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Senate Committee Backs Ignition Facility Stoppage By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — A key Senate committee voted this week to halt construction on a multibillion dollar nuclear weapons research facility, called the National Ignition Facility (see GSN, April 15, 2004). The Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee approved $314 million for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory facility in California for fiscal 2006, $146 million less than requested by the administration, which would allow the continuation of experiments using elements of the facility already built. However, “No funds are provided to continue construction,” the committee said Tuesday in a press release on the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill. The planned Rose Bowl-size facility is intended to demonstrate by 2010 unprecedented nuclear fusion ignition through the simultaneous concentration of 192 laser beams. It also could help keep aging U.S. nuclear weapons safe and reliable, and be used for nuclear energy, astrophysics, and other scientific research, according to the Energy Department. Construction has experienced delays attributed to management problems. At an April hearing, subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) called it a “monster program in terms of dollars” and said the administration’s fiscal 2006 budget “cuts a lot of relevant [nuclear stockpile] stewardship research while [the National Nuclear Security Administration] wages this — what I consider almost a crusade to move on with NIF.” At a hearing last year, he vowed to “do everything in my power to ensure that program managers deal with most pressing technical issues before we allow the program to continue.” He then questioned whether the department was constructing elements of the facility well in advance of what is necessary to make it difficult for Congress to kill the program. “As the chairman of this committee, I don’t like to get hoodwinked and I don’t like the way the laboratory which will house NIF has proceeded to spend the money, buy all the parts and everything that goes in it ahead of time and have them all there,” he said. The House Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee this year excused the delays and voted to fund in full the administration’s $142 million request for construction. “The committee supports the department’s response to the congressional concern expressed last year regarding the fiscal year 2005 budget request proposed schedule [delay] to the program goal of ignition demonstration in 2010 for the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The committee continues to view ignition demonstration as the primary benchmark for success in this program,” it said in a report. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council in June 2000 questioned the scientific and technical basis of attempting fusion ignition and whether the program would help much in maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. “This project should never have gone forward,” the report’s author, Christopher Paine, said in an interview today. The University of California’s attitude should have been, he said, “It may be a great idea, but [it] needed a lot more work before taking it to the construction stage.” Work on the facility began in the late 1990s. The Government Accountability Office has estimated it will cost as much as $4 billion to build an ignition-ready facility. NNSA chief Linton Brooks told the Senate subcommittee at the April hearing that the facility “continues to be an essential component of the Stockpile Stewardship Program.” To meet the goal of fully commissioning 192 laser beams and fusion ignition by 2010, however, he said the agency has “had to accept additional risks and reduce some other inertial confinement fusion work at other sites.” Paine said he does not believe Domenici intends this year to see construction halted, but rather hopes to “take the program hostage” in order to increase his bargaining leverage in conference for programs that are important to him. The bill is scheduled to be considered by the full Senate Appropriations Committee today.
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