In terms of the size of its budget and actual hands-on work involved, there probably is no more important project to the U.S. nuclear weapons program than refurbishment of the nation’s arsenal of B61 bombs.
Between now and 2016, the National Nuclear Security Administration wants to spend $1.6 billion on the project. And that’s just for design work, much of it at Sandia and Los Alamos labs.
The actual refurbishment doesn’t start until 2017. The total price tag when the work is completed in the early 2020s could be as much as $3.9 billion. Given the track record of the Defense Department and NNSA in predicting budget and schedule for these big “life extension” projects, you would be smart to assume the price tag will be higher and the completion date later.
As congressional investigators dryly put it in a report in May, “DOD and NNSA have continued to experience problems carrying out life extensions within the agreed-upon schedule, and within estimated costs.”
Work on the B61 has barely started, and it’s already behind schedule.
A Senate report earlier this month suggests congressional appropriators are concerned.
Employees at the U.S. government’s Pantex plant in Texas work on B61 nuclear bombs. (courtesy national nuclear security administration)
The risk, according to the report from the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee, is that the labs and NNSA are going too far in their effort to bring the aging B61s into the 21st century. In an effort to improve the bombs’ safety and security, the weaponeers may actually be jeopardizing its long-term reliability, the Senate report suggests.
“NNSA plans to incorporate untried technologies and design features to improve the safety and security of the nuclear stockpile,” the report says. “The committee supports enhanced surety of weapon systems to avoid accidents and unauthorized use, but it should not come at the expense of long-term weapon reliability. New safety and security features should be incorporated in weapon systems when feasible, but the primary goal … should be to increase confidence in warhead performance without underground nuclear testing.”
The debate here is arcane, and maddeningly opaque to outsiders without security clearances and therefore access to the technical details of what is being proposed. The secrecy surrounding nuclear weapons work makes democratic decision-making difficult, including the important task of determining whether those running the U.S. nuclear weapons are wisely spending the staggering sums we give them.
But the core of the question being raised by the Senate (where staff and senators do get the classified briefings) is clear — whether changes to the weapons move us further away from the original designs that were actually tested in underground blasts to ensure they would work. With such tests banned by national policy since 1992, the challenge is to ensure the nuclear weapons in the stockpile will work reliably today.
In a world where automotive metaphors are common, you could think of the B61 as the Volkswagen bug of the U.S. nuclear arsenal — reliable, adaptable and very, very old.
But unlike the Volkswagen bug, the B61 is still a major player in the U.S. arsenal. The aircraft-dropped bomb can be carried by a wide variety of U.S. aircraft, with a reported range of yields from less than the equivalent of a thousand tons of TNT (small by nuclear bomb standards) to hundreds of times that explosive force.
Design work at Los Alamos began in 1963, and the first version entered the stockpile in 1968. Today, there are nearly 1,000 still in service, according to Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists.
The practical effect of the Senate’s report is unclear. It calls for an independent analysis of the proposed weapon modifications to determine whether they are needed and what effect they might have on the B61′s reliability. The report, part of the Senate’s version of the 2012 budget, is not yet law. But it is a signal that some in national leadership are taking the question seriously.
The report comes as a cadre of retired weaponeers has become increasingly vocal about the proposal to change weapons while they are undergoing refurbishment.
Cold War veteran Bob Peurifoy, a retired Sandia labs vice president, said the NNSA and labs, in pushing for the changes to the B61, are “risking a very reliable system.”
Roger Logan, who worked at both Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national labs managing nuclear weapons maintenance efforts and is now retired, called the proposed changes to the B61 “the exact opposite of what should be done.”
To the extent that changes are made at all during the refurbishment process, they should move the weapons closer to the original tested designs, not further away, according to Logan.
“I would much rather that the B61 be left alone,” Logan said.
UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. Comment directly to John Fleck at 823-3916 or jfleck@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
Reprint story -- Email the reporter at jfleck@abqjournal.com. Call the reporter at 505-823-3916
