Where is Pea On O’Leary’s Legacy Of Denuclearizing The U.S., Passivity On The Growing Nuclear Threat In Cuba?
(Washington, D.C.): Tomorrow, the
Senate Energy Committee has the
unenviable task of considering President
Clinton’s astounding decision to appoint
Federico Peña to the post of Secretary
of Energy. The task is an unenviable one
because — if done conscientiously —
Committee members will have to challenge
not only the fitness of this nominee to
hold a position entailing enormous, if
largely overlooked, responsibility for
the national security. They will also
have to explore the truly appalling
legacy bequeathed to Mr. Peña by his
predecessor, outgoing Energy Secretary
Hazel O’Leary.
The starting point for these
deliberations should be whether a
Cabinet post charged with overseeing and
assuring the safety, reliability and
effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear arsenal
is an appropriate one for President
Clinton to use as an affirmative action
device for satisfying the perceived
requirement for demographic balance in
his Administration’s senior ranks?
Mrs. O’Leary brought no identifiable
competence in the nuclear weapons field
when she became the first black female
Secretary of Energy. It came as little
surprise that she failed competently to
execute that charge (see below).
Incredibly, President Clinton’s choice
to be the first Hispanic Energy Secretary
lacks even Hazel O’Leary’s experience in other
aspects of the Energy Department’s
portfolio. He has reportedly been taking
a crash course in nuclear physics and
related topics since his eleventh-hour
reprieve from banishment to Colorado
following an undistinguished (some —
even in the Clinton White House — would
say, dismal) performance as
Secretary of Transportation.
The true test, of course, will not be
whether Federico Peña has
“crammed” long and hard enough
to fool Senators about his competence.
Rather, it will be whether he has
sufficiently comprehended the mistakes
made by his predecessor to refrain from
perpetuating and/or compounding them.
Such a prospect is especially ominous in
several nuclear-related arenas. The
following are among the issues of concern
and the questions that need to be posed
to Secretary Peña about them:
‘Erosion by Design’
As the Center for Security Policy
noted in a Transition Brief
summarizing the deplorable O’Leary legacy
with respect to the Nation’s nuclear
deterrent on 29 November 1996,
House National Security Committee
Chairman Floyd Spence (R-SC) issued an
important study on 30 October 1996.
Entitled, “The Clinton
Administration and Stockpile Stewardship:
Erosion by Design,” the
Spence study observed that:
“The past four years
have witnessed the dramatic
decline of the U.S. nuclear
weapons complex and the uniquely
skilled workforce that is
responsible for maintaining our
nuclear deterrent. The
Administration’s laissez-faire
approach to stewardship of the
nuclear stockpile, within the
broader context of its support
for a Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty, is clearly threatening
the Nation’s long-term ability to
maintain a safe and reliable
nuclear stockpile….In my mind, it’s
no longer a question of the
Administration’s ‘benign neglect’
of our Nation’s nuclear forces,
but instead, a compelling case
can be made that it is a matter
of ‘erosion by design.‘”
(Emphasis added.)
That this erosion is “no
accident” can be seen in Secretary
O’Leary’s choice of like-minded
individuals drawn from the ranks of the
United States top anti-nuclear
organizations to staff the senior ranks
of her department. Predictably, they have
used their offices to subject the
Nation’s nuclear weapons complex, as Rep.
Spence suggests, not merely to
“benign neglect,” but to a
purposeful wrecking operation. Before
the Senate can contemplate entrusting
what is left of America’s nuclear
deterrent to Mr. Peña, it must know:
- Will a Secretary Peña
replace all those O’Leary
appointees responsible for
inflicting erosion by design on
the Nation’s nuclear weapons
complex with individuals who have
a demonstrated competence in the
field and who are committed to
restoring and maintaining the
viability of this vital
infrastructure for the
foreseeable future?
Nuclear Testing
One of the most outrageous steps taken
by Secretary O’Leary and her
denuclearizers over the past four years
in their bid unilaterally to
dismantle the U.S. nuclear deterrent was her
assiduous support for the permanent
cessation of U.S. nuclear testing.
As the Spence report determined:
“The Administration has
given higher priority to
concluding a CTBT than to
maintaining the nuclear testing
regime that ensured the safety
and reliability of the U.S.
nuclear stockpile over the past
fifty years. As North Korea,
Pakistan, Israel and South Africa
have demonstrated by developing
nuclear weapons without testing,
the CTBT will not inhibit nuclear
proliferation and cannot be
effectively verified. Moreover,
although the President formally
conditioned U.S. acceptance of a
CTBT on a series of safeguards,
the Administration has failed to
act when faced with events that
should have triggered those
safeguards.”
In its 29 November analysis, the Center
observed that: “Those opposed to the
United States remaining a nuclear power
well appreciate [that] it is not
possible to retain confidence over time
in the safety, reliability and
effectiveness of the Nation’s deterrent
posture without periodic underground
nuclear testing.” Mrs.
O’Leary’s team coerced the directors of
the national laboratories — the
individuals responsible for certifying
that America’s deterrent forces meet
these rigorous standards — to agree to a
Comprehensive Test Ban that would
preclude all such testing. If they went
along, more funds were promised for what
would amount to an R&D slush fund in
the form of an ill-defined
“Stockpile Stewardship Management
Program.”(2)
If they continued to support the need for
testing, on the other hand, the lab
directors could take their chances on
getting the associated resources.
- What confidence is there that
Mrs. O’Leary’s “stockpile
stewardship” techniques can
be relied upon to mitigate the
dangers associated with a
no-testing environment? As the
Spence report put it:
“The Clinton
Administration’s Stockpile
Stewardship and Management
Program (SSMP) entails
significant technological risks
and uncertainties. Certification
that U.S. nuclear weapons are
safe and reliable — in the
context of a Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty — depends upon
developing highly advanced
scientific diagnostic tools that
do not yet exist and may not work
as advertised. Funding
shortfalls, legal challenges and
other problems are almost certain
to continue to impede progress in
achieving the program’s ambitious
goals, and raise serious doubts
about the ability of the program
to serve as an effective
substitute for nuclear testing. The
Administration’s commitment to
implementing the SSMP and, more
broadly, to maintaining the U.S.
nuclear stockpile is called into
question by DOE’s failure to
adequately fund the SSMP and to
conduct important
experiments.”
In light of this damning assessment, Senators
ought to demand that the Clinton
Administration’s reckless decision to
suspend future nuclear testing be
revisited and reversed. At the
very least, the Administration must be
held to its commitment to preserve the
option to resume nuclear testing in the
likely event that such a step proves
necessary.
- What steps would a Peña Energy
Department take to ensure that
the option for resumed
underground nuclear testing is
fully preserved? - Specifically, would it explicitly
recognize that the Nevada Test
Site is both a critical and
unique asset for the Nation? - Will Secretary Peña commit to
ensure that the Test Site’s
facilities and personnel will be
preserved in a ready condition
and not compromised in their
ability to perform that mission
by civilian encroachment on, or
other uses of, the Site?
Dismantling the DOE Weapons
Complex
As a result largely of decisions taken
by Mrs. O’Leary, the United States could
not now perform volume production of
nuclear weapons. Worse yet, at her
direction, the U.S. will continue to
postpone the work necessary to bring
on-line a new, reliable source of tritium
— a radioactive gas essential to the
effective operation of the existing
American arsenal. The upshot of the
decision to defer taking such steps for
at least three years will be not only to
compel further cannibalization and deep
unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear
stockpile. It may condemn the Nation to a
trajectory that makes the realization of
the denuclearizers’ surreal dream — a
world “unthreatened” by American
nuclear power — virtually unavoidable.
The National Security Committee report
describes this problem in the following,
ominous terms:
“Unprecedented reductions
and disruptive reorganizations in
the nuclear weapons scientific
and industrial base have
compromised the ability to
maintain a safe and reliable
nuclear stockpile. The cessation
of nuclear-related production and
manufacturing activities has
resulted in the loss of thousands
of jobs and critical
capabilities….DOE still lacks
concrete plans for resuming the
production of tritium….Unlike
Russia or China, the United
States no longer retains the
capacity for large-scale
plutonium ‘pit’ production and
DOE’s plans to reconstitute such
a capacity may be
inadequate.”
- What steps would Federico Peña
take if confirmed as Secretary of
Energy to restore the physical
viability and productive capacity
of the Nation’s nuclear weapons
complex? - Does he regard such an objective
as at least as high a
priority as efforts to clean
up the environmental impact of
the complex’s previous
operations?
Disregard for Information and
Physical Security
Under Hazel O’Leary and Company, the
Energy Department’s traditional cautious
approach to the protection of the
Nation’s vital secrets was equated with
“repression.” Her
insistence on indiscriminately
declassifying vast quantities of
heretofore classified nuclear
weapons-related information has virtually
assured that nations and subnational
groups are garnering an undesirably
enhanced understanding of U.S. designs,
developmental experiences, capabilities
and vulnerabilities. At one
point, deadlines arbitrarily imposed by
the Secretary obliged security personnel
to declassify documents by the box-full
rather than evaluate each one page by
page.
Of particular concern is the fact that
Mrs. O’Leary’s glasnost campaign
has made public precise information
concerning the quantities and whereabouts
of U.S. plutonium and highly enriched
uranium stocks. At the same time,
her Department has significantly reduced
the budget available for securing and
protecting those sites. The
Center for Security Policy has been
informed that one reason for these cuts
has been the Clinton Administration’s
diversion of scarce resources from U.S.
programs to fund the Cooperative Threat
Reduction initiative (frequently called
the Nunn-Lugar program).
A frightening aspect of the O’Leary
legacy could thus be to have invited
attacks on these critical facilities and
seriously diminished their capacity to
thwart such attacks — with potentially
ominous implications for the local
communities and for the effort to staunch
the proliferation of radiological, atomic
or thermonuclear weapons.
- What steps will
a Peña Energy Department take to
reestablish the policies and
procedures necessary to prevent
the unwarranted dissemination of
information that can, in the
wrong hands, reliably lead to
intensified proliferation
dangers? - What steps will Secretary Peña
take to reverse the 42% cut in
protective forces and other
degradations of the physical
security of sensitive DOE
facilities? - Specifically, will he correct the
estimated $100 million annual
shortfall in the Department’s
Safeguards and Security Program
so as to alleviate current,
unacceptably high risks to these
facilities?
The Cuban
Chernobyl-in-the-Making
The Department of Energy is also in
the cross-hairs on another nuclear issue
left behind by Secretary O’Leary — the
prospect that Fidel Castro is trying to
bring on-line two dangerously defective,
Soviet-supplied nuclear reactors in
Juragua, Cuba and upwind from
millions of Americans.
Interestingly, in a letter to Foreign
Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms
(R-NC) dated 11 September 1995, Mrs.
O’Leary declared, “If
construction [of these reactors] were
resumed(5)
and the reactors completed, their poor
construction and lack of regulatory
oversight, and uncertainties about the
qualification and experience of its
operators would pose serious safety
risks.”
In accompanying, written answers to
questions posed by Sen. Helms, the
Department of Energy listed among its
concerns about the Juragua project:
“the quality of civil construction,
the condition of critical reactor
components, the regulatory structure and
nuclear operating base, the plant staff
training programs and industrial
infrastructure in Cuba required to
support operation and maintenance of
nuclear power plants.” The O’Leary
Energy Department even went so far as to
state:
“If a poorly designed,
defectively constructed nuclear
reactor began operation in Cuba,
there would be an unacceptably
high possibility that a large
accidental release of radioactive
material would occur.
Dependent on the meteorological
conditions at the time of a major
accident, people on the U.S.
mainland could be exposed to
significant airborne
[radioactive]
contamination.”
Despite these ominous warnings — and her
palpable antipathy to things nuclear —
Mrs. O’Leary and her agency were
remarkably passive about Castro’s Juragua
project. Perhaps this was because, as
reflected in some of the answers to
Senator Helms’ questions, the Department
took the view that the VVER-440 (Model
318) design might prove to be safe, after
all, even though one has never been
constructed and operated before. Or it
may have seen the possibility that the
levels of radiation would be sufficient
to cause problems only for the U.S. food
supply, not directly for the American
people. Alternatively, DOE’s passivity
may be explained by the O’Leary team’s
acceptance of Russian claims that the
Juragua reactors could withstand seismic
shocks up to 7 on the Richter scale —
apparently unaware that there was a
7.0 magnitude quake in the nearby
Carribean Plate in 1995.
The most
likely explanation, however, is that the
Clinton Administration is receptive to
the idea of helping the Cubans — as the
Russians and several European allies are
keen to do — to bring the first
Juragua reactor (which DOE estimates is
between 90-97% complete) on-line and
complete construction of the second
reactor which is less far along (i.e.,
“only about 37% of the reactor
equipment has been installed”). As
the Department told Sen. Helms in 1995:
“The judgments of several nuclear
experts relative to the feasibility of
upgrading the VVER-440-318 design
indicate that it is possible to perform
back-fits to these plants to achieve
Western levels of safety.”
In fact, this conclusion has been
soundly rebutted by the General
Accounting Office, numerous Cuban
emigrés formerly associated with the
Juragua reactor construction project, the
House International Relations Committee’s
Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere
and investigations by NBC News. If these
authorities are right and the
“several nuclear experts”
consulted by DOE are wrong, Western
assistance to the Cuban nuclear project
would not only serve to eviscerate the
U.S. embargo against Castro’s tyranny. It
could also precipitate a nuclear
catastrophe afflicting as many as 50-80
million Americans.
The Senate should demand hard answers
from Secretary Peña to the following
questions:
- Will a Peña Energy Department
make a priority of terminating
the Cuban nuclear program? Will
it support import controls
against foreign companies,
individuals and entities that
cooperate in finishing, fueling
or operating these dangerous
reactors? Would Secretary Peña
support an ultimatum that these
reactors will be militarily
destroyed, if necessary, to
prevent them from being fueled
and brought on line? - If a proposal is made to enlist
the United States in an effort to
make the Juragua reactors safer
— and, therefore, to allow them
to be brought on-line, will
Secretary Peña oppose such a
step?
The Bottom Line
There are myriad reasons for concern
about the Peña nomination. If the
answers to any of the foregoing questions
suggest that Secretary Peña intends to
perpetuate his predecessor’s abysmal
policies, the Senate should not hesitate
to ask President Clinton to send it
another candidate for the important post
of Secretary of Energy.
– 30 –
1. See Fiddling
While the Nation’s Nuclear Weapons
Complex ‘Burns’ Down: O’Leary’s Last
Denuclearization Shot? (
29 November 1996).
2. In the case of
Lawrence Livermore, the inducement was
even more dramatic. After Livermore
played ball on testing, Secretary O’Leary
dropped her announced intention to close
down the lab.
3. Mrs. O’Leary’s
budget cuts have also significantly
diminished her Department’s ability to
monitor the quantities of special nuclear
materials in its facilities. As a result,
there is a distinct — and growing —
possibility that such materials could be
diverted or stolen from American
as well as Russian facilities.
4. In 1994, the W.
Alton Jones Foundation — a deep-pocketed
charitable foundation which advertizes at
every turn its interest in preventing
nuclear war and proliferation — has
granted the Fund for Peace’s National
Security Archives Project a $100,000
grant for the purpose of increasing
electronic public access to former
nuclear secrets by creating a centralized
data base for document releases from DOE.
Presumably, by so doing, it has greatly
simplified the task facing
nuclear-wannabes determined to glean
weapons-relevant material from such
materials.
5. Following the
publication on 13 January 1997 in the Wall
Street Journal Europe of an article
criticizing the Cuban nuclear program
(see Guess Who Else Was
Listening to Newt Gingrich’s Phone Call
— and to Those of Millions of Other
Americans Every Day? [
January 1997]) which found resonance in
several European media outlets, Castro
announced that the reactor program was
going to remain “suspended.” As
the Center observed when the first
suspension was announced (see Castro’s
Potemkin Nuclear Shutdown: Chernobyl at
Cienfuegos Still in Prospect
(No. 92-D
108, 10 September 1992)) however, it
is likely that Castro will make every
effort to continue bringing his reactors
to fruition.
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