Foreign Policy In Focus

You may be familiar with the term fund of funds from the world of investments. It refers to a mutual fund that invests in other mutual funds; in the same vein, a fund of hedge funds  invests in several different hedge funds. Hold that thought. 

Regular readers know that we frequently post about a proposed new facility called the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF)  at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), one of two labs in the United States where nuclear-weapon design work is conducted. On January 18, the independent watchdog POGO (Project On Government Oversight) released a report by by one of its investigators, Peter Stockton, titled "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Energy Department Plans to Waste Billions of Dollars on Unneeded Los Alamos Lab Facility."

The CMRR-NF replacement facility, they write:

… will take over [the existing Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility's] main functions of housing laboratory space for the research and development of … elements such as plutonium and … will add a vault capable of holding six metric tons of plutonium. CMRR-NF "will operate in an integrated fashion" with LANL's existing Plutonium Facility 4 … and will free up space [for] PF-4 to manufacture pits. 

Nuclear pits are, as the authors write, "the plutonium triggers at the core of nuclear weapons" -- in other words, the living breathing heart of the warhead where the chain reaction occurs. The overriding issue of the need for nuclear weapons aside, the problem with the CMRR-NF can be broken down into two -- inevitably intertwined -- components.

First, the estimated cost of just that one building has ballooned from $375 million to between $3.71 to $5.9 billion. Second --dealing with the issue of nuclear weapons on a relative, rather than absolute level -- are more pits needed to maintain the United States nuclear-weapons program? The authors write:

… the need to build any new pits is aggressively challenged by numerous experts from the nuclear weapons complex. In a 2009 hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development … Philip Coyle, a former associate director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [cited] the pits already stored at Pantex Plant in Texas as an alternative to the [National Nuclear Security Administration's] supposed need for a new facility to manufacture 80 new pits per year. Pantex stockpiles over 14,000 pits and has the capacity to store up to 20,000 pits [and is] authorized to reuse up to 350 pits per year. [While it] was originally feared that the plutonium in pits would gradually degrade over time. … the independent JASON advisory panel found in 2007 that [the pits] have credible minimum lifetimes in excess of 100 years."

Furthermore (emphasis added):

… to extend the life of the warhead, [the National Nuclear Security Administration] has the Life Extension Program (LEP), which aims to increase the lifetimes of existing weapons by refurbishing and replacing certain components as necessary. [Most of this work] will be finished by the time CMRR-NF is [or would be -- RW] operational in 2023. In addition, as a result of New START and the Nuclear Posture Review [there will be] even fewer warheads [that] will need to go through LEP by the time CMRR-NF is completed. These factors mean that CMRR-NF may be unnecessary. 

After all, in a time when the triggers for nuclear war between major powers have been minimized, why must the nuclear-weapons program be awash in nuclear triggers? Between Pantex and Los Alamos, it's a veritable pit of pits.

Therefore, the authors of the POGO report recommend: 

1) The Administration and DOE [Department of Energy] should cancel CMRR-NF and zero out funding for the project in the upcoming budget.

2) If the Administration and DOE fail to act, Congress should cancel funding for CMRR-NF in its next appropriations bill.

3) NNSA should continue using existing facilities, at LANL and elsewhere, in the nuclear weapons complex to meet credible nuclear modernization requirements.

To prevent future projects such as the CMRR-NF:

4) Congress should amend [the] National Defense Authorization Act … to improve the oversight of major cost overruns and schedule delays at the DOE.

5) Congress should require independent cost estimates of major DOE construction projects at an early milestone.

In his latest Los Alamos Study Group bulletin, Greg Mello refers to an article in the Nuclear Weapons and Materials Monitor for a status update.

… the Administration said it expected to spend $300 million on CMRR-NF in [Fiscal Year] 2012 and FY2013, but Congress had already begun to balk at the price tag, providing just $200 million in FY2012 with explicit instructions prohibiting the start of preliminary construction activities. …. "The eventual demise of CMRR-NF has been inevitable, given its lack of justification and astronomical cost," said [Mello, whose] organization has parallel lawsuits that contend that NNSA hasn't fully analyzed alternatives to building CMRR-NF.

As for that "eventual demise," Mello writes in the LASG bulletin:

Yes, failure of this project has been inevitable sooner or later. … There is a huge difference, however, between "sooner" and "later." By far the best outcome for all parties would be to end the project now, rather than building up to a bigger fiasco later. As I said [elsewhere],

Assuming the current rumors are true, the main thing now is to stop additional expenditures immediately, mid-year, rather than winding down the project gradually and wasting even more money.  

As with our wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the decision may finally be made to wind down, but, along with casualties, untold riches continue to be expended in the process. 

"In crisis lies opportunity" is more than just a cliché (and we're not just talking about Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine.)  For instance, what could be a better time than the recess-depression in which we're mired to rethink the whole concept of a growth economy, which has become unsustainable in the face of climate change and dwindling resources? At the very least, it's a chance to trim our defense budget. In fact, it might not be foremost in the minds of most Americans, or even of much consolation, but cuts to our nuclear-weapons program constitute a silver lining to our economic crisis.

If you'll recall, earlier this year, the New START treaty was held hostage by Senate Republicans under the direction of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). By way of ransoming it, the Obama administration forked over a proposal to spend $88 billion during the next decade on nuclear-weapon modernization. (As if to show the futility of that approach, while it was ultimately passed, Kyl still didn't vote in favor of New START.) That figure represents a 20 percent increase above funding levels proposed during the Bush administration.

Equally as sad, as Hans Kristensen wrote at the Federation of American Scientists' Strategic Security Blog:

… the treaty does not require destruction of a single nuclear warhead and actually permits the United States and Russia to deploy almost the same number of strategic warheads that were permitted by the 2002 Moscow Treaty [thanks, in part, to a] new counting rule that attributes one weapon to each bomber rather than the actual number of weapons assigned to them. [Even stranger, this] "fake" counting rule frees up a large pool of warhead spaces under the treaty limit that enable each country to deploy many more warheads than would otherwise be the case.

Indeed, the New START Treaty is not so much a nuclear reductions treaty as it is a verification and confidence building treaty.

Confidence building is nice and all. But it's been 62 years since both the United States and the former Soviet Union (and then Russia) have possessed nuclear weapons,  25 years since the pivotal Reykjavík nuclear summit, and 20 years since the end of the Cold War. We're still just trying to build confidence?

Meanwhile, what does disarmament look like when it's not just pecking at the inside of its egg struggling to emerge? Regular readers of Focal Points know that we track the progress of the Los Alamos Study Group, a disarmament organization that monitors the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory (the heart of the Manhattan Project during World War II) and is today managed by a Bechtel-led consortium for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

In recent years, the mission of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG) has been to halt the progress of a Soviet-era-sounding project called the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility (CMRR), intended, in the words of the Los Alamos National Laboratory itself, to perform "analytical chemistry, materials characterization, and metallurgy research and development," for the production of nuclear pits.

Upon first hearing the phrase, a nuclear pit might sound like a dump for nuclear waste and old warheads. But, as in the pit of a fruit, it's an origin of life -- where the chain reaction occurs in a nuclear warhead. You can be forgiven if you're surprised that, in light of President Obama's renowned Prague disarmament speech and New START, however watered down, we're still creating these obscure objects of destruction. Especially considering that 14,000 pits have been recovered from warheads that have been retired.

Physicist and nuclear policy authority Frank von Hippel recently testified in a lawsuit that the LASG filed against the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

The need for large-scale pit production has vanished. In 2003, the [NNSA] was arguing that the [United States] needed the capability to produce 125 to 450 pits per year by 2020 to replace the pits in the US weapon stockpile that would be 30 to 40 years old by then. . . . But, in 2006, we learned that US pits were so well made that, according to a Congressionally-mandated review of … pit aging, "Most primary types have credible minimum lifetimes in excess of 100 years."

Of course, that's as much bad news -- these infernal engines will be around for another century unless they're dismantled -- as good news. Meanwhile, the CMRR project is now expected to cost between $4 and $6 billion. In order to halt or at least stall it, the LASG filed a case against the NNSA seeking a new Environmental Impact Statement (as mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act) to address, among other things, seismic concerns about the project. While that case was dismissed, the LASG is not only appealing it, but filing a second lawsuit toward the same end. In the latest LASG newsletter, Executive Director Greg Mello writes (emphasis added):

On December 15, House and Senate conferees issued their "megabus" appropriations bill for fiscal year (FY) 2012. [Passed in the Senate and House, though 86 Republicans defied Republican leadership and voted against it. -- RW] … the bill appropriates only 63% of the requested funds for the [CMRR], slashing $100 million (M) from the $270 M proposed spending level in the project. … CMRR and [a project in proximity to it] were the only NNSA Weapons Activities construction projects cut. … The proposed CMRR cut is 90% of the total proposed cut in new NNSA construction. NNSA's other proposed massive project, the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), slated to be built at the Y-12 Nuclear Security Site in Tennessee, was not cut at all.   

We have no wish to slight the forces arrayed against the Oak Ridge, Tennessee project. But we can't help but conclude that, along with current economic climate, the Los Alamos Study Group made the difference in slowing progress of the CMRR.

As Mello writes, the funding cut "can be fairly described as one of the few concrete policy accomplishments of the entire arms control and disarmament community in the United States over the past couple of years." Never mind your garden-party treaties that are guaranteed not to offend -- when the construction of a facility designated for the manufacture of nuclear-weapons components is blocked, that's disarmament you can taste and feel.

[The National Nuclear Security Administration] has advanced a "new paradigm" of nuclear weapons management. … which is really just the old Cold War revived. [The] CMRR-NF is a required gateway to that bleak and hopeless world. 
-- Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group

A nuclear "pit," as regular readers of Focal Points know, is the heart of a nuclear weapon where the chain reaction occurs. The fight to halt the construction of a facility that's instrumental in their manufacture is finally experiencing some success and the media, including mainstream, has been noticing. By way of background, an excerpt from a recent post of ours about the Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility (CMRR-NF ) follows.

To Focal Points' surprise, the New York Times addressed the facility in an editorial on October 29 titled The Bloated Nuclear Budget, which began:

Twenty years after the end of the cold war, the United States still has about 2,500 nuclear weapons deployed and 2,600 more as backup. The Obama administration, in an attempt to mollify Congressional Republicans, has also committed to modernizing an already hugely expensive complex of nuclear labs and production facilities. [But the] country does not need to maintain this large an arsenal. … President Obama [should speed up] already negotiated reductions in deployed weapons and committing to further cuts, unilaterally if necessary.

Including

Halt construction of the new plutonium storage facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Costs have increased tenfold, and there are serious safety questions about the location — along a fault line and near an active volcano. Savings: $2.9 billion.

Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, which is leading the charge to block the CMRR-NF, via the courts. The LASG is both appealing the dismissal of its case which sought a new Environmental Impact Statement (under the National Environmental Policy Act) to address those seismic concerns and is filing a second lawsuit to the same end.

Not long after singling out the CMRR-NF for condemnation, the Times provided Mello with space for an op-ed of his own. He points out that the present plutonium facility at Los Alamos

… which has about twice the space inside as the proposed one, already has a high-capacity manufacturing line that takes up just a third of the building. Why does the nuclear administration need to produce more pits, let alone at a faster rate? Scientists agree that the existing stock of pits will last a century or so without replacement.

Then the American Conservative ran a story about the CMRR-NF. Kelley Beaucar Vlahos reports.

It hasn’t been built yet—in fact, the designs aren’t even finished after 10 years. But the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) has been soaking up taxpayer money all the same as the scope of the project has metastasized.

“The country doesn’t have money to pour into an unnecessary, giant boondoggle that has grown beyond all original expectations,” charges Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group. … There is no doubt that the budget-cutting imperative is clashing with the old way of doing business on Capitol Hill, as pet projects and earmarks come under more scrutiny than ever. … That includes CMRR-NF, which has never been the subject of a public congressional hearing or passionate floor speech—much less a heated debate on cable TV or talk radio—but has been controversial nonetheless.

Finally, some good news, as relayed in the latest LASG newsletter.

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Judicial District ruled … in favor of the Los Alamos Study Group on a motion by the Department of Justice (DOJ) requesting dismissal of the Study Group's appeal of a May 2011 decision by a New Mexico federal district court which allowed the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) to continue working toward building [the CMRR-NF].

The Study Group had claimed, and still claims in this appeal and in a second lawsuit filed in New Mexico federal court, that NNSA and DOE have never written an applicable environmental impact statement (EIS) for the facility … that the agencies involved are violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and that the project is proceeding illegally and must be halted while an applicable EIS is written. … In a separate positive ruling yesterday for Study Group in their second NEPA case in New Mexico federal court, the court denied DOJ's attempt to transfer the new case to the Honorable Judith Herrera, who had ruled against the Study Group in the first case, the case now under appeal.  

Then, on Monday, December 5, the Associated Press addressed the CMRR-NF in an article titled Debate over $6B Los Alamos nuke lab.

Questions continue to swirl about exactly what kind of nuclear and plutonium research will be done there, whether the lab is really necessary, and — perhaps most important — will it be safe, or could it become New Mexico's equivalent of Japan's Fukushima?

As federal officials prepare the final design plans for the controversial and very expensive lab, increased scrutiny is being placed on what in recent years has been discovered to be a greater potential for a major earthquake along the fault lines that have carved out the stunning gorges, canyons and valleys that surround the premier U.S. nuclear weapons facility in northern New Mexico. 

It's beginning to look as if the nuclear weapons-industrial complex has overreached with the CMRR-NF. We'll give Mello the last word.

NNSA has advanced a “new paradigm” of nuclear weapons management, so far without White House endorsement, which aims at repeated upgrades and replacements to nuclear weapons on an accelerated schedule. If accepted, this “new paradigm” … – which is really just the old Cold War revived – could serve as a potent narrative supporting a new arms race with Russia, a possibility which is never far away. CMRR-NF is a required gateway to that bleak and hopeless world. 

Running for the Republican nomination for president, Rick Perry has been prone to flubs that raise questions about his suitability for the office. (Hey, at least they draw attention away from the truly epic scale of his corruption, as chronicled by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone.) His worst may have occurred at the November 9th debate, when he expressed his wish to eliminate three federal agencies.

Apparently, though, he failed to write them down on the palm of his hand a la Sarah Palin and was only able to remember two. Fifteen minutes later, after referring to his notes, he informed those in attendance that the third federal agency he would target was the Department of Energy. In fact, he calls for its abolition on a regular basis.

Aside from strangling government in general, why is the DOE high on the list of agencies condemned by Republicans? First, it exists to advance energy technology and innovation, which includes wind and solar, of little use to a party dependent on the funding of legacy energy like oil and gas. Also, Republicans can't resist kicking the dead horse of Solyndra, described by the Washington Post as "the now-shuttered California company [which] had been a poster child of President Obama's initiative to invest in clean energies and received the administration's first energy loan of $535 million."

It's true, as IPS's Robert Alvarez informs us, that "since 1990, Energy has remained prominent on the GAO's list of high-risk federal agencies vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse." But Perry -- or his people, to be more exact -- seems to have overlooked a key function of the Department of Energy. E.J. Dionne explains at the Washington Post:

Would [Perry] scrap the department's 17 national labs, including such world-class facilities as Los Alamos, N.M., Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Yes, the National Nuclear Security Administration is one of the Department of Energy's divisions. Its stated mission is to "ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile has been met through its Stockpile Stewardship Program." Alvarez reminds us that Perry is not the first man who sought to abolish the Department of Energy while president:

When President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, one of his first goals was to abolish Energy and eliminate the government's role in the energy sector. But he was unable to kill the department because neither he nor his supporters could figure out what to do with the country's sprawling nuclear weapons complex, a key part of Energy's mandate. Ever since, nuclear weapon stewardship has dominated the department's agenda.

Unfortunately my fantasy that shutting down the Department of Energy would deal a serious blow to the U.S. nuclear-weapons program is just that. More likely, the National Nuclear Security Administration would be privatized and wind up like Los Alamos and Lawerence Livermore Laboratory. At the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Hugh Gusterson explains (no link -- behind a pay wall).

Los Alamos National Security (LANS), a consortium headed by the Bechtel Corporation with the University of California as a junior partner, won the contract [to manage Los Alamos] in 2005. A year later, it also won the contract to run the lab at Livermore. To boost profits, Bechtel increased the management fee tenfold, rewarding its senior LANS officials. The budget was static but costs increased, resulting in heavy job losses at the Livermore Laboratory.

In other words, a privatized nuclear-weapons complex would live on, but with even more mismanagement and waste than when a division of the Department of Energy.

As those who read Focal Points regularly know, a facility intended to provide technical support for the production of the plutonium pits for nuclear warheads is under construction at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The pit -- which, one ventures to guess, makes the warhead the fruit of our nuclear-weapons program -- is where the chain reaction occurs. To Focal Points' surprise, the New York Times addressed the facility in an editorial on October 29 titled The Bloated Nuclear Budget, which began:

Twenty years after the end of the cold war, the United States still has about 2,500 nuclear weapons deployed and 2,600 more as backup. The Obama administration, in an attempt to mollify Congressional Republicans, has also committed to modernizing an already hugely expensive complex of nuclear labs and production facilities. Altogether, these and other nuclear-related programs could cost $600 billion or more over the next decade. The country does not need to maintain this large an arsenal. … especially when Congress is considering deep cuts in vital domestic programs. … President Obama [should speed up] already negotiated reductions in deployed weapons and committing to further cuts, unilaterally if necessary.

Including

Halt construction of the new plutonium storage facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Costs have increased tenfold, and there are serious safety questions about the location — along a fault line and near an active volcano. Savings: $2.9 billion.

Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, which is leading the charge to block the facility, known as the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility (CMRR-NF), via the courts. The LASG is both appealing the dismissal of its case which sought a new Environmental Impact Statement (under the National Environmental Policy Act) to address those seismic concerns and is filing a second lawsuit to the same end. In the comments section of the op-ed, Mello points out that the Times underestimated the cost of the CMRR-NF.

The CMRR project is now expected to cost between $4 and $6 billion, not $3 billion. NNSA and the Bechtel-led consortium that runs Los Alamos want to start construction a year or more before design is completed; currently the Senate would allow and fund that but the House would not. A year from now when design is 90% complete the cost may be higher; experience shows further large cost increases can be expected between now and the planned completion date in 2023. 

Continuing to look at the CMRR-NF in purely economic terms, at the New Mexican, Roger Snodgrass writes:

Some small-business owners in Santa Fe are opposing the proposed plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. … Although the group has been gathering support for several weeks, the announcement of its formation in a newspaper ad coincided with the release of a formal record of decision, a day earlier, that approved the plan to build a nuclear facility at LANL. … "We hope New Mexicans will take more interest now, and if they want to keep some value in the real estate and attract visitors from all over the world, they better think twice about their relation with Los Alamos," said Willem Malten, the organizer of the businesses. 
Also, in 2008
 
… 326 New Mexico businesses … signed a "Call to Disarmament" developed by the Los Alamos Study Group. The petition called for a stop to the "design and manufacture of all nuclear weapons, including plutonium bomb cores ['pits'] at Los Alamos and elsewhere." 

Mello, too, speaks about the effect (or lack thereof) of nuclear-weapons projects such as the CMRR-NF on the local economy in an interview with Mary-Charlotte Domandi on KSFR, Santa Fe Public Radio:

Unlike a solar or wind-energy project, which could potentially bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment and create thousands of jobs (as opposed to just 660), the CMRR, in Mello's opinion, benefits primarily the companies who already own LANL (Bechtel, the University of California, BMW), while hardly generating any long term value. "It doesn't train people to do anything in the economy," observed Mello. "It doesn't provide any infrastructure, in that it functions in the real economy (there are no goods or services provided, since no one buys or sells nuclear pits). And it attracts no private capital."

Or as Andrew Lichterman, also a member of the LASG, as well as the Western States Legal Foundation and Reaching Critical Will, writes: Even though the CMRR-NF is

… by far the largest government  construction project in New Mexico history aside from the interstate highway system [much] of this money will flow to contractors based elsewhere, as Los Alamos is now managed by a consortium including such huge multinational nuclear industry players as Bechtel and B&W. Complex high tech military construction projects create fewer jobs per dollar than most other types of public spending, and even fewer permanent positions. The end result for New Mexico, where Los Alamos County residents have a per capita income over 4 times that of the poorest county, will be further economic stratification. 

Nuclear-weapons projects are of so little benefit to the economy of the state that they don't even qualify as pork. Lichterman explains who they benefit and how. Take a moment to digest his thoughts: if you're like me, you haven't seen nuclear weapons viewed in exactly this light before.

The nuclear road provides elites in that sector with privileged access to their own country’s resources, a development context that can be shielded from foreign competition, and forms of trade and industry that can be portrayed as increasing in importance as fossil fuels diminish. The powerful tools of nationalism and “national security” secrecy both facilitate the extraction of wealth from the rest of society and prevent scrutiny of national nuclear enterprises that … have been rife with technical problems, corruption, and widespread, intractable environmental impacts. Nuclear technology, with its vision of near-magical, limitless power (an image its purveyors energetically promote), casts a positive aura over other big, centralized high-tech development programs that are profitable for elites, but have little or even negative value for much of the population in an ever more stratified world.