Foreign Policy In Focus

The construction of an expensive new plutonium pit facility has been abandoned. Will it be replaced a collection of smaller buildings?

Thanks in large part to lawsuits filed by the Los Alamos Study Group, last year the Obama administration halted the construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The research for which it was earmarked was  on plutonium pits, which is where the chain reaction of a nuclear weapons occurs. Even if you believe in nuclear weapons, the need for new pits is nonexistent because they’re noted for their longevity.

How difficult it is to discontinue researching and manufacturing plutonium pits is a microcosm for how the nuclear weapons-industrial complex itself endures. In February at Global Security Newswire, Elaine Grossman reported that, without the CMRR-NF, Los Alamos would

… instead permanently parcel out work to an array of smaller buildings. [The] institution’s director said. … “I’m concerned that in the current fiscal crisis, it may no longer be practical to plan and build very large-scale nuclear facilities,” Charles McMillan, who heads the New Mexico research site, said at a three-day conference on nuclear deterrence in Arlington, Va. “A new path forward is needed.”

On May 7, a Los Alamos Study Group [LASG] press release stated:

After more than a year since a halt to new funding was announced for [the CMRR-NF], a few details about the latest plan to construct a large-scale "pit" factory complex have begun to emerge.

Note that McMillan’s use of the phrase “very large-scale nuclear facilities” referred to the two main buildings of the planned CMRR-NF. The complex that LASG refers to is smaller buildings, as Ms. Grossman reported. More from the press release:

It is now clear that the "interim" "plutonium sustainment" plan [in lieu of the CMRR-NF – RW] of last year is but the first part of a much larger, multibillion dollar plan spanning approximately two decades, which could easily exceed CMRR-NF in final scope, cost, and possibly in size. 

The new plan aims not just to replace the capabilities once envisioned for … CMRR-NF but also to supplement or replace some the most dangerous and demanding capabilities of LANL's large main plutonium facility.  

This year's plan is certainly much larger than the … "interim" plan … in pit production capacity, physical scale, environmental disruption, cost, and duration [and] includes everything in the "interim plan" plus construction of underground laboratory and production "modules" connected by "tunnels" to the [large main plutonium facility].

Furthermore, states LASG Director Greg Mello:

"There are as yet no firm mission requirements, no project definition, no total estimated cost, no requested line item, no analysis of alternatives, no environmental impact statement [EIS], and no schedule for this project. Despite these deficiencies, despite wasting $500 M and ten years on the last plan, and despite NNSA’s abysmal management record, the agency now claims that hundreds of millions of dollars must be spent each year, starting right now, to get this 'non-project project' going.”

Mello then hints at how difficult it is to put the nail in the coffin of these projects. Like monsters or slashers in horror movies, they have a discouraging habit of rising up like phoenixes just when you think you’ve killed them dead.

"No U.S. warhead requires new pits, so none of this is about maintaining warheads. Pit aging is not even mentioned in the April 8 letter as a driver for this project." 

What purpose would new plutonium pits serve then? From the press release again.

The need for new pit production is tied to these two proposed Life Extension Projects (LEPs), which congressional and administration officials have described to us as, essentially, new warheads: 

• A proposed W78/W88 "interoperable" Air Force/Navy warhead for land-based and sea-based missiles. Depending on the design chosen and the size of the “build,” [it] might require pit production. 

• The proposed "Long-Range Stand-Off" (LRSO) missile warhead [which] too might require pit production.

The spirit of boondoggle flees the dying host of one project, only to seek out another to possess. We can never truly drive a stake may never be drive into nuclear weapons until the Unholy Trinity of waste, pork, and campaign financing is exorcised from the body politic. 

The new budget for fiscal year 2013 (which begins on October 1) just released, reports Chris Schneidmiller for Global Security Newswire, calls for the

Energy Department's semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration to receive $11.5 billion. … just shy of 5 percent above the amount allocated in the current budget … The budget would provide $7.6 billion for NNSA efforts to "maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent." 

The other $2.5 billion … 

… is proposed for NNSA initiatives to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and related materials. [Nonproliferation, in other words. -- RW] That amount, if approved, would constitute a $163 million boost from the amount allocated for this year.

All in all …

… the administration is seeking $372 million less for weapons programs than it had anticipated requesting as of 2011. 

Most encouraging of all:

The administration aims to freeze development of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement complex at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which would conduct work on materials such as plutonium employed in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. … Under the proposal, funding for the Los Alamos site … estimated to cost up to $6 … would be cut by $165 million and building would be pushed back by no less than five years.

This is the infamous plutonium pit -- the living, breathing heart of a nuclear warhead -- facility about which I frequently post. Much of the credit for inserting this major blip into the United States nuclear weapons-industrial complex goes to the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG). Among their protracted efforts to halt the CMRR-NF has been incessant lobbying on Capitol Hill and two separate lawsuits it has filed against the Department of Energy on the grounds that the planned facility is not environmentally safe.

Another factor in the CMRR-NF's delay is an economic climate that makes even Republicans open to the idea of defense cuts. The Pentagon, meanwhile (or elements thereof), with its unique talent for sensing the opportunity in any crisis, stands ready and willing to re-allocate money to weapons systems it can actually use, instead of just brandish (as with nuclear deterrence).

In one of its press releases on this development, LASG Executive Director Greg Mello reminds us of the extent to which the CMRR-NF is a boondoggle. 

The CMRR project has been a fiasco from the get-go. In the beginning, [the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Los Alamos National Laboratory] proposed CMRR structures which even the most cursory examination revealed could never be built. The construction materials specified in environmental documents could not have built a shed, much less a fortified, seismically-sound nuclear facility to hold and protect several tons of plutonium. As the project developed, NNSA and its contractors kept the bad news from Congress, as they always do, until the last moment. … Right now, NNSA is spending between one-half and one million dollars per day to design a facility which is highly unlikely to ever be built -- and if it were, much of the design would need to be redone anyway.

In the LASG's most recent bulletin, Mello also reminds us:

This is not an Obama-led “nuclear disarmament” decision. This decision has nothing to do with disarmament. CMRR-NF is being rejected, for now, on very strong factual and management grounds by the Pentagon, DOE, and NNSA itself, among many others.  

The postponement of CMRR-NF certainly doesn't kill, but it at least clips the wings of two birds with one stone: the United States nuclear-weapons program and any future nuclear-weapons boondoggles.

[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.