"U.S. production of tritium, a critical strategic material for nuclear weapons, is now insufficient to meet the forthcoming U.S. nuclear force sustainment demands, or to hedge against unforeseen developments," the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review said. "In the absence of sustained support for these programs, including a marked increase in the planned production of tritium in the next few years, our nuclear capabilities will inevitably atrophy and degrade below requirements."

The U.S. has had to rely on commercial nuclear reactors belonging to the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority to obtain Tritium since the failure of a purpose-built reactor in Savannah in 1991. NNSA hopes to achieve the congressionally mandated 65% increase of its tritium production by 2025. It wrote in the March 2022 report that it currently is keeping up with the demand for tritium and that its new tritium manufacturing facility that will replace its current site will be fully operational by the 2031 fiscal year.

Funding for the revitalization of nuclear-weapon component manufacturing has grown dramatically since the last year of the Obama administration in 2016, from $9.25 billion in the 2017 fiscal year to $17.3 billion for the current fiscal year.

A March 2022 report by the NNSA found that the overwhelming percentage of the facilities under its control that have the responsibility for maintaining or modernizing the nation's nuclear stockpile are over 40 years old. At least 50% are in poor condition.

"If not appropriately addressed, the age and condition of DOE/NNSA's infrastructure will put at risk DOE/NNSA's missions, as well as the safety of its workforce, the public, and the environment," the NNSA said.

Patty-Jane Geller, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation who tracks U.S. nuclear weapons issues, argues the NNSA and Congress aren't doing enough in the face of China's nuclear buildup. The Chinese could be building as many as 100 plutonium pits annually. This makes the 80 per year that NNSA plans to produce inadequate.

"This has to get done," Geller said. "Even from things like safety constraints and going to work every day, there are pictures from a few years ago of ceilings literally falling down in the facilities, and people can't work in there. Things take longer, and they're at risk.

"There's no doubt that NNSA had a lot of challenges going and recapitalizing the entire enterprise all at once."

The Democratic Congress has also imposed bureaucratic hurdles when it comes to reporting the agency's activities that Geller argues could be better allocated.

"Maybe if NNSA spent less time on writing reports, updates, and risk reduction, they will have more time and resources, and manpower to get the real stuff done," Geller said.

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