Self-Imposed Structural Disarmament: The Sorry State Of The Doe Weapons Complex

Excerpts from Testimony by

FRANK J. GAFFNEY, JR.

Director of the Center for Security Policy

before

the House Armed Services Committee

18 April 1991

I have been concerned for quite some time about the portentous consequences should the Department of Energy weapons complex cease to be able to sustain a robust, reliable nuclear arsenal. For example, in March of 1988, in an op.ed. article in the Wall Street Journal, I warned that — "as a result of years of low budgetary priority, maintenance deferred, investment foregone and obsolescing designs — key elements of the nuclear weapons infrastructure are in extremis."

…That statement was made before the Savannah River production reactors, the Rocky Flats plant and other elements of the complex went off-line, either temporarily or permanently. In the aftermath of those developments, however, the concern I expressed at the time — to the effect that a failure to take urgent corrective action would produce "unilateral, structural denuclearization" — has begun to be borne out.

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…The Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex is today, at best, in a state of suspended animation. The United States has no present ability to produce key ingredients for nuclear weapons, notably the so-called "special nuclear materials," plutonium and tritium. As a result, it is relying on a process of cannibalizing existing weapons to meet present and near- to medium-term requirements.

In short, we have permitted the production complex to be brought effectively to a standstill. To some extent, the gravity of this situation has been masked by force structure reductions that are either underway or anticipated. We must not kid ourselves, however, this amounts to robbing Peter to pay Paul. While such a practice can allow some key activities to continue on a short-term, stop-gap, work-around basis, it will not permit longer-term requirements to be satisfied reliably.

This problem will be further aggravated by the cumulative effects of present and projected cuts in nuclear weapons research and development spending. The resources that are needed to sustain a competent, experienced workforce at the nation’s nuclear laboratories and test facilities are being especially hard hit.

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In my professional judgment, the United States should not proceed down this path even if the Soviet Union were doing likewise. As a practical matter, as long as we rely on nuclear weapons for deterrence, it seems to me utterly irresponsible for our government willingly to act in a manner that endangers the viability — to say nothing of the credibility — of that deterrent.

The degree of irresponsibility involved in the present condition of the U.S. weapons complex is immeasurably greater, however, since the Soviets are taking a radically different approach. Despite the deplorable condition of the Soviet economy, the ostensible passing of the Cold War and Moscow center’s espousal of "New Thinking," maintaining the modernity and improving the lethality of the USSR’s nuclear forces are evidently still high priorities for the Kremlin.

There is to my knowledge, moreover, no indication that the USSR is permitting its own complex that supports those forces to experience any disruption at all — to say nothing of allowing it to experience the virtually complete disruption afflicting the American complex. If such an asymmetric condition is permitted to persist, it is predictable that, over time, there will be real and adverse strategic repercussions.

* * *

Several actions taken in recent years have, in my view, significantly compounded the aforementioned dangers. These include:

• Secretary Watkin’s understandable — and laudable — desire to make all aspects of the weapons complex essentially perfectly safe holds the organization to a standard that is, as a practical matter, unachievable. None of us chooses in our daily lives to eschew all activities that could cause harm to ourselves or to our loved ones. The issue is simply: Are the risks minimized to a reasonable degree and are the benefits of doing the activity sufficiently compelling to justify assuming those risks?

 

• If, as is frequently argued, safety considerations were unduly subordinated to weapons production requirements during the 1980s, it seems to me that today unrealizable expectations about how safe an inherently dangerous — but vital — national activity can be rendered could make it impossible to resume that activity in the foreseeable future. Some sense of perspective urgently needs to be restored to this program before litigation, if not executive fiat, renders it permanently inoperative.

   

• Action on this front has been further complicated by several recent decisions — for example: waiving of DoE’s statutory exemption from certain regulations; agreeing to permit the Department to be sued by other federal agencies for deviating from environmental rules and allowing prosecution of government employees as individuals for environmental wrongs performed in the course of their official duties.

 

• To the extent that Congress is disposed to heed the Government Accounting Office’s concerns about undue DoE reliance on contractors, it should urgently consider the effect such prosecutions are having on the Department’s ability to pursue the alternative path of recruiting and retaining competent individuals on the government’s rolls.

   

• In addition, there are significant resource considerations. These are exacerbated by Secretary Watkin’s commitment — one shared by many in Congress — to clean up the weapons complex’s accumulated toxic waste problem. No one knows the ultimate cost of this campaign; it is projected to translate into an expenditure of nearly $13.5 billion during the FY1990-93 period, alone. (The annual outlay is supposed almost to double over that period.) As a practical matter, some of these funds inevitably are going to be taken out of the hide of the Energy Department’s Defense, Naval Reactors and New Production Reactor programs.

 

• Without minimizing in any way the magnitude of the clean-up task at hand or maligning official intentions, unless extraordinary care is exercised and congressional oversight redoubled, there is a real danger that the Environmental Management (EM) account will become a profligate waste of money, a slush fund for pork-barrel spending at the expense of the national security.

   

• I believe there has also been a serious breakdown in the process whereby the Departments of Defense and Energy are supposed jointly to develop plans for programs and spending on nuclear weaponry.

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Notions such as the preclusion of new nuclear weapon developments, bans on nuclear testing and fissionable material production and arbitrary standardization of weapon designs must be seen for what they are: component parts of a warmed-over nuclear freeze. When, in the mid-1980s, these ideas were promoted in an aggregate form under the freeze campaign’s banner, they were properly rejected by Congress as being inconsistent with the national security. Taken together or individually, they would be every bit as serious a mistake today.

The simple truth of the matter is that deterring an adversary with the present and emerging capabilities of the Soviet Union will continue to require a modern, flexible, technologically sophisticated and responsive nuclear arsenal. Each of these initiatives, like the nuclear freeze concept of which they are a part, would inhibit or preclude the United States’ efforts to maintain such an arsenal.

I support the broad thrust of the Department of Energy’s plan for reconfiguring the nuclear weapons complex. Overall, it seems to me to be an orderly and responsible approach to an extremely complex and pressing national problem.

My principal reservation has to do with the inordinate amount of time, resources and energy that will be expended in the Sisyphean task of trying to satisfy all relevant environmental impact requirements. In view of the urgency that I believe must attend the reconstitution and modernization of the nuclear weapons complex, I urge members of this committee and your colleagues to consider expedited procedures which can streamline necessary consideration of environmental concerns. I also strongly urge this Committee and the Congress to ensure that sufficient funds are available to achieve the earliest possible start-up of a New Production Reactor. It is, in my view, scandalous that the Bush Administration has failed to do so in its present and projected budget submissions.

As a parting thought, Mr. Chairman, may I simply add that — in light of the very serious problems currently afflicting the infrastructure that supports our nuclear deterrent, to say nothing of those in prospect — the need for a deterrent approach that is less reliant on offensive nuclear forces seems ever more clear. In that vein, I very much hope that the Congress will bend every effort toward approving completion of development and expedited deployment of effective strategic defenses.