Arnold-Jones: U.S. Nuclear Complex Management Needs Fixing

FOR THE RECORD: In this story,  the Journal inaccurately characterized the views of congressional candidate Janice Arnold-Jones regarding which government agency should oversee the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Arnold-Jones said she in general agrees with ideas of former Sandia National Laboratories Director C. Paul Robinson regarding weapons program management, but she did not say she supports Robinson’s suggestion that the weapons program be moved from the civilian Department of Energy to the Department of Defense.

New Mexicans need to recognize a fundamental reality, according to Janice Arnold-Jones: The labs are not likely to escape unscathed from efforts to reduce federal spending.

“To believe that we won’t take some part of the cuts?” she said in an interview. “That’s foolish.”

In that environment, she said, it is critical for Sandia and Los Alamos labs and their federal overseers at the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy to find ways to do their work more efficiently. The current expense of doing research at the labs makes diversification beyond the core nuclear weapons mission difficult, according to Arnold-Jones, a former state representative and the Republican candidate for New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District seat in the U.S. House.

Arnold-Jones brings direct experience to that question. Before deciding to run for Congress, she was an executive at EnergySolutions, a company that does subcontracting work for the federal nuclear establishment. She worked on contracts for the Pantex weapons plant in Texas and the Office of Secure Transportation, based in Albuquerque, which is responsible for transportation of U.S. nuclear weapons.

She said she saw first hand the high overhead associated with working with the U.S. nuclear weapons establishment – the laborious paperwork required to bid for contracts and get work done.

Arnold-Jones said she recognizes the continued importance of the labs’ nuclear weapons missions. Upgrading the aging stockpile and the nuclear weapons complex that must do the work “is simply a matter of national priority from my perspective,” she said.

But she expressed frustration at the continued cost overruns that have plagued the effort, especially for the refurbishment of the B61 bomb and the construction of a new plutonium laboratory complex at Los Alamos.

“Who was asking the questions?” she said. “It is the responsibility of members of Congress to ask, ‘Is this budget proposal reasonable.’ … It is my belief that it is Congress’s role to ferret out those really bad assumptions, and if you allow them to stand, you probably shouldn’t be there.”

She acknowledged that would place her in a delicate position as a congressional representative for the state of New Mexico, as both an advocate for spending in the state but also as a steward of national resources.

“I will act in the best interests of our state,” she said, “but if I allow a cost overrun simply to benefit my state then I did not serve, and that’s a really bitter pill because times are tight right now.”

On the specific projects facing cost overruns, Arnold-Jones said it is “probably prudent” to await the next steps in the nation’s nuclear drawdown to see how many B61 bombs are needed.

She believes the new plutonium laboratory at Los Alamos is needed to replace the aging building where the work is done today. The best solution is to find a way to do the project at lower cost, she said. In the long run, the solution is to deal with the underlying management problems at the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration.

In her years working as a contractor for the agency, she saw repeated problems as the agencies’ political leadership turned over every four years. “The agency every four years goes into a tailspin,” she said.

One option, she said, is to pursue a path suggested by former Sandia labs President C. Paul Robinson – to shift management of the nuclear weapons complex from the civilian Department of Energy to the Department of Defense, where permanent military leadership would provide the needed continuity.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal