{"id":649,"date":"2019-04-23T15:07:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T21:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/?p=649"},"modified":"2019-04-23T15:07:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T21:07:44","slug":"fissile-material-mysteries-in-the-u-s-department-of-energy-fy20-budget-request","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/2019\/04\/23\/fissile-material-mysteries-in-the-u-s-department-of-energy-fy20-budget-request\/","title":{"rendered":"Fissile material mysteries in the U.S. Department of Energy FY20 budget request"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(This post was previously published at the International Panel on Fissile Materials here.)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On March 25, DOE released the final installment of its fiscal year (FY) 2020 funding request<\/a>\n for its nuclear weapons, naval reactor, and nonproliferation programs, \nincluding proposed outyear spending for FYs 2021-2024. (Subsequent page \nnumbers without associated links refer to this document.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some programs, the details provided raise as many questions as they answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The huge and growing “Plutonium Sustainment” budget line, for \nwhich DOE is requesting $712 million for FY2020 (p. 82), about twice \nlast year’s budget. The program covers “all things plutonium” in the \nnuclear weapons program, including efforts to reestablish warhead core \n(“pit”) production capability. It is expected to double in scale again \nby 2023, spending $5.7 billion over the coming 5 years (p. 83). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alarmed by the scale and growth of pit production spending absent any firm project description or management structure<\/em>, last year congressional appropriators required<\/a>\n (pp. 107-108) that the expansion of pit production be placed within a \nwell-defined new project, with normal fiscal and management controls. \nThat hasn’t happened yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this budget request the “Plutonium Sustainment” program has three \nsubprograms (p. 119), none of which are well-defined. The first is \nNNSA’s “Plutonium Sustainment Operations” budget line, which includes \namong other things everything needed to “restore” the 10 pit per year \n(ppy) production capacity Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was \nrecently said to already have. No dollar figure is attached. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. A new “Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility” (SRPPF) \nproject, no formal description of which is included, for which $410 \nmillion is requested (p. 122) for FY2020. Presumably most of these funds\n would be spent at or through the Savannah River Site, although an \nunknown portion will be spent at LANL. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The “Plutonium Pit Production” (P3) Project at LANL, the scope of \nwhich “is being redefined” (p. 135). Some $21 million is requested for \nFY2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subsequent to the budget release, National Nuclear Security \nAdministration (NNSA) Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty testified that \nin addition to the $410 million for SRPPF, NNSA is requesting “nearly $500 million”<\/a>\n (at 1:18:57) for pit production at LANL. The latter figure is nowhere \nexplained in the public budget. Neither is the apparent discrepancy \nbetween the total of these two efforts and the overall Plutonium \nSustainment request. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. The proposed $1.4 billion Material Staging Facility (MSF) (pp. \n283, 288) at the Pantex nuclear weapons assembly plant, located in House\n Armed Services Ranking Member “Mac” Thornberry’s district. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pantex is authorized to store up to 20,000 pits<\/a> (p. 7; see also footnote 3 here<\/a>)\n as well as nuclear warheads, in its “Zone 4” magazines as well as in \nZone 12, the main production area. Possible replacement of the magazines\n – which date from World War II and have had numerous issues related to overheating, humidity, and safety<\/a>, as well as flooding<\/a> and corrosion<\/a> and which now face security recapitalization costs<\/a> – with a consolidated storage facility has been considered<\/a> for decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MSF project originated in Congress – not NNSA – via Section 3142 of the FY18 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)<\/a>,\n which required NNSA to choose a preferred concept within 30 days of \nenactment (!). By now, two years later, $29 million (p. 283) has been \nspent trying to define the project, none of which funds were actually \nrequested by NNSA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March of this year DOE, NNSA, and their contractors met at Pantex<\/a>\n to hammer out the facility’s requirements, constraints, location, \nnecessary support facilities, and other project details. A final \nconceptual design is due in August 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from $4 million in overhead requested for the coming year (p. \n283), NNSA does not propose funding this project again until FY2024, \nwhen $371 million is projected (p. 288). Given the amount, this is \napparently for detailed design and initial construction. Needless to \nsay, much could change over the coming four years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. The disposition of surplus plutonium, which draws on much the same\n set of infrastructure assets as do NNSA’s other plutonium programs. \nFirst, why does NNSA seek to spend $329 million — $220 million in FY20 \nand the balance in FY21 – on the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication \nFacility (MFFF), which was canceled in FY18? That is a lot of money to \nspend laying that project to rest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. What is the large NN construction project proposed for LANL, \npresented without any explanation at all except an ever-rising funding \nlevel totaling $215 million over the FY21-24 period, with no overall \ncost or end in sight? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. How will NNSA allocate its limited plutonium processing and \nstorage space, especially in LANL’s crowded PF-4, given the rising \nprogrammatic importance of pit production? Will disposition suffer? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of these projects are evolving even as funding decisions are \nbeing made. For some, Congress doesn’t know what they are, NNSA \nadmittedly doesn’t either, no fiscal or project management controls are \nin place, and for most of them no environmental impact analysis has been\n done. A key question is whether Congress will demand full explanations\n of these and other programs before making multibillion-dollar, \nmulti-decade commitments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This post was previously published at the International Panel on Fissile Materials here.) On March 25, DOE released the final installment of its fiscal year (FY) 2020 funding request for its nuclear weapons, naval reactor, and nonproliferation programs, including proposed outyear spending for FYs 2021-2024. (Subsequent page numbers without associated links refer to this document.)… Read More »Fissile material mysteries in the U.S. Department of Energy FY20 budget request<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[18,39,41,29,40,19,21,22],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-lanl","tag-mfff","tag-mox","tag-nnsa","tag-pantex","tag-pit-production","tag-savannah-river-site","tag-united-states"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ZtEt-at","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}