Global Security Newswire

The heads of three U.S. nuclear-weapon laboratories have questioned a public report issued last year by a top-level independent advisory panel, which asserted that the United States could maintain a reliable nuclear deterrent for decades without preparing a new generation of nuclear warheads, Politico reported last week (see GSN, Nov. 20, 2009).

The laboratory officials issued written statements in response to a request by Representative Michael Turner (Ohio), top Republican on the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, for comment on the study by the JASON group, a panel of senior scientific and technical experts frequently consulted by the U.S. government.

"The JASON report states that the lifetimes of today’s nuclear weapons could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss of confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in (life-extension programs) to date. I do not agree with this assertion," Michael Anastasio, head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, wrote in his statement. “The available mitigation actions ... are reaching their limits.”

The executive summary of the JASON report "understates the risks and challenges" of maintaining existing nuclear weapons over an extended period, added George Miller, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Such a strategy could lead to an "increasing risk in our ability to certify the safety and reliability of our Cold War stockpile into the indefinite future," he wrote.

The laboratory directors called for greater latitude in determining how to maintain various weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. "Replacing" components of the bombs should be an option in making such judgments, they said.

The Obama administration last year suggested that the unclassified executive summary might not fully reflect the JASON group's confidential full report, Politico reported.

"While we endorse the recommendations and consider them well-aligned with NNSA’s long-term stockpile management strategy, certain findings in the unclassified executive summary convey a different perspective on key findings when viewed without the context of the full classified report,” stated Damien LaVera, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. "The full report addresses them comprehensively and validates our basic scientific approach to warhead life extension programs, specifically our commitment to evaluating each weapon system on a case-by-case basis and applying the best technological approach from a spectrum of options,” LaVera wrote.

The directors' statements could intensify a debate playing out within the Obama administration over maintenance of the nation's nuclear deterrent. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden have advocated strict reliance on life-extension approaches to maintain existing weapons, while Defense Secretary Robert Gates has supported new warhead designs (see GSN, Aug. 18, 2009).

The administration is expected to clarify its policies in a major nuclear weapons strategy review expected within weeks (see GSN, March 24).

"These are our nation's technical experts when it comes to the design, the maintenance and the knowledge of how these weapons work. We would hope that our policy-makers and members on the Hill would seriously take input from these lab directors," one House Armed Services Committee staffer said (DiMascio/Gerstein, Politico, March 25).