NNSA Official Calls for Consensus on Nuclear Weapons

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Tom D’Agostino, until recently the acting chief of the National Nuclear Security Administration, agreed yesterday with a recent recommendation from a scientific association urging the Bush administration to more clearly define its nuclear weapons plans (see GSN, April 25).

While suggesting that such a policy discussion should take place, however, he said the Energy Department should forge ahead in its pursuit of a new nuclear warhead.

The April report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science — authored by former national laboratory staffers and other experts — called for a presidential or Cabinet-level statement articulating what role nuclear weapons would play in U.S. policy and what the country’s stockpile needs are.

“I agree,” D’Agostino said during a breakfast address here sponsored by the National Defense University.  With the recent swearing in of Bill Ostendorff as NNSA deputy administrator, D’Agostino has returned to his role overseeing weapons programs at the agency.

Questions of policy and the international effect of U.S. plans to develop its first new nuclear warhead design in more than 20 years should be explored but not at the expense of progress in developing the Reliable Replacement Warhead, he said.

The Energy Department has selected a preliminary design from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and expects to further flesh out cost estimates and engineering and design plans in the coming year.  The president requested more than $88 million for the project in fiscal 2008, tripling funding from the last approved budget request (see GSN, Feb. 6).

A House defense authorization bill making its way through Congress cuts $20 million from the NNSA request and slices $25 million of $30 million requested by the Navy for RRW-related research.

“We need not and should not defer our efforts over the next 12 months to develop a detailed project and cost plan for the Reliable Replacement Warhead,” D’Agostino said.  “There are things that need to go on in parallel, and there are things that need to happen in series.”

The AAAS report offered limited support for the RRW program, calling it a “prudent hedge” against a stockpile composed entirely of aging Cold War-era warheads.  The authors of the report, however, struggled to completely assess the pros and cons of the administration’s proposed plans in the absence of details, they wrote.

The Bush administration has offered no detailed description of the size or composition it foresees for the future U.S. nuclear stockpile.  Nor is there a cost schedule or description of the scope of the planned transformation of the nuclear complex 20 to 25 years in the future, the report noted.

Administration officials have said developing the new warhead would drive a transformation of an outdated nuclear weapons production complex.  D’Agostino stressed that point, also suggesting that a new nuclear weapons project would help the national laboratories attract and retain a new generation of elite scientists.

“We need to challenge our folks,” he said.  “People work well when they have real work to do.”

D’Agostino said he expects the nuclear weapons complex to be “fine” for the next five years but said he was “very uncomfortable with the long-term view.”

“It’s going to be very difficult to attract top-notch folks 10 years from now,” he said.  “How are we going to sustain people’s interest in coming to work at a national security laboratory?  What’s going to draw them in?”

The first Reliable Replacement Warhead would have the same yield as the submarine-launched W-76 warheads it is intended to replace.  It is intended to enter the stockpile without underground explosive testing — a requirement stressed by some wary lawmakers  (see GSN, March 21)  — and would be easier to maintain than the current warhead, administration officials say (see GSN, March 30).

The United States has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.  Since 1992 it has observed a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing.

Energy Department officials have said the new design could be followed by new warheads for silo-based missiles or gravity bombs. (see GSN, March 21). 

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