[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT
APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2017
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
_______________________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho, Chairman
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
KEN CALVERT, California PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
KAY GRANGER, Texas
JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington
DAVID G. VALADAO, California
NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mrs. Lowey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
Donna Shahbaz, Angie Giancarlo, Loraine Heckenberg,
Perry Yates, and Matthew Anderson
Staff Assistants
_____________________________
PART 8
NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
Energy Weapons Activities and Nuclear Nonproliferation
and Naval Reactors
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
______________________________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
20-843 WASHINGTON : 2016
_______________________________________________________________________________
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
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HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey NITA M. LOWEY, New York
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
KAY GRANGER, Texas PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
KEN CALVERT, California SAM FARR, California
TOM COLE, Oklahoma CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania BARBARA LEE, California
TOM GRAVES, Georgia MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
KEVIN YODER, Kansas BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas STEVE ISRAEL, New York
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska TIM RYAN, Ohio
THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
DAVID G. VALADAO, California MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland DEREK KILMER, Washington
MARTHA ROBY, Alabama
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada
CHRIS STEWART, Utah
E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia
DAVID W. JOLLY, Florida
DAVID YOUNG, Iowa
EVAN H. JENKINS, West Virginia
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi
William E. Smith, Clerk and Staff Director
(ii)
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2017
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Tuesday, March 1, 2016.
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY--NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, WEAPONS
AND ACTIVITIES AND NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION AND NAVAL REACTORS
WITNESSES
FRANK KLOTZ, ADMINISTRATOR FOR NUCLEAR SECURITY, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
ANNE HARRINGTON, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR DEFENSE NUCLEAR
NONPROLIFERATION, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
BRIGADIER GENERAL S.L. DAVIS, ACTING DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR DEFENSE
PROGRAMS, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
ADMIRAL JAMES FRANK CALDWELL, JR., DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR OFFICE OF
NAVAL REACTORS, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Mr. Simpson. I would like to call this hearing to order and
good afternoon, everyone. Administrator Klotz, I would like to
welcome you to your second appearance before the Subcommittee
to testify on the budget request for the National Nuclear
Security Administration, which includes programs that sustain
our nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, advance U.S. nuclear
nonproliferation goals, and support the nuclear Navy.
Admiral Caldwell, I would like to thank you for your
service to this country and welcome you to your first
appearance before this Subcommittee. Since the Director of
Naval Reactors serves an 8-year term, we look forward to having
you this year and many years to come. You are probably going to
outlast me. I am at that stage of life where 8 years is like
have we got our plots ready?
General Davis, I would like also welcome you and thank you
for your service to the country. This is the second time you
have testified before the Subcommittee, but the first in your
new capacity as the Acting Director of Defense Programs.
Ms. Harrington, I welcome you back. I believe we may have
actually lost count of the number of times you testified before
this Subcommittee. The expertise you bring to the table is
incredibly valuable and we thank you for your continued
dedication to the nonproliferation programs.
The President's Budget Request for the National Nuclear
Security Administration is $12.9 billion, an increase of $357
million, or 2.9 percent above last year's level. Since the
overall budget cap set by the Bipartisan Budget Control Act are
flat compared to last year's level, the increases requested for
defense activities for NNSA will need to compete with other
important defense programs across the federal government.
Within the NNSA budget request itself, that same
competition for resources is evident. The Administration's
nuclear modernization plans continue to exert large pressures
on available funds. Weapons Activities has increased by $357
million and Naval Reactors is increased by $45 million, while
Nonproliferation activities are decreased by $132 million.
We hope to hear more from you today on the prioritization
in your budget request and how you intend to accomplish the
modernization activities that are need to extend the life of
our nuclear deterrent within a constrained budget environment.
Please ensure for the hearing record that responses to the
questions for the record and any supporting information
requested by the Subcommittee are delivered in final form to us
no later than 4 weeks from the time you receive them. I also
ask that if Members have additional questions they would like
to submit to the Subcommittee for the record that they please
do so by close of business on Thursday.
With those opening comments I would like to yield to our
Ranking Member, Ms. Kaptur, for any opening comments that she
would like to make.
[The information follows:]
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Ms. Kaptur. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Welcome.
Certainly General Klotz, Admiral Caldwell, Miss Harrington, and
General Davis, we appreciate your appearing before the
subcommittee this afternoon. And since this subcommittee last
met to review the National Nuclear Security Administration
Budget, the world continues to see challenges in disparate
areas of our globe. It is through that lens that we must assess
our strategic future, including importantly, nuclear security.
The possession of nuclear weapons bring an awesome
responsibility, and no one knows that more than you do. Still
nuclear weapons serve as only one component of our national
nuclear strategy. The NNSA nonproliferation program also plays
an essential role in securing nuclear material globally and
provides a rare, though admittedly recently more limited look
into the Russian nuclear program.
Congress, and this subcommittee in particular, must balance
the need to maintain our nuclear weapons stockpile with the
importance of reducing global vulnerabilities through
nonproliferation efforts. And additionally the tremendous
amount of money spent on nuclear capabilities compels a sharp
attention to ensuring financial responsibility. The NNSA makes
up a sizeable portion of this subcommittee's bill with nuclear
weapons and Naval Reactors representing 83 percent of NNSA's
total budget. Mindful of the many needs of our Nation this
subcommittee must ensure precious resources are provided as
part of a coherent strategy. Further, the NNSA must demonstrate
a continued ability to better manage projects, particularly in
the weapons account.
I remain concerned about repeated and astonishing cost
increases and schedule delays that plague the NNSA. The nuclear
deterrent is too important and resources too precious to waste
funds pursuing unnecessary or unrealistic proposals. While NNSA
has made progress toward more rigorous project and financial
management, much work remains as you well know.
We look forward to our discussion today.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for yielding the time. And thank
you all for being here.
Mr. Simpson. And I understand, Administrator, you have the
opening statement and you are going to do one.
Mr. Klotz. Yes, sir.
Mr. Simpson. And the others were submitted for the record,
is that correct?
Mr. Klotz. Yes, sir.
Mr. Simpson. The time is yours.
Mr. Klotz. Okay. Thank you, sir. Chairman Simpson, Ranking
Member Kaptur, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for
the opportunity to present the President's Fiscal Year 2017
Budget Request for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear
Security Administration. We have provided you a written
statement and respectfully request that it be submitted for the
record.
We value this committee's leadership in national security
as well as its robust and abiding support for the missions and
for the people of the NNSA. Our budget request, which comprises
more than 40 percent of DOE's overall budget is $12.9 billion,
an increase of nearly $357 million or 2.9 percent over the
fiscal year 2016 enacted level.
The budget request continues the Administration's
unwavering commitment to NNSA's important and enduring
missions. These missions are defined in the NNSA Strategic
Vision, which we released at the end of last year. They include
to maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear weapons
stockpile; to prevent, counter, and respond to the threat of
nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism; and, to support
the capability of our nuclear powered Navy to project power and
to protect American and Allied interests across the globe.
To succeed, NNSA must maintain cross cutting capabilities
that enable each core mission, again as defined in our
Strategic Vision. These cross cuts focus on advancing science,
technology, and engineering, supporting our people, and
modernizing our infrastructure, and developing a management
culture focused on safety, security, and efficiency, adopting
the best practices and use across the government and in the
commercial world. If you would like, I would also be pleased to
provide a copy of this document to the subcommittee for the
record.
[A copy of the NNSA Strategic Vision follows:]
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Mr. Klotz. The budget materials and briefings we have
provided describe NNSA's major accomplishments in the calendar
year 2015, as well as the underlying rationale for our budget
proposal for fiscal year 2017. Let me just briefly highlight a
few points here.
First and foremost, the United States has maintained a
safe, secure, and effective nuclear weapons stockpile without
nuclear explosive testing for over 20 years. NNSA's fiscal year
2017 budget request continues a steady increase in the Weapons
Activity appropriation. And in fact, this account has increased
more than 40 percent since the fiscal year 2010 budget request.
As a result of the funding provided by this Congress and
supported by this subcommittee, and the significant
improvements NNSA has made in program management over the past
two to three years, all of our life extension programs are now
on schedule and within budget.
NNSA's science and technology base also continues to yield
critical modeling and simulation data and deploy increasingly
capable high performance computing in support of stockpile
stewardship. Last year, for example, the National Ignition
Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California increased its shot rate--that is the number of
experiments that it does--from 191 in 2014 to 357 in 2015,
almost doubling the shot rate, including the first-ever
experiments at NIF using plutonium.
Our budget request also supports the recapitalization of
NNSA's aging research and production infrastructure. Most
notably the facilities where we perform our major uranium,
plutonium, tritium, and other commodity operations. Of
significance, NNSA completed the first subproject, titled Site
Readiness, for the Uranium Processing Facility on time and
under budget.
This year's request for the Defense Nuclear
Nonproliferation account is 6.8 percent lower than the fiscal
year 2016 enacted level for two reasons. First, prior year
carry over balances are available to execute several programs
in this mission space. And second, we propose terminating the
mixed oxide, or MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility project and
pursuing a dilute and dispose approach as a faster, cheaper
path to meeting our national commitment and international
agreement to dispose of 34 metric tons of excess weapons grade
plutonium.
The request for our third appropriations, the Naval
Reactors programs, keeps pace with mission needs and continues
NNSA's commitment to the three major initiatives undertaken by
NR: The OHIO-Class Reactor Plant System development, the land-
based S8G Prototype refueling overhaul taking place in upstate
New York, and the spent fuel handling recapitalization project
in Idaho. For each of these missions, NNSA is driving
improvements in management and governance. For all of our
programs, we have instituted rigorous analysis of alternatives,
defining clear lines of authority and accountability for
Federal and contractor program and project management, improved
cost and scheduled performance, and ensure that Federal project
directors and contracting officers have the appropriate skill
mix and professional certifications to effectively manage
NNSA's work.
Our budget request for the fourth appropriation, that is
Federal Salaries and Expenses, reflects an increasing emphasis
on improving program and project management across all our
mission pillars.
So, in closing, the nuclear security enterprise continues
to make significant progress, although as the Ranking Member
pointed out, there is still work to be done. Through
discipline, careful planning, consistent funding, and your
continued strong support, we believe we can make smart
investments to build on that progress and to meet new
challenges in the future.
So, again, thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you today. We all look forward to answering any questions you
may have.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Administrator Klotz. Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Klotz, I have
a question relating to weapons dismantlement. And the budget
request includes a significant increase for weapons
dismantlement, something you have not typically supported, at
least at this level. And I understand that some of this
increase is due to Secretary Kerry's announcement to accelerate
dismantlement by 20 percent. What benefits does this increase
bring to the budget, to the workforce, and are there benefits
beyond simply dismantling more weapons?
Mr. Klotz. Thank you. That is an extraordinarily good
question. We have all along been continuing a dismantlement
program to dismantle all those weapons that were retired prior
to the year 2009 by the year 2022. Last year, for instance, in
fiscal year 2016 the Congress enacted $52 million to continue
dismantlement activities which take place both at the Pantex
Plant in Amarillo, Texas and at Y-12 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
As you rightly pointed out, Secretary Kerry committed the
Administration to seeking a 20 percent increase in the funding
that we do for dismantlement, therefore our request for 2017 is
roughly $69 million. So a significant increase.
In addition to allowing us to complete or meet our pledge
to dismantle all those weapons that were retired before the
year 2009, it will allow us to do that a year earlier. But in
addition to doing that, it will allow us to hire more staff at
Pantex. We estimate that we will need to hire between 35 to 40
people at Pantex to do this increased workload. We will also
need to hire an additional 10 people we estimate, at Y-12 to do
this work. So once we have these people on board at both of
those sites, they have gotten their security clearances, they
understand how to the processes work at both plants, if the
need arises elsewhere at Pantex or Y-12 for other work that we
do, and we do work for all three of our mission pillars,
particularly at Y-12, then those individuals will be ideally
suited. So we also see it as a way of starting to build that
next generation of workforce, both at Pantex and Y-12.
Did you want to add anything to that?
General Davis. No, sir. I will just simply add that these
weapons will never be returned to the field in their current
condition so dismantling them also gives us some strategic
materials that we can use in our other life extension programs.
So it also provides that role.
Mr. Klotz. Even though a weapon has been retired, we
continue to have to ensure the safety and security of those
retired weapons. So I used to be in the same uniform as General
Davis, and the last thing as a commander you want to do is have
things sitting around your base that you do not need anymore.
Ms. Kaptur. Do you have an estimate of the numbers of those
weapons that will be dismantled?
Mr. Klotz. We would have to tell you the specific numbers
in a different setting. We would be happy to do that.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
Mr. Klotz. Yes, we do have a chart that lays all that out.
So we will share that with you.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. And just one other question on
domestic uranium enrichment, General. Your fiscal year 2016
budget request included $100 million to continue operating
uranium enrichment centrifuges that were constructed as part of
a joint demonstration with the United States Enrichment
Corporation, or USEC, now known as CENTRUS. You now do not
believe that this effort is worth supporting, so I have three
little questions. What changed in the intervening year, when
will we require a domestic capability for tritium needs, and
thirdly, I understand that given the time horizon you are now
considering you may look at technologies beyond ACP to achieve
a domestic enrichment capability. How will you make a
determination on which technology to use?
Mr. Klotz. Thank you for the question. And if I forget to
answer one of them, please remind me.
Ms. Kaptur. First, what changed in the intervening year?
You now believe that the effort is not worth supporting.
Mr. Klotz. Well, there is a number of things that were done
over the past several years. one, in accordance with
congressional direction, and also direction within the
executive branch interagency, we embarked upon a very serious
accounting of the current and future availability of low-
enriched uranium, highly enriched uranium, and tritium to meet
our defense needs. We also took a look at analysis of the
various types of technology there were to produce all three of
these commodities.
And then we also took a look at the preliminary cost and
schedule estimates of what it would take to build--the
Secretary referred to it this morning--as a national security
train of centrifuges at Piketon. One of the things that was
revealed as we did this inventory of uranium is we were able to
find additional uranium that could be used to meet our defense
needs, whether it is in the production of tritium or for Naval
Reactors or for the weapons program. So the need that we had--
--
Mr. Simpson. Would the Ranking Member yield for just a
second?
Ms. Kaptur. I would be very happy to.
Mr. Simpson. When you say you were able to find extra
amounts of this material, is this just laying around? Don't we
keep track of this?
Mr. Klotz. Yes. There are various types of uranium that are
in a form which might not be readily usable in the way in which
we have traditionally done it. For instance, leftover materials
that we are using at Y-12, if you are doing a cost analysis of
whether you want to build a whole capability enriched uranium,
or invest the money in taking this uranium that might otherwise
have been uneconomical to use for these purposes, the cost
curves drive you to the point it might be less expensive to
develop the capability to use that uranium.
Mr. Simpson. So it is not that you found this uranium in
the back of the shed----
Mr. Klotz. No, sir.
Mr. Simpson [continuing]. That you did not know was there?
Mr. Klotz. No, sir.
Mr. Simpson. Okay.
Mr. Klotz. And so there is cost associated with that. And
in the out years, we will show those costs of what it takes to
develop that uranium and downblend it for the purposes that we
need to use it for.
So in any event, given the fact that the need for this
uranium--or the need for it to have to use or develop a
capability of using only U.S. technology to enrich uranium got
pushed out to roughly 2040. So we used the cascade, the 100-120
large centrifuges that were in Piketon, for several years to
basically do a proof of concept to do the research and
development for these large centrifuges which are there. In our
assessment, we have now obtained all the data that we need on
how to at this point from the facility at Piketon. There is
still work that we will continue to do on the large centrifuges
at Oak Ridge in Tennessee and the K1600 facility that is there,
another facility located in Oak Ridge. And we feel that will
allow us to continue to learn what we need to learn until such
time as we need to build out a large national security train to
do domestic uranium enrichment with U.S. only technology.
In the meantime, we have also----
Ms. Kaptur. You are saying it is after 2040?
Mr. Klotz. That is when we will have the need for that, so
we would have to--and I would have to get you the specific
dates when we would have to start thinking about developing
that.
And you are right, now that we have the opportunity to do
that we also want to consider the possibility of using smaller
centrifuges to get to the same objective. And we will do that
work at Oak Ridge as well.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Fleischmann.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to
thank each and every one of the witnesses for being here today
and for your outstanding service to our great Nation.
General Klotz, it is always good to see you, sir. Before I
begin my questions I do think congratulations are in order for
the entire NNSA team. It was reported I believe last week that
the completion of the dismantlement of the retired W69 warhead
at Y-12 is complete. Thank you very much. That is the way it is
supposed to work.
My first question to you is usually about the same subject,
this Uranium Processing Facility. The UPF at Y-12 is obviously
very important to me and I think to our country and its
national defense. Will you please give an update on the status
of the design process and any details that you can give us on
the status of the project as we ramp up for construction? And,
specifically, what do you plan to accomplish in fiscal year
2017, sir?
Mr. Klotz. Thank you very much. And I think the Secretary
showed you a chart this morning in the course of the hearing
which lays out, I think, in great detail the approach that we
are taking for constructing a uranium processing facility, the
objective of which is to get us out of Building 9212, which you
visited many times, sir, at the Y-12 complex by the year 2025
at a cost cap of $6.5 billion.
So what we have done, again, at one point we were thinking
about building a big box to house everything that was in that
facility and move it in. And as a result of ideas that were
conceived in the NNSA and DOE and thoroughly studied by a red
team, chaired by Dr. Thom Mason, who is the director of Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, we have now come up with what is
known as the modular approach, where we are segregating various
activities that need to be performed to process uranium by
hazard category and by security category, placing them in
different buildings. And of course, there is a different cost
structure associated with the level of security and the level
of safety that you have to achieve.
The first subproject under the redesigned approach was
called the Site Readiness subproject. I had the great pleasure
of joining you when we cut the ribbon on the completion of that
last year. Again, as I said in my opening statement, under
budget and on time.
We are now in the midst of work related to the site
infrastructure and services subproject, which will continue to
prepare us for the actual construction of the UPF facility once
we are ready to do that. The project is actually under way,
will cost about $78 million, and we expect to complete that in
April of 2018. So a lot of the work in 2017 will be devoted to
that.
We are also continuing the process of the design for the
three main facilities, two of which are nuclear facilities, the
mechanical and electrical building, the salvage and
accountability building, and the main process building. So that
will also continue over the course of the next several years.
And we will also be getting ready to do the next two major
subprojects, one called Electrical Substation and also one
called Site Preparation and Long Lead Procurement.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, sir. I would like to ask you a
question about high-risk facilities. I was pleased to see that
NNSA's budget request increased funding for the high-risk
excess facilities.
Would you please explain what can be accomplished over the
next few years, especially and specifically at Alpha 5, at Y-
12, described as the worst of the worst?
Mr. Klotz. Well, one of the things that we do have in this
budget, Congressman, is we put in some additional funding to
ensure the safety and security of Alpha 5 as well as Beta 4,
two major facilities at Y-12 which are no longer in use.
However, they still exist. Our employees have to go in there
from time to time to make sure that they are safe and secure
and there are risks associated with them doing that, risks from
fire, contamination, water intrusion, and so on. So we had
asked for additional money in this particular budget
specifically going to carry out a very structured, disciplined
approach to making sure that we have done the work that is
necessary to sustain those buildings for the long-term.
As I think the Secretary testified this morning, one of his
directives that we are carrying out, not only at NNSA, but at
the other parts of the DOE, is to arrest the growth of deferred
maintenance. One of the things I learned in my time in the
military is in an era of constrained budgets, the first dollar
will always go to mission and to people. And the dollars that
are necessary to sustain infrastructure, to do repairs, whether
it is roads or facilities, always gets pushed to the right; it
gets deferred. And there is a tendency to want to take risk in
that area. Well, at some point you can only take risk for so
long until you get to a tipping point, and literally, at places
like Y-12, the ceiling starts to cave in which will shut down
operations for extended periods of time.
So with the support of the Congress, last year in the 2016
enacted budget, we were able to basically hold the level of
growth in NNSA's deferred maintenance to level. And then there
will be a slight downturn in the overall level of deferred
maintenance which quite frankly right now is at $3.7 billion
for the NNSA.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I will yield back
to round two.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Gentleman and Miss Harrington, we had
Secretary Mabus in this morning and Admiral Richardson, CNO,
and so I would like to get some sort of updates on your
characterization of where we stand, Admiral Caldwell, with the
OHIO-class subs. This Committee makes substantial investments,
and obviously they are matched on the Department of Defense
side. Where are we?
Admiral Caldwell. Yes, sir. First off, sir, thanks for the
question and thanks for the great support that Naval Reactors
has enjoyed from this subcommittee. It has enabled us to be
successful and it will be important to our future success.
My responsibility for OHIO-Class replacement is the design
and the way ahead in the engine room and the reactor plants.
The simple answer is we are on a great track. We are on track
to support the Navy's goals. And the Navy's goals are to start
construction of that national asset in 2021, to complete that
construction in 2028, and send that ship to sea in 2031. Now
that is a fairly aggressive timeline for construction. We are
building a ship that is about two and a half times the size of
Virginia, and we are going to do it in seven years, the same
time span to build the first VIRGINIA-class submarine.
On the Naval Reactors side, this year and with the support
of the subcommittee's past support to us, we are moving forward
on the system component and equipment designs, and final
designs that will allow us to do heavy equipment procurement in
fiscal year 2019.
Two other big portions in this are the development of the
electric drive system, which we will get to a full-scale
testing at the end of fiscal year 2017. That will be a very
important milestone. And then the other big component in OHIO-
Class replacement is the life of the ship fuel. That ship will
be loaded with fuel once and will last over 40 years without
ever refueling. And we are on a great track to do that and
start manufacturing the core in about fiscal year 2019. And it
will take about five years to develop that core.
So, again, thanks to your success we are on a great path to
meet the Navy's timeline and our fiscal year 2017 budget
submission allows us to continue that path.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. This Committee under Chairman Simpson,
and certainly on the defense side, we are supportive, but there
are some pretty extraordinary costs involved here. How do you
stay on top of some of those costs and what is the estimate for
the first OHIO-class Replacement sub? It is pretty high.
Admiral Caldwell. Well, the first will be on the order of
about $9 billion and follow up about $5 billion. Those figures
are being, you know, looked at closely. In regards to the
design work that I am responsible for, the total bill is about
$1.7 billion on the DOE side, and that enables me to do all of
this design that gets the electric drive to provide the stealth
that we need to operate this class out into 2080, and allows us
to do the detailed design work to develop this life of the ship
core. That is not a trivial undertaking. But we are on an
excellent path with periodic program updates to meet. My staff
is out providing the regulatory oversight and the management
oversight to make sure that these projects are on track. We are
very involved. And I think, again, thanks to the support of the
Committee, the fiscal year 2017 budget is going to allow us to
continue that. So we are exactly where we need to be on the
Naval Reactors side.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. A few years ago--and I do not include
you in the group--people were rather dismissive of what the
Russians are doing and the Chinese are doing, like whatever
they had in the way of subs could never match our capabilities.
But in reality we find in open sources Russians ginning up
their game. They have, you know, some pretty extraordinary
capabilities. I assume the Chinese are not slowing down their
building of subs, both nuclear and diesel.
Any observations besides, obviously, the Navy's view that
you will always have overwhelming superiority? Is there any
recognition, especially since we made two VIRGINIA subs every
year? We want to continue that. But the end product we are
looking at in terms of the replacement, whether that will be a
match for the future, for future situations.
Admiral Caldwell. A couple of thoughts on that, sir. First
off, I think what you are seeing in Russia and China is the
understanding that a Navy brings value to their national
interest, a strong Navy in particular. And they have also seen
the advantage of an undersea Navy. You see Russia developing
highly capable submarines in smaller numbers, and you have
certainly seen China develop larger numbers of submarines. Our
responsibility in the Navy is to understand the capabilities
that are out there in the world and to make sure that our
capabilities are overmatched, or that we overmatch that
capability. And I think we are on a great path to do that with
the VIRGINIA-class submarines and the ability to modernize
those throughout their life. The OHIO-Class replacement design
was undertaken with understanding the challenges that she will
face over her life, including stealth weapons requirements, the
reliability, the endurance, all of those things factored in.
And, again, I think we are on a great path to deliver exactly
what the Nation needs on schedule.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Thank you for exuding that confidence.
Maybe just put in a plug, I understand that the Washington
Carrier group is out there on maneuvers. Is that right? Was
that the aircraft carrier we were going to retire? So now it is
up and running?
Admiral Caldwell. It is back on the East Coast, sir, and it
will be refueled starting next year. We were able to, due to
some great work with support by our DOE labs, and Naval
Reactors which enabled a carrier swap that positioned the
Ronald Reagan as the forward deployed carrier in Japan.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. We have got to get moving on the forward
too. Thank you.
Admiral Caldwell. And we already are, sir.
Mr. Frelinghuysen. Okay, good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. I hate to do this, but we have nine minutes to
vote. We have started actually trying to constrain it to the
time allowed so the first vote doesn't go on for 45 minutes. So
we are going to have to leave for just a minute, if you could
stay around. I think we have two votes, is that right? We have
two votes and will be back right after that. I would encourage
Members to come back as soon after that second vote as we can
so that we don't have these ladies and gentlemen sitting around
all day when they have important work to do. We will be
recessed for a few minutes.
[Recess.]
Mr. Simpson. We will be back in order.
Representative Roybal-Allard.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Deputy Administrator Harrington, last
year you spoke to the merits of the Nuclear Smuggling Detection
and Deterrence program, which is at the core of our strategy to
deter, detect, and interdict illicit international trafficking
in special nuclear and other radioactive materials. In the
fiscal year 2016 budget hearing you explained that the reason
for the roughly 6 percent decrease in a funding cut from fiscal
year 2015 was due to the success of the program and the ability
for our partners to be self-sustainable and take responsibility
of their own operations and maintenance. This year's request is
nearly level to the fiscal year 2016 enacted level even as
there have been reported cases of radiological material going
missing in recent years, including most recently in Iraq.
Are you confident that the current funding levels will
reinforce our global nuclear security infrastructure in the
face of today's threats? And how does the NNSA help ensure that
its self-sustainable partners are preserving the high standard
for detecting radioactive materials that the NNSA holds?
Ms. Harrington. Thank you very much for your question. Yes,
the Nuclear Smuggling Detection and Deterrence program is key
to our counter-nuclear smuggling efforts. We have a high degree
of confidence in the capabilities of the program, in part
because we continually are reviewing and realigning where
necessary.
We have gone through two strategic reviews in the last 4
years. And one of the conclusions from those reviews is that
depending on the geographic and other considerations that we
have to take into account, diversifying the technologies, not
just the fixed detectors, but mobile vans, backpacks, handheld
detectors, have to be designed as part of an overall suite of
capabilities. Included in that suite of capabilities is our
collaboration with both the law enforcement communities in the
countries where we work as well as intelligence communities,
all of which contribute to a multilayered defense.
You talked about sustainability. That is absolutely key
and, if anything, it is the dog and not the tail of this whole
effort because it is the ongoing commitment with each of these
countries, their ability to work effectively with their
neighbors and within their regions that actually builds the
global ring of security. So we pay a great deal of attention to
that.
And what we never intend to do is simply build a capability
and then drop it and walk away. We build networks to sustain
professional interaction among these capabilities and to
provide continuing education, if you will, training, and
updating, both of skills and equipment. We are moving more into
doing a variety of tabletop and field exercises to really push
the limits even more.
I hope that answers your question.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. How do you prioritize which countries to
work with and what sorts of factors do you look at when
considering new partnerships? And what new countries do you
expect to partner with in fiscal year 2017?
Ms. Harrington. So the prioritization of countries I can
speak about generally, but as you surely appreciate, a number
of our considerations would be classified, but we could give
you a more detailed briefing on what some of those
considerations are. Clearly, the presence of established
smuggling routes, the presence of nuclear and radiological
materials, the stability of the country or regions in which we
see these materials, and other elements are part of a package
of considerations that we take into account in our selection
process.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Okay, thank you.
Administrator Klotz, the Stewardship Science Academic
Alliances Program and the site stewardship Minority Serving
Institutions Partnerships Program were consolidated into one
program in fiscal year 2016. This action was taken to improve
the effectiveness of these programs and to encourage additional
partnerships among minority-serving institutions.
Can you please provide an update on how this restructuring
is doing, how the program is specifically working with
Hispanic-serving institutions to get the next generation of
Hispanic youth excited about the STEM fields, and if you have
seen an increase in the partnerships of minority serving
institutions?
Mr. Klotz. Thank you very much for that question and let me
take the specific response in terms of the numbers for the
record, if I could. But just let me underline just how
important it is to us in the areas in which we have reached out
in all regions of the United States to bring minority serving
institutes into our programs for internships, for small
activities, but also support to various academic institutions
in building curriculum and providing scholarships and work
opportunities for people in minority serving institutes.
Just last year, we developed a program for training
students from minority serving institutes, largely in the
Southeast United States for cybersecurity, which we think is
going to be one of the most important fields not only for NNSA
and for the Department of Energy, but also for the government
and commercial operations in general. Everywhere I go I make a
point when I visit our sites to meet with the people who
support those programs and it is something we are absolutely
committed to.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Do I have time for another question?
Mr. Simpson. Yes.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. NNSA's Radiological Security subprogram
works to secure certain radioactive sealed sources located in
soft target sites such as hospital or universities. And this
work reduces the risk of terrorists acquiring radioactive
material that could be used to make a dirty bomb.
The NNSA states that fiscal year 2016 funding will be used
to complete security upgrades for 95 domestic buildings
containing radiological material. For fiscal year 2017 your
budget request includes funding for only 45 buildings. There
are 225 additional buildings planned to complete security
upgrades between fiscal year 2018 and 2021.
Why does the funding request include only 45 buildings and
how do you plan to complete the 225 remaining requests between
fiscal year 2018 and 2021?
Ms. Harrington. Thank you. So, radiological security is a
high priority for us. The schedule that we have is one that we
believe is realistic and what we need to emphasize is that all
of these buildings in the United States meet Nuclear Regulatory
Commission requirements for licensing these sources in the
first place. So this is an augmentation above and beyond those
baseline commitments.
Part of the shift in funding is an increase in the amount
of funding that we are putting into what we call our
alternative technologies program. And this is a pathway to
permanent risk reduction because there are alternative
technologies available, for example blood irradiators are often
found in hospitals and other organizations and could be
replaced by x-ray-based technology, so you do not even have to
have the source in the facility in the first place. So we are
trying to encourage both new technology development as well as
greater utilization of existing technologies to eliminate some
of these classes of radiological sources altogether.
Ms. Roybal-Allard. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Valadao.
Mr. Valadao. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for your time
today. I have a couple of questions.
Ms. Harrington, negotiations on the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action, JCPOA, have concluded and the Department of
Energy is expected to play some kind of role in implementing a
program. However, your responsibilities for implementation are
unclear.
Is there any funding in your budget request to support the
nuclear agreement with Iran? I'm asking the wrong person the
question, I'm assuming. And, B, what is the role of DOE going
forward and why should Congress support these particular DOE
activities?
Mr. Klotz. Thank you for that question. It is an
extraordinarily good question. And I believe, as Secretary
Moniz testified this morning, there are a number of ways in
which the Department of Energy and NNSA are associated with the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Probably the most important way in which we are involved is
our continuing close relationship with the International Atomic
Energy Agency, which is headquartered in Vienna. As you know,
under the JCPOA they have the lion's share of the
responsibility for monitoring Iranian compliance with every
provision of that agreement. As I said, we have a long
association with them. We provide training to their inspectors.
In fact, as the Secretary mentioned this morning, every IAEA
inspector since 1980 has taken a course in nuclear material
measurement at Los Alamos Laboratory in addition to
professional continuing education and a whole host of areas.
We also provide technology, electronic seals, tamperproof
cameras. There is also a piece of equipment that is being
deployed for the first time in Iran as part of the JCPOA called
the OLEM, the Online Enrichment Monitor, which you can fit
around a pipe and actually measure the enrichment level of
uranium gas which is flowing through that pipe to ensure that
it is not being enriched beyond the levels that are permitted
under the JCPOA.
In terms of specific additions to the budget, for the NNSA
budget, in addition to that work which we continue to do anyway
in international safeguards, there is an additional 13 million
that we are requesting. That will largely go to pay salary and
travel for those people who are involved in the redesign of the
ARAK reactor, A-R-A-K reactor, to ensure that it meets our
nonproliferation goals and cannot be used to produce plutonium,
and that we also have some additional work in other areas.
Mr. Valadao. I am glad you brought up the IAEA. The
Government Accountability Office recently released a report
that states the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA,
the agency responsible for verifying and reporting back to the
international community on Iran's compliance, the quote is,
``faces an inherent challenge to detecting undeclared nuclear
materials and activities.''
Do you believe the verification measures that exist will be
sufficient for the IAEA to monitor compliance with the
agreement? And what will be the greatest challenges, and are
there any opportunities to improve the limitations of current
nuclear verification techniques?
Mr. Klotz. I do believe that the verification measures that
have been put in place through the JCPOA are absolutely right
for the agreement. And, in fact, to be perfectly honest, when
we came out with the agreement, many of us were very surprised
and very impressed with the level of verification that was
written into that particular agreement. It goes well beyond any
other agreement that we have struck with the IAEA has.
As the Secretary mentioned this morning, we essentially
will monitor every aspect of the Iranian fuel cycle from the
mining and milling of uranium all the way to its disposition in
the end. If there is diversion of material to other uses, that
is how it will become obvious when you see that in how the fuel
cycle flows beyond onsite inspections, beyond all the
technological monitoring that we talked about.
Again, as the Secretary said, it is always a challenge to
find those areas which are at undeclared facilities in large,
open spaces. We also have very capable American and allied
intelligence capabilities that will also be paying attention to
that.
Mr. Valadao. And just one more on cybersecurity. Mr.
Administrator, as you know, the Department of Energy has
experienced a number of data breaches in the past. The data
breach last summer which involved files held by the Office of
Personnel Management was a huge failure for the Federal
Government. The performance measures in your budget request
consistently say the cyber program is effective.
What are you doing to protect employees and obviously, most
importantly, our national security information? Do you believe
that the measures put in place thus far are sufficient?
Mr. Klotz. This is one of the greatest challenges I think
the Federal Government faces, whether it is on the executive
branch or the legislative branch, and also commercial industry
faces, and that is maintaining the security of its cyber
networks and its databases. It seems like we always have to
work to get one step ahead of what the state of the art is for
those who would try and penetrate our systems. We take this
very, very seriously, one for the protection of our people and
their personal identifying information, to guard against the
risk of that being compromised and leading to identity theft,
but also we guard some of the most important secrets that the
U.S. Government has in the nuclear area. So there is always
more that can be done.
Mr. Valadao. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Klotz. I might add to that, if I could, one of the
initiatives that Anne Harrington, I think, has actually
spearheaded both for the U.S. Government and the international
community is to draw that connection between the physical
protection of nuclear facilities, including civil nuclear
plants, and protecting their vulnerability to cyberattack. And
she has led the charge in getting that onto the international
agenda of concerns.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Fortenberry.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, good afternoon. I
want to return to some of the questioning that I had interacted
with and posed to the Secretary this morning regarding just the
architecture of our nonproliferation efforts.
You have a slight decrease in the budget. I need to hear
some explanation for that please but more than that, is the
current construct, the current ecosystem multiagency effort to
share information, to think critically, to project out what the
emerging threats will be in this regard so that we are all
working toward increasing the probability as close to zero as
possible of some incident in this regard? Are those efforts
ongoing? The Secretary and I, as well as the chairman had
spoken about following up to the March report, perhaps with you
in another setting to review some of the finer points in that
regard but in terms of generalities, is the current ecosystem
of nonproliferation, the cross-agency cooperation, our ability
to think critically about emerging trends in this regard? Are
we doing enough? Are we safe?
To me, everything else that we are doing in the building is
inconsequential if we do not get this right, frankly.
Mr. Klotz. Thank you and I did watch with rapt attention
through the miracle of modern communication technology this
morning and of course, we cannot hold a candle to the Secretary
in articulating in a clear, concise and compelling way this but
let me try. On the issue of interagency coordination and you
and I have discussed this before and we certainly need to have
additional discussions. I think at the moment, my personal view
is that we have very good interaction at the interagency level
between the various agencies which are responsible for
nonproliferation.
DOE, State Department, Homeland Security, the Intelligence
Committee, the Department of Defense coordinated by the
National Security Council which is, by the 1947 law, that is
their responsibility to do that.
But I think there is also something that is unique about
the current situation. The President made a speech in 2009 in
which he clearly stated that securing nuclear materials and
dealing with the threat of nuclear proliferation and the threat
of nuclear terrorism was a national priority.
That sort of galvanizing guidance, I think, has seized all
of us who work in this particular area so we know we should and
we can work together on that.
In terms of setting up formal structures, I have often
thought that communities of interest in which people are drawn
together because they share a common goal, a common objective,
or a common need to pool resources is one of the greatest
motivators in terms of making people work together. Did you
have any----
Ms. Harrington. I would just add very briefly that not only
do we have a very vibrant interagency process, and one that I
would have to say works. I was recently involved in an issue
that in fact involved two separate interagency policy groups
and so the White House said: ``This is silly, everybody get
together in one room. Let's figure out whether we can come to
consensus.''
We came to the consensus at the Assistant Secretary level
which means that we do not have to now bother all the deputies
and principals with a decision because we were able to broker
that at our level and that really is the point, to get that
engine going and real communication on substantive issues, but
we also work individually. For example, the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency has been a long time partner of ours. Ken
Myers will be retiring soon, stepping down as the director of
that agency. He was in my office yesterday so that we could, as
our last act together, sign an MOU between our two
organizations on how they will work together into the future
and coordinate specifically.
Mr. Fortenberry. Let me ask you this, one of the challenges
of holding a congressional seat, of being in public office and
yours as well is to take the legacy of what has been done and
try to retranslate it in order to meet emerging needs,
creativity, entrepreneurship. Have there been gaps identified
in the current construct of our nonproliferation efforts, as
they exist across basically six agencies or are there
duplications that, you referenced one there, that do not make
sense that can be informally addressed?
This is what I worry about and again, I look forward into
going deeper into the report that you have appropriately issued
last year and that may better answer, but to the degree that
you can address this, I would appreciate it.
Ms. Harrington. Well I think that one of the issues that we
would like to come back, for example, and discuss more is
emerging technologies and some of the other things that we
believe we have to be prepared to meet flexibly and responsibly
in the future.
Mr. Fortenberry. Yes, there are enrichment technologies,
for instance, that are emerging that would make this quite
simpler than the vast infrastructure that is now required and
things of this type is exactly what I am talking about.
Ms. Harrington. Correct.
Mr. Klotz. Additive manufacturing is another area that both
has enormous promise for allowing us to do a lot of our
activities less expensively, faster, by cutting down how long
it takes to develop a prototype, but by the same token, there
is another side of that coin which we can discuss when we get
together.
Mr. Fortenberry. The Secretary proposed, and I gave this
example, that with the advent and the movement towards small
modular reactors that this technology is suddenly smaller,
scalable, duplicatable more readily. Now he, you know how he
is, he is very respectful and polite and he countered the
argument by suggesting that that actually takes away the need
for advanced enrichment capabilities that could be diverted
toward more improper purposes but nonetheless, it is the
broader problem of advancing technology without there being any
singular controlling entity, I think leaves us vulnerable.
Ms. Harrington. I was actually really happy that you raised
that question.
Mr. Fortenberry. Oh, good.
Ms. Harrington. Because we have a very close working
relationship with the Nuclear Energy Office, which, as you
know, has the lead for advancing small modular reactor
competitiveness and design in the United States so in 2014, we
sat down and looked at these reactors and said: ``Well that is
great, but why do we not do a study on the implications for
safeguards and security of these new designs?'' And so we have
that study and we would be happy to share it with you and the
good news out of the study is that it does not create
additional problems compared to existing reactors and in some
cases, particularly for the models that are intended for
placement underground, subsurface designs, it actually adds to
the security so we would be happy to----
Mr. Fortenberry. Yes, please.
Ms. Harrington. But we tried to, within the Department, to
bring all those streams together and do the thinking as a
group.
Mr. Fortenberry. One more quick question, Mr. Chairman. In
that regard, who drives that narrative? You rightly pointed out
the President's projection of policy, his vision and I
completely agree.
In fact, I was one of about 15 members who were invited to
the White House very early on, we all rode on a bus and we
could not figure out what was the binding narrative between us
because it was people from all types of philosophical
dispositions. We finally figured it out, in fact Senator Markey
told me because he was on the bus, that this is everyone who
voted against the India Civil Nuclear Trade Deal so there was
only a handful of us.
So I want to commend the President for this because this
was important work to reestablish this ideal for the
international community that at least gathering loose,
unsecured material was something that we could all do and then
it is a gateway to the broader considerations about nuclear
security worldwide.
But in terms of specific emerging technology and who drives
the culture of the policy discussion on that? Do you do it?
Does the National Security Council do it? Does it happen
organically, informally? Is there a hierarchy of process here?
I am curious so--should I do it?
Mr. Klotz. The answer to all of that is yes, all of the
above. It is a community of interest; there truly is a
community of interest that involves not just those agencies of
which we are a part of that have an abiding interest in these
issues.
It involves interested members of Congress and their staff.
It involves the Non-Governmental Organizations, the NGOs, some
of whom are sitting here who drive the thinking, the thoughts,
the ideas forward in ways in which we can make the world a
safer place with respect to nuclear proliferation and
terrorism.
Mr. Fortenberry. And you are satisfied that that
collaborative process, without a strict hierarchy, if you will,
actually is the right, proper, robust mechanism by which the
spectrum of emerging threats or the ability to think
constructively and creatively about what we are doing that is
leaving us potentially vulnerable, what could be updated, what
could be let go of, what could be created is actually
occurring, you are confident with this process?
Ms. Harrington. Yes.
Mr. Fortenberry. All right, thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Before I forget, could you get a copy of that
report to all the members of the Committee?
Mr. Klotz. This report here?
Mr. Simpson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Klotz. Yes, sir. I am happy to do that.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Admiral Caldwell, your budget
request reports that the Legacy Spending Fuel Facility will
have to operate for another 5 to 12 years after the new
facility comes online in order to provide spending fuel
examination capabilities. Why were the examination capabilities
not included in the design of the new facility? Naval Reactors
was working with the Office of Nuclear Energy on a partnership
for the new spent fuel examination facility, those plans have
not been advanced. What is the status of this effort and could
a joint project meet the needs of both programs?
Admiral Caldwell. I will answer the first part, sir, and
then I might come back to just drill in a little bit on the
second one so that I am clearly answering your question. The
Spent Fuel Handling Project is designed to replace a 55-year-
old facility in the extended core facility that is out in
Idaho.
That facility is aging, it has some infrastructure
challenges there. It could limit our ability to do what the
Navy needs in terms of receiving, packaging, and interim
storage of spent fuel and additionally, it cannot accommodate
the longer fuel that we processed that comes out of the NIMITZ-
Class carriers so we are on a steady drumbeat of refueling the
NIMITZ-Class carriers so that they can get out to their roughly
50 year lifetime.
So we have been trying to do this for a number of years but
due to budget shortfalls, we were never able to undertake it.
Now thanks to the support of this subcommittee, we have been
able to move out on the plan to recapitalize that expended core
facility and we decided to do that in phases. The phasing was
necessary to fit within the budget constraints that we had to
deal with.
I think it is important also to understand that there are
several aspects of work that go on at the expended core
facility today. One is that receipt, handling and packaging of
spent naval fuel for interim storage. The other is to take
expended cores from reactor plants and go do analysis. That
analysis is very important because it allows us to prove and
understand whether all of our design considerations play out
exactly the way we wanted them to. We learned a lot
essentially. We also do examinations of materials that are
tested in the advanced test reactor. We have materials that we
want to use in future cores. We eradiate them in a flux reactor
and we analyze what happens to those and that allows us to
build things for the future.
A great example there is the OHIO-Class replacement fuel.
All of that research and study is validated by what happens and
what we see in those test samples so the bottom line, sir, is
that we approach this in a phased approach and the phase most
important to us is to be able to process this NIMITZ-Class fuel
because we did not want to impact the Navy's ability to operate
the fleet.
We had to be able to bring the carriers in, offload the
fuel and through a steady drumbeat, bring that fuel out and
process it so we are on a path to recapitalize just that one
aspect of it first, the spent fuel handling, and now we will
go, we will start the construction in 2019 and we will start
doing the operations with that longer fuel from the NIMITZ-
Class in 2024 and then we are also working on the next phases
of this to go recapitalize those expended core analyses and
also the work that we need to do in hot cells and the work that
we need to do to examine samples that we test in the advanced
test reactor.
So that is a fairly complicated set of things that we have
to do but the spent fuel handling is only one phase of it and
we are on a path to do that.
Now your other question I believe was is there a
partnership and I think you mentioned the INL. I just want to
make sure that I understand that before I launch off on an
answer.
Mr. Simpson. You were looking at one time with the Office
of Nuclear Energy on a partnership for a new spent fuel
examination facility, but those plans seem to have not
progressed.
Admiral Caldwell. Well, what we did, sir, we looked at what
other facilities were around which included some of the
facilities out at the INL and fundamentally, when we got done
with it and doing the analysis of different courses of action,
this was the best course of action for us, because there would
be too many modifications required to existing facilities.
Mr. Simpson. And that goes to the difference in fuel?
Admiral Caldwell. The difference in fuel, the difference in
terms of the amount of things that we have to process. There is
a lot that goes into it and the existing facilities just could
not do what we needed to do in terms of production capacity and
so this is the best course based on the budget that we had and
based on the outcome we needed to be able to service the Navy's
needs.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. Naval Reactors continues to spend
approximately $130 million per year, approximately 30 percent
of your infrastructure budget on the spent fuel management
program. The Idaho Settlement Agreement requires Naval Reactors
to transfer all of its spent fuel to dry storage by 2023 and to
move all spent fuel out of the State by 2035. Since DOE's
overall spent fuel strategy is no longer valid, it has changed
substantially over the years and the State seems supportive of
Nuclear Reactors continued presence, there may be value in
updating the agreement between the State of Idaho and the Navy
sooner rather than later. What are your plans or do you have
plans to approach the State of Idaho about renegotiation of the
settlement agreement.
Admiral Caldwell. First off, Mr. Chairman, we are in--
everything that I can control within my program is tracking to
meet our agreement with the State of Idaho.
Mr. Simpson. But it is what you cannot control.
Admiral Caldwell. That's right, sir, the challenge is the
National Repository for spent fuel and therein lies the
challenge. We have a program now that takes our spent fuel,
prepares it and packages it and puts it in interim dry storage
which is safe and secure. Also, we are in close discussions, at
various times throughout the year, reporting to the governor
and the State of Idaho that we are meeting our responsibilities
in terms of our agreement. We are going to have to just keep
working on that as we go forward. At the same time, I think the
Nation needs to deal with how we are going to handle this spent
fuel and until we get there, my responsibility is to do that
work safely. If you approve my budget request the money that
you are giving me in fiscal year 17 will allow me to do what I
need to do safely to store that in an interim manner, while we
try to figure out how we are going to go in the long run.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I appreciate that. To tell you the
truth, I think that the people of Idaho are very supportive of
what Naval Reactors is doing and I do not hear any complaints,
and frankly, that is kind of unusual in my line of work and in
yours probably.
Admiral Caldwell. Sir, no doubt we get great support from
the State of Idaho and we are very thankful for that and we aim
to keep it that way.
Mr. Simpson. Well, you do a good job out there and we
appreciate that, but at some point and time, this settlement
agreement that was done, I cannot remember how many years ago,
1995----
Admiral Caldwell. 1995.
Mr. Simpson. So it is what now? Twenty years old, 21 years
old? Who knows what the future is going to be 20 years from
now, you know what I mean? You do the best you can and
circumstances change and at some point in time, the State of
Idaho, and I suspect all of the States that have had agreements
with DOE that are older, are going to have to sit down and say,
``Okay, now what do circumstances require that we do and still
meet the demands of the State and the needs of the Federal
Government and the Navy and others?'' And that is always a
tough thing to do because the people in Idaho are insisting
that we follow the governor's agreement to the letter of the
law. They are the ones who took the governor to court trying to
overturn that agreement to start with, and now they insist that
we follow it to the letter and we are down the road 20 years
and circumstances have changed; that is the reality. We know
they will change over the next 20 years, but I appreciate the
work that you have done out in Idaho and you do a great job and
we look forward to working with you and to complete your
mission.
General Davis, the GAO previously found that because NNSA
took an extended period of time to prepare a valid cost
estimate for the B-61 Life Extension Program, that life
extension program now has a little margin in the schedule left
to ensure the U.S. commitments to NATO will be met.
The new scope for the W-88 refurbishment was approved by
the Nuclear Weapons Council in November 2014 and the
Subcommittee still has not been provided the cost estimate.
What improvements have been made to the way that you estimate
life extension programs? Why has it taken so long to prepare a
valid cost estimate for the W 88 and will the extended time it
has taken to verify the cost have an impact on the
refurbishment schedule? And do you anticipate the W 88 cost to
rise significantly above the original cost estimates of $.4
billion.
General Davis. Thanks for that question, Congressman.
First, with regard to the B61-12, that program is currently
completing its last year of full-scale engineering and
development and we are on schedule and on budget to produce our
first production unit in March 2020.
This year was a good year for the B61-12. We conducted
three drop tests and we also did compatibility testing with the
F15, F16, B-2, and F35. In fact, I was able to actually witness
the first full-scale integration test of the B61-12 out in
Tonapah and it went very well and while I cannot get into
specifics, I will tell you that right now we are very happy
with where that program is as is the Air Force so that is with
the B61-12.
With regard to the W88, essentially through our
surveillance program, we identified an issue with the
conventional high explosive where it was not aging as we
expected to. In order to make sure that that weapon continued
to meet its military requirements, we made the decision,
working through the Nuclear Weapons Council that we need to
replace that conventional high explosive. Obviously that was
something that just happened in the last about a year. Going
through our discipline process, we will come up with a new cost
estimate, our first cost estimate for that program in September
of this year and then we will match up the existing Alt 370
Program, which was working to put a new arming, fusing, and
firing capability into that weapon along with the conventional
high explosive refresh and we will match up those programs in
March of 2017 in Phase 6.4 which is our production engineering.
Mr. Simpson. In order to make sure that a more affordable
design that meets military requirements was not overlooked, the
fiscal year 2016 Committee directed the NNSA to conduct an
independent validation of the alternatives. The NNSA selected
for the long-range standoff warhead which is in the early
stages of development. When do you expect the results of that
independent validation to be available? How many alternatives
did you consider? And were there any that were less expensive
than the preferred alternative you are now developing? And do
you believe that the process the NNSA uses to analyze
refurbishment alternatives is mature and comprehensive?
General Davis. Sir, with regard to the legislation, it
actually asked us to have a JASON-like organization take a look
at that. We approached the JASONs, they did not feel like this
work was in their wheelhouse so they directed us to some other
folks. We are currently in conversations with the MITRE
Corporation to perform that analysis for us. We expect that to
being hopefully later this summer.
In terms of the program, I think we, over the last several
years, have put a lot of discipline into it. When NNSA first
stood up, the real issue that they had was to figure out how to
do this stockpile stewardship program. How do we do the hard
science to make sure that the stockpile is working as it is
supposed to without having to run testing.
Our first life extension program was the W76 which is now
just over 60 percent complete so we are now taking that same
rigor that we put into the science part of NNSA and we are
putting it to the program management part.
To that end, we recently hired, although we have not
announced the candidate yet, a program executive officer that
will oversee all of our life extension programs to continue to
bring rigor to that process.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, and thanks for the work that you do
in all of this. I know it is very complicated and important
work.
Ann, your budget request and there are many people on the
floor who will look at a budget and that is the determination
of your commitment to a particular subject matter. Your budget
request is down, how much was it, $132 million from last year.
That means $132 million less commitment to nonproliferation,
according to some people.
Mr. Simpson. Tell me why it is down, why the request is
down, and what the implications of that are in terms of
nonproliferation so that we can answer those questions on the
floor.
Ms. Harrington. Okay, thank you. The fact that we have
dropped a few percentage points in the amount of money in the
budget does not reflect at all any less commitment to
nonproliferation by the Secretary, by the Administrator, by me,
or anybody else in the organization. But, as you know, we have
proposed a different path forward for the Mixed Oxide Fuel
Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, a dilute disposed
option.
Mr. Simpson. I think I may have heard something about that
this morning.
Ms. Harrington. I would be surprised if you did not, but
that is a difference of $70 million right there. And then
trying to be good custodians of our budget, we have some prior
year funds, which we have not been able to spend out as quickly
as we had hoped. In our line of business, a lot depends on your
foreign partners and their ability to absorb money at the pace
that we hoped that they can.
The funds that are in the budget will fully fund the
activities that we believe we can deliver in 2017, and we have
restored in the out-years the funding for the program that is
implementing slower than we had hoped because we fully intend
to be able to fulfill those commitments. So I think, on
balance, we have a good pathway forward. We are not worried
about being able to execute during 2017 with the funds that we
have requested.
Mr. Klotz. Could I just add a little bit to that?
Mr. Simpson. Sure.
Mr. Klotz. Everything Anne said is absolutely right. The
good news for us last year was that Congress voted an
appropriations bill for fiscal year 2016, and, of course, we
are your biggest cheerleaders to get an early appropriations
bill this year.
Mr. Simpson. We are going to try.
Mr. Klotz. You have no stronger supporters, Chairman, than
for that. But there still were budget caps we had to write to
build the fiscal year 2017 budget. We have a big portfolio that
covers a lot of different interests and with strong
stakeholders behind it. No one is more passionately committed
to the nonproliferation activities that we do than myself, than
Anne, than the Secretary, but we had to make a hard-headed
business decision. We had to be able to cash-flow everything at
fiscal year 2017. When we looked across the portfolio, we saw
we had these uncosted balances, as the Secretary and Anne have
mentioned already, and it just made business sense to us to use
the money that was in the bank to fund these projects in 2017
until we can tackle the fiscal year 2018 and beyond as we build
the next budget.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I appreciate that and I appreciate the
important work that you do. And probably nobody appreciates it
more than Congressman Fortenberry, who has worked on this very
dedicatedly, and not just from the perspective of looking at
the exact budget that we have each year to look at, but in the
long-range overall view of how we address this issue and are we
looking at it in the right way. I am glad that there is
somebody on the Committee that takes a real interest in looking
at that, so I appreciate that, Congressman.
And Congresswoman Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Davis, what is
Defense Programs doing in the area of additive manufacturing?
General Davis. Well, ma'am, additive manufacturing is a
great opportunity for Defense Programs in terms of future
technologies, especially in terms of fabricating pieces and
parts at our Kansas City National Security Campus. In the past,
we would have to send stuff out to be manufactured. It would
take several months to turn around. With additive manufacturing
at that location, we can now change the forms in a matter of
weeks, so it is a great opportunity for us to reduce costs. I
can tell you, out at Lawrence Livermore, they are also doing
some groundbreaking work in additive manufacturing in terms of
how we can use it within the actual design of actual components
that would go within the nuclear weapons as opposed to the
nonnuclear components as well.
Ms. Kaptur. All right, so those would give you locations?
General Davis. Well, I would say throughout the NNSA
enterprise, additive manufacturing is being used and,
certainly, we are pairing all of those labs and plants together
to leverage what they are learning at the different locations
to get the maximum effect.
Ms. Kaptur. Theoretically, in the future, could additive
manufacturing actually serve to compromise security in any way?
General Davis. Well, certainly one of the challenges with
additive manufacturing is that, right now, it takes a lot of
skill and expertise to build certain components within the
weapons that we use. Once you get additive manufacturing,
really the secret sauce is in the design, and those designs are
held on computers, so certainly cybersecurity is an important
element to protecting those in the future, so there is
certainly some hard science that still goes into the work.
Certainly protecting the cyber elements of the design is
important, and then also there is some unique technologies that
NNSA is developing in this area.
Ms. Kaptur. Yes, please, Ms. Harrington.
Ms. Harrington. So it might not surprise you that General
Davis' group and my group are working together on this issue,
looking at how to maximize the utilization of this important
emerging technology but still protect it, develop
classification guidance so that we know within the complex how
we can responsibly use it. So we are, again, very focused on
those issues and have a great team working together to come up
with a solution.
Ms. Kaptur. Without getting into too much detail, I would
assume the areas of technology that you are particularly
interested in, you prefer not to say.
Ms. Harrington. We could come back and talk about that.
Ms. Kaptur. Okay. All right, thank you.
Admiral Caldwell, could you give us an update on the study
of the feasibility of using low-enriched uranium in naval
reactors that was required in the fiscal year 2016 Defense
Authorization bill and funded at a level of $5 million in the
appropriations bill?
Admiral Caldwell. Yes, ma'am. We completed an initial
report over a year ago that just laid out the high-level
concerns or things that we would have to deal with in a low-
enriched uranium type program, and as directed in the NDAA for
2016, we have a draft, conceptual study to answer Congress'
question about this particular issue. That report is in routing
for approval, and I can give you some sense of where we are on
that.
I think the first thing I would tell you is that from a
strictly military standpoint, the application of low-enriched
uranium is problematic because, fundamentally, what you are
doing is you are removing the amount of available energy that
you are putting into the core. Now, we have decades of
experience in using highly enriched uranium that allow us to
operate these reactors for longer and longer time periods.
Again, a great example is the OHIO-Class replacement core,
which will last over 40 years.
Now, from the U.S. perspective, though, a low-enriched
uranium core, or pursuit of such things, offers us the chance
to take a leadership role. It also offers, within the Naval
Reactors Program, a chance to balance out the demand signal on
our technical community because, as we come through the OHIO-
Class replacement design, we are going to taper off in the
demand signal. So to sustain that workforce, pursuing an
advanced fuel system, which would be required for a low-
enriched uranium, would keep that team working, which is
important to us as we get to the next generation submarine.
Now, the conceptual study, we looked at what it would take
to develop the low-enriched uranium core and what it would take
to deploy. The development we estimate would take about 10 to
15 years. It would take an advanced fuel system because you are
trying to figure out how to load more fuel because it has less
energy. And it would take, again, 10 to 15 years and it would
be on the order of about $1 billion. Any work that we put
towards that would be of value to the Naval Reactors Program
because, again, advanced fuel-cell systems, we could leverage
that and even use highly enriched uranium.
The conceptual plan has several off-ramps. I talked before
about irradiated samples that allow us to examine materials.
The plan lays out several phases of irradiated materials that
we would take and look at, and over those 10 to 15 years, it
would allow us to take some off-ramps to decide whether it was
appropriate to pursue the low-enriched uranium core.
The conceptual study examines going after a potential use
in a carrier core. That is a bigger core than a submarine, and
it is not practical today to go do that in a submarine core.
So, again, success could not be assured in this effort; 10 to
15 years just to develop the fuel system and probably another
10 years or so to actually deploy the fuel system, that means
to construct it and deploy it in a ship.
So we are several generations away, but the conceptual plan
lays out this opportunity. And if that is the path that we end
up going down, it would take money above what we currently have
in our budget because we could not do it at the expense of the
work that we are doing today to support today's fleet and the
OHIO-Class replacement and so forth.
So the plan lays out a conceptual plan starting in fiscal
year 2018, I hope that answers your question, ma'am.
Ms. Kaptur. Yes, thank you very much.
All right, General Klotz, could you tell me, does NNSA need
to produce any pits to support the current and planned life
extension programs?
Mr. Klotz. Current, no; future, yes, and so that is the
path that we are on. The major demand signal for being able to
manufacture pits will be when we get into what we call the
Interoperable Warhead 1, which will most likely start off
addressing the Air Force's need to do a life extension program
for the current W78 warhead. In the meantime, however, we do
not have a capability to produce pits and in great number, so
we are in the process of doing some significant work at Los
Alamos National Laboratory in repurposing existing facility
space in a building called PF-4 and another building called
Irradiation Laboratory. This year, we will begin analysis of
alternatives, on what is known as the modular approach to
building additional capacity at Los Alamos to begin to develop
pits on the schedule, which the Congress has directed us to do
in subsequent National Defense Authorization acts.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, and I had one follow-up to----
Mr. Klotz. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Kaptur [continuing]. An earlier issue, and that is
dismantlements. In addition of your earlier points, is not work
leveling at Pantex also a benefit to increasing the rate of
dismantlements?
Mr. Klotz. Well, with additional people, of course,
obviously, that gives you the opportunity to level the work
between the dismantlement and the life extension work that has
to go on because the skill sets, in many respects, are the
same, so with the additional 30 to 40 to 45 people at Pantex
and the additional people at Y-12, that gives you a great deal
more flexibility.
General Davis. I would say, normally, we do use
dismantlements to work to balance a workload at Pantex. In this
case, the folks we bring on to accelerate those will be
dedicated to that effort until that is complete.
Ms. Kaptur. I have a final question of each of you. In
general terms, is there any unmet scientific horizon or
necessary workforce capability that you consider primary to
conducting your responsibilities more ably? So science and
workforce development.
Mr. Klotz. Well, I will go ahead and start. The biggest
challenge that we are facing at the moment, of course, is the
graying--and I can say that, at my age--of our workforce, both
on the Federal side, but, more importantly, in our laboratories
and our production facilities. In many places we have a high
number of people who are now eligible to retire. Many of them
will not because they love what they are doing or they have got
personal financial reasons why they want to continue to work,
but they are certainly eligible to do that. So we need to make
sure, both, again, on the Federal side and the laboratory side,
that we are doing all the things that we need to do to recruit
the next generation of leadership in this particular endeavor.
So that is one of our greatest challenges by the way, in
fields, STEM fields, which there is very high demand in the
commercial sector for right now, so I would say that is one of
the key things that we need to address.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
Ms. Harrington. So I would add to that that some of the
challenges that we face now, many of the challenges, for
example, that we have seen in Iran, have monitoring a really
unique arrangement to limit their nuclear activities to
peaceful ones only, has made us really, I think, through what
are all of the things within the nuclear fuel cycle that we
need to be more aware of, how would we have more comprehensive
monitoring, especially as countries continue to move forward
with their nuclear power programs.
So that is an area that really is of concern and, very
clearly, how would we possibly detect any terrorist acquisition
or intent to utilize nuclear radiological materials and, again,
getting down to smaller quantities, more difficult movements to
detect. So those are the sorts of things.
But, again, reinforcing what the administrator said, being
able to link some of these activities to universities, being
able to draw talented young students into these programs, for
example, through our university consortia, has provided both a
unique pathway for us to get new talent, but it also helps
universities identify areas of research that are really
relevant to our mission. So we will continue to pursue those
programs, but I have no doubt we will see new challenges in the
future and we will have to go back to our labs and test their
capabilities on a regular basis.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. General?
General Davis. Yes, so for Defense Programs, I would say it
is probably exascale computing. There was a time, certainly,
when NNSA drove advanced supercomputing and, basically,
industry provided us everything we need. Now we are not the
primary user for advanced supercomputing and exascales. So, as
we go to exascales, it is important that we are involved, so we
can make sure that our codes continue to run. Obviously, our
modeling simulation is key to continuing to certify the
stockpile and making sure that we understand exactly what is
going on with those weapons to keep them safe, secure, and
reliable.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. Admiral?
Admiral Caldwell. Ma'am, I would say that the singularly
most important thing to enable the success of Naval Reactors'
programs is our technical base. This is the funding that goes
towards our Naval Reactors' operations and infrastructure to
our Naval Reactors' development and to our program direction.
That money really goes to support what I call the flywheel, the
linchpin, the center of gravity for everything that we do. It
supports the infrastructure of the labs and facilities. It pays
for the salaries, for my folks to do the oversight and meet our
regulatory responsibilities. It pays for the scientists, the
engineers, and technicians that do everything that we do in the
program from research, design, construction, operation, fleet
support, and dealing with disposal at end of life of the core.
That technical base, in fiscal year 2017 budget, the
request is for $949 million. I could not do what I need to do
to support today's fleet, tomorrow's fleet, to recapitalize the
tools, the infrastructure, the equipment that I need to be able
to ensure the safe, reliable operation of reactor plants. I
will not go into it now, but there is a litany of things that
that technical base has enabled, all the research and
development that eventually goes into reactor plant design. The
electric drive on OHIO-class replacement is a product of all
that technical base work over the last several decades. The
OHIO-class replacement life of the ship fuel is also a result
of decades of work in that technical base. Every day that
technical base responds to requests from the fleet on the order
of 4,000 requests per year for technical assistance that keeps
our fleet operating. So your support to fund that technical
base is absolutely essential to what I do.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. Thank you very much for your
testimony today. Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Mr. Fleischmann [presiding]. Thank you. Mr. Klotz, I have a
question about security, sir. This committee has long been
concerned and acted on those concerns about security funding at
NNSA sites for several years.
There has been an increased workload placed on life
extension programs at NNSA's production facilities in next
year's budget. Is there a corresponding need to increase the
security budget or the security budget to accommodate those
increases, and how will that be accomplished, sir?
Mr. Klotz. Thank you very much for that question, and of
course, safe, secure, and effective security ranks up there in
the very top of what we have to do in order to protect these
assets, as well as the people who work around them.
One of the things, since we came into the position a couple
of years ago, that we have stressed is first of all making sure
we had the right people in the right positions throughout our
security apparatus.
We had a lot of vacancies. We had a lot of people who were
in acting positions, and we have placed great stress on getting
highly qualified people into key positions both at headquarters
here in Washington, DC as well as at our site offices, and also
making the same stress on the M&O partners that we work with.
The other thing we called for was development of a security
roadmap. This was another idea that came out of the Congress,
and that has been produced. If you do not have a copy of that,
also in addition to making copies of that document available, I
would be very delighted to make that available as well.
We are also again at the direction of the Congress taking a
look at sort of a 10-year plan for how we refresh all of our
sites. A lot of the perimeter intrusion detection alarm
systems, the PIDAS, such as the one we have at Y-12, are
beginning to age out in terms of sensors, the cameras, other
aspects of that.
So, we are working with the CSTART--please do not ask me
what that acronym stands for. It is an operation that we have
that Sandia National Laboratories spearheads for all of our
sites in cooperation with DOD. Again, another product of
congressional direction, which is yielding a lot of benefits in
terms of how we go forward in terms of that security.
At the end of the day though, it boils down to making sure
we have, you know, the people, and the good people to do that
work, and so we have asked for some additional money in that
area to help build up our capabilities.
Mr. Fleischmann. Very good, sir. Thank you. I have a
question about lithium, and whomever would like to answer that.
The Government Accounting Office and the Department of Energy's
own Inspector General's reviews highlighted a shortage of
lithium for use in refurbishing nuclear weapons, saying the
demand had risen and could lead to a lithium shortage at Y-12
by 2018.
Could you discuss your plans to respond on how it will
affect life extension programs, and does the budget request
indicate a 2-year delay in replacing the lithium facility?
General Davis. Congressman Fleischmann, thanks for that
question. As you know, lithium is an important material used in
U.S. nuclear weapons. The GAO did do a report and said that the
existing supply of lithium would be used up in 2018. The key
word there really is the ``existing'' supply.
NNSA does have a plan to create enough useable lithium to
get out to 2028 by doing two things. First of all, we will
convert lithium from dismantled weapons, and we also have an
existing feedstock of lithium that will convert into the proper
type of lithium for the life extension programs.
Of course, we will need to sustain the current lithium
production capability at Y-12 until a replacement facility does
come on line. To that end, we started an analysis of
alternatives using the NNSA's process last month. We expect
that to be done by the end of this fiscal year. That will
examine essentially all the options that are available,
everything from recapitalizing the current capabilities at Y-12
to perhaps looking at the potential for commercial providers to
provide this capability.
So, we plan to have that capability on line no later than
2025, giving us 3 years of cushion in between the time that
capability comes on line and we expect to run out of the
existing supply of lithium.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, sir. I would like to talk about
Y-12's alarm response training. Ms. Harrington, before I ask
you that question, I want to thank you. You came to Oak Ridge
and actually spoke at our ETEC meeting, were very warmly
received, and I really appreciate your coming in there.
That is a group that meets every Friday at Oak Ridge, and
it is DOE, business people. It is just a great group of
contractors, and many of you have been there. We get a lot done
in that forum, and thank you for attending.
Y-12 has been called the ``Fort Knox of highly enriched
uranium.'' How are you using Y-12's expertise in securing our
Nation's highly enriched uranium to secure sensitive nuclear or
radiological sites around the globe?
How do you see an increased role for Y-12's alarm response
training that trains personnel responding to civilian nuclear
and radiological security alarms?
Ms. Harrington. Thank you, Congressman. It was truly my
pleasure to come down and spend time with ETEC. It is a
remarkably energetic and terrific group. There is just such a
sense of community there, you should be very proud.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you.
Ms. Harrington. So, our alarm response training program, I
think, is a terrific example, number one, of utilization of
excessed buildings. I think we are now in our second excessed
building. The first one, we outgrew. It was the old clinic at
Y-12, and we identified it as being suitable for the type of
training that we do there.
Our new facility, and I was there for the ribbon cutting on
that one, is even better because it provides us a more diverse
set of scenario's within the building, as well as a very nice
training area with monitors where you can see the simulated
attacks and response, how a response force would actually have
to respond.
So, it is as close to real life as you can get with blue
and red plastic guns, but it is a really effective way to train
emergency responders, local police forces, university police
forces on how to respond and keep their communities safe.
So, it has been a terrific opportunity, and we have trained
thousands of people from across the United States already.
We are also using it to bring our international
participants not only to have them go through the training, but
to help them see how they can set up similar training
facilities themselves, particularly in areas where there is
higher risk for this kind of intrusion.
So, it has been a terrific test bed for us. It has really
paid off to communities all across the United States. We are in
the process, as I said, of expanding both how we use it for
international guests, but particularly as a model for how to do
this well.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you. General Davis, I have a final
question for you, sir, on the Supply Chain Management Center.
Members of the small business community have discussed with me
rather at length the challenges with NNSA's Supply Chain
Management Center, and more specifically, the enterprise-wide
procurement agreements.
I have been told that NNSA is aware of these concerns. Are
there plans to address these issues to give small businesses a
more level playing field to compete on procurements, sir?
Mr. Klotz. Can I take that?
Mr. Fleischmann. Yes, sir.
Mr. Klotz. Just 2 weeks ago, I joined all the members of
the New Mexico congressional delegation for a first ever
industry day that the Supply Chain Management Center has held
in New Mexico or anywhere else for that matter, in order to
address the concerns of small businesses.
Four hundred people signed up, 300 people showed up. They
heard from the congressional delegations. They heard from the
manager of the Supply Chain Management Center.
What the Supply Chain Management Center is--it is located
in Kansas City at our operation there, but it is a strategic
sourcing center which basically serves as a facilitator for
companies all over the United States to become a supplier of
commodities to not just NNSA's eight sites, but many
Environmental Management, EM sites, as well.
The purpose of the get-together there was to address the
very concerns which small businesses in the State of New
Mexico, particularly northern New Mexico, have expressed about
the Supply Chain Management Center, to tell them how it
actually works.
We do not direct--NNSA and the Department of Energy do not
direct people to use the Supply Chain Management Center. We
created it as an opportunity for our M&O partners to reduce
costs by buying strategically.
But it is also a great opportunity for small businesses in
New Mexico, but elsewhere too in fact, to do business with DOE
and with NNSA, and in some cases, to actually expand beyond the
local regional areas in which they may do business now to
nationwide.
So, we gave them an opportunity to learn how the Supply
Chain Management Center works. We gave them an opportunity to
talk face-to-face with the commodity managers from Kansas City
and also the procurement officers from each of our sites, which
are part of the M&O contractors, and we are in the process of
collecting data which we will share with the New Mexico
delegation as well as you, sir, and this committee as to how
many people responded and what the feedback was to that.
We have also changed a little bit of our processes and
procedures. We set this thing up 10 years ago. As a former boss
of mine used to say, when you are talking about fallible human
beings working in complex organizations, there is 100 percent
chance we do not get 100 percent right 100 percent of the time.
So, we know there are some adjustments. We have put in a
provision whereby instead of being a national supplier, you can
be a regional supplier. In fact, we have had one New Mexico
company that has very successfully taken advantage of that
change.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that, and
appreciate your endeavors in that regard. My final comment
would be to Admiral Caldwell. I want to thank you for taking
the time to come to my office to meet with me to go over naval
reactors in detail. I knew your predecessor. He did a great job
as well.
I just wanted to convey from the Oak Ridge community how
much we and I cherish the relationship with the Navy, and all
that you do for our country, and we hope we will be able to
continue on into the future to provide the much needed fuel as
the Navy goes forward, sir.
Admiral Caldwell. Thank you, sir. We value that
relationship. As I think I told you in your office, I endeavor
to enhance and strengthen that relationship going forward.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, sir. With that, Congressman
Fortenberry, do you have any questions?
Mr. Fortenberry. Yes, briefly, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. As
Chairman Simpson had alluded to earlier and you all gave a good
forthright answer about your commitment to nonproliferation,
but as it is showing up in budgetary matters, it is sending a
signal that you are going to need to explain what you very well
did.
One of the complaints about government is agencies spin
down monies they have in order to build upon baseline for more
expenditures in the previous year--in the next year, rather.
So, in this regard, you are to be very much commended for
again being frank that there was an absorption capacity problem
with other partners. You had some leftover funds. You were
living under caps, that is a reality, so you are effectively
turning money back to the government, or directing it anyway.
That creates the problem for next year. You better hope all
of us are still here when you come back and show an added
expenditure above a new baseline. I think we ought to make an
asterisk and note for the record in that regard.
Two other quick issues. One is you mentioned the graying
workforce problem, graying personnel problem that you are
having. I have raised this with the Nuclear Threat Initiative
as well, the idea of the next generation of academic experts,
of scientists, nonproliferation persons who willingly cast
themselves into the strategic thinking of nonproliferation,
military and nonmilitary.
Where are we in this regard? Are we treading water? I do
not see much enthusiasm frankly for this field among the next
generation, and that worries me.
The second question is regarding the International Atomic
Energy Agency. I raised some of this earlier with the
Secretary. I think they grow in relevance, they grow in
prominence as again whatever architecture we are going to have
for the next 100 years to assure that civilization is not under
grave threats from nuclear annihilation. That entity grows in
its potential impact to keep us safe.
Are you comfortable with, again, our shaping of that
institution's culture? We have, I think, an excellent director
general. That continuity of process is essential, and that is
harder to control in international environments.
So, those two questions, please.
Mr. Klotz. Let me start, and Anne has some thoughts on this
as well. You are right. There was a period of time where
strategic studies, nuclear studies, defense studies in
general--there were more opportunities in various academic
institutions across the United States, including the ones when
I attended, and that sort of fell off with the end of the Cold
War.
I think there has been sort of a resurgence of interest, a
lot of it fueled not so much by the nuclear strategic force
side of things, but the nonproliferation, the nuclear security
field.
We have had a number of programs in which we have tried to
draw upon that expertise, one of them is the NNSA graduate
fellows program, where we bring in some of the best and
brightest out of recent graduate programs and undergraduate
programs to work with us at NNSA for a year, and then hopefully
stay or go on to the laboratories.
We have had a very, very good success rate in terms of--
Mr. Fortenberry. Are there Centers of Excellence in this
regard across the country that you primarily turn to or is it
coming from multiple disciplines?
Ms. Harrington. Well, there is a group of targets,
universities, for example--I hate to keep picking on you, sir,
but the University of Tennessee.
Mr. Fleischmann. Bless you for that.
Ms. Harrington. Howard Hall runs a super program there, but
he is not the only one to have recognized that we need first-
rate university based programs that not only look at the
technical issues but blend those with the international
relations and policy issues.
We would love to bring some of our fellows to meet you.
Mr. Fortenberry. You could place one in my office if you
like. We have more than we can handle.
Ms. Harrington. We cannot say that too loudly around our
folks because they are eager and they are talented, and they
are extremely bright. Some of them actually end up going to the
IAEA as junior professional officers.
We have a lot of young talent that feeds into the IAEA like
that. They will go over, they will spend a couple of years in a
junior position doing regular staff work, learning an enormous
amount, but carrying with them all of the things they have
learned working with us.
Mr. Fortenberry. So, segue that into my question about the
IAEA.
Mr. Klotz. It is a very important question, and I think
with the JCPOA and as we move into the post-Nuclear Security
Summit world with the Nuclear Security Summit that President
Obama will host at the end of March, beginning of April of this
year, the IAEA and other international organizations will
likely have an even larger role and more important role to play
in that process.
The United States has been intimately involved with the
IAEA since its creation in the 1950s. I think we know the
organization very, very well. As I said earlier, we provide
training. We provide technology. We help them develop their
concepts.
Now, it is not just a U.S.-driven thing. We have some great
international partners who also believe this is an important
organization and also commit resources and talent to the
effective operation of the IAEA.
We also have a lot of Americans over there serving, as Anne
suggested, in a variety of leadership positions as well as
early career positions in the IAEA.
As the Secretary said this morning, it is something we are
going to have to pay attention to as one of the member nations
of the IAEA to make sure they have the funding they need,
either through voluntary contributions or through regular
annual budgets, to take on the increased workload that we have
called upon them to take.
I share your sentiment. I think the leadership, not just at
the level of the director general, but among the number of the
deputy director generals and throughout the staff, is
absolutely first rate.
I guess the bottom line is our sense is the IAEA is a very
serious, very sober, and very professional organization, and
one in which we feel very confident in working closely with as
well as other member nations through this international
organization to deal with issues of nuclear security that we
have talked about.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you all very much.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you. Mr. Visclosky, do you have any
questions, sir?
Mr. Visclosky. I do. Perhaps you can go to Ms. Kaptur
first.
Mr. Fleischmann. I will recognize Ms. Kaptur first. Ms.
Kaptur?
Ms. Kaptur. Yes, as the afternoon wears on, you know we get
more creative. In listening to your plea for follow-on staff,
filling the bench that is coming forward, it reminded me--I
will just tell you the world I live in, from Toledo, Ohio to
Cleveland, with lots of universities and lots of young people
thinking about what their future is going to be.
I recently spoke with the new head of the Berkeley Lab,
Mike Witherell. I said one of the things we need, whether you
are the man or we find somebody--when I was growing up there
was something called ``Mr. Wizard.'' Mr. Wizard used to be on
TV, and I watched that. That was a really good show. You are
too young.
I said we need a Mr. Wizard out there somewhere. I was
thinking about two science centers that I represent, one in
Toledo called Imagination Station, and one in Cleveland called
the Great Lakes Science Center. Thousands of children go
through there every year.
They have no clue who you are or what you do or even that
you exist. We have no lab in our part of the country. We have
great engineering schools, great scientists, but the Federal
Government does not really meet in my region very effectively.
A couple of years ago we had Sailor of the Year from
Toledo, Ohio, but you cannot get one of your subs up the St.
Lawrence Seaway, I guarantee you that, Admiral.
Admiral Caldwell. You never know where we show up.
Ms. Kaptur. I am waiting. My point is your budget is quite
sizable, and there are lots of funds spent on communication and
messaging. You may not be the proper place in the Federal
Government to do this, Ms. Harrington, but I really want to
push you a little bit to think about the assets that you do
have, and how one would develop broadcasting a programming that
would link to our science centers.
You must have old collections. You must have very
interesting materials stored in warehouses all over the place.
I am not the only representative who has these incredible
institutions in their communities trying to help raise the next
generation and trying to find a way to engage them.
Now, there is a man that broadcasts, and I have no
investment in his company or I do not even know if he has a
company or if it is a nonprofit, named Bob Ballard, who goes
and finds all the ship wrecks. He works for National Geographic
some of the time, and the kids are, you know, this is really a
big deal.
We had an old tanker that went down in Lake Erie many
decades ago. Just getting all the oil out of that thing and
doing it in the right way, virtually showing it on a big screen
in these science centers. The kids get really interested.
I know you work at such a different level, but there just
might be a way of bringing some individuals in from these
science centers and just talking to them, do a convening from
places like I represent across the country, and link to them
and the teachers that are taking these thousands of kids, can
you imagine what that is like, school lunches, everybody has to
have boots on, and you have to take them down there, and they
go through these exhibits.
Can you imagine whatever you could draw from the nuclear
Navy, what you might have there, and these kids would be
interested.
General Davis, whether it is additive manufacturing, we
have some of these platforms and these science centers, but
what you might bring to it, and from the science arena, Ms.
Harrington, what you must have that you cannot communicate to
us here but maybe something in there, is finding somebody like
a Bob Ballard. I am not pushing him but he knows how to reach
the public.
I think you could really be a force, you could really be a
force out there, and I do not even like the name ``STEM.'' I
always say ``STEAM,'' because if you do not have the arts, the
rest of it does not really work. So, I always talk about STEM,
not STEAM. You have to have the other half of the brain there,
too.
I just think we shortchange our children, especially from
Washington, because we seem so far away, but I just urge you to
think about a mechanism to draw in--you know, General Klotz,
you can think of a way to do this, particularly the Department
of Energy is far removed from the ordinary person compared to
something like the SBA, you know. That is on the ground and
they have agents and all these other things going around, or
the FBI.
I would just urge you to consider that. You might have
something to offer, and I thank you.
Admiral Caldwell. Can I offer a comment on that? I think
you might be surprised if you were to go around to naval
institutions around the United States, and I would venture to
say even Army, Air Force, Marine Corps institutions, that you
would find in the public a lot of military members involved in
their communities in advancing STEM and probably STEAM to some
extent.
There are a variety of programs out there, things from
robotics to developing undersea vehicles. I know some folks in
my headquarters have been involved in things they are
interested in, and helping students learn about science, and
even the labs have folks they have sponsored and brought in
that pursued science.
So, there is a lot of that that goes on at various levels
across the United States with service members and people who
are in the Federal Government that are interacting with folks
on a human level and developing interest in science.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Admiral. I was thinking of a man
that works for our court system in one of the counties I
represent. He takes children that have been through the court
system--he is actually a parole officer--but one of the
projects that they involved hundreds of children in is building
ships, seaworthy vessels to go out on the Great Lakes. Can you
imagine that? These kids are just into it. We have not lost
anybody yet.
I am hearing what you are saying, but I am thinking if you
could create a spot for it inside the department, and we did
not have a chance to mention that to the Secretary this
morning.
By the way, I have to say yesterday the Medal of Honor was
presented to a wonderful member of our Armed Forces who was
born in Toledo, my home, and grew up in Grand Rapids, Ohio,
which I used to represent and do not any longer, but we are
very honored by his service.
Mr. Fleischmann. I want to thank the ranking member for her
comments. Thank you very much. Mr. Visclosky?
Mr. Visclosky. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr.
Administrator, a recent National Academy of Sciences' report
recommended a clean slate approach to building new nuclear
weapons and building prototypes in order to exercise design and
production skills.
Do you agree with the recommendation, and do you believe
NNSA and the labs should be focused on building prototypes, and
if so, do you have any sense on the cost and how it compares
with other priorities you have today?
Mr. Klotz. Thank you, Congressman. That is a very important
question. I think within the NNSA and within the DOE, we
certainly recognize the importance of exercising our capability
to do the whole range of activities associated with nuclear
weapons from cradle to grave, design, development,
manufacturing, prototype building, and testing.
Now, there was a letter sent from each of the laboratory
directors that were sent at the request of the Senate Armed
Services Committee which addressed the importance of all this,
but the sense I took from that is a lot of the work associated
with that kind of chain of activities is already being done in
the very robust scientific and technical work that is done in
support of the stockpile stewardship program and life extension
programs.
There was a report that was recently rendered that talked
about the possibility of prototyping, and there is some
congressional language that directs that, I think in the NDAA.
That language was passed relatively late in the year, in
December 2015, of course.
So, we have been looking at how we would operationalize
that, recognizing there is costs associated with that, that
there are a lot of other priorities within the NNSA portfolio,
that if we are going to do a program in this particular regard,
we need to vet it as a program that would require the Nuclear
Weapons Council blessing of it as well as appropriation
authorization from the Congress to do that.
Well before this congressional language came down, General
Davis' folks had already established a thing called the
``Defense Program Advisory Committee,'' and that is one of the
things we specifically asked them to take a look at, and they
are expected to report out in the early part of this year.
So, this is something under active consideration. I think
we are actually doing more in this area than we often recognize
we are or are given credit for.
Mr. Visclosky. If I could ask, on the interoperable
warhead, how much work is slated to be done in 2017, if any at
all, and how much capability are you retaining to support the
interoperable warhead, which was deferred at least 5 years from
2015 to 2020?
General Davis. Sir, within the actual program for the W78-
1, there is no money asked for in fiscal year 2017. Within the
RDT&E program, we will be doing some work that will prepare for
certification of that system, and to make sure that we
understand the challenges with certifying a system that will
have a common nuclear explosive package.
Mr. Visclosky. Okay.
Mr. Klotz. On some of the work that was done, there was a
120-day study after that work terminated to make sure we fully
captured and archived the work that had been done up to that
particular point.
As General Davis indicated, the timing of that was moved to
the right because of other priorities within the budget and a
question of when do we need that kind of capability, and as I
mentioned earlier, it comes up with the need to do a life
extension program or do something with the W78 warhead.
Mr. Visclosky. Okay. Right before we broke for votes
earlier in the hearing, you had talked about deferred
maintenance, and I think the backlog was $3.7 billion. I also
understand that reportedly by 2019, NNSA may have up to 600
excess facilities.
Closing facilities, despite people's assumption that it is
easy to do, I appreciate that it is not, but also to the extent
you can save money on deferred maintenance on facilities that
are no longer needed by the United States of America, it is a
savings.
Where is the administration on that and what difficulties
are you facing? Is it a question of money or any help that the
committee can give to you? I do not diminish the problem of
closing anything.
Mr. Klotz. There are two major problems. The most important
one is, of course, money to do that. As I mentioned earlier in
a constrained budget environment, the first dollar always goes
to the mission and to the people who perform that particular
mission. These other things get deferred.
To actually give you the numbers, at the end of fiscal year
2015, which just passed, we had 421 excess facilities in NNSA,
90 of which we identified as high-risk facilities.
Now, the other problem, of course, is some of our
facilities are contaminated, so before we either demolish them
or turn them over to Environmental Management to do the
demolition and disposition of it, we have to do some
remediation associated with that. That also is both technically
challenging and costly. But we are ramping up the things that
we want to do in the area of disposition.
One of the most important things, in this particular
budget, is we just opened up, a year or so, a new facility in
Kansas City. We got out of a 3.2 million square foot World War
II-era production facility into one half the size, a lot less
expensive to operate, far more efficient, and we are asking for
money in 2017 to disposition that by turning it over to a
private developer, which can disposition that facility for
about $200 million, where we estimated it would cost the
Federal Government $900 million. That will take a lot of our
square footage out.
Mr. Visclosky. Taking Kansas City as an example, is there
much as far as job loss in communities that are attached to
some of these excess facilities or is it simply a question of
they are not efficient for other uses at that location, they
are simply not being used for the purposes of NNSA? I assume at
some point there are considerations of potential job loss in
communities.
Mr. Klotz. No, sir. I would have to go back and dig into
that. My initial reaction is no.
Mr. Visclosky. That is not part of it?
Mr. Klotz. It is not part of it, because we move those
people into other facilities as we build other facilities. In
every facility, for instance, if we create a new facility to do
a particular type of operation, the facility that people leave
to go into that, we take a look at it and say could this be
repurposed, could it be used for other purposes, or is the
condition of the facility such that it is time to get rid of
it.
Mr. Visclosky. Okay.
Mr. Klotz. We used to have a rule when I was in the Air
Force to build a building, tear a building down, unless you had
some other purpose for it. That is an aspiration that is not
always backed up by the funds to do it.
Mr. Visclosky. One final point and more of a point having
worn a number of hats on this subcommittee, and remembering
conversations and directives from the committee on lab directed
research, looking at my notes for the hearing, I understand
there are new accounting rules that went into effect in
October.
I also understand that the Laboratory Commission made
certain recommendations, and I hope after all of these years we
are making some progress on that.
Mr. Klotz. I am not the expert----
Mr. Visclosky. Overhead. deja vu here.
Mr. Klotz. Yes, I know that came up in the testimony
earlier with the Secretary, and it is something I am not the
expert on in terms of that, other than to say----
Mr. Visclosky. You need to be.
Mr. Klotz. I know. There has been some legislation that set
a floor of no less than 5 percent, no more than seven percent
on that.
I will tell you when I talk to the laboratory directors and
the plant directors for plant directed research and
development, they say this is one of the most important tools
they have in terms of recruitment, in terms of retention of
qualified individuals, and in terms of actually doing some
leading edge science.
Mr. Visclosky. I would not argue that point, but there are
limitations. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Visclosky. I believe we
will conclude our hearing today. I want to thank each and every
one of you for your service to our country and for performing
the vital tasks that NNSA does for our great Nation.
With that, we will gavel out.
Mr. Klotz. Thank you, sir.
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