INTEGRATING NUCLEAR WEAPONS STOCKPILE MANAGEMENT AND NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL OBJECTIVES TO ENABLE SIGNIFICANT STOCKPILE REDUCTIONS

Abstract

In his 2009 Prague speech and the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, President Barack Obama committed the United States to take concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament while maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent. There is an inherent tension between these two goals that is best addressed through improved integration of nuclear weapons objectives with nuclear arms control objectives. This article reviews historical examples of the interaction between the two sets of objectives, develops a framework for analyzing opportunities for future integration, and suggests specific ideas that could benefit the nuclear weapons enterprise as it undergoes transformation and that could make the future enterprise compatible with a variety of arms control futures.

Keywords:

• National Nuclear Security Administration
• Department of Energy
• Department of Defense
• nuclear weapons
• arms control
• verification

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Henry Abeyta, Phil Bryson, Bill Chambers, Dennis Croessmann, Bob Paulsen, Robert Rhoades, Mike Sjulin, Drew Walter, and Janson Wu, all from Sandia National Laboratories, and Jim Tegnelia of DBE Consulting, LLC, for their review of and comments on the manuscript. The authors are also grateful to Siegfried Hecker and Michael May of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University for their insights into events leading up to the U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing and for feedback on the central thesis of the article. The authors thank Scott Sagan, also of Stanford/CISAC, for feedback on the examples, as well as suggestions for structuring the writing that significantly improved the final result. Finally, we thank all those who participated in many fruitful discussions about the interactions between the nuclear weapons enterprise and arms control objectives.

Notes

1. Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Barack Obama, Hradcany Square, Prague, Czech Republic,” April 5, 2009, <www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered>.

2. Nuclear Posture Review Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2010), <www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20Nuclear%20Posture%20Review%20Report.pdf>.

3. This article defines the “nuclear weapons enterprise” as encompassing: the nuclear weapons stockpile; the operational deployment and maintenance of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems (a Department of Defense responsibility); and the NNSA nuclear weapons complex, which the NNSA formally refers to as the “Nuclear Security Enterprise.” For clarity, we refer to NNSA's “Nuclear Security Enterprise” as the nuclear weapons complex, or “the complex.” The complex consists of three national laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia), the Kansas City Plant, the Nevada Test Site, the Pantex Plant, the Savannah River Site, and the Y-12 National Security Complex.

4. It is beyond the scope of this article to critique the policy agenda established by the Nuclear Posture Review.

5. The likely focus of FMCT provisions would be on material enrichment and separation, capabilities not currently functional or operational within the complex.

6. JASON, “Life Extension Program (LEP) Executive Summary,” Mitre Corporation, JSR-09-334E, September 9, 2009.

7. NNSA, “Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building Replacement Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico,” DOE/EIS-0350, November 2003, <nepa.energy.gov/finalEIS-0350.htm>.

8. The “pit” is the central core of a primary assembly in a nuclear weapon typically composed of plutonium-239 and/or highly enriched uranium and other materials. See NNSA, “Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building Replacement Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory.”

9. Department of Energy, “FY 2011 Congressional Budget Request: Budget Highlights,” Office of Chief Financial Officer, DOE/CF-0046, February 2010, <www.cfo.doe.gov/budget/11budget/Content/FY2011Highlights.pdf>.

10. Garry Flowers, president and CEO of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, speech for Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness “Up and Atom” Breakfast, December 3, 2009; Mike Gellatly, “SRS Has Plutonium Project in Sight,” Aiken Standard, December 10, 2009. The privately financed Kansas City Responsive Infrastructure Manufacturing and Sourcing project—to replace the existing Kansas City Plant, where the large majority of non-nuclear components of U.S. nuclear weapons are manufactured—is not included in this discussion because the kinds of opportunities discussed in this article are not applicable at this stage for this project.

11. Lani Miyoshi Sanders, Eric H. Detlefs, Larry E. Pope, John A. Sayre, Donald E. Waye, and Robert G. Spulak, “Transfer of the Neutron Generator Production Mission to Sandia,” Sandia National Laboratories, SAND2005-2875, May 2005.

12. START II never entered into force, and in June 2002, after the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Russia announced that it would no longer be bound by START II's provisions. START III discussions had also begun to slow by the late 1990s.

13. For example, it took more than a decade to reconstitute the capability for nuclear weapon pit production at Los Alamos, New Mexico. See, “W88 Certification without Testing,” 1663: Los Alamos Science and Technology Magazine, August 2007, pp. 12–17. The impact of a no-underground-test environment was a significant factor in the time to reconstitute the capability, particularly with respect to certification. Siegfried Hecker, co-director, Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), interview with authors, Palo Alto, California, February 11, 2010.

14. NNSA, “NNSA Authorizes Start-up of Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility at Y-12,” press release, January 25, 2010.

15. Department of Energy, “FY 2001 Congressional Budget Request: Budget Highlights,” Office of Chief Financial Officer, 2000, <www.mbe.doe.gov/budget/01budget/highlite/hilite01.pdf>.

16. Department of Energy, “FY 2004 Congressional Budget Request: Budget Highlights,” Office of Chief Financial Officer, 2003, <www.mbe.doe.gov/budget/04budget/content/highlite/highlite.pdf>.

17. Frank Munger, “International Inspections Coming to a Close at Y-12,” Knoxville News Sentinel, March 5, 2008, <www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/mar/05/munger-international-inspections-coming-close-y-12/>.

18. The Soviet Union (later Russia) observed a series of unilateral test moratoria, including from August 1985 to October 1987, November 1989 to October 1990, and October 1991 to the present.

19. Hecker, interview with the authors, February 11, 2010.

20. Public Law 100-146, Section 1436, established the Nuclear Test Ban Readiness Program.

21. Hecker, interview with the authors, February 11, 2010; and Michael May, CISAC faculty member, interview with the authors, Palo Alto, California, February 11, 2010.

22. U.S. Senate, Congressional Record, 102nd Cong., Hatfield Amendment No. 2833, Senate, August 3, 1992, p. S11393, <thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r102:50:./temp/~r102EfbOuH::>.

23. Siegfried Hecker, co-director, CISAC, interview with one of the authors, Palo Alto, California, April 16, 2010.

24. Even though the Senate voted not to ratify the CTBT in 1999, a return to routine nuclear testing is unlikely.

25. Jacques Bouchard, director of military applications for Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique, as quoted in Richard L. Garwin, “The Maintenance of Nuclear Weapon Stockpiles without Nuclear Explosion Testing,” paper delivered to the 24th Pugwash Workshop on Nuclear Forces, London, September 22–24, 1995.

26. Bruno Tertrais, “French Perspectives on Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Disarmament,” in Barry Blechman, ed., “Unblocking the Road to Zero: Perspectives of Advanced Nuclear Nations,” Stimson Nuclear Security Series, February 2009, pp. 1–22.

27. We note that this is not a problem for arms control alone, but for many other aspects of the design of facilities that must operate for decades.

28. See, for example, Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National Academies of Sciences, Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Explosive Materials: An Assessment of Methods and Capabilities (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2005); Robert J. Rhoades, “Field Testing of a Remote and Unattended Monitoring System for Monitoring Warhead Storage,” Sandia National Laboratories, SAND2002-2362P, 2002; and William B. Chambers, Bobby H. Corbell, Lawrence M. Desonier, Robert L. Martinez, Pamela J. Kissock, and Machelle Sumner, “Remote Storage Monitoring at Defense Nuclear Sites,” paper delivered to the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, Indian Wells, California, July 2001.

29. The monitoring scenario assumed that data collected by the monitoring system would periodically be made available to the inspecting party, perhaps at three- or six-month intervals. Data included necessary authentication features to enable the inspecting party to determine that data had not been tampered with.

30. Joseph C. Martz, William J. Perry Fellow in National Security Science, CISAC, interview with the authors, Palo Alto, California, March 12, 2010; and John D. Immele, TechSource, Inc., correspondence with the authors, July 16, 2010.

31. “Record of Decision for the Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement: Operations Involving Plutonium, Uranium, and the Assembly and Disassembly of Nuclear Weapons,” Federal Register 73 (December 19, 2008), pp. 77657–63.

32. For example, a recently proposed framework includes a multilateral nuclear weapons complex transparency regime and a stage involving “latent” deterrence in which there are zero deployed nuclear weapons but some countries retain the capability to reconstitute a physical deterrent in a timely manner. See Garry George, “Integrated Nuclear Security in the 21st Century: Thinking Multilaterally,” Sandia National Laboratories, SAND2009-5641, 2009.

33. The authors’ personal experiences indicate that this separation is particularly noticeable between the nuclear weapons and arms control organizations within the NNSA and at the nuclear weapons laboratories.

34. This cooperation was conducted under the umbrella of the Warhead Safety and Security Exchange Agreement from 1994 to 2005. The agreement was not extended in 2005. A functional replacement is needed to provide an umbrella for future cooperation.