Author: Jay Coghlan

Watchdogs Call for Renewed Investigation of Corruption at Los Alamos Lab

Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons

For immediate release February 2, 2016

Watchdogs Call for Renewed Investigation of Corruption at Los Alamos Lab and Questionable Suicide of Former Deputy Director

Santa Fe, NM – Today three well-known whistleblowers sent a certified letter to Mr. Damon Martinez, the US Attorney for the District of New Mexico, asking him to reopen an investigation into fraud and corruption at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the questionable suicide in 2002 of the then-recently retired Lab Deputy Director. Mr. Damon is the top federal law enforcement official in New Mexico, and also serves as the Chair of the National Lab/Research University Working Group for US Attorneys. Therefore, he should be uniquely qualified to address the whistleblowers’ concerns.

Glenn Walp and Steve Doran were hired in 2002 by LANL to investigate fraud at the Lab after it had been repeatedly rocked by security and corruption scandals. However, senior Lab officials summarily fired them without cause before they could complete their investigations. During their long careers in law enforcement they were respectively, among other things, Commissioner of Pennsylvania State Police and police chief of Idaho City, Idaho. The third whistleblower, Chuck Montaño, is a multi-credentialed auditor and investigator who worked at LANL for 32 years. He became a federally protected whistleblower after reporting accounting malpractice and abuses that he had witnessed for years, and for which Lab management retaliated against him.

In their letter to Mr. Martinez, the three whistleblowers state that their main concern is the need for law enforcement to fully investigate the claimed suicide in 2002 of LANL’s second-in-command, former Deputy Director of Operations Richard Burick. Specifically at issue was the gun found at the scene of his death, and the improbability of this particular type of handgun being left in the state and condition that it was found in if truly used in a suicide. Steve Doran, who is a highly qualified investigator, and other weapon experts have concluded that it is impossible that the gun in question would have landed where it did, with an open, undamaged chamber, had it been truly used in a suicide.

In the same period of time as Burick’s claimed suicide, the criminal investigation of major procurement fraud at LANL was derailed by the Lab’s hasty firing of Walp and Doran. This, in turn, prevented a congressional committee from learning the full scope of potential criminal activity. Since then, new information has emerged that possibly links the corruption to Burick’s suicide, which the three whistleblowers assert deserves serious investigation by federal law enforcement.

The whistleblowers are coming forth now with their letter to the US Attorney for New Mexico prompted in part by a recent article by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a respected national organization that investigates and publicizes government waste, fraud and abuse. The POGO article concluded that if there were ever to be full accountability at LANL, “a new investigation into Richard Burick’s alleged suicide would be a good place to start.”

Walp, Doran and Montaño are also motivated by the recent announcement by the National Nuclear Security Administration that the LANL management contract will be competed in 2017. Their concern is that a full and complete investigation is needed in order to clean house and help ensure that one of the premier nuclear weapons labs, long plagued by scandal, is properly managed in the future, free of any possible reoccurrence of fraud and corruption. They believe that it is imperative that decision makers know the full extent of what transpired in order to know how best to proceed with the award of the new contract. Without a deeper understanding and accountability before the award is made, it is possible that the LANL management contract will end up in the hands of those largely responsible for the cover-up of past mismanagement at the Los Alamos Lab, or even worse the possible obstruction of justice that occurred.

Former Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Glenn Walp commented, “Unless the consortium contractors for the Los Alamos National Laboratory consciously and aggressively resolve their perpetual management and operational failings, the lab will remain a haven for crime, corruption and cover-ups; perhaps it is time to shut it down.”

Former Police Chief Steve Doran asserted, “Corruption at Los Alamos must be taken out at the roots and those responsible brought to justice. This will build a strong national laboratory system that can be both trusted and productive.”

Federally protected whistleblower Chuck Montaño added, “The Los Alamos Lab is a cash cow for the military-industrial complex, and because politicians are so beholden to these corporations, there’s zero accountability for the fraud, waste and abuse that keeps occurring in Los Alamos. We are seeking to end that by asking the US Attorney for New Mexico to intervene and go wherever the facts may take him. ”

# # #

 The Walp/Doran/Montaño letter to Mr. Damon Martinez, US Attorney for New Mexico, is available at https://nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/Letter-NM-US-Attorney-LANL-fraud.pdf

The Project on Government Oversight’s article Once Upon a Time in Los Alamos is available at http://www.pogo.org/blog/2016/once-upon-a-time-los-alamos.html

Chuck Montaño’s book Los Alamos: Secret Colony, Hidden Truths chronicling his 32 years working at the Los Alamos Lab and becoming a federally protected whistleblower is available at http://losalamosdiary.com/index.html

Glenn Walp’s book Implosion at Los Alamos on his hiring and firing investigating corruption and fraud at the Los Alamos Lab is available at http://www.implosionatlosalamos.com/

Nuclear Watch NM Gives Notice of Intent to Sue Over Lack of Cleanup at the Los Alamos Lab

Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear Watch NM Gives Notice of Intent to Sue

Over Lack of Cleanup at the Los Alamos Lab

Nuclear Watch New Mexico has notified the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) that it will file a lawsuit over their failure to meet cleanup milestones under a “Consent Order” governed by the New Mexico Environment Department. Formal notice is required before a lawsuit can actually be filed, which NukeWatch intends to do within 60 days or less. The New Mexico Environmental Law Center is representing NukeWatch in this legal action to enforce cleanup at LANL.

Jay Coghlan, NukeWatch Executive Director, commented, “The nuclear weaponeers plan to spend a trillion dollars over the next 30 years completely rebuilding U.S. nuclear forces. Meanwhile, cleanup at the Los Alamos Lab, the birthplace of nuclear weapons, continues to be delayed, delayed, delayed. We are putting the weaponeers on notice that they have to cleanup their radioactive and toxic mess first before making another one for a nuclear weapons stockpile that is already bloated far beyond what we need. Real cleanup would be a win-win for New Mexicans, permanently protecting our water and environment while creating hundreds of high paying jobs.”

Last week Nuclear Watch NM broke a story  on how LANL and DOE have formally given the green light for new underground facilities to expand the production of plutonium pits (the fissile triggers of modern H-bombs) from the currently approved level of 20 pits per year to 80. In all, upgrades to existing plutonium facilities at LANL and the construction of two underground “modules” that can be added to later for yet more production will cost at least $4 billion. The environmental impact statement for a previously proposed Walmart-sized plutonium facility (canceled because of costs that exploded up to $6.5 billion dollars) documented that not a single new Lab job would be created because it would simply relocate existing jobs. Full cleanup, on the other hand, would be labor intensive and create hundreds of high paying jobs for several decades.

Every year the estimated cost of nation-wide “environmental liabilities” from past nuclear weapons research and production, currently $298 billion, outpaces the annual levels of environmental restoration funding actually spent, even though those estimated liabilities don’t include full cleanup to begin with. At the same time, one multi-billion dollar DOE cleanup project after the other fails, for example the $13.5 billion Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation, the multi-billion dollar Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico (closed because of a ruptured radioactive waste barrel from LANL), and the estimated $2.6 billion spent to date for incomplete cleanup at LANL. As an example of local impacts, during major stormwater events the City of Santa Fe has to close water diversion on the Rio Grande that can supply up to 15 million gallons per day of drinking water because of plutonium contamination in Los Alamos Canyon. Meanwhile, nation-wide, thousands of sick Cold War workers and downwinders from nuclear weapons tests await long delayed health benefits and compensation.

LANL is key to the trillion dollar rebuilding of nuclear forces as the premier nuclear weapons design lab and the nation’s sole production site for plutonium pit triggers, the most critical nuclear weapons components. Funding for DOE nuclear weapons programs is nearly double historic Cold War averages, with around $1.5 billion spent annually at LANL alone. In contrast, funding for Lab cleanup remains flat at around $185 million per year, with only approximately a third going to actual cleanup (one-third goes to pensions and another third to safeguarding improperly prepared radioactive waste barrels destined for the now-closed WIPP). New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) officials have publicly stated that around $250 million per year is needed for effective cleanup at LANL.

The 2005 Consent Order required DOE and LANL to investigate, characterize, and clean up hazardous and mixed radioactive contaminants from 70 years of nuclear weapons research and production. It also stipulated a detailed compliance schedule that the Lab was required to meet. Ironically, the last milestone, due December 6, 2015, required a report from LANL on how it successfully cleaned up Area G, its largest waste dump. However, real cleanup remains decades away, if ever. The Lab plans to “cap and cover” Area G, thereby creating a permanent nuclear waste dump in unlined pits and shafts, with an estimated 200,000 cubic yards of toxic and radioactive wastes buried above the regional groundwater aquifer, four miles uphill from the Rio Grande.

In the past the New Mexico Environment Department had repeatedly stated that it would release a revised Consent Order with new compliance dates before the end of 2015. Last November NMED Secretary Ryan Flynn said that a draft revised Consent Order would not be released until settlements were finalized over LANL violations of waste handling procedures that led to the closure of WIPP. Those settlement negotiations are still ongoing, leaving the Consent Order governing cleanup at the Lab in legal limbo.

Under typical hazardous waste handling permits, federal regulations require that an extension of a final compliance date include “an opportunity for a public hearing at which all interested persons shall be given a reasonable chance to submit data, views or arguments orally or in writing and to examine witnesses testifying at the hearing.” While the 2005 Consent Order is not a permit per se, it nevertheless explicitly incorporated the public process requirements of a federal hazardous waste permit. Therefore, Nuclear Watch New Mexico believes that any revised Consent Order requires an opportunity for meaningful public participation during its negotiation, leading to a public hearing should there be any unresolved issues, a position which so far NMED has opposed.

Scott Kovac, Nuclear Watch NM Research Director, said, “DOE, LANL and NMED have had four years to involve the public in revising Consent Order cleanup decisions and comnpliance dates at the Lab, but yet they seem to have ignored the final deadline. Northern New Mexicans want meaningful input into cleanup decisions at LANL. NukeWatch believes that a rigorous cleanup schedule must be stipulated from the beginning in any revised Consent Order, and that the Lab must be held accountable every step along the way for getting the necessary funding and doing the work on time. We insist upon meaningful public participation and dates certain for compliance milestones. Cleanup at the Los Alamos Lab cannot be open-ended or it will never be accomplished.”

# # #

Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s Notice of Intent to Sue is available at https://nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/NukeWatch-NM-NOI-to-DOE-and-LANS-20160120.pdf

Budget data are from the Department of Energy’s annual Congressional Budget Requests.

The current estimate of $298 billion to cleanup past nuclear weapons research and production comes from the DOE Agency Financial Report for Fiscal Year 2014. Even that figure does not come anywhere close to full and complete cleanup, but instead often involves “cap and cover” and leaving nuclear wastes permanently in place.

The quote concerning the need for a public hearing was incorporated into New Mexico state law NMSA 1978, §74-4-4.2(H) (2006).

National Nuclear Security Administration Gives Green Light For Expanded Plutonium Pit Production at Los Alamos

Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Pit Production

 For immediate release January 15, 2016

Contacts:       Jay Coghlan, NWNM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154, jay[at]nukewatch.org

National Nuclear Security Administration Gives Green Light

For Expanded Plutonium Pit Production at Los Alamos

Santa Fe, NM – Today the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent agency commissioned by Congress, posted a weekly report that makes explicit a decision by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to expand plutonium pit production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Plutonium pits are the fissile cores or “triggers” of modern two-stage thermonuclear weapons, but they are also atomic weapons in their own right (a plutonium bomb incinerated Nagasaki in August 1945). Plutonium pit production has always been the chokepoint preventing industrial-scale U.S. nuclear weapons production ever since a FBI raid investigating environmental crimes shut down the notorious Rocky Flats Plant near Denver in 1989.

Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch Director, commented, “Expanded plutonium pit production at the Los Alamos Lab is really all about future new-design nuclear weapons with new military capabilities produced through so-called Life Extension Programs for existing nuclear weapons.” The relevant case-in-point is that LANL is now tooling up to produce pits for one type of warhead (the W87) to use in an “Interoperable Warhead” that will combine two other warheads (the W78, a land-based ICBM warhead, and the W88, a sub-launched warhead), clearly a radically new design even if as claimed only existing nuclear weapons components are used.

Coghlan further commented, “The real irony is that this Interoperable Warhead has been delayed for at least five years, if not forever, because of its enormous estimated expense and Navy skepticism. Yet this doesn’t keep LANL and the NNSA from spending billions of taxpayer dollars to upgrade existing and build new production facilities for unnecessary and provocative expanded plutonium pit production.”

Specifically, NNSA and LANL seek to raise the administrative limit on plutonium in the existing Radiological Lab (“RLUOB” in the Safety Board report below) from an original 8.4 grams to 400 grams, and proceed with the “Plutonium Modular Approach project.” In 2012, in the face of exploding costs and rising citizen opposition, NNSA dropped its proposal to build a $6.5 billion Walmart-sized “Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project-Nuclear Facility” for expanded plutonium pit production of up to 80 pits per year. There was no technical justification for this expanded production, other than unspecified “Department of Defense requirements.”

These new moves by NNSA and LANL, which will cost around $4 billion before the usual cost overruns, are just another way to achieve their goal of raising plutonium pit production to up to 80 plutonium pits per year. Raising the amount of plutonium in the Radiological Lab will enable LANL to conduct all needed analytical chemistry quality control samples of new pits, as the Safety Board memo says to “primarily support the increased capacity required for larger pit manufacturing rates.” The Plutonium Modular Approach project will be newly constructed underground facilities for hot operations such as a plutonium foundry, likely beginning with two modules at a billion dollars each. It should be noted that proposed major federal actions require the opportunity for public review and comment under the National Environmental Policy Act, which has not been done for what NNSA calls this alternative plutonium strategy. Nevertheless, increased funding for LANL’s plutonium infrastructure will be likely included in the pending federal budget for FY 2017, scheduled to be released Monday February 9.

There is no need for expanded plutonium pit production to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile, but it is vital for future new-designs that the nuclear weaponeers want. In fact, the U.S. government is planning to spend a trillion dollars over the next 30 years to “modernize” and completely rebuild its nuclear forces, despite its pledge in the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty to enter into serious negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament.

Background

In 1996 the plutonium pit production mission was formally relocated to LANL, with an approved upper limit of 20 pits per year. NNSA has tried four times since then to expand plutonium pit production. This started with a proposed “Modern Pit Facility” capable of producing up to 450 pits per year, with no justification of why that Cold War-like level of production was needed. In all four cases, in response to successful citizen activism, Congress either rejected or NNSA dropped efforts to expand production, in large part because of a pit life study that New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman required at Nuclear Watch’s request. That 2006 study by independent experts found that plutonium pits last at least 100 years (with no proscribed end date), more than double NNSA’s previous estimates of 45 years.

Nevertheless, NNSA now seeks for the fifth time to expand plutonium pit production beyond the currently approved level of 20 pits per year at LANL. After having produced 30 pits for the W88 sub-launched warhead (which was in production when the Rocky Flats Plant was shut down), there are no current requirements for plutonium pit production to maintain stockpile safety and reliability.

In the meanwhile, funding for cleanup at the Los Alamos Lab is being cut, while nuclear weapons programs that caused the mess to begin with are thriving. As a final irony, these plans to expand plutonium pit production are now being implemented, despite the fact that 1) major operations at LANL’s main plutonium facility have been suspended since June 2013 because of nuclear criticality safety concerns; and 2) the Los Alamos Lab has no place to send its radioactive plutonium pit production wastes ever since it sent a drum that ruptured and closed down the multi-billion dollar Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico is confident that this latest attempt to expand plutonium pit production will fall apart as well, but only as a result of continuing strong citizen activism.

# # #

•           Relevant excerpt from Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Weekly LANL Report:

http://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/Board%20Activities/Reports/Site%20Rep%20Weekly%20Reports/Los%20Alamos%20National%20Laboratory/2015/wr_20151218_65.pdf
Los Alamos Report for Week Ending December 18, 2015

MEMORANDUM FOR: S.A. Stokes, Technical Director FROM: R.K. Verhaagen and J.W. Plaue

DNFSB Staff Activity: R. L. Jackson was onsite to plan oversight activities associated with Plutonium Infrastructure Strategy. Accordingly, he met with key project staff and walked down the Plutonium Facility, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) building, and the Radiological Laboratory Utility Office Building (RLUOB).

Plutonium Infrastructure Strategy: Late last month, the Deputy Secretary of Energy approved a restructuring of the subprojects covered under the CMR Replacement project. There are now four subprojects: (1) RLUOB Equipment Installation, Phase 2; (2) Plutonium Facility Equipment Installation, Phase 1; (3) Plutonium Facility Equipment Installation, Phase 2; and (4) Re- categorizing the RLUOB to Hazard Category 3 with a material-at-risk limit of 400 g plutonium- 239 equivalent. The first two subprojects enable LANL to cease programmatic activities in the CMR by 2019, while the latter two subprojects primarily support the increased capacity required for larger pit manufacturing rates. The memo requests an updated project execution plan within 90 days and indicates approval authority will remain with the DOE Deputy Secretary for subprojects 2–4 and with the NNSA Administrator for subproject 1.

In a separate action, the DOE Deputy Secretary also approved the mission need Critical Decision (CD)-0 for the Plutonium Modular Approach project. This project addresses life extension needs for the existing Plutonium Facility in support of Department of Defense requirements and Congressional Direction. The CD-0 schedule range for project completion is December 2025 to December 2027.

 

•           For an extensive history of successful citizen activism against plutonium pit production see https://nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/Pit-Production-History.pdf

LANL contract up for bid after 2017

Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab.

NukeWatch comment:

As the trillion dollar “modernization” of U.S. nuclear forces moves forward, note how hollow the Department of Energy infrastructure is because of contractor greed, incompetence and waste. While that alone won’t win the day for us, I do expect it to limit the scale and timing of “modernizing” the DOE nuclear weapons complex (“modernization” means the indefinite preservation of the nuclear weapons stockpile and its supporting research and production infrastructure, contrary to official U.S. policy that endorses a future world free of nuclear weapons). This includes Life Extension Programs that give existing nuclear weapons new military capabilities despite denials at the highest levels of the U.S. government, and new production facilities such as the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 Plant near Oak Ridge, TN and plutonium facilities at Los Alamos which face constant cost overruns.

There could also possibly be developments in the first quarter of next year related to its illegal lobbying activities that would shake up Lockheed Martin’s grip on the Sandia Labs (the Sandia contract is also scheduled to be put up for bid). In short, 2016 could be a very fluid and unstable year for the DOE nuclear weapons complex, even as it seeks to put the B61-12 smart nuclear bomb into production and move forward aggressively on a nuclear warhead for a new first-strike air-launched cruise missile.

Jay Coghlan, Executive Director

***********

LANL contract up for bid after 2017

By Mark Oswald / Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer

Friday, December 18th, 2015 at 11:40pm

SANTA FE – The National Nuclear Safety Administration has informed
Congress that the Los Alamos National Laboratory contract will be put
out for competitive bidding sometime after 2017, the Journal has learned.

It would be only the second time the contact has been put out to bid
since the lab was created to develop the atomic bomb during World War II.

LANL’s most recent federal government performance evaluation is better
than last year’s, but not good enough for the lab’s private-sector
operator to earn the award of an extra year on its contract, the lab’s
director informed LANL workers this week.

And continuation of Los Alamos National Security LLC holding the
contract was contingent on it being granted the “award term.”

LANL director Charles McMillan said in his Thursday email to lab
employees that he was “deeply disappointed that we did not meet NNSA’s
expectations in a manner sufficient to net another year of award term”
on the contract that runs through fiscal year 2017.

“Nevertheless, the federal government has offered Los Alamos National
Security, LLC (LANS) an extension to the contract to manage the
Laboratory beyond FY17; I will provide additional details about that at
a later date after there has been more discussion between the federal
government and LANS,” McMillan said in a copy of his message obtained by
the Journal.

An extension as described by McMillan is not the same thing as the
merit-based award of an additional contract year that LANS missed out on
this year. It’s unclear from McMillan’s statement whether the extension
he mentioned is intended as merely a holding pattern but, under its
contract, LANS needed to earn an award year this time around to keep the
contract going.

The contract with LANS provides for vacating the contract, awarded in
2006, if the consortium doesn’t earn a series of one-year term awards.
Last year, the Department of Energy – NNSA’s parent organization –
warned that LANS was under the gun to earn an award term for its work in
fiscal 2015.

“Having failed to earn contract term extensions for fiscal years 2013
and 2014,” and with the revocation of a previous extension, “LANS must
earn (an) award term in every future performance period to keep the
contract in force beyond fiscal year 2017,” said a statement provided by
the DOE last December.

On Friday, an NNSA spokeswoman said, “We do not comment on ongoing
assessments.”

Contract over $2 billion

LANS – a consortium that includes the Bechtel corporation, the
University of California, Babcock and Wilcox, and URS Energy and
Construction – won the LANL contract in 2006. The contract now amounts
to about $2.2 billion a year, plus a fee based on performance.

The University of California, on its own, had previously held the Los
Alamos contract since the lab’s beginnings developing the atomic bomb
during World War II. The contract was put out for competition about a
decade ago after a series of security and property management problems
at the lab.

Last year, LANS also didn’t earn an “award term” and even lost a year it
had previously been granted as NNSA hit the lab hard for failures that
led to a radioactive leak at the nation’s nuclear waste repository near
Carlsbad from a drum packaged at Los Alamos. The Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant has been shut down since the leak in February 2014.

The federal government cut the performance-based management fee for LANS
by nearly 90 percent, down to $6.25 million, for fiscal 2014. That
compared with $59 million-plus paid to the LANS consortium the previous
two years. No information on the 2015 fee award has been released.

McMillan’s Thursday message to employees said that, in order to earn an
award year, the lab had to score better than “satisfactory”in all of
six evaluation categories. “We did not accomplish this,” McMillan said,
despite getting high scores in four of the six areas.

NNSA rated LANS only satisfactory for operations and infrastructure, the
same category in which the lab got a crucial “unsatisfactory” grade last
year. LANS this year was rated “very good” in two categories – its
missions to manage nuclear weapons and reduce global nuclear security
threats – and excellent in two others, missions for science technology
and engineering, and for a “DOE and Strategic Partnership Project.” The
NNSA rated LANS’s leadership as “good.”

Despite his disappointment over failing to net an award term, McMillan
wrote, “I am pleased to note that our federal partners once again
acknowledged our strong performance in the areas of mission and science.
We continue to provide strong value to the national security missions
and Los Alamos continues to be regarded highly for the quality of its
science.

‘Shortcomings’ noted

“Our federal partners made it clear that shortcomings in our work
planning and work controls related to safety events, project
performance, cybersecurity, the earned value management system (EVMS)
and continued weaknesses in criticality safety all weighed heavily in
the evaluation of our performance. These are areas we must – and will –
improve going forward,” said McMillan.

He also wrote, “I remain committed to the long-term sustainability of
the Laboratory and to each of you. I am scheduling an all-employee
meeting shortly after the New Year to hear and address your thoughts,
concerns, and questions. Los Alamos will continue to have a valued role
in protecting the nation and the world. It is incumbent upon us during
the remainder of the contract period to deliver mission success through
operational effectiveness and scientific excellence.”

Jay Coghlan of the Nuclear Watch New Mexico watchdog group said the
situation as described by McMillan, with LANS getting an extension
despite failing to earn an award term, was “deja vu all over again,”
similar to a later-rescinded waiver that granted LANS an award year for
fiscal 2012, although it hadn’t met all the performance criteria. “It
seems awfully premature for director McMillan to indicate there’s going
to be a contract extension before it’s actually finalized by the U.S.
government,” Coghlan said. “He’s putting the cart before the horse,
maybe putting on a happy face for his employees before they leave for
Christmas.”

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/feds-won-t-renew-contract-for-private-lanl-operator/article_fa11e970-8bc2-530a-8d22-6e50626e6dcd.html

Feds won’t renew contract for private LANL operator

Posted: Friday, December 18, 2015 9:30 pm | Updated: 10:24 pm, Fri Dec 18, 2015.
By Justin Horwath

The New Mexican | 0 comments

The private consortium that runs Los Alamos National Laboratory will not have its contract renewed after it ends Sept. 30, 2017, The New Mexican has learned. The consortium is currently in negotiations with the federal government that could extend the $2.2 billion annual contract beyond 2017, even as the contract is put back up for bid, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

The decision not to renew the contract follows a blistering series of federal investigations and performance evaluations involving the lab’s safety record after a drum from the lab burst and leaked radiation at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in February 2014 near Carlsbad, shutting down the nation’s only underground nuclear repository indefinitely.

The Department of Energy notified staffers with the New Mexico congressional delegation about the decision to put the contract up for bid on Friday, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. Members of the delegation were not available for comment Friday evening.

Lab officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment Friday evening.

The lab has been run since 2006 by Los Alamos National Security, which took over operations after years of accounting scandals, security lapses and other management issues. The company is made up of a partnership between the University of California, Bechtel Corp., Babcock & Wilcox Co., URS Corp. and AECOM.

But the consortium repeatedly has run into its own problems over the past several years. In 2013, the National Nuclear Safety Administration, the arm of the Department of Energy that oversees the lab’s contract, denied LANS a one-year extension of its contract to operate the lab because it fell short of its goals for repairing and reopening some weapons facilities. Still, the NNSA awarded LANS about $52 million in performance fees, or 87 percent of the full amount possible in 2013.

Then, last December, the NNSA issued a stinging performance evaluation in the wake of the WIPP leak. In that evaluation, the lab received grades of “unsatisfactory” in key areas that cost the consortium a year on its contract and about $57 million in incentives.

The lab has received the results of its latest performance evaluation for 2015, according to an internal memo obtained byThe New Mexican. The results, though better, were not good enough to earn a “unilateral” addition of another year in what is known in the contract as an “award term.”

“While I am deeply disappointed that we did not meet NNSA’s expectations in a manner sufficient to net another year of award term, I am extremely proud of our accomplishments,” lab Director Charles F. McMillan wrote in the Thursday, Dec. 17, memo to lab employees.

In the memo, McMillan focuses on the positives and does not mention that the contract will be up for renewal, but the language underscores the gravity of the situation.

“Understandably, this news is sure to generate questions for each of you,” McMillan wrote. “Nevertheless, I once again express my deeply held belief that the Laboratory’s greatest asset continues to be its people.”
A few paragraphs later, he writes, “I am scheduling an all-employee meeting shortly after the New Year to hear and address your thoughts, concerns, and questions.”

The new evaluation is not expected to be released publicly for a few weeks. But the memo purports to show substantially better results than in 2014. The memo says the lab received high scores in four of six categories, including management of the nuclear weapons mission and its mission of reducing global nuclear security threats. But it received only a “satisfactory” in the category of “operations and infrastructure.”

The lab needed to receive better than “satisfactory” in all six categories to qualify for an additional year in its contract.
“We did not accomplish this,” McMillan wrote. He added, however, that the NNSA has offered the consortium an extension. “I will provide additional details about that at a later date after there has been more discussion between the federal government and LANS,” he wrote.

“Our federal partners,” he added, “made it clear that shortcomings in our work planning and work controls related to safety events, project performance, cybersecurity, the earned value management system (EVMS), and continued weaknesses in criticality safety all weighed heavily in the evaluation of our performance,” McMillan wrote. “These are areas we must — and will — improve going forward.”

Justin Horwath can be reached at 986-3017 [email protected].

Op-ed: B61 bomb is fuel for new arms race

Jay CoghlanNuclear Weapons, Sandia National Laboratories

Op-ed: B61 bomb is fuel for new arms race

By Jay Coghlan / Nuclear Watch New Mexico

Albuquerque Journal
Sunday, October 25th, 2015 at 12:02am

http://www.abqjournal.com/665029/opinion/b61-bomb-is-fuel-for-new-arms-race.html

The article “‘New’ U.S. nukes are anything but” should be judged more by
its omissions than its contents.

While arguing that the soon-to-be rebuilt B61 bomb won’t be a “new”
nuclear weapon, the Heritage Foundation omits mentioning that it is
being retrofitted with a tail fin kit that will give it precision
guidance. In effect, once completed, the B61 bomb will be the world’s
first nuclear “smart” bomb, to be delivered by the new super-stealthy
(but problem-plagued) $1 trillion F-35.

If that’s not a new military capability – which the U.S. government
denies – then I don’t know what is.

The Heritage Foundation also bemoans Russia’s 2-to-1 advantage in
tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. It omits mentioning that the new B61
bomb modification will meld three tactical variants and one strategic
version of the same bomb, in effect wiping out the distinction between
tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.

The new B61 will be a precision-guided, selectable yield, multi-purpose
nuclear weapon with relatively less fallout and collateral damage. It
will lower the threshold for potential use of nuclear weapons because it
will be arguably more usable.

I am no Putin apologist – I personally know Russian activists persecuted
by his regime. But don’t be fooled by the Heritage Foundation’s
one-sided narrative that helps propel the new Cold War.

The Russians are paranoid, perhaps deservedly so, starting with Genghis
Khan and on through Napoleon and Hitler. Relentless expansion of NATO
fuels that paranoia.

While offering a laundry list of alleged treaty violations by Russia,
the Heritage Foundation fails to mention how George W. Bush unilaterally
tore up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty for “Star Wars” defenses that
still don’t work after hundreds of billions of dollars, and if they did
would create enhanced nuclear war-fighting capabilities.

The Heritage Foundation warns of Moscow’s “time-honored technique of
denial and deception,” but we as Americans must guard against our own
government’s use of the same that got us into disastrous wars like
Vietnam and Iraq.

Cool heads are needed to avoid a new nuclear arms race, not the
cherry-picked narrative of the Heritage Foundation.

That narrative will profit the war contractors who in turn support the
Heritage Foundation. Among them is Lockheed Martin, who illegally
lobbied to extend its for-profit Sandia Laboratories management contract
and is profiting on both ends with the B61 bomb.

Lockheed runs the program through Sandia to transform the B61 into the
world’s first nuclear smart bomb, and is building the way-over-budget
F-35 to deliver them.

As Pope Francis recently warned us, “Many powerful people don’t want
peace, because they feed off war. It is the industry of death!”

Concerning the B61 smart nuclear bomb, Lockheed Martin and the Sandia
Labs are in the business of megadeath, which the Heritage Foundation
seeks to aid and abet.

Pope Francis Calls for the Complete Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons, Sandia National Laboratories

September 25, 2015

Pope Francis Calls for the Complete Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons  

Santa Fe, NM – In his speech today at the United Nations Pope Francis stated:

The Preamble and the first Article of the Charter of the United Nations set forth the foundations of the international juridical framework: peace, the pacific solution of disputes and the development of friendly relations between the nations. Strongly opposed to such statements, and in practice denying them, is the constant tendency to the proliferation of arms, especially weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear weapons. An ethics and a law based on the threat of mutual destruction – and possibly the destruction of all mankind – are self-contradictory and an affront to the entire framework of the United Nations, which would end up as “nations united by fear and distrust.” There is urgent need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons, in full application of the non-proliferation Treaty, in letter and spirit, with the goal of a complete prohibition of these weapons.

Separately, the United Nations’ Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released a statement in advance of tomorrow’s (September 26) International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons tomorrow. He said:

The norm against the use of nuclear weapons – the most destructive weapons ever created, with potentially unparalleled human costs – has stood strong for seven decades. But the only absolute guarantee that they are never used again is through their total elimination.

The Pope’s words builds upon a December 2014 paper entitled “Nuclear Weapons: Time for Abolition” that the Vatican presented at an international conference on the “Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons” held by the Austrian government in Vienna. In it, the Catholic Church declared that the provisional justification it once gave for possession of nuclear weapons for the sake of “deterrence” during the Cold War is no longer valid. The Vatican further stated in no uncertain terms, “Now is the time to affirm not only the immorality of the use of nuclear weapons, but the immorality of their possession, thereby clearing the road to nuclear abolition.”

Contrary to the Catholic Church’s growing push to ban nuclear weapons, the recent May 2015 NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in failure. The immediate reason was that the United States, United Kingdom and Canada blocked the adoption of a “Final Document” seeking to implement a previously agreed-to conference on a Middle East nuclear weapons free zone, at the behest of Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT and a non-declared nuclear weapons power. A broader, deeper reason is that the majority of non-weapons states are growing increasingly frustrated by the nuclear weapons powers’ failure to honor their NPT Article VI obligation “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament…”, first promised in 1970.  This is now exacerbated by accelerating nuclear weapons “modernization” programs, led by the United States which plans to spend a trillion dollars over thirty years completely rebuilding its nuclear weapons stockpile and infrastructure.

New Mexico plays a key role in these modernization programs, with two of the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories, Sandia and Los Alamos. Currently the labs’ main focus is “Life Extension Programs” that prolong the service lives of existing U.S. nuclear weapons for up to 60 years and give them new military capabilities despite U.S. government denials. These programs are clearly contrary to the Vatican’s push for nuclear weapons abolition.

New Mexico also has one of the highest percentages of Catholic citizens, at around 40% of the total population. The full name of its capitol Santa Fe (English: “Holy Faith”) is “The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi,” the saint from whom Pope Francis took his papal name. St. Francis and the Pope are both known for their focus on the poor. Ironically, Los Alamos County, next to Santa Fe, is the second richest county in the USA because of nuclear weapons programs, while some of the poorest communities in the country (the San Ildefonso and Santa Clara Pueblos) are contiguous to it.

One of New Mexico’s two Catholic Archbishops, Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, is chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s Committee on International Justice and Peace, and is playing a leading role in the Catholic Church’s accelerating push for nuclear weapons abolition. He delivered a homily at the Nagasaki Cathedral in Japan on August 9, 2015 commemorating the 70th anniversary of the city’s destruction by a plutonium bomb designed and produced in New Mexico. He described it as a life-changing experience, and declared:

The bishops of the United States join in solidarity with the Church in Japan in advocating for global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament in the face of the tragedies that occurred here when atomic bombs struck… the U.S. bishops committed themselves to shaping “the climate of opinion which will make it possible for our country to express profound sorrow over the atomic bombing in 1945. Without that sorrow, there is no possibility of finding a way to repudiate future use of nuclear weapons….”

New Mexico’s other archbishop, Santa Fe’s newly installed John Wester, has not yet stated his position on nuclear weapons. His diocese includes the Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs.

Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, commented, “Northern New Mexico has been a Catholic stronghold for centuries, and the birthplace of nuclear weapons seventy years ago. Catholics and non-Catholics alike must examine their consciences and the Pope’s calling for the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and how that squares with the nuclear weapons industry that is so deeply embedded in our culture and economy. The choice is not easy, but clearly we must follow faith and good will toward elimination of these worst of weapons of mass destruction. I hope that Santa Fe’s new Archbishop John Wester will help guide us in following Pope Francis’ call for the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons.”

# # #

Pope Francis’ quote is from http://time.com/4049905/pope-francis-us-visit-united-nations-speech-transcript/ Note: the original transcript erroneously said “weapons of mass distraction” instead of “weapons of mass destruction.”

The Vatican’s December 2014 paper  “Nuclear Weapons: Time for Abolition” is available at http://www.paxchristi.net/sites/default/files/nuclearweaponstimeforabolitionfinal.pdf

See Archbishop Oscar Cantú’s essays on the need to abolish nuclear weapons at http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/war-and-peace/nuclear-weapons/

In particular, see Homily on Peace and a World without Nuclear Weapons for a Mass at Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, Japan Bishop Oscar Cantú, August 9, 2015

New Mexico’s Archbishop Cantú Helps Lead Vatican Charge for Nuclear Weapons Abolition

Jay CoghlanNuclear Weapons

On Thursday morning, 9:30 EST/7:30 MT, Sept. 24 Pope Francis will  address both houses of the U.S. Congress, viewable by webcast on C-SPAN. The next morning at 8:30 am EST/6:30 MT he addresses at the United Nations in New York City, viewable on the UN web site http://webtv.un.org/
There is good reason to think that the Pope might address the need for nuclear weapons abolition. In December 2014 the Vatican presented a paper entitled “Nuclear Weapons: Time for Abolition” at the conference on “Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons” held by the Austrian government in Vienna. In it, the Vatican declared that while the possession of nuclear weapons could be justified for the sake of “deterrence” during the Cold War that is no longer true. It further stated, “Now is the time to affirm not only the immorality of the use of nuclear weapons, but the immorality of their possession, thereby clearing the road to nuclear abolition.”

See http://www.paxchristi.net/sites/default/files/nuclearweaponstimeforabolitionfinal.pdf

I met with the Holy See’s permanent delegation to the United Nations during the first week of the NonProliferation Treaty Review Conference this last May 2015. To my surprise I was told that Archbishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, NM, chair of the Vatican’s Committee on International Justice and Peace, is playing a prominent role in the Catholic Church’s accelerating push for nuclear weapons abolition. You can see a number of papers that he has written on nuclear weapons at
https://web.archive.org/web/20200428225157/http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/war-and-peace/nuclear-weapons/

For example, in anticipation of the Pope’s speech to Congress, Archbishop Cantú wrote The Pope and the Bomb: New Nuclear Dangers and Moral Dilemmas
September 17, 2015 http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/war-and-peace/nuclear-weapons/presentation-the-pope-and-the-bomb-2015-09-17.cfm
In a background paper on nuclear weapons Pope Francis is quoted as saying:
““A world without nuclear weapons” is a goal shared by all nations and echoed by world leaders, as well as the aspiration of millions of men and women. The future and the survival of the human family hinges on moving beyond this ideal and ensuring that it becomes a reality.         — Pope Francis, December 7, 2014″

Archbishop Cantú was at a mass at the Nagasaki Cathedral in Japan this August, 9, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing. See his
Homily on Peace and a World without Nuclear Weapons for a Mass at Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, Japan
August 9, 2015
http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/war-and-peace/nuclear-weapons/homily-by-bishop-cantu-at-nagasaki-for-world-without-nuclear-weapons-2015-08-09.cfm

In his homily Archbishop Cantú declares:

“Pope Francis, when asked in November 2014 about what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, said, “… humanity has not learnt its lesson … Humans did this and discovered nuclear energy which has many positive uses, but they also used it to destroy creation, humanity.”

The bishops of the United States join in solidarity with the Church in Japan in advocating for global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament in the face of the tragedies that occurred here when atomic bombs struck.  In our 1983 pastoral letter on The Challenge of Peace, the U.S. bishops committed themselves to shaping “the climate of opinion which will make it possible for our country to express profound sorrow over the atomic bombing in 1945. Without that sorrow, there is no possibility of finding a way to repudiate future use of nuclear weapons….”  – End of quote –

Also, see Letter to Secretary of State Kerry on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
Bishop Oscar Cantú, May 12, 2015
In it he writes:
The United States and other nuclear weapons possessing states bear a particular responsibility for nuclear disarmament and despite the  success of the New START Treaty in further reducing the numbers of  weapons, there has not been enough progress.  We urge bold and concrete commitments to accelerate verifiable nuclear disarmament, including taking weapons off “launch on warning” status to prevent a catastrophic accident, deeper cuts in nuclear arsenals, ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to bring it into force, serious negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty and other prudent measures.

As the Holy See recently said:  “Lack of concrete and effective nuclear disarmament will lead sooner or later to real risks of nuclear proliferation.”  We share the view that ‘[t]he erosion of the credibility of the NPT could have catastrophic consequences for all countries and for the future of humanity as a whole.”  Please be assured of our prayers as you work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Sincerely yours,
Cantú
Most Reverend Oscar Cantú
Bishop of Las Cruces
Chair, Committee on International Justice and Peace

– End of quote –

Nuclear Watch New Mexico finds it very gratifying to see a New Mexico archbishop helping to lead the Vatican’s charge for nuclear weapons abolition. We will take an intense interest in seeing what position the other New Mexico archbishop, Santa Fe’s newly installed John Wester, might take on nuclear weapons. His diocese includes two of the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos and Sandia. The labs’ main business nowadays is Life Extension Programs that prolong the lives of existing U.S. nuclear weapons for up to 60 years while giving them new military capabilities, despite denials at the highest levels of government. In keeping with New Mexico demographics, the work force at the labs is around  25% Catholic, some of whom may be receptive to the Pope’s call for nuclear weapons abolition.

DOE Sites Partially or Fully Closed: WIPP, Pantex & now Savannah River Site…

Jay CoghlanPantex Plant, Savannah River Site, WIPP

From Tom Clements of SRS Watch, our colleague and fellow member of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability:

DOE Sites Partially or Fully Closed: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Pantex & now the Savannah River Site (SRS)

The main contractor at SRS, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), has halted non-essential operations. See SRS shutdown email below…sent out late on Friday afternoon.

Today’s shutdown stems from operational and procedural problems while preparing plutonium oxide “feedstock” (for fuel pellets) for the Mixed Oxide (MOX) program back in February.

The plutonium oxide for MOX (or perhaps for another disposition option if MOX goes down) has been prepared in the HB-Line, which sits atop the decrepit H-Canyon reprocessing plant.  The National Nuclear Security Administration has been paying the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management division, which manages the H-Canyon, for this job.  Problems developed when a plutonium solution tank was not properly monitored by SRNS staff.  After being shut for six months, H-Canyon operations resumed a few weeks ago but problems have persisted.

Just like for the MOX program at SRS, there is absolutely no accountability for EM contractors at SRS, and every year they just collect a bonus, few questions asked. How long will DOE Secretary Moniz and Congress allow the lack of accountability for MOX, the Uranium Processing Facility, the Waste Treatment Plant, etc,, to go on?

As per the DOE’s Public Relations “Conduct of Operations” textbook [sarcastic], they sent out the public notice below at 5:25 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. Go DOE! [A classic maneuver to avoid media attention.]

Tom

[Note: The Pantex Plant, the nation’s site for nuclear weapons assembly and dismantlements (lots of the former, not so much of the latter], is effectively shut down because of a serious labor dispute. The multi-billion dollar Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has been closed since February 2014 following contamination by a ruptured barrel of radioactive wastes sent by the Los Alamos Lab.]

 


From: james-r.giusti <[email protected]>
Subject: DOE-SR UPDATE … Savannah River Nuclear Solutions Pauses All Non-essential Operations at SRS
Date: Fri, Sep 11, 2015 5:25 pm

Based on recent Conduct of Operations issues identified with HB-Line activities, effective today Savannah River Nuclear Solutions has implemented an operational safety pause for all non-essential and discretionary Office of Environmental Management activities site-wide.  All work activities are on hold for those facilities under the SRNS management and operations contract.

SRNS is developing a recovery plan for resuming non-essential and discretionary operations and the plan will be submitted to the Department for review and concurrence.  The plan will include corrective actions that will be implemented to assure workers adhere to management expectations for safe work performance, to reinforce accountability, and to re-initiate work in a controlled, phased manner.  

SRNS will notify the DOE-SR management of any non-essential or discretionary work that SRNS believes needs to be performed before executing the work.

This operational safety pause does not affect other contractors at SRS.

James R. Giusti
Director
DOE-SR Office Of External Affairs
W:      (803) 952-7684
M:    (803) 645-1350
E:      [email protected]

Los Alamos National Laboratory Files Motion to Dismiss James Doyle Whistleblower Case

Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons

Los Alamos National Laboratory Files Motion to Dismiss

James Doyle Whistleblower Case

Santa Fe, NM – On August 25, 2015 the for-profit contractor that runs the Los Alamos National Laboratory filed a motion with the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Hearings and Appeals to dismiss Dr. James Doyle’s whistleblower complaint. Doyle’s case received widespread national and international media attention after Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS) terminated his employment in July 2014. In 2013 Doyle had published a study arguing that the global, verifiable abolition of nuclear weapons was in the best national security interests of the United States.

In September 2014, following his termination, DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz wrote to Doyle that Frank Klotz, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), had asked the DOE Office of Inspector General (OIG) to investigate if “Dr. Doyle’s termination resulted in whole, or in part from the publication of his article in question or the views expressed in it.” NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz repeated this promise of an Inspector General investigation in a February 2015 letter to Senator Edward Markey, but it has yet to take place.

The promised Inspector General investigation is essential in determining whether LANS and NNSA acted properly in the Doyle case, and must be conducted before the DOE Office of Hearings and Appeals rules on LANS’ motion to dismiss. This is underscored by the fact that an earlier Inspector General report had determined that the LANS classification officer who retroactively classified Dr. Doyle’s study had a history of mishandling classified information and misrepresented himself to OIG investigators.

Dr. James Doyle remarked, “This attempt by LANS to have my case dismissed before the promised Inspector General investigation or an administrative hearing is a blatant attempt to deprive me of my rights and to cover up misconduct. I have written to President Obama and Energy Secretary Moniz asking that they deny LANS’ motion to dismiss and complete the promised Inspector General investigation.”

Doyle was among only 14 people within the laboratory workforce of over 10,000 employees to be laid off in 2014.

Doyle claimed in his whistleblower complaint that LANS’ Classification Officer abused his authority by improperly and retroactively classifying his article “Why Eliminate Nuclear Weapons,” which supported President Obama’s declared policy of a future world free of nuclear weapons. Although he wrote the study on his own time, Doyle took the precaution of successfully clearing his article with LANL in advance of publication. Various media articles have reported that his study was retroactively classified only after an inquiry by Republican staff on the House Armed Services Committee as to whether it contained sensitive information.

Because of classification rules Doyle cannot address allegations that his study contains secret information. However, Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, observed, “Anyone can download Doyle’s study from the internet and see for themselves that it contains nothing sensitive about nuclear weapons deployments, designs or materials. There is only one word in his study that can possibly be classified, and that word is “Israel,” whose possession of nuclear weapons is commonly regarded as the worst kept secret in the world. Nevertheless, it is official US government policy to keep it classified. Many officials have crossed that line, but only Doyle has had to pay the price after it was misused in a biased manner to gag him after his article was published and he fought back.”

The DOE Office of Hearings and Appeals has not yet responded to the LANS motion to dismiss the Doyle case.

# # #

Los Alamos National Security, LLC’s motion to dismiss is available at

https://nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/LANS-motion-to-dismiss.pdf

Dr. James Doyle’s letter to Secretary Ernest Moniz is available at

https://nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/Doyle-Moniz-letter.pdf

Doyle’s January 2013 study “Why Eliminate Nuclear Weapon?” is available at:

https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/survival/sections/2013-94b0/survival–global-politics-and-strategy-february-march-2013-3db7/55-1-02-doyle-a88b.

The DOE Office of Hearings and Appeals’ docket on the Doyle case is available at https://cse.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=011145866664225340457:yhreiv3focq

The February 2015 DOE Inspector General report is available at http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/02/f19/DOE-IG-0935.pdf.

Additional background on the Doyle case is available at:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/07/31/15161/nuclear-weapons-lab-employee-fired-after-publishing-scathing-critique-arms-race

and

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-antinuclear-article-20140815-column.html

Watchdogs Denounce Slap on Wrist for Illegal Lobbying Activities

Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons, Sandia National Laboratories

Watchdogs Denounce Slap on Wrist for Illegal Lobbying Activities
By the World’s Biggest Defense Contractor
Demand Real Accountability by Barring Lockheed Martin
From Future Sandia Labs Contract

 

Santa Fe, NM – In notice given late Friday the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Lockheed Martin over alleged violations of federal anti-lobbying laws to extend its management contract of the Sandia Labs without competition.

Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, commented:

4.7 million dollars is a slap on the wrist for the world’s biggest defense contractor to pay. Lockheed Martin clearly broke the law by engaging in illegal lobbying activities to extend its Sandia contract without competition, and earned more than 100 million dollars while doing so. Moreover, it engaged in deep and systemic corruption, including paying Congresswoman Heather Wilson $10,000 a month starting the day after she left office for so-called consulting services that had no written work requirements. There should be criminal prosecutions for clear violations of federal anti-lobbying laws, and Lockheed Marin should be barred from future competition for the Sandia Labs contract, expected next year. Holding the revolving gang of greedy politicians and contractors strictly accountable is essential as they get ready to fleece the taxpayer during the planned one trillion dollar “modernization” for what the nuclear weapons labs are now calling “The Second Nuclear Age.”

Rep. Heather Wilson was the protégé of the powerful Senator Pete Domenici and was groomed to succeed him. Historically the New Mexican congressional delegation has always had deep ties to the Los Alamos and Sandia nuclear weapons labs, while the state remains among the poorest in the country. In 2013 Nuclear Watch New Mexico discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request that Wilson signed her contract with Sandia while still in office, and began receiving payment the day after she left Congress. She went on to secure a simultaneous contract with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, also for $10,000 a month for “consulting” services with no written work requirements.

# # #

The Department of Justice’s settlement agreement is available at

https://nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/Sandia-Settlement-Agreement.pdf

Rep. Heather Wilson’s contract and invoices pursuant to our FOIA request are available at

https://nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/HeatherWilson-Sandia contract-invoices.pdf
Jay CoghlanNuclear Weapons

Federation of American Scientists

Nuclear Watch New Mexico

For immediate release August 12, 2015

Contacts:       Jay Coghlan, NWNM, 505.470.3154, jay[at]nukewatch.org

Hans Kristensen, FAS, 202.454.4695, hkristensen[at]fas.org

Robert Alvarez, IPS, 301.585.7672, kitbob[at]rcn.com

Dr. James Doyle, nonproliferation expert, 505.470.3154, jimdoyle6[at]msn.com

 

Nuclear Weapons Experts File Amicus Brief

To Support Marshall Islands Lawsuit

To Require Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations

Under U.S. NonProliferation Treaty Commitments

 

Washington, DC and Santa Fe, NM – Four nuclear weapons experts have filed an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief in support of a lawsuit filed by the Republic of the Marshall Islands to compel the United States to meet its requirements under the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT). The basic bargain of the NPT is that non-weapons states agreed to never acquire nuclear weapons, in exchange for which nuclear weapons states promised to enter into good faith disarmament negotiations. Ratification of the treaty by the Senate in 1970 made its provisions the law of the land under the U.S. Constitution.

The experts filing the brief are: Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists; Dr. James Doyle, a nuclear nonproliferation expert fired by the Los Alamos national lab after publishing a study arguing for nuclear weapons abolition; Robert Alvarez, a former Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy, now at the Institute for Policy Studies; and Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.

Hans Kristensen explained, “The United States, as one of the five original nuclear weapons states under the NPT, has a clear legal obligation to pursue negotiations toward nuclear disarmament. Yet despite progress on reducing overall nuclear arsenals, forty-five years later there are and have been no negotiations on their elimination. Instead, all nuclear weapon powers are pursuing broad and expensive modernization programs to retain and improve nuclear weapons indefinitely.”

The Marshall Islands’ lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in San Francisco, asserts that the U.S. has failed to fulfill its treaty duties. The case was initially dismissed in February 2015 by a federal judge after the U.S. government argued in part that enforcement of the NPT’s requirement for nuclear disarmament negotiations was not in the public interest. This is now being appealed. As the Marshall Islands’ original complaint notes, “While cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament are vitally important objectives to the entire international community, the Marshall Islands has a particular awareness of the dire consequences of nuclear weapons.” While still a U.S. protectorate after World War II, the American nuclear weapons complex used the Marshall Islands for more than a hundred atmospheric nuclear weapons tests that included newly developed H-bombs, and the displaced Marshallese have suffered severe health and contamination effects to this day. However, the Marshall Islands’ lawsuit is not asking for compensation, but instead seeks to hold the nuclear weapons powers accountable to the NPT’s requirement for good faith nuclear disarmament negotiations.

Andrea St. Julian, an attorney based in San Diego who specializes in federal appellate proceedings, filed the 94-page amicus brief. She observed, “The level of expertise and understanding the amici bring to this appeal is remarkable. Their arguments show how profoundly mistaken the district court was in its misapplication of the law. If the Court of Appeals takes adequate note of the briefing, it will have no alternative but to reverse the dismissal of the Marshall Islands’ suit. If not, we expect the Marshall Islands to take its case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and we will strongly support it there.”

Dr. James Doyle commented, “It’s not possible to eliminate the knowledge to build nuclear weapons, but it’s possible to make them illegal and remove them from all military arsenals, as existing treaties on chemical and biological weapons have already substantially done. The Marshall Islands’ case is an important step on the path to the elimination of nuclear weapons and deserves a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Robert Alvarez added, “The Republic of the Marshall Islands has exposed the abuse of the good faith and trust of the non-weapons states that signed the NonProliferation Treaty on the understanding that the nuclear weapons states would begin disarmament negotiations. By seeking a binding legal requirement to actually begin negotiations, the Marshall Islands is simply trying to get the United States to honor the promises and commitments it made to the world 45 years ago.”

Jay Coghlan noted that the recently concluded 2015 NPT Review Conference ended in failure, in large part because nuclear weapons nations are modernizing their arsenals. He observed, “The U.S. government is getting ready to spend a trillion dollars on new production facilities for nuclear weapons and new bombers, missiles and submarines to deliver them. Because of that, we are keen to help the Marshall Islands hold the U.S. and other nuclear weapons powers accountable to their end of the NPT bargain, which is to enter into disarmament negotiations.”

# # #

The amicus brief is available at https://nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/Dkt-38-Amicus-Brief.pdf

Bios of the four amici are available in the amicus brief, beginning page 1.

Complete 9th circuit court proceedings in the Republic of Marshall Islands’ lawsuit are available at https://www.wagingpeace.org/nuclearzero/

 

 

Response to the Inaccurate Wall St. Journal Op-Ed “The Faded U.S. Nuclear Deterrent”

Jay CoghlanNuclear Security

On July 13, 2015 the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed entitled The Fading U.S. Nuclear Deterrent by Robert Monroe, a retired Navy vice admiral and  former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency. The op-ed’s byline is “The next president must restore America’s aging arsenal to face a world of new atomic threats.” Among other things Monroe argues for “an entirely new nuclear-weapons stockpile, including specialized low-yield advanced weapons” and that “military force must be used if necessary” to prevent others from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Jim Doyle submitted the following to The Wall Street Journal seeking to challenge the op-ed’s inaccuracies, which the Journal rejected. Jim is the nonproliferation expert fired by the Los Alamos Lab after writing a study arguing for nuclear weapons abolition. He is also a crucial member of Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s Steering Committee.

Response to the Inaccurate Wall St. Journal Op-Ed “The Faded U.S. Nuclear Deterrent”

 “The Fading U.S. Nuclear Deterrent,” By Robert R. Monroe is loaded with factual inaccuracies and bad advice for America’s national security policymakers.  As a consequence, Mr. Monroe’s essay is political theater, void of any logical strategic thinking.  Unfortunately, Mr. Monroe targets a vulnerability we all share – fear.   But America should not scare itself into making bad decisions with our finite national defense resources.

Now and for the foreseeable future our nuclear forces are in no danger of failing to provide deterrence against nuclear attack.  Increasingly however, the United States and its allies face a growing panoply of threats including radical Islam, cyber attacks and the consequences of environmental degradation that are immune to nuclear firepower.  US national security strategy must make balanced investments in defensive capabilities that can address the full spectrum of threats.  Contrary to what Mr. Monroe advocates, defense investments based on a nostalgic preoccupation with the meaningless concept of “nuclear superiority” will weaken America over time and increase our vulnerability to the most likely threats.

Mr. Monroe claims that the “U.S. began a debilitating nuclear freeze” at the end of the Cold War.  This is pure disinformation.  During the 20 years from 1990-2010 the US completed deployment of the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile and the B-2 stealth strategic nuclear bomber and rebuilt the entire Minuteman III land-based nuclear missile force.  Additional upgrades to nuclear command and control and warhead accuracy provided the US with the world’s most capable nuclear force.  It remains that way today.

During this same timeframe Russia’s nuclear capabilities declined precipitously. By 2006, it had 55 percent fewer intercontinental ballistic missiles, 39 percent fewer strategic bombers, and 80 percent fewer ballistic-missile submarines compared to 1990. The Russian nuclear arsenal continued its decline until approximately 2010 when its nuclear modernization programs began to come on line and initiate restoration of nuclear capabilities that had been maintained by the Soviet Union.  China’s nuclear forces with fewer than 250 deployed nuclear warheads remain small compared to the US and Russia which each possess more than 1,500 deployed warheads.

Ironically, nuclear superiority over the last 25 years has not provided America with the strategic advantages implied by Mr. Monroe.  Nuclear weapons did not help secure any meaningful victory in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Syria, did not prevent the rise of Al Qaida, ISIS and Boko Harem or deter Russia’s actions in Georgia and Ukraine.  Nuclear weapons did not check China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, or thwart the DPRK’s acquisition and testing of nuclear weapons.  Nuclear weapons cannot give their possessors the ability to prevent or defeat these threats.  Other non-nuclear military, diplomatic and strategic capabilities are required.

Mr. Monroe urges us to dismiss President Obama’s goal of a world without nuclear weapons as an “impossible vision” that is “terribly damaging” to America.  Perhaps he is comfortable with successive generations of Americans living with the threat of nuclear holocaust for time immemorial.  Fortunately, he is in a minority that believes nuclear deterrence can work forever without fail.  Science and rationality tell us it cannot.

The most alarming of Mr. Monroe’s fantasies is his description of nuclear deterrence: “You threaten your adversary with intolerable consequences if he does not comply with your demands. Then, through reinforcing actions, you convince him that you have the will and capability to carry out your threat.” Your threat, of course is mutual nuclear suicide.  These sound like the delusions of General Jack Ripper from the film Dr. Strangelove, or the motto of so many failed empires that have tried to rule the world.

Mr. Monroe also claims “for the past two decades nuclear deterrence has been missing from the U.S. toolbox.”  Bullocks.  Nuclear deterrence is a condition that obtains when any nation has the ability to threaten nuclear attack or devastating nuclear retaliation. It has never been absent from US strategy since the deployment of nuclear weapons in 1945. The delusion to which Mr. Monroe ascribes is that nuclear weapons somehow allow us to reliably influence the decisions of our adversaries.  They can never provide this capability.

Mr. Monroe advocates the production and testing of “an entirely new nuclear-weapons stockpile, including specialized low-yield advanced weapons.”  Such a course of action will not give America the ability to achieve the outcomes it desires in the world.  It will most likely encourage other nations to accelerate plans to increase their nuclear arsenals and acquire similar capabilities as some are now doing.

America’s nuclear deterrent is not rusting away but as former US statesmen Schultz, Kissinger, Perry and Nunn have repeatedly warned in these pages “nuclear deterrence is becoming decreasingly effective and increasingly hazardous.” For now American must and is maintaining a more-than-sufficient nuclear deterrent.  But developing and testing new types of nuclear bombs and engaging in a new nuclear arms race will not make that deterrent more effective against the full range of threats nor less hazardous.  The world’s nuclear weapons addiction leads only to disaster.  America, with it partners and allies, needs to lead the way to a better system for international stability and development.

James E. Doyle

Lockheed Martin’s illegal lobbying to extend Sandia contract

Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons, Sandia National Laboratories

The Center for Public Integrity has come out with a hard-hitting article about illegal lobbying by the world’s biggest defense contractor Lockheed Martin to extend its management contract of the Sandia Labs. Sandia contracted former congresswoman Heather Wilson for consulting services that had no written work requirements, although she denies engaging in illegal lobbying activity. Notably, Wilson was the groomed successor to the powerful Republican senator Pete Domenici (“St. Pete” to the labs for the money be brought them), but was defeated by Tom Udall in the 2007 race for the Senate after Domenici retired. Ironically, the “liberal” Udall now functions as the new Pete Domenici from the same budget seat in the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee. My point is how deeply in bed the New Mexican congressional delegation is with the nuclear weapons industry in this state, no matter which political party they come from.

But this business about Lockheed Martin engaging in illegal lobbying to extend its Sandia contract takes it to a whole new level. We believe this is a story that won’t go away – – more developments are bound to come. Looking ahead, because of its illegal activities Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s position is that Lockheed Martin should be barred from competing for the Sandia Labs contract when the National Nuclear Security Administration next puts it out for bid, currently scheduled for next year.

The Center for Public Integrity’s must-read article is at

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/07/08/17628/nuclear-weapons-lab-lobbied-federal-funds-block-competition-lucrative-c

excerpts:

““Given the specific prohibitions against such activity, we could not comprehend the logic of using Federal funds for the development of a plan to influence members of Congress and federal officials to, in essence, prevent competition,” [DOE Inspector General] Friedman said in the report….

In 2009, the report explains, Sandia Corp. hired a consulting firm headed by former U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-New Mexico, and two unnamed former employees of the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, at least one of whom previously had oversight authority at the lab. Wilson’s company, Heather Wilson, LLC, provided explicit directions about how to influence the most crucial decision-makers in the contract-award process, according to the IG report.” – End –

A few comments on the article follow, notably begun by Heather Wilson herself, followed by yours truly and Jim Doyle.

Heather Wilson ·

Rapid City, South Dakota

For your readers, this is what I said to the reporter of this story: “The full report confirms what I have said all along. I was not a lobbyist for Sandia and I did not contact any federal official — Congressional or Executive — to try to extend the Sandia contract. I was not a member of the “Sandia Contract Strategy Team” that is criticized in the report. Interestingly, someone’s notes from a conversation with me contained in this full report confirm that I advised that contract extension activities should be done by Lockheed Martin, not Sandia. That is the same position taken by the Department of Energy Inspector General.
Jay Coghlan ·

Executive Director at Nuclear Watch New Mexico

I am not contesting what former Congresswoman Wilson says below. But it should be noted that Nuclear Watch New Mexico filed a FOIA request and got her contract with the Sandia Labs. It makes clear that she entered into that contract with Sandia Labs while still serving in congressional office, and started getting paid $10,000 a month the day after she left office. See https://nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/HeatherWilson-Sandia contract-invoices.pdf

Ms. Wilson then went on to get a similar contract with the Los Alamos Lab. The DOE IG reported that both contracts had no written work requirements. Pretty sweet work if you can get it, $20K a month, and for what?

The Los Alamos and Sandia Labs had to pay back the government the ~$425,000 they paid Wilson, but as far we know she kept the money. Perhaps she didn’t do anything technically illegal, but it sure doesn’t pass the smell test. Especially when she ran for the U.S. Senate as a strong supporter of the nuclear weapons labs that had paid her. She has also served on the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance Structure of the National Nuclear Security Administration that made recommendations favorable to the labs. We think she should have resigned from that panel when her conflicts-of-interest were revealed.

That is history. The more profound question now is should Lockheed Martin be allowed to bid for the Sandia contract next year when it has clearly engaged in illegal lobbying activity? Nuclear Watch New Mexico thinks not.

Jay Coghlan
Nuclear Watch New Mexico
www.nukewatch.org

Jim Doyle ·

Works at Self-Employed

I certainly have to object to the reported view of Sandia’s Lockheed-Martin management that it is “not merely in the corporation’s best interest, but in the country’s for Lockheed-Martin, Sandia, and the nation to work together towards influencing DOE to retain the Lockheed-Martin team.” Why would it be to the nation’s best interest to retain a contractor that allowed costs for it largest project, the B-61 nuclear bomb refurbishment, to skyrocket from an estimated $4 billion in 2010 to more than $8 billion today? I do not call this good management. The nation deserves better.

 

[Jim’s self-description as self-employed is an understatement. He is a former Los Alamos Lab nonproliferation expert who authored a study arguing for nuclear weapons abolition, which ultimately led to his firing.  He is now self-employed as an independent nuclear weapons nonproliferation expert, and among many other things serves on Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s Steering Committee.]

 

Watchdog Groups Seek Info On Alleged Rat Shootings in Nuclear Weapons Facilities

Jay CoghlanNuclear Weapons, Pantex Plant

Peace Farm

Nuclear Watch New Mexico

 

For immediate release June 30, 2015

Contacts: Cletus (Jerry) Stein, Board President, Peace Farm, 806.351.2744, [email protected]

Jay Coghlan, Executive Director, NWNM, 505.989.7342, [email protected]

Watchdog Groups Seek Info

On Alleged Rat Shootings in Nuclear Weapons Facilities

Amarillo, TX – Today, the Peace Farm and Nuclear Watch New Mexico have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and sent a letter to Rep. Mac Thornberry (R.-TX), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. The two groups are seeking additional information concerning a startling remark he made in a June 23, 2015 speech entitled “A Strategy for America.” In that speech, he argued for “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and its supporting research and production complex. Along with new nuclear-armed missiles, subs and bombers, this modernization is expected to cost taxpayers a trillion dollars over the next 30 years. As an example of why it is needed, Thornberry said

We have lost people, engineers in the nuclear complex, who go work in the energy industry, partly because they had to, well, shoot rats off of their lunch in some of the facilities that they were working in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLdCpbe8IZ0, beginning minute 45:49

On the same day the trade newspaper Defense Daily quoted Thornberry as saying

 Nuclear engineers no longer consider national laboratories “desirable” places to work, “partly because they had to shoot rats off their lunch in some of the facilities that they were working in.” (Quotation marks indicate the newspaper’s direct quotes of Thornberry) http://www.defensedaily.com/hasc-chair-increase-u-s-defense-spending-to-counter-russian-nuke-modernization/

 Rep. Mac Thornberry represents the 13th congressional district in the Texas Panhandle. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) site for the final assembly and disassembly of nuclear weapons, the Pantex Plant, is located in that district, 17 miles northeast of Amarillo. A local watchdog and peace group, The Peace Farm, has long monitored nuclear weapons programs at Pantex.

The Peace Farm’s Board President Cletus (Jerry) Stein, who lives in the 13th district, commented, “I am surprised to hear what my congressman House Armed Services Chairman Thornberry has reported. The Peace Farm wants to know who is doing the rat shooting and where this occurs. Does this possibly mean that employees are carrying personal firearms and weapons at some of the nation’s most sensitive nuclear weapons facilities? Is this shooting taking place near explosives and nuclear materials? Is this occurring at Pantex? Mr. Thornberry’s remarks raise a number of serious safety and security questions that we are keen to have answered.”

Nuclear weapons modernization begins with very expensive “Life Extension Programs” for each type of nuclear weapon in the planned stockpile, performed at Pantex and the Y-12 Plant near Oak Ridge, TN. Thornberry is on record stating that Life Extension Programs and not dismantlements are the priority at Pantex. An estimated 2,500 nuclear weapons are in the queue for disassembly, and dismantlements are proven to enhance security and permanently save taxpayers money. A December 2013 Government Accountability Office study found that the Navy saved $190 million through accelerated dismantlements, which eliminated the need to build a new safe and secure storage facility.

To help foster better public understanding of the need (or not) for a trillion dollar taxpayer investment in nuclear weapons modernization, and some of the stated rationales in support of that investment, the Peace Farm and Nuclear Watch New Mexico have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Nuclear Security Administration. Nuclear Watch has extensive FOIA experience, and has twice won FOIA litigation in federal court. In this instance, the two groups are asking for documentation of where and when these reported rat shootings occurred, whether authorized personnel did the shooting, and if explosives and nuclear materials were within bullet range.

The two groups have also requested more information directly from Rep. Mac Thornberry, in his capacity as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

# # #

The joint Peace Farm – Nuclear Watch New Mexico Freedom of Information Act request is available at

https://nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/Peace-Farm-NWNM-FOIA-Request-RatShootings-Nuclear-Facilities.pdf

Their joint letter to Rep. Mac Thornberry, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is available at

https://nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/Peace-Farm-NukeWatch-Thornberry-Letter.pdf

NukeWatch response to ABQ Journal article “Putin’s plans to add nukes closely watched in New Mexico”

Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons, Sandia National Laboratories
Putin clearly cannot be trusted, but this article is very one sided. First, it is alarmist to say Putin is “adding” 40 ICBMs. Instead, Russia is replacing old ones and, as the article points out, staying within New START limits. Putin claims that these new ICBMs are more capable of penetrating missile defenses. But this is largely in response to George W. Bush unilaterally tearing up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a profoundly negative watershed in U.S. –Russian relations. And above all is continuous expansion of NATO to Russia’s border. The Russian military will be keenly aware that the life extension program for the B61 bomb that Tom Udall so ardently supports will create the world’s first nuclear smart bomb. This is contrary to U.S. claims that it only maintains stockpile safety and reliability and would never give existing nuclear weapons new military capabilities. The revamped bomb’s main mission is forward deployment in Europe against Russia.

The much-quoted ex-Sandia director Paul Robinson was prominent in undermining U.S. ratification of the long-sought-for Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by damning it with faint praise in 1999 congressional testimony. The CTBT failed, but the labs kept the quid pro quo money for so-called Stockpile Stewardship. There is hardly a nuke that Robinson doesn’t like. In the past, he argued for a “To Whom it May Concern” target list (fill in the blank) for U.S. nuclear weapons.

Finally, the 900 pound gorilla.  This article has no mention of U.S. plans to spend at least a trillion dollars over the next 30 years on “modernization” of nuclear forces. This will rebuild every existing type of nuclear weapon in the planned stockpile, and buy completely new missiles, subs and bombers to deliver them. That makes Putin look like a chump.

You bet that the for-profit, giant defense contractors running the Los Alamos and Sandia Labs (Bechtel and Lockheed Martin) and their politicians are closely watching deteriorating relations with Russia (which the U.S. has done so much to cause). They can hear the cash registers going ca-ching, ca-ching! Meanwhile, as schools and bridges are falling apart and the 70th anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings approach, the nuclear weapons labs are internally trumpeting “The Second Nuclear Age.”

Jay Coghlan,

NukeWatch Director

Putin’s plans to add nukes closely watched in New Mexico

By Michael Coleman / Journal Washington Bureau
PUBLISHED: Sunday, June 21, 2015 at 12:02 am

WASHINGTON – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement last week that he plans to add 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to his country’s nuclear arsenal could have implications for New Mexico’s nuclear weapons laboratories and the spending debate on Capitol Hill.

Putin’s announcement was a blunt reminder of Russia’s nuclear might amid tensions with the West over Ukraine.

Relations between Russia and the West have plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War with Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and support for a pro-Russia separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

“Over 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of penetrating any, even the most technologically advanced, missile defense systems, will join the nuclear forces in the current year,” Putin said.

The declaration came at the opening of an arms show at a shooting range in Alabino, just west of Moscow. Sen. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat and member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Putin’s nuclear weapons declaration was troubling.

“Putin’s military aggression is disturbing on a number of fronts,” Udall told the Journal. “A nuclear conflict should never occur in today’s world, and the U.S. and Russia should continue to commit to our agreements to reduce these weapons and prevent proliferation to additional countries.”

Russia’s nuclear developments are likely to be closely watched by workers at Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.

“These developments do underscore the importance of the work at our national nuclear labs, which keep the nation’s arsenal safe, secure and reliable, and provide critical capabilities to track and prevent proliferation,” Udall said.
UDALL: This military aggression is “disturbing”

UDALL: This military aggression is “disturbing”

Last year, Russia added 38 ICBMs to its arsenal, according to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Modernizing its nuclear forces is a top priority for the Russian military, which needs to gradually decommission its aging Soviet-built ICBMs.

No violation

Nuclear policy experts interviewed by the Journal this week said the addition of the nuclear weapons would not put Russia in violation of the 2010 New START agreement, in which the U.S. and Russia both agreed to nuclear weapons limits.

“Putin’s move is mainly symbolic, because 40 more ICBMs does not significantly affect the strategic balance and keeps Russia within the limits of the New START agreement,” said Gary Samore, who served for four years as President Barack Obama’s White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Rodney Wilson, director of nonproliferation programs at Sandia, referred the Journal‘s questions about implications for the New Mexico lab to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the labs.

An NNSA spokeswoman also declined to comment on the labs’ work related to Russian nuclear arms issues and instead referred the Journal‘s questions to the State Department or the White House.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest dismissed Putin’s pledge to build more nuclear weapons as “saber-rattling” and said it “does nothing to de-escalate conflict.”

“The United States has repeatedly stressed our commitment to the collective defense of our NATO allies,” Earnest told reporters at the White House this week. “That is a commitment that we are willing to back up with action, if necessary. And that stands in pretty stark contrast to the saber-rattling that we’ve seen from Mr. Putin.

“And you could also make a case – and I think with some credibility – that invoking the nuclear arsenal is even an escalation of that saber-rattling,” Earnest added. “That’s unnecessary and not constructive.”

The U.S. and the EU have slapped Russia with economic sanctions, and Washington and its NATO allies have pondered an array of measures in response to Russia’s moves toward Ukraine. The three Baltic members of the alliance – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – have asked NATO to permanently deploy ground troops to their nations as a deterrent against an increasingly assertive Russia.

And Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak says he and U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter have held talks about placing U.S. heavy army equipment in Poland. The uptick in Russia’s nuclear ambitions would seem to stymie President Barack Obama’s call for a nuclear-free world during a much heralded 2009 speech in Prague in which Obama vowed “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Asked whether there is a possibility of another U.S.-Russian arms race, Earnest suggested that Russia – hit hard by falling energy prices – may not be able to afford Putin’s latest nuclear pledge.

“There are legitimate questions that have been raised about whether or not Russia would be able to succeed in following through on many of the claims and threats that President Putin has had to offer,” Earnest said.

Work at labs

Paul Robinson, a former director of Sandia National Laboratories, said Putin’s announcement last week reinforces the importance of the work done at Sandia and Los Alamos, which are integral to the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.

Both labs are heavily involved in maintaining the nuclear stockpile, and working to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and materials around the world.
ROBINSON: Concerned about a new weapon

ROBINSON: Concerned about a new weapon

“Nuclear deterrence is just as important as it ever was, and to say we’re going to relax and we don’t have to worry about strategic war any more would be a huge mistake,” Robinson said in a Journal interview, adding that he is concerned about Russia’s reported work on developing a new tactical nuclear weapon that would emit low radiation and could be used in conventional warfare.

“I think it is time for us to worry about it,” said Robinson, who was an ambassador and chief negotiator during U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms talks in Geneva in the 1980s.

“Clearly, if these things are going to arise again to threaten our future, (the labs) would do almost anything they could in being a part to protect it.”

Steven Pifer, director of Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, said Putin’s announcement might trigger additional sympathy for nuclear weapons spending on Capitol Hill. Nuclear weapons budgets remain steady – including for work on the B61 Life Extension Project carried out at both New Mexico labs – but some in Congress are questioning the need for increases.

“My guess is that it might increase a little bit the push for doing more on the nuclear side, but I don’t think it’s going to have a huge impact,” Pifer said.

“The more worrisome thing is, why does Putin feel the need to keep talking about nuclear weapons? I sincerely hope he does not see these things as weapons of coercion, because that could be potentially very dangerous. I hope there are sensible people around him who are explaining to him just exactly what one should do to manage nuclear weapons in a responsible way.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Four Reasons Why U.S. Claims of NPT Compliance Are False

Jay CoghlanKansas City Plant, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Security, Nuclear Weapons, Y-12 Nat'l Security Complex

 Four Reasons Why U.S. Claims of NPT Compliance Are False

 In April 2015 the U.S. State Department issued a so-called Fact Sheet entitled Myths and Facts Regarding the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Regime. Its targeted audience was international delegations attending the 2015 NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. Given the increasing dissatisfaction of non-nuclear weapons states, the State Department argued that numerical stockpile reductions since the end of the Cold War is ample evidence that the U.S. is complying with the NPT’s Article VI obligation for nuclear disarmament. It also claimed:

 The United States is committed not to pursue new nuclear warheads, and life extension programs will not provide for new military capabilities… infrastructure modernization, stockpile stewardship, and life extension programs for U.S. warheads will contribute to and do not detract from progress on our NPT nuclear disarmament obligations. [1]

 There are four immediate reasons why these claims by the United States Government are false:

1)   While it’s true that the number of weapons is being reduced (albeit more slowly now), the U.S.’ nuclear stockpile is being indefinitely preserved and qualitatively improved through new military capabilities. Clearly this is not the nuclear disarmament required by NPT Article VI.

2)   The United States Government is preparing to spend more than one trillion dollars over the next thirty years for nuclear weapons modernization and new ballistic and cruise missiles, submarines and bombers.[2] [3] This too is obviously not nuclear disarmament.

3)   The new Kansas City Plant has begun operations to produce or procure up to 100,000 nonnuclear components every year for nuclear weapons life extension programs.[4] Multi-billion dollar upgrades and new facilities are planned for expanded production of plutonium pit cores at the Los Alamos Lab and for thermonuclear components (“secondaries”) at the Y-12 Plant near Oak Ridge, Tennessee.[5] These upgrades and new facilities are being designed to produce up to 80 plutonium pits and secondaries per year. Once completed, these three new complexes comprehensively rebuild the production side of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Moreover, they are expected to be operational until ~2075.  That is not nuclear disarmament.

4)   The United States Government has a high-level annual plan to indefinitely preserve its nuclear weapons stockpile [6] and a new high-level plan to prevent other countries from acquiring or proliferating nuclear weapons.[7] But the United States Government has no high-level policy plan to implement its NPT Article VI nuclear disarmament obligation.

Concerning indefinite preservation of the nuclear stockpile, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration has scheduled programs out to 2040 and beyond that extend the service lives of nuclear weapons by at least 30 years. Moreover, the current B61-12 life extension program will be followed by another program in 2038 to produce the B61-13 nuclear bomb, indicating a perpetual cycle of life extension programs.[8] It also suggests that some form of the B61 nuclear bomb is planned to be forward deployed in Europe until around the year 2070.

Concerning new military capabilities, the B61-12 blurs the line between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. The B61 life extension program is creating the world’s first nuclear smart bomb through the installation of a new guided tail fin kit that will dramatically increase its accuracy. It is also slated for delivery by the new super stealthy F-35. Yet the United States continues to assert that it would never give existing nuclear weapons new military capabilities.[9]

This is part of a long pattern. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the international delegations at the 2010 NPT Review Conference that “[o]ur Nuclear Posture Review ruled out the development of new U.S. nuclear weapons and new missions and capabilities for our existing weapons.” [10] But at the same time the U.S. was ramping up a life extension program for the 100 kiloton W76 warhead that gave it the capability of assuming the hard target kill mission of the 475 kiloton W88 warhead.[11]  Going further back, in the late 1990’s the 9 megaton surface-burst B53 bomb was replaced by the 400 kiloton B61-11 earth-penetrating modification to destroy hardened deeply buried targets. The point is that the general direction of post-Cold War planning for nuclear warfighting has been toward more accurate weapons with lower yields and reduced fallout, all of which make them arguably more usable.

Nevertheless, the United States maintains that these are not new military capabilities. It apparently avoids talking about the characteristics of individual nuclear weapons types and adopts the position that there are no new military capabilities because of the incalculable amount of extremely destructive military capabilities already in the stockpile as a whole. Thus, by this logic, if a lower yield, more precise nuclear weapon assumes the mission of a higher yield weapon, then that is not a new military capability. If so, then the United States Government’s assertion that it will never give existing nuclear weapons new military capabilities is essentially meaningless, giving it carte blanche to do whatever it wants with its existing stockpile.

The international community should demand that the United States Government fully explain and justify its claim that it would never give existing nuclear weapons new military capabilities, when the evidence points to the contrary. Perhaps that would be a step toward getting serious about global, verifiable nuclear disarmament.

[1]     https://web.archive.org/web/20171105070826/https://www.state.gov/t/isn/rls/fs/2015/240650.htm

[2]     Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2015 to 2024, Congressional Budget Office, January 22, 2015,

“CBO estimates the Administration’s plans for nuclear forces would cost $348 billion over the next decade… For each leg of the triad, most of the cost to procure new systems would occur after 2023.” https://www.cbo.gov/publication/4987

[3]     The Trillion Dollar Triad, James Martin Center, Jan. 7, 2014, http://cns.miis.edu/trillion_dollar_nuclear_triad/

[4]     http://www.nnsa.energy.gov/aboutus/ourlocations/kansas-city-plant

[5]     See the National Nuclear Security Administration’s FY 2016 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, March 2015, Section 2.4.6.3 “Uranium Sustainment” and Section 4.3.3.1 “Strategy for Key Commodities,” https://web.archive.org/web/20171229181847/https://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/FY16SSMP_FINAL%203_16_2015_reducedsize.pdf

[6]     FY 2016 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, National Nuclear Security Administration, March 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20171229181847/https://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/FY16SSMP_FINAL%203_16_2015_reducedsize.pdf

[7]     Prevent, Counter, and Respond – A Strategic Plan to Reduce Global Nuclear Threats, National Nuclear Security Administration, March 2015, https://www.scribd.com/doc/259397464/Prevent-Counter-and-Respond-A-Strategic-Plan-to-Reduce-Global-Nuclear-Threats-FY-2016-2020

[8]        FY 2016 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, National Nuclear Security Administration, March 2015, chapter 2, page 19 and chapter 8, page 18, https://web.archive.org/web/20171229181847/https://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/FY16SSMP_FINAL%203_16_2015_reducedsize.pdf

[9]       For more, see General Confirms Enhanced Targeting Capabilities of B61-12 Nuclear Bomb, Hans Kristensen, January 23, 2014, http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/01/b61capability/

[10]    Hillary Clinton’s Remarks before the 2010 NPT Review Conference, May 3, 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20120930181944/http://www.cfr.org/united-states/hillary-clintons-remarks-before-2010-npt-review-conference/p22042

[11]    For more, see Administration Increases Submarine Nuclear Warhead Production Plan, Hans Kristensen, August 30, 2007, http://fas.org/blogs/security/2007/08/us_tripples_submarine_warhead/

Department of Energy waste needs to be cleaned up

Jay CoghlanNuclear Weapons, WIPP

The New Mexican

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/

Letters to the editor, March 10, 2015

Department of Energy waste needs to be cleaned up

As usual, the Department of Energy gets it exactly wrong. The department was fined by our state Environment Department for lousy procedures that caused the explosion and leak at WIPP. As predicted more than 25 years ago, improperly characterized and mislabeled wastes make a dangerous mix. Now the feds want to steal from nuclear cleanup programs to pay the fine. Cleanup is already perennially underfunded, and environmental targets remain unmet year after year — because all DOE really wants to do is make more unneeded weapons, and thus more waste that doesn’t get cleaned up.

Every time DOE is fined for shoddy work, it should have to pay out of weapons research and development funds — and then throw double the amount of the fine into the cleanup budget. New Mexicans, have we had enough of watching the weaponeers roll around in their pork dollars while we pay the price with our land, water and future? Bad theater, indeed.

Sasha Pyle

Santa Fe

(Sasha is a former NukeWatch NM Steering Committee member.)

 

Tom Udall’s Unlikely Alliance With the Chemical Industry

Jay CoghlanWashington DC
NukeWatch NM Commentary: Not to mention Tom Udall’s not-so-unlikely alliance with the nuclear weapons industry in New Mexico. For that he sits on the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, the same seat from which Pete Domenici sent buckets of money to the Los Alamos and Sandia Labs. Except given the beginning of the trillion dollars over 30 years for nuclear weapons “modernization,” Tom is outdoing Pete in supplying money for nuclear weapons programs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/us/tom-udalls-unlikely-alliance-with-the-chemical-industry.html?_r=0

Tom Udall’s Unlikely Alliance With the Chemical Industry

By MARCH 6, 2015

WASHINGTON — Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico has earned a reputation as an environmental champion. He helped lead the fight against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and pushed through legislation for a new federal wilderness area in his home state of New Mexico.

It is part of his family legacy, dating back to the Kennedy administration, when his father, Stewart, served as the secretary of interior, and later played a vital role in enacting the landmark Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

So environmental activists were stunned to learn that Mr. Udall’s political supporters now include the chemical industry, which has donated tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns and sponsored a television ad that praised his leadership.

This unlikely alliance has been forged as Mr. Udall emerged as the chief Senate negotiator for Democrats on legislation that would fundamentally change the way the federal government evaluates the safety of more than 80,000 chemicals.

Some of Mr. Udall’s Democratic Senate colleagues and prominent environmentalists say he has helped the industry write new regulations in a way that protects profits more than public health.

Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who until last year served as chairwoman of the committee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency, has been the harshest critic of the negotiations between Mr. Udall and Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, notably over the language that would prevent states from setting their own, tougher standards.

“I’ve been around the Senate for a long time, but I have never before seen so much heavy-handed, big-spending lobbying on any issue,” Ms. Boxer said. “To me it looks like the chemical industry itself is writing this bill.”

Mr. Udall emphatically rejects the notion that he is industry’s emissary. “I am fighting for our children and trying to make sure they are not being pumped full of chemicals in the next generation,” he said. “We can’t do something that is pie in the sky; we have to deal with the reality.”

It is a reality that pleases industry officials who have worked to get close to Mr. Udall over the past 20 months, after the death of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, who once led Democrats in negotiations on a deal with Senate Republicans.

“The leadership he is providing is absolutely critical,” said Cal M. Dooley, a former Democratic representative from California, who is now the president and a lobbyist at the American Chemistry Council, which represents DuPont, Dow and other giants in the $800 billion-a-year industry.

The courting of Mr. Udall, even with Republicans in control of Congress, demonstrates how important securing the support of at least a few Democrats in the Senate is to any corporate agenda in Washington, where almost nothing can emerge from the chamber without 60 votes.

Unlike most industries that fight new federal regulations, the chemical industry wants Congress to act. T he existing fe deral law, adopted in 1976, is so antiquated that individual state governments have imposed their own chemical safety regulations.

The E.P.A. acknowledges there are about 1,000 chemicals used in the United States that might represent health hazards. Asbestos, for example, is still illegal to manufacture and sell, but the agency for decades h as been unable to ban its use.

Industry executives also realize the public is increasingly losing confidence in the safety of common chemicals once routinely found in toys or baby bottles, a fear they say can be addressed with more rigorous regulations.

But some environmental activists involved in the negotiations between Mr. Udall and Mr. Vitter are convinced that Mr. Udall has been too open to pressure from the industry.

“Senator Udall’s strong support for the legislation, in spite of its remaining flaws, has emboldened the chemical industry to take a more aggressive approach in Congress and try to disregard the critique of health experts and state governments,” said Andy Igrejas, national campaign director of a nonprofit group called Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, which represents hundreds of public health, labor and environmental groups.

The criticism is, in part, a negotiating tactic. The environmental groups still hope to toughen the draft legislation. But the disagreements are real.

The most intense disputes are over the pace the E.P.A. will attempt to test the backlog of chemicals whose safety has never been comprehensively assessed. The speed depends in part on how much the chemical industry must pay to cover the cost of tests and rule-making.

Mr. Udall’s current draft would require the start of testing just 10 high-risk chemicals in the first year, a figure Mr. Udall conceded he wishes could be higher.

But Mr. Udall added that the current draft legislation does give the E.P.A. clearer authority to impose limits on chemicals that its tests show cause any “unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.”

Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund who has been involved in drafting the bill, along with other environmentalists and chemical industry representatives, said this new safety standard language is a major improvement.

“It is not the bill I would have written from scratch,” Mr. Denison said. “But it’s a solid compromise that would be much more protective of public health.”

Still, the chemical industry prefers Mr. Udall and Mr. Vitter over Ms. Boxer. “Senator Boxer can no longer unilaterally stop the progress of reform,” said Anne Womack Kolton, a Chemistry Council spokeswoman.

The Chemistry Council is engaged in an aggressive push to pass the legislation, which will be named after Mr. Lautenberg as another tip of the hat to Democrats.

As part of its push, the Chemistry Council spent more than $4 million during the 2014 election cycle on television and radio spots to help their allies in Congress.

“These days in Washington, it is not easy getting things done,” said the advertisement that ran in New Mexico, featuring images of Mr. Udall. “But New Mexico’s Tom Udall brings both sides together to get results.”

Millions of dollars in campaign contributions were also distributed among the political accounts of the lawmakers involved in the debate, including Mr. Udall. First elected to the House in 1998, Mr. Udall had never before received a contribution from the Chemistry Council. The industry also made donations to Mr. Vitter, who is running for governor in Louisiana, and Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which would oversee the debate in the House.

Lobbyists from at least 100 chemical manufacturers, retailers that sell chemicals or trade associations representing them were registered as of last year to lobby Congress on the topic, disclosure records show, compared with a total of about 15 environmental, public health and educational institutions.

Mr. Udall and Mr. Vitter circulated a new draft on Thursday, but some environmentalists were still critical. The chief lobbyist at the Natural Resources Defense Council said that the law, if adopted without being strengthened, would actually harm public health. And the California attorney general’s office wrote a strongly worded letter late Thursday calling the new draft an “unnecessary evisceration of state regulatory authority.”

Mr. Dooley, of the Chemistry Council, said the industry was pleased with the new draft — and confident that it would prevail.

“This is the best moment, without question,” Mr. Dooley said from his office overlooking the Capitol. “I think we will get 70 votes on the Senate floor, or that is what Senator Udall, who spoke with us the other day, predicted.”

 




		

		
	


	





			
	
		

	


		

			
Watchdog Groups Praise NNSA Decision to Obey the Law

							

					Jay CoghlanNuclear Weapons, Y-12 Nat'l Security Complex			

					


		

			
Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance


Nuclear Watch New Mexico


For immediate release.  March 4, 2015


Watchdog Groups Praise NNSA Decision to Obey the Law,


Prepare Supplement Analysis on Bomb Plant


Contacts:       Ralph Hutchison, Coordinator OREPA,  orep(at)earthlink.net;

Jay Coghlan, Executive Director NWNM, jay(at)nukewatch.org


The National Nuclear Security Administration’s disclosure that the agency “in the process” of preparing a Supplement Analysis for the much-changed Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 nuclear weapons production plant brought praise from the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) and Nuclear Watch New Mexico. Just two days ago the two grassroots watchdog groups filed an expedited Freedom of Information Act request asking for the Supplement Analysis. At the same time the two groups noted that NNSA could be legally vulnerable without one. The issue is that the NNSA has proposed major changes to the UPF. The two groups contend that a Supplement Analysis is needed to determine whether or not past public review required under the National Environmental Policy Act needs to supplemented because of those changes.


The UPF is a highly troubled project whose costs have exploded from an original estimate of $600 million to more than $19 billion by one Pentagon study. More recently, in order to keep costs down, the UPF’s future mission has been stripped of dismantlement operations that would work off a backlog of unneeded nuclear weapons parts that need to be kept secure. Instead, the UPF will be a production-only facility for up to 80 “secondaries” per year, the components that give nuclear weapons immense thermonuclear capabilities. The UPF’s original “big box” design has been abandoned, replaced by a number of smaller modular facilities, plus use of existing nuclear facilities that were previously deemed too unsafe for continuing operations.


“It’s always a good thing when the government decides to obey its own laws and regulations,” said Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of OREPA. “We had been told previously that a decision had already been made to proceed with the Uranium Processing Facility without preparing a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. We were surprised, because the law requires NNSA to complete and publish a Supplement Analysis in order to make that bigger decision.”


Jay Coghlan, Executive Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico commented, “The UPF bomb plant has already been delayed several times by bad management decisions and incompetent design work, which dearly costs the American taxpayer every time. Instead of playing games about whether NNSA is or isn’t going to comply with the law, the agency should do what it did here in Los Alamos—prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement after making major changes to a proposed nuclear weapons facility.”


“The cart and horse problem continues to bedevil this project,” Hutchison noted. “It cost us half a billion dollars in the space/fit fiasco, where not all planned uranium processing equipment could fit into the designed building, and for which no one has been held accountable. Now we have federal officials saying they are not going to do the environmental analysis until they have spent more hundreds of millions of dollars on the second go around for “conceptual” project design—even though new seismic hazard maps may show it is unsafe to build the plant where they want to. It’s a great plan if your goal is to hand out taxpayer dollars to giant defense contractors. But if you are trying to complete a project in a sensible and timely way, it’s completely backwards.”


NNSA did not indicate when the Supplement Analysis would be complete. The Oak Ridge Peace and Environmental Alliance and Nuclear Watch New Mexico will be closely monitoring the UPF process as it unfolds.


# # #


NNSA’s admission that it is preparing a Supplement Analysis is reported at


http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2015/03/04/nnsa-says-it-is-preparing-supplement-analysis/

		

		
	


	





			
	
		

	


		

			
GROUPS JOIN TO DEMAND ANSWERS ABOUT BOMB PLANT PLANS

							

					Jay CoghlanNuclear Weapons, Y-12 Nat'l Security Complex			

					


		

			
Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance


Nuclear Watch New Mexico


GROUPS JOIN TO DEMAND ANSWERS ABOUT BOMB PLANT PLANS


For immediate release: March 2, 2015


The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (Oak Ridge, TN) and Nuclear Watch New Mexico (Santa Fe, NM) today filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking the Department of Energy (DOE) to come clean about its plans for a new, multi-billion dollar nuclear bomb plant proposed for the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.


The Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) is a highly troubled project that has exploded in estimated costs from an original $600 million to as high as $19 billion. Since then, in order to attempt to cap project spending at $6.5 billion, DOE has reduced the scope of the UPF by eliminating dismantlement operations and assuming a mission of production-only for nuclear weapons. After a half-billion dollar design mistake for which no one has been held accountable, DOE has abandoned its previous “big box” concept for the UPF in favor of a modular approach that includes the continuing use of unsafe, aging facilities previously slated for demolition. Despite these major changes, DOE has indicated it does not plan to update the legally required environmental review process it completed in 2011, but which must now address potential impacts of the new plan.


The groups’ FOIA request asks the government to release its Supplement Analysis—a study required by law when a federal agency makes a substantial change to its formally recorded Record of Decision. A Supplement Analysis is used to determine whether the agency needs to prepare a new Environmental Impact Statement, a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, or no new environmental analysis. The law requires DOE to make the Supplement Analysis publicly available, and the document would likely provide much valuable and up-to-date information on the UPF project. Alternatively, DOE may be legally vulnerable if no Supplement Analysis has been prepared.


Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, stressed that his organization is determined to hold the DOE publicly accountable over its plans for Oak Ridge and Y-12. “We live here. We are the ones placed at risk when people in Washington make decisions to keep building nuclear bombs in buildings that do not meet safety codes or even weakened seismic standards. At the very least, we deserve an explanation. We’ve previously asked DOE politely and got no answer. So now we are resorting to a FOIA request and subsequent steps as needed.”


Jay Coghlan, Executive Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, noted, “We had a similar situation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, when the government changed plans for a new multi-billion dollar plutonium facility. In our case, DOE responded to citizen pressure and prepared a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. We believe the same is legally required for the Uranium Processing Facility.”


The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to respond to FOIA requests within twenty working days. OREPA and Nuclear Watch NM have requested expedited processing of their request as provided for by the Freedom of Information Act.


Ralph Hutchison added, “We think informing Congress and the public of the status of the UPF’s compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act is urgently needed because of the project’s substantial changes and the thirty percent increase in funding. Determination of UPF’s NEPA status and updated public review could help prevent further waste of taxpayers’ money after more than a half-billion dollars has already been squandered.”


# # #


OREPA’s and Nuclear Watch NM’s FOIA request is available at:


http://orepa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/OREPA-NWNM-FOIA.pdf

		

		
	


	





			
	
		

	


		

			
Tom Udall’s Stand

							

					Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons			

					


		

			
The New Mexican

Feb. 26, 2015

Letter to the Editor


http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letters-to-the-editor-feb/article_74b054a2-432f-5f0e-8fb1-ec972291a10f.html




Udall’s stand






A recent New Mexican article (“Udall weighs in on LANL’s next mission: Pits,” Feb. 22) quotes Sen. Tom Udall, “As long as we have nuclear weapons, they have to have pits, and Los Alamos does that.” He then goes on to hope that future international agreements would lower the need for plutonium “pit” cores of nuclear weapons.






Udall explicitly supported a huge new plutonium facility at LANL for expanded pit production, and a “life extension program” for an existing nuclear weapon that is creating the world’s first nuclear smart bomb. Expanded plutonium pit production is for future life extension programs that seek to not only indefinitely preserve existing nuclear weapons, but also give them new military capabilities, despite U.S. government denials. Udall can’t have it both ways, wishing for future limits on plutonium pit production while supporting the very programs and facilities that will expand production. He needs to stand up, pick one or the other, and make clear whether he is working for a world free of nuclear weapons or not.


Jay Coghlan

Nuclear Watch New Mexico

Santa Fe.




 

		

		
	


	





			
	
		

	


		

			
DOE Nuclear Weapons Budget Up 10%, Equals Cold War Record

							

					Jay CoghlanNuclear Weapons, Press Releases			

					


		

			




Nuclear Watch New Mexico 




FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 2, 2015

Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342




DOE Nuclear Weapons Budget Up 10%, Equals Cold War Record

Huge Startup for Nuclear Cruise Missile Warhead

$4 Billion Slated for LANL Plutonium Pit Production Facilities

Cleanup and Dismantlement Funding Remain Flat 




Santa Fe, NM – Today, the Obama Administration released its proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2016, which starts October 1, 2015.


The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within the Department of Energy, and has perennially been on the Government Accountability Office’s High Risk List for wasting taxpayers’ money. Despite that, the Obama Administration is giving NNSA nuclear weapons programs a 10.5% jump in funding to $8.85 billion. (1) This is statistically equal to the Cold War high point in 1985 under President Reagan’s military buildup. (2) Moreover, the NNSA’s nuclear weapons budget is slated to rise to $9.8 billion by 2020, nearly double that of the Cold War average. All of this is the beginning of the planned one trillion dollar modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons forces over the next 30 years.


The large increases in NNSA budgets are due to 1) aggressive “Life Extension Programs” that seek to indefinitely preserve existing nuclear weapons while giving them new military capabilities; and 2) new production plants for these rebuilt nuclear weapons, expected to be operational until ~2075. As an example of the former, the current $12 billion B61 Life Extension Program will create the world’s first nuclear “smart” bomb, and will soon begin production at existing facilities.


NNSA’s FY 2016 budget launches a whole new Life Extension Program for a nuclear warhead for a new air-launched cruise missile. (3) Requested FY 2016 funding is $195 million, a 20-fold increase from $9 million for conceptual studies in FY 2015. This program is slated to rise to $459 million in annual appropriations by FY 2020. This nuclear warhead has been scheduled before Pentagon development of the new air-launched cruise missile itself, in effect putting the cart before the horse. This costly program is arguably redundant as well, given that rebuilt B61 nuclear bombs will be delivered on future super-stealthy fighters advertised as capable of penetrating any adversary’s air defenses. Finally, a nuclear-armed cruise missile is destabilizing from an arms control perspective because they can fly below radar, delivering the proverbial bolt from the blue.


On the flip side of production, the Obama Administration’s funding request for dismantlements is $48 million, less than 4% of the funding for all Life Extension Programs to rebuild nuclear weapons. Obama’s request itself is an improvement from last year, when the Administration asked for only $30 million, a 45% cut compared to the year before. Congress refused to go along with that, earmarking $50 million for dismantlements in FY 2015. Besides providing a good example to the rest of the world, nuclear weapons dismantlements deliver real savings to the American taxpayer by eliminating otherwise permanent security costs.


Concerning new production facilities, NNSA is asking for a 28% increase to $430 million for the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) near Oak Ridge, TN. The UPF is to produce up to 80 “secondaries” each year, the components that give weapons thermonuclear capabilities capable of killing millions. The previous “big box” design for the UPF was canceled after out-of-control costs rose as high as $19 billion by one Pentagon estimate. UPF also had a half-billion dollar design mistake for which no one has been held accountable, in which all planned equipment could not fit within the building’s footprint. Because of all this, the UPF’s mission has been downscoped to production only, eliminating dismantlements, in order to help contain costs, currently capped at $6.5 billion. Again, dismantlements seem dispensable to the Obama Administration.


NNSA also plans to begin spending $2 billion to upgrade existing facilities for the expanded production of the plutonium pit cores of nuclear weapons at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), beginning with $155.6 million in FY 2016. The controversial CMRR “Nuclear Facility” is formally canceled. In its place, up to $675 million is planned to be spent on additional equipment for the already built Radiological Laboratory to quadruple the amount of plutonium that can be handled there, and up to $1.4 billion to upgrade PF-4, LANL’s existing main plutonium facility.


In addition, “The third step of the plutonium strategy extends the lifetime of PF-4 and supports increases in pit production capacity beyond 30 pits per year by proposing to build new modular facilities and move selected processes into new space… The NNSA is planning to construct not less than two modular structures that will achieve full operating capability not later than 2027.” Although still far from final design, those modular facilities will likely cost a billion dollars each. Given the usual cost overruns, eventual costs may meet or exceed the CMRR’s estimated cost of $6.5 billion when it included the Nuclear Facility.


In New Mexico-related news, the DOE budget request for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is decreased by $76 million to $248 million. Of that, $87 million is for “base activities” while WIPP is shut down because of a radiation release in February 2104. The rest of funding is for “Recovery Activities” to resume underground disposal by March 2016 of radioactive wastes that were already stored above ground at WIPP when the accident happened. Meanwhile, plutonium-contaminated wastes across the country already prepared for shipment to WIPP will have to wait. Total costs to reopen WIPP remain unknown.


Inflation-adjusted funding for cleanup across the nation-wide nuclear weapons complex remains flat at $5.5 billion, even though estimated cleanup costs of the massive widespread contamination continue to climb. The funding request for cleanup at Los Alamos Lab is flat at $185 million. It includes repackaging radioactive waste drums stored at LANL that are similar to the one that ruptured and contaminated WIPP. It will also fund investigation and corrective measures for the large chromium plume in our groundwater aquifer, with an emphasis on preventing it from crossing the boundary of neighboring San Ildefonso Pueblo. Current contamination maps show the plume stopping at exactly the boundary, which is nearly impossible.


Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch New Mexico Director, commented, “Thousands of nuclear weapons rebuilt at enormous costs won’t protect us from ISIS, a dirty bomb in Manhattan, Ebola or climate change. NNSA’s nuclear weapons programs should be cut to help pay for the expansion of nonproliferation programs that actually enhance national security, cleanup programs that protect the environment while creating jobs, and dismantlement programs that get rid of nuclear weapons forever and save taxpayers money.”


# # #




The NNSA’s FY 2016 Congressional Budget Request is available at

http://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/02/f19/FY2016BudgetVolume1%20_1.pdf


Notes:


(1)  As topline numbers, NNSA’s budget category “Total Weapons Activities” increase from $8.23 billion in FY 2015 to $8.85 billion in FY 2016, or 7.5%. However, the true increase is masked by the fact that two counterproliferation programs formerly within NNSA’s “Total Weapons Activities” are moved to Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation. Once that is factored in the real increase for NNSA’s nuclear weapons programs is 10.5%


(2) The FY 2016 DOE nuclear weapons request is calculated as statistically equal to the Cold War record using data from Atomic Audit, Brookings Institute, 1998, Stephen Schwartz editor, Table A-2. It gives 5.494 billion in 1996 dollars as the cost for DOE nuclear weapons research, production and testing programs in 1985, the height of the Cold War military build up under Ronald Reagan. Adjusted for inflation that is $8.99 billion in 2015 dollars.


(3) Called the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon in the budget because heavy bombers can launch the nuclear-armed cruise missiles at a great distance from their intended targets.


 


 





		

		
	


	





			
	
		

	


		

			
More WIPP Fallout:  NNSA Cuts Los Alamos Lab’s Award Fees by 90%

							

					Jay CoghlanLos Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons, WIPP, Y-12 Nat'l Security Complex			

					


		

			
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 29, 2014

Contact:  Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154, [email protected]


More WIPP Fallout: 

NNSA Cuts Los Alamos Lab’s Award Fees by 90%

Watchdogs Say Management Contract Should Be Put Out for Bid


Santa Fe, NM – Today, Los Alamos Lab Director Charles McMillan notified LANL employees that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had slashed FY 2014 management award fees to $6.25 million. Seventeen million dollars were available in fixed fees, and around $40 million in incentive fees, resulting in a 90% cut to potential awards. In addition, NNSA declined to grant a previously pro forma one-year contract extension, and most remarkably rescinded a contract extension from an earlier year (see more below). As justification, the agency invoked a ““First Degree” performance failure… [that] created damage to DOE property or costs for cleaning, decontaminating, renovating, replacing or rehabilitating property that in aggregate exceed $2.5 million.”


This is more fallout from WIPP. The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) used unapproved radioactive waste treatment procedures that resulted in a ruptured drum at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, contaminating 21 workers and indefinitely closing that multi-billion dollar facility. It will cost an estimated half-billion dollars to reopen WIPP, which will likely double. Additionally, the New Mexico Environment Department has proposed $54 million in fines against LANL and WIPP, and Congress has cut $40 million from cleanup programs at the Lab, while adding $100 million to help reopen WIPP.


LANL is managed by Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), whose two main partners are the University of California (UC) and the privately held Bechtel Corporation. UC ran the Lab as a nonprofit until June 2006, and received approximately $8 million in annual compensation. In contrast, the for-profit LANS was awarded $51.9 million in FY 2013, or more than six times the old nonprofit fee, for no apparent improvement in contract management. LANL Director Charles McMillan is compensated $1.5 million annually, while also acting as president of the for-profit limited liability corporation, a possible conflict of interest.


Because of grossly substandard performance, the Project On Government Oversight and Nuclear Watch New Mexico had jointly asked the Department of Energy Secretary to cut LANS’ FY 2014 incentive fee at least in half. NNSA’s final decision far exceeds our request. Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, commented, “We strongly praise NNSA for gutting LANS’ award fees. This sends an unmistakable message to contractors that they will be held accountable, which has been sorely missing to date. However, in light of LANS’ miserable performance, NNSA should take the next big step and put the management contract out to bid. NNSA and Congress should also consider whether for-profit management of the nuclear weapons complex is really in the country’s best interests, when the track record demonstrates that it’s not.”


In addition to the WIPP fiasco, another monumental failure occurred in July 2012 when three elderly protestors broke into a highly secure area, previously thought impregnable, at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, TN. The for-profit contractor had self-appraised its security program management as “excellent” and physical security as “good” in the preceding official “Performance Evaluation Report,” which the NNSA approved and paid for with taxpayer dollars.


Concerning LANS’ own substandard performance, LANL has been incapable of conducting major operations at its main plutonium facility since the end of June 2013 because of serious nuclear criticality safety concerns. This belies the fact that the Lab is the country’s only designated, so-called “Plutonium Center of Excellence.” Bechtel has had a particularly troubled performance history with the Department of Energy. Under Bechtel management estimated costs for the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation soared from $3.5 billion to $13 billion, with numerous complaints of retaliation against whistleblowers.


Similarly, under Bechtel’s partnership management of the Los Alamos Lab, estimated costs for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project (CMRR) mushroomed from around $600 million to $6.5 billion, leading to cancellation of the proposed “Nuclear Facility.” Lab Director McMillan now pushes for a multi-billion dollar “modular” substitute for the CMRR Nuclear Facility, whose mission would be expanded production of plutonium pits, the fissile cores of nuclear weapons. However, existing nuclear weapons don’t need expanded pit production, implying that it would be for unspecified future nuclear weapons. In any event, LANL has questionable competency to perform any plutonium pit production at all.


On a final related matter, to its credit NNSA posted the LANS FY 2014 Fee Determination Letter and Notice of Reduction. However, the agency did not post the full Performance Evaluation Report upon which they are based. Jay Coghlan commented, “NNSA’s decision to slash LANS’ fees is very welcomed, but far greater transparency is still needed. Nuclear Watch New Mexico successfully sued in the past to make full Performance Evaluation Reports publicly available. We will sue again if our current Freedom of Information Act request for the full FY 2014 Performance Evaluation Report is not soon satisfied.”


LANS received a 68% contractor performance rating for FY 2012, but was given a waiver by the NNSA fee determination officer (who soon thereafter became the NNSA Administrator). That waiver gave LANS additional taxpayer-paid fees and granted it another contract extension, when the required minimum threshold was 80%. Nuclear Watch New Mexico discovered this after litigation that obtained the full FY 2012 Performance Evaluation Report. Congress subsequently required NNSA to report any future waivers to the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees, effectively ending that practice. This does, however, demonstrate the importance of public access to NNSA’s full Performance Evaluation Reports, so that taxpayers can know that nuclear weapons contractors are being held accountable.


# # #


References:


1.   NNSA, FY 2014 Performance Evaluation Report, Fee Determination Letter, Los Alamos National Security, LLC, https://web.archive.org/web/20170128035135/https://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/inlinefiles/FY14%20LANS%20FDO%20Letter.pdf


2.   NNSA, Contracting Officer’s Notice of Reduction of LANS FY 2014 Fixed Fee and Forfeiture of Previously Earned Award Term, https://web.archive.org/web/20170212143207/https://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/inlinefiles/Contracting%20Officer%20Notice%20of%20Reduction%20of%20LANS%20FY14%20Fixed%20Fee%20and%20Incentive%20Fee.pdf


3.   December 3, 2014 joint POGO and Nuclear Watch NM letter to DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz urging reduced award fees for the Los Alamos Lab contractor. https://nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/POGO-NukeWatch-Moniz-Sandia-performance-12-19-14.pdf


4.   LANL Director Charles McMillan December 29, 2014 announcement to Lab employees:


To/MS:LANL-ALL

From/MS: Charles F. McMillan, DIR, A100

Phone/Fax:7-5101/7-2997

Symbol:DIR-14-246

Date: December 29, 2014


SUBJECT:  FY2014 NNSA PERFORMANCE REVIEW


NNSA has presented the Laboratory with our annual performance

evaluation report (PER) for FY2014. As expected the overall

results are not, with several notable exceptions, positive.


The fee for Fiscal Year 2014 was reduced to $6.25 million.  Given

the events surrounding our breached drum at WIPP and the severity

of the issue, the Laboratory received a rating of

“unsatisfactory” in operations and infrastructure and a score of

zero in that area which accounted for the significant reduction

in fee.


Although the WIPP incident weighed very heavily on our overall

evaluation from NNSA we performed well in the areas of our core

nuclear weapons work, global security, and science. This good

performance prompted written praise from NNSA Field Office

Manager Kim Davis Lebak as well as in the PER. Lebak said, “The

majority of the work performed by the Laboratory met or exceeded

NNSA expectations.”


I want to emphasize that our true value as a Laboratory should be

measured by the contributions we make to national security. This

is something we can all be very proud of. According to the PER

our nuclear weapons mission and global security mission each

“exceeded expectations.”  The PER cited many weapons program

highlights including: assisting Pantex to surpass the recovery

schedule for W76-1 production, execution of the Leda experiment

at Nevada, advances in the plutonium strategy, and excellent

progress in support of B61-12.  In global security, according to

the PER, “The Laboratory’s efforts were high impact and largely

successful, especially in the areas of Nuclear Safeguards and

Security, the Nuclear Counterterrorism Program, the Nuclear Non-

Compliance Verification Program and Non-Proliferation Research

and Development.”


Despite the challenges of fiscal uncertainty during the past

year, the Laboratory has made significant strides in many areas.

Our mission deliverables included multiple activities and studies

that increased our understanding of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.


An update to the W78 life expectancy study was delivered, along

with analyses related to the B61, W76, W78, and W88 systems.  In

the broader national security mission the Laboratory was

instrumental in supporting the removal of low-enriched uranium

from Russia, hosting the IAEA non-destructive inspector training

course, and developing USAF satellite-based treaty verification

instruments.


In addition, the PER calls out our science, technology and

engineering missions for advancing the state of research and

utilization of the exceptional scientific resources of the

Laboratory including Laboratory Directed Research and Development

(LDRD).   According to the PER, “The Laboratory has reinforced

its stature as one of the preeminent scientific institutions of

the nation.” Indeed, we pushed the boundaries of science,

technology and engineering with major feats, such as: being

chosen to develop SuperCam for the Mars 2020 mission, supplying

unique RAPTOR telescope data on the birth of a black hole,

leading the development of a “desktop” human surrogate device,

and collaboration on the characterization of the damage to the

Fukushima nuclear plant.


Operationally, despite setbacks and shortcomings, we saw progress

and momentum in key areas:

*             Safety and environmental performance are at historically

positive levels.  Injuries and days away from work due to

safety issues are lower than ever before.  The Laboratory

was named a “Star Site” of the Voluntary Protection Plan

program, the largest site in the DOE complex to earn the

star level;

*             Site-wide energy usage was reduced and water consumption

was reduced by 18 percent over last fiscal year;

*             An upgrade project for plutonium facility security was

completed and seismic and fire protection upgrades at TA-55

were completed; and

*             Significant progress was made on construction projects,

including TA-55 revitalization, the Transuranic Waste

Facility, and the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center.


To position the Laboratory to deliver on our future national

security missions we made significant progress with NNSA on

plutonium strategy including the “modular” approach to

infrastructure that will reduce risk associated with the

construction of targeted facilities while meeting mission needs,

safety and security, and regulatory requirements.  We also

awarded a contract to Cray Inc. to build the next-generation

supercomputer, Trinity.  Trinity will play a key role in

assessing future issues, both known and unknown, in the U.S.

nuclear deterrent.


Although this was a very tough year for the Laboratory I am

optimistic that next year will be better. I am determined to do

all that I can to make it so. My personal priorities will be to

continue to make progress on getting PF-4 fully restarted,

continuing collaboration with DOE on an effective and efficient

transition of the Environmental Management program scope, and

enhancing our management and leadership capabilities by filling

key vacancies and correcting operational deficiencies.


I would like to personally thank each of you for the hard work

and wish you and your family members a safe and happy holiday

season. Enjoy your well-deserved break and come back in the New

Year rededicated to serving the national security needs of this

country.

		

		
	


	





			
	
		

	


		

			
NNSA Governance Advisory Panel Condones Diminishing Federal Oversight Of Failing Contractors

							

					Jay CoghlanLawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Security, Nuclear Weapons, Sandia National Laboratories, WIPP, Y-12 Nat'l Security Complex			

					


		

			




 Santa Fe, NM – Yesterday, the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise released its long awaited report, entitled “A New Foundation for the Nuclear Enterprise.” According to enabling language in the FY 2013 Defense Authorization Act, “The purpose of the advisory panel is to examine options and make recommendations for revising the governance structure, mission, and management of the nuclear security enterprise.” This means the nuclear weapons complex owned by the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and run by its contractors. In an attempt to give increased prominence to nuclear weapons programs, the Panel goes so far as to recommend that the Department of Energy be renamed the Department of Energy and Nuclear Security.


The Panel itself is full of conflicts-of-interest. It is co-chaired by Norman Augustine, the former CEO of Lockheed Martin, which is the sole manager of the Sandia Labs and runs the Y-12 and Pantex nuclear weapons production plants in partnership with the Bechtel Corp. The other co-chair, Admiral Robert Mies, sits on the Board of Governors of both for-profit contractors that run the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore Labs, as do former congresswoman Ellen Tauscher and Michael Anastasio, former director of both labs. Yet another panel member, Franklin C. Miller, sits on the Sandia Corporation Board of Directors.


But the most questionable panel member is former Congresswoman Heather Wilson (ex.-R-NM). While still in office she signed a contract for “consulting” services with the Sandia National Laboratories that had no written work requirements. The day after she stepped down from office she started being paid $10,000 a month, and went on to secure a similar contract from the Los Alamos Lab for the same amount of money. The DOE Inspector General has recently found that the Sandia contractor (wholly owned by Lockheed Martin) had engaged in highly improper, if not illegal, lobbying of Congress for contract extensions, in which Heather Wilson was “deeply, deeply involved.” Both Sandia and LANL were forced to return to the government the $450,000 they had paid to Wilson, but she has not returned any money.


The Panel’s report laments the dysfunctional relationship between NNSA and its contractors, and deplores the loss of mutual trust. But while profits are rising, contractors are being held to fewer and fewer performance benchmarks, which the Panel does little if anything to fix. Performance benchmarks were previously codified in annual Performance Evaluation Plans (PEPs), but have been subsequently stripped. As a case in point, the FY 2012 Performance Evaluation Plan for the Los Alamos Lab contractor was 89 pages long, full of concrete performance benchmarks. The restructured FY 2013 Plan was nine pages long, with vague performance benchmarks.


This diminishing federal oversight flies in the face of a long history of project delays and immense cost increases for which contractors are responsible, but not held accountable. For example, the former contractor for the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant committed a half-billion dollar design mistake for the Uranium Processing Facility, but has not been publicly disciplined. Y-12’s new contractor just awarded Bechtel a no-bid UPF construction contract, which in effect awards itself since the contractor is principally composed of Lockheed Martin and Bechtel. This is despite the fact that under Bechtel management the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project at Los Alamos exploded in costs from ~$600 million to ~$.6.5 billion, and the Waste Treatment Plant at Hanford from ~$3.5 billion to ~$13.5 billion.


Contractors have also committed very serious operational mistakes. The LANL contractor used unapproved waste handling methods to prepare plutonium-contaminated radioactive wastes for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). A waste drum subsequently ruptured, contaminating 21 workers and closing WIPP, causing estimated reopening costs of a half-billion dollars (which will no doubt increase) and $54 million in New Mexico state fines.


As another example, the former Y-12 contractor self-appraised its security management program as “excellent” and its physical security as “good,” which the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) approved while awarding management fees. Both were shaken to their cores when an 82-year old nun and two elderly colleagues cut through three security fences to protest nuclear weapons in a very sensitive area previously thought impregnable.


Despite all this, the Panel makes no specific recommendations to put performance benchmarks back into management contracts. Instead, it proposes that the number of budget line items be reduced, which could further erode transparency, accountability, and congressional oversight, and increase the ability of NNSA and its contractors to move money around.


Perhaps most alarmingly, the Panel recommends that congressional oversight be strengthened by having the DOE Secretary report to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources and Armed Services Committees, and to the House Energy and Commerce and Armed Services Committees. This would likely have the opposite effect, as it seems to preclude the traditional jurisdiction of the House and Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittees, which have provided key oversight in the past, and have often cut certain nuclear weapons programs. Indeed, later in the report, the Panel suggests (short of a formal recommendation) that funding authority for NNSA nuclear weapons programs be invested in the Defense Subcommittees of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. Again, this appears to exclude Energy and Water Appropriations, which could have profound implications by weakening congressional fiscal constraints on the nuclear weapons complex.


Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch Director, commented, “The Panel’s self-interested premise that the Nuclear Security Enterprise needs a new foundation is wrong. First, call it what it is, not some kind of innocuous sounding “enterprise,” but rather a massive research and production complex that is pushing an unaffordable trillion dollar modernization program for nuclear warheads, missiles, subs and bombers. This will divert taxpayers’ dollars from meeting the real national security threats of nuclear weapons proliferation and climate change. The Panel failed by not arguing for prudent maintenance of the stockpile, instead supporting a perpetual work program of risky life extension programs for existing nuclear weapons that will enrich contractors.”




# # # 




“A New Foundation for the Nuclear Enterprise” by the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise is available at

http://cdn.knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2014/12/Governance.pdf?_ga=1.136311025.1198700939.1418359009


The DOE Inspector General “Special Inquiry: Alleged Attempts by Sandia National Laboratories to Influence Congress and Federal Officials on a Contract Extension” is available at

http://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/11/f19/IG-0927.pdf


The DOE’s Inspector General’s quote of Heather Wilson’s deep involvement in improper lobbying on behalf of the Sandia Labs is from

http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/mines-president-named-in-doe-inspector-general-s-probe/article_b984ab84-d593-5578-8007-e70e7c9e986f.html







		

		
	


	





			
	
		

	


		

			
FY 2015 Defense Authorization Act cuts Safety Board employees

							

					Jay CoghlanNuclear Safety			

					


		

			
The House Armed Services Committee has tried repeatedly to cripple the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, realizing that the Board slows down what the nuclear weaponeers want to do (and causes the estimated costs of new nuclear facilities to explode because of safety concerns).


The Board’s enabling legislation authorized a staff of up to 150 personnel. HASC tried to cut it down to 120. The final House-Senate agreement on the FY 2015 Defense Authorization Act cuts it to 130. Remember, the Board covers the entire active nuclear weapons complex and then some, and is often the only adult in the room when it comes to nuclear safety issues. For example, the Los Alamos Lab’s plutonium pit production facility has not conducted major operations since the end of June 2013 because of nuclear criticality safety issues that the Board raised.


The relevant FY 2015 Defense Authorization Act Agreement language is as follows, page 350, https://web.archive.org/web/20210718064321/https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/download/fy2015-ndaa-conference-jes


Number of employees of Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board(sec. 3203)


The House bill contained a provision (sec. 3203) that would amend section 313(b)(1)(A) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2286b(b)(1)(A)) to limit the number of full-time employees of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board to 120. The Senate committee-reported bill contained no similar provision. The agreement includes the House provision with an amendment that would limit the number of employees to 130. – end of quote –


The Board deserves our ongoing support. In Nuclear Watch NM’s view, the Board should be expanded, not cut, especially in light of the govermnent’s plans to spend more than a trillion dollars over the next 30 years on nuclear weapons modernization.


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