The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Overview of Department of Energy Sites
Congressional research reportMar 31, 2021
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The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex:
Overview of Department of Energy Sites
Updated March 31, 2021
Congressional Research Service
https://crsreports.congress.gov
R45306
SUMMARY
The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex:
Overview of Department of Energy Sites
Responsibility for U.S. nuclear weapons resides in both the Department of Defense
(DOD) and the Department of Energy (DOE). DOD develops, deploys, and operates the
missiles and aircraft that deliver nuclear warheads. It also generates the military
requirements for the warheads carried on those platforms. DOE, and its semiautonomous
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), oversee the research, development,
testing, and acquisition programs that produce, maintain, and sustain the nuclear
warheads.
R45306
March 31, 2021
Amy F. Woolf
Specialist in Nuclear
Weapons Policy
James D. Werner
Section Research Manager
To achieve these objectives, the facilities that constitute the nuclear weapons complex
produce nuclear materials, fabricate nuclear and nonnuclear components, assemble and disassemble nuclear
warheads, conduct scientific research and analysis to maintain confidence in the reliability of existing warheads,
integrate components with nuclear weapons delivery vehicles, and conduct support operations.
The Trump Administration raised concerns about the aging infrastructure of facilities in the nuclear weapons
complex. The Obama Administration had proposed, and Congress had funded, budget increases for these facilities
during the 2010s. Nevertheless, the Trump Administration argued, in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, that “the
United States has not pursued the investments needed to ensure that the infrastructure has the capacity to not only
maintain the current nuclear stockpile but also to respond to unforeseen technical or geopolitical developments.”
The Trump Administration then proposed, and Congress appropriated, significant additional increases in funding
for the nuclear weapons complex. The Biden Administration is likely to review this funding before releasing its
first budget in mid-2021.
The nuclear weapons complex—what NNSA currently refers to as the Nuclear Security Enterprise—consists
primarily of nine government-owned, contractor-operated sites in seven states, and a Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA) nuclear reactor used to produce tritium for nuclear weapons. The complex began with the establishment of
the Manhattan Engineer District in 1942, then grew in size and complexity during the Cold War, before evolving
into the current configuration during the 1990s.
Facilities at the current nine sites include three laboratories, five component fabrication/materials production
plants, one assembly and disassembly site, a geologic waste repository, and one testing facility that now conducts
research but was previously the location for U.S. underground nuclear tests. This report summarizes the
operations at each of these sites.
As Congress conducts oversight of DOE’s and NNSA’s management, operations, and programs, and as it
authorizes and appropriates funds for the Nuclear Security Enterprise, it may address a wide range of issues
related to the nuclear weapons complex. These include questions about organization and management at NNSA,
infrastructure recapitalization, plutonium pit production, and concerns about access to necessary supplies of
tritium.
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The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Overview of Department of Energy Sites
Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Background ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Origins and Organization of the Nuclear Weapons Enterprise .................................................. 6
The Nuclear Weapons Complex ................................................................................................ 8
The Current Nuclear Weapons Complex ........................................................................................11
National Security Laboratories................................................................................................ 12
Los Alamos National Laboratory ...................................................................................... 13
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ....................................................................... 14
Sandia National Laboratories ............................................................................................ 15
Testing and Research ............................................................................................................... 16
Nevada National Security Site .......................................................................................... 16
Production ............................................................................................................................... 18
Kansas City National Security Campus ............................................................................ 18
Savannah River Site (SRS) ............................................................................................... 19
Pantex Plant ...................................................................................................................... 21
Y-12 National Security Complex ...................................................................................... 22
Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Barr Reactor (TVA) ................................................. 23
Support .................................................................................................................................... 23
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) ................................................................................... 23
Issues for Congress ........................................................................................................................ 25
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board ......................................................................... 25
Organization and Management at NNSA ................................................................................ 26
Infrastructure Recapitalization ................................................................................................ 28
Pit Production .......................................................................................................................... 29
Tritium Production .................................................................................................................. 31
Figures
Figure 1. NNSA Nuclear Security Enterprise .................................................................................. 2
Figure 2. Funding for NNSA Nuclear Weapons Activities .............................................................. 3
Figure A-1. U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile: 1945-2014 ............................................................ 33
Tables
Table 1. U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex ......................................................................................11
Table 2. NNSA Funding for Infrastructure and Operations ........................................................... 29
Table A-1. Current U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Associated Delivery Systems .............................. 33
Table B-1. U.S. Nuclear Weapons Tests: 1945-1992..................................................................... 34
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The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Overview of Department of Energy Sites
Appendixes
Appendix A. U.S. Nuclear Stockpile ............................................................................................. 33
Appendix B. U.S. Nuclear Testing ................................................................................................ 34
Contacts
Author Information........................................................................................................................ 35
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The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Overview of Department of Energy Sites
Introduction
The U.S. nuclear weapons complex, which the Department of Energy (DOE) refers to as the
Nuclear Security Enterprise,1 is the current incarnation of an evolving infrastructure designed to
meet the requirements mandated by the Atomic Energy Act2 to “ensure ... the [U.S. nuclear]
stockpile is safe, secure, and reliable to perform [as intended] as the Nation’s nuclear deterrent.”3
These requirements include
production of nuclear materials;
fabrication of nuclear components;
fabrication of nonnuclear components;
assembly and disassembly of nuclear warheads;
integration of components with nuclear weapons delivery vehicles; and
support operations.
Some of the functions within this complex have changed over time. The United States no longer
produces highly enriched uranium or plutonium for use in nuclear weapons, although DOE
continues to reuse materials removed from retired weapons. In addition, although the United
States instituted a moratorium on explosive nuclear testing in 1992, several of the facilities in the
complex now conduct science-based research and testing in support of the stockpile stewardship
program.
The sites in this complex, and their locations within the United States, appear in Figure 1. The
functions at each site are displayed in Table 1.
Responsibility for U.S. nuclear weapons resides in both the Department of Defense (DOD) and
the DOE. DOD develops, deploys, and operates the missiles, submarines, and aircraft that deliver
nuclear warheads. It also generates the military requirements for the warheads carried on those
platforms.4 This report, however, focuses on the facilities managed by the DOE and its
semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). NNSA oversees the
research, development, test, and acquisition programs that produce, maintain, and sustain the
nuclear warheads. DOE is responsible for storing and securing the warheads that are not deployed
with DOD delivery systems, securing special nuclear materials, and dismantling warheads that
have been retired and removed from the stockpile.
The current nuclear weapons complex (i.e., the major facilities within the Nuclear Security
Enterprise that are used to meet the requirements for maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile)
consists of nine government-owned, contractor-operated sites in seven states, and a Tennessee
Valley Authority (TVA) nuclear reactor used to produce tritium for nuclear weapons. Facilities at
these sites include three laboratories, five component fabrication/materials production plants, one
1 This report uses the phrase nuclear weapons complex interchangeably with Nuclear Security Enterprise. While both
terms essentially refer to the same set of sites and facilities, NNSA has adopted the phrase Nuclear Security Enterprise
to indicate that, while these facilities support the U.S. nuclear weapons program, many also support U.S.
nonproliferation research and other national security goals.
2 42 USC 2021(b).
3 Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters. Nuclear Matters Handbook, 2016,
https://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/nmhb/chapters/chapter_5.htm.
4 For a description of these programs, see CRS Report RL33640, U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background,
Developments, and Issues, by Amy F. Woolf.
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The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Overview of Department of Energy Sites
assembly and disassembly site, a geologic waste repository, and one testing facility that now
conducts research but was previously the location for U.S. underground nuclear tests.
Figure 1. NNSA Nuclear Security Enterprise
Source: Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, Nuclear Matters Handbook,
2016.
Notes: This map does not include two facilities that are relevant to meeting the current nuclear warhead
requirements: the Tennessee Valley Authority Watts Bar reactor, used for tritium production, and the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, used for managing plutonium waste generated during ongoing nuclear
warhead stockpile support operations. The map also does not include Alaska and Hawaii, as neither houses a
facility in the Nuclear Security Enterprise.
The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), prepared by DOD and released in early February 2018,
noted that
Over the past several decades, the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure has suffered the
effects of aging and underfunding. Over half of NNSA’s infrastructure is over 40 years old,
and a quarter dates back to the Manhattan Project era.5
In addition, the 2018 NPR noted that each of the Nuclear Posture Reviews completed since the
end of the Cold War (in 1994, 2001, and 2010) had “highlighted the need to maintain a modern
nuclear weapons infrastructure.” However, it argued that the United States had not pursued the
investments needed to ensure that the infrastructure could maintain the current nuclear stockpile
5 Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, Washington, DC, February 2, 2018, p. 61,
https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINALREPORT.PDF.
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as well as respond to unforeseen technical or geopolitical developments6 by providing the United
States with sufficient capacity to sustain and replace its nuclear forces.
After declining during the first two decades after the Cold War, funding for nuclear weapons
activities at NNSA has increased steadily over the past decade.7 In a 2010 editorial, then-Vice
President Biden noted that U.S. nuclear laboratories and facilities had been “underfunded and
undervalued” for more than a decade.8 He stated that President Obama’s budget request for
FY2011 would include “$7 billion for maintaining our nuclear-weapons stockpile and complex,
and for related efforts,” an amount that was $600 million more than Congress appropriated for
FY2010.9 He also stated that the Administration would “boost funding for these important
activities by more than $5 billion” over the next five years.10 Figure 2 displays the projected and
actual funding levels for NNSA through 2021.
Figure 2. Funding for NNSA Nuclear Weapons Activities
Requested and Appropriated, FY2011-FY2021 (billions of current dollars)
18
16
November 2010
projection (1251
Report)
14
12
Budget Request
10
8
Appropriations
6
4
2
0
FY11 FY12 FY13 FY14 FY15 FY16 FY17 FY18 FY19 FY20 FY21
Sources: NNSA budget requests, congressional appropriations reports, CRS estimates.
While the passage of the Budget Control Act in 2011 slowed the increases in NNSA budgets,
appropriations for NNSA’s weapons activities have grown in each of the subsequent years,
reaching $9.25 billion in FY2017, the last year of the Obama Administration. The Trump
Administration, in its budget for FY2018, requested an additional $1 billion for NNSA weapons
activities over the level appropriated in FY2017. The Trump Administration’s budget for FY2019
continued to fund increases in NNSA’s weapons activities, requesting $11.02 billion, an increase
of nearly $400 million over the funding enacted in FY2018. The FY2020 budget requested $12.4
billion for NNSA’s weapons activities accounts, an increase of $1.3 billion (12%) over the
6 Ibid., p. 61.
7 For details on the programs funded through the Nuclear Weapons Activities, and recent appropriations activities, see
CRS Report R44442, Energy and Water Development Appropriations: Nuclear Weapons Activities, by Amy F. Woolf.
8 Joe Biden, “The President’s Nuclear Vision,” Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2010.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
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funding enacted in 2019. Congress appropriated $12.5 billion in the Further Consolidated
Appropriations Act, 2020 (P.L. 116-94). The FY2021 budget request sought $15.6 billion for
weapons activities within a total of $19.8 billion for NNSA. This amounted to a 25% increase in
funding for weapons activities, and an 18% increase in funding for NNSA over the amount
appropriated in FY2020. Congress appropriated $15.3 billion for weapons activities in P.L. 116260, the Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2021. These amounts do not include site overhead
costs (e.g., site security, maintenance, administration) paid through the Environmental
Management (EM) program funding for certain sites (e.g., the Savannah River Site, where EM
accounts provided 60% of the site budget, and 90% of site operations funding).
These funding increases have sought to address ongoing concerns about the aging facilities in the
nuclear weapons infrastructure. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in
2016, General Frank G. Klotz, who was then the Administrator of NNSA, noted that “the age and
condition of NNSA’s infrastructure will, if not addressed, put the mission, the safety of our
workers, the public, and the environment at risk.”11 At a hearing held by the Strategic Forces
Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, General Klotz noted that the resources
available to maintain NNSA’s infrastructure “have historically not kept pace with growing
needs.” Further, press reports indicate that, in late 2015, then-Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz
requested a $5.2 billion increase in the planned budget for NNSA between FY2018 and FY2021
to address “programmatic gaps.” He noted, in a letter described in the Wall Street Journal, that “a
majority of NNSA’s facilities and systems are well beyond end-of-life” and that “infrastructure
problems such as falling ceilings are increasing in frequency and severity.”12
Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty, the NNSA Administrator from 2018 through late 2020, echoed the
concerns raised by General Klotz during her testimony before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee
of the House Armed Services Committee in March 2018.13 She stated that NNSA’s FY2019
budget request of $3 billion for Infrastructure and Operations represented a 7% increase over the
FY2018 request. She asserted that this funding would support both NNSA’s deferred
maintenance problem in existing facilities and its need to construct new facilities, including the
Uranium Processing Facility at Oak Ridge, TN, and
the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research
Plutonium pits are a critical core component of
Replacement (CMRR) project at Los Alamos
modern nuclear weapons. The nuclear fission
National Laboratory in New Mexico.
energy produced when the pit is compressed
by explosives initiates the process that
In May 2018, NNSA announced that it was
produces the much larger fusion reaction.
recommending a strategy to achieve the goal of
NNSA has argued that the United States needs
to produce at least 80 pits per year in order to
producing 80 nuclear pits per year, which would
replace aging pits in the U.S. stockpile over the
both maximize pit production at Los Alamos within
next 50 years.
the CMRR project and repurpose the Mixed Oxide
(MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah
River Site in South Carolina. NNSA argued that “this two-prong approach—with at least 50 pits
per year produced at Savannah River and at least 30 pits per year at Los Alamos—is the best way
11 U.S. Congress, Senate Armed Services, Strategic Forces, Department of Energy Atomic Energy Defense Activities
and Programs, Hearing, 114th Cong., 2nd sess., February 23, 2016, Statement of Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, USAF (Ret),
p. 5.
12 “Mr. Moniz’s Nuclear Warning,” Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/mr-monizsnuclear-warning-1452644053.
13 U.S. Congress, House Armed Services, Strategic Forces, Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Request for Nuclear Forces and
Atomic Energy Defense Activities, Hearing, 115th Cong., 2nd sess., March 22, 2018. Statement of Lisa Gordon Hagerty,
p. 6.
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The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Overview of Department of Energy Sites
to manage the cost, schedule, and risk of such a vital undertaking.”14 Some studies, however, have
questioned the feasibility of this approach. For example, the Institute for Defense Analyses
determined, in studies mandated by Senate Armed Services Committee, concluded that it wold be
possible for NNSA to eventually produce 80 pits per year with its two-site strategy, but that it
would be “extremely challenging” to do so. IDA also found that none of the options considered
by NNSA could be expected to produce 80 pits per year by 2030.15
As funding for NNSA continues to rise, interest has grown in U.S. nuclear policy, in general, and
in the facilities and programs managed by NNSA, in particular. This report provides details about
each of the sites within the complex.16 It begins with a brief history of the nuclear weapons
complex and then reviews current issues that Congress may address during the annual
authorizations and appropriations process.
Background
Interest in the development of nuclear weapons was evident in discussions among academic
scientists and federal officials shortly before the United States entered World War II. The nuclear
weapons program, in an effort known as the Manhattan Project, began in 1942.17 Many of the
sites and facilities established early in the program to support the design, development, and
production of the first nuclear weapons remain in operation today as a part of the DOE nuclear
security enterprise.
The end of the Cold War saw numerous changes to the nuclear enterprise. The number of sites
involved in nuclear warhead production declined, as the United States reduced the number of
warheads in the stockpile while maintaining the capability to sustain the remaining nuclear
weapons. In addition, the focus of the work shifted away from weapons research, development,
and production—the core mission during the Cold War—toward a science-based stockpile
stewardship program designed to enable the United States to sustain and maintain its warheads
without conducting explosive nuclear testing.
The enterprise has also increased its focus on research into technologies and processes that can
prevent, counter, and respond to threats of nuclear proliferation while addressing the degradation
remaining from the environmental contamination and waste generated during the Cold War. 18
These goals are not addressed in this report.
14 Ellen M. Lord and Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, Recapitalization of Plutonium Pit Production, National Nuclear Security
Administration, Joint Statement, Washington, DC, May 10, 2018, https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/jointstatement-ellen-m-lord-and-lisa-e-gordon-hagerty-recapitalization-plutonium-pit.
15 Institute for Defense Analyses, Independent Assessment of the Two-Site Pit; Production Decision, IDA Document
NS D-10711 (2019)
16 This report addresses only the major sites currently used for nuclear weapons production and funded largely through
the NNSA’s Weapons Activities account. Several other DOE facilities, including many of its other 14 national
laboratories (https://science.energy.gov/laboratories/), receive funding from NNSA that supports nonproliferation and
other national security programs, but are not considered by NNSA to be a part of the nuclear security enterprise.
17 “The Manhattan Engineer District (MED) was established, effective August 16, 1942, by Office of the Chief of
Engineers General Order 33, dated August 13, 1942 …. Development of Substitute Materials.” War Department, Office
of the Chief of Engineers, Manhattan Engineer District, August 16, 1942-August 15,1947, Organization Authority
Record, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/10510246; and Fowle, Barry W., ed. Builders and Fighters: U. S. Army
Engineers in World War II, Fort Belvoir, VA: Office of History, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1992, p. 147.
18 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Comments on the Final Report of the
Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise, Report to Congress, Washington,
DC, May 2015, p. 3.
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Origins and Organization of the Nuclear Weapons Enterprise
In August 1939, Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt to inform him that
recent scientific research conducted at U.S. universities indicated that large amounts of power
could be produced by a chain reaction using uranium and that, by harnessing this power, the
construction of “extremely powerful bombs” was conceivable. The letter urged the U.S.
government to support research in this area, in part, because the German government was doing
so.
President Roosevelt responded to Einstein in October 1939, and informed him that he had set up a
committee to study uranium. The President’s Advisory Committee on Uranium first met in
October 1939, and recommended that the government fund limited research into uranium.19 The
effort expanded in 1940, after the German invasion of Poland, when President Roosevelt
reorganized the Uranium Committee into a scientific body known as the National Defense
Research Committee. Over the next few years, this organization supported funding for scientists
who were exploring alternative processes that would produce the fissionable materials needed for
a nuclear bomb.
By mid-1942, with research proceeding on several
different processes, the committee decided that it
was time to advance to the pilot plant stage and to
full-production planning for the atomic bomb. In
June 1942, President Roosevelt approved a plan
giving the Army Corps of Engineers the
responsibility for producing an atomic weapon
before the end of the war, and the Army established
the Manhattan Engineer District (MED).
With Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves in charge,
the Manhattan Engineer District joined major
industrial partners with scientists and academia to
research, develop, and produce an atomic bomb.20
The Army owned and managed the MED from
1942 through 1946.
Nuclear explosions are produced by initiating and
sustaining nuclear chain reactions in highly
compressed material that can undergo both
fission and fusion.
“Little Boy”—the nuclear weapon used against
Hiroshima in 1945—was a “gun-type” weapon
that initiated fission by shooting a hollow
uranium-235 cylinder at a target “plug” of the
same material.
Most existing U.S. nuclear weapons use a nuclear
package with two assemblies: the “primary,"
which is used as the initial source of energy, and
the “secondary,” which provides additional
explosive power. The primary contains a central
core, called the “pit,” typically composed of
plutonium-239 and/or highly enriched uranium
(HEU) and other materials. Plutonium-239 and
HEU are fissile materials, capable of sustaining a
chain reaction. HEU contains large fractions of
uranium-235. The pit is surrounded by a layer of
high explosive.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Linking
Legacies: Connecting the Cold War Nuclear
Weapons Production Processes to Their
Environmental Consequences, DOE/EM-0319,
January 1997, p. 13.
After World War II, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946
established a policy to develop atomic energy for
military and peaceful purposes. The act established
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), an
independent civilian agency, and moved the
weapons program from the Army to the AEC. The
act stipulated that, with certain exceptions, a
civilian agency “shall be the exclusive owner of all
facilities for the production of fissionable material,” including “all materials, facilities,
19 F.G. Gosling, The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC,
January 2010, p. 6, http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Manhattan_Project_2010.pdf.
20 U.S. Department of Energy, Linking Legacies: Connecting the Cold War Nuclear Weapons Production Processes to
Their Environmental Consequences, DOE/EM-0319, January 1997.
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equipment, items, and property related to atomic energy research”; this placed nuclear energy, and
the U.S. nuclear weapons program, firmly under civilian control.21
The decision on whether to place nuclear energy under civilian or military control was bitterly
contentious in 1946.22 Some feared that military control would impede or prevent the
development of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, would impede the free international
exchange of information on the basic science of atomic energy, would stifle independent inquiry,
and would impede efforts to have international control of atomic energy. The armed services and
some Members of Congress, however, were concerned about the need to preserve secrecy and to
ensure the responsiveness of the nuclear weapons program to the needs of the services. Those
concerns were raised as arguments for continued military control over nuclear energy.
The Atomic Energy Act (42 U.S.C. 2121(b)) institutionalized civilian control. It authorized the
AEC to conduct research and development on the military applications of nuclear energy and to
produce nuclear weapons and their components, but “only to the extent that the express consent
and direction of the President of the United States has been obtained.” The act gave the President
further control:
The President from time to time may direct the Commission (1) to deliver such quantities
of fissionable materials or weapons to the armed forces for such use as he deems necessary
in the interest of national defense or (2) to authorize the armed forces to manufacture,
produce, or acquire any equipment or device utilizing fissionable material or atomic energy
as a military weapon.23
The act also established a Military Liaison Committee and directed the AEC to “to coordinate
nuclear defense activities between the War and Navy Departments and the AEC."24 The council
was expected to “advise and consult with the Committee on all atomic energy matters which the
Committee deems to relate to military applications.”
In the early years, civilian control extended to custodianship over operational nuclear weapons.
With early weapon designs, the fissile core of the weapon was separated from the rest of the
weapon to address safety concerns; AEC personnel maintained custody of the cores. This practice
continued until the mid-1950s, when integrated warheads were designed, produced, and turned
over to DOD.25
In the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 (P.L. 93-438), Congress dissolved the AEC and created
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration
(ERDA).26 ERDA became the lead agency in the energy R&D program and the repository of the
21 42 U.S.C. 2161. Also see Kevin O'Neill, “Building the Bomb,” in Atomic Audit, ed. Stephen I. Schwartz
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), p. 61.
22 This, and several subsequent paragraphs, are drawn from CRS Report 95-1162F, Nuclear Weapons Complex
Facilities: Background and Profiles, by Jonathan Medalia, William Boseman, and Mark Holt (available to
congressional clients upon request from the author of this report).
23 42 U.S.C. 2121(b).
24 The MLC was the forerunner of the Nuclear Weapons Council, which is a “DoD-DOE activity responsible for
facilitating cooperation and coordination, reaching consensus, and establishing priorities between the two Departments
as they fulfill their dual-agency responsibilities for U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile management.” See Office of the
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, Nuclear Matters Handbook 2016, Washington, DC,
Appendix A, https://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/NMHB/chapters/Appendix_A.htm.
25 Thomas Cochran, William Arkin, and Milton Hoenig, Nuclear Weapons Databook: Volume I, U.S. Nuclear Forces
and Capabilities, Cambridge, MA, Ballinger, 1984, p. 6, note 13.
26 This legislation was, in large part, a response to the energy crisis of 1973 and an effort to “assure the coordinated and
effective development of all energy sources” by bringing together “Federal activities relating to research and
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weapons program.27 That program was moved again by the Department of Energy Organization
Act of 1977, which dissolved ERDA and created the Department of Energy.
Congress, in passing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 (P.L. 106-65,
Title XXXII), established the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). NNSA is a
semiautonomous agency operating within DOE. According to NNSA, its mission, among other
things, is to maintain and enhance “the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear
weapons stockpile without nuclear explosive testing”; work to “reduce the global danger from
weapons of mass destruction”; provide the U.S. Navy “with safe and effective nuclear
propulsion”; and respond to “nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and abroad.”28
The Nuclear Weapons Complex
The eight sites that NNSA identifies as composing the current U.S. Nuclear Security Enterprise
reflect the most recent in a series of expansions and contractions in the structure of the nuclear
weapons complex for carrying out the functions required to maintain the nuclear weapons
stockpile. Generally, the enterprise has been structured and operated in three phases. Although the
locations of the facilities have changed, the essential functions have mostly remained the same
because warhead designs have largely remained the same.
First, during the 1940s, the Manhattan
Hanford
Project included three well-known primary
Hanford produced the first plutonium for U.S. nuclear
“government-owned, contractor-operated”
weapons during World War II and eventually made most
(GOCO) facilities that were used during
of the plutonium for tens of thousands of weapons
World War II and immediately afterward.
produced by the United States during the Cold War.
These included the laboratory at Los
Nine plutonium production reactors eventually operated
at Hanford, and large processing facilities were built to
Alamos, NM (called Site Y in World War II,
chemically separate the plutonium from other elements
now Los Alamos National Laboratory),
produced in the reactors. Plutonium production at
which designed nuclear weapons; the
Hanford ended in the mid-1980s, and the reactors were
Hanford Engineering Works (later known as
shut down by 1987. The United States no longer
produces plutonium for nuclear weapons. Hanford
the Hanford Reservation or Hanford Site)
remains severely contaminated with nuclear and chemical
near Richland, WA, which produced
wastes, and remedial action and waste management
plutonium; and three major sites at Oak
operations are expected to continue through 2060, with
Ridge, TN, which produced uranium
an estimated life-cost of over $100 billion, to be followed
enriched in the fissile isotope 235.29 The
by indefinite long-term stewardship.
nuclear weapons complex also incorporated
hundreds of smaller “contractor-owned, contractor-operated” (COCO) facilities that allowed for
rapid increases in production in the early years of the nuclear weapons program.30 In some cases,
development on the various sources of energy, to increase the efficiency and reliability in the use of energy, and to
carry out the performance of other functions, including but not limited to the Atomic Energy Commission’s military
and production activities and its general basic research activities.” See P.L. 93-438.
27 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, An Analysis of the ERDA Plan and Program, Washington, DC,
U.S. Government. Printing Office, October 1975, p. vii, 311.
28 National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), “About NNSA,” https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/about-nnsa.
29 Natural uranium from the earth consists of more than 99% uranium 238 and less than 1% uranium 235. Natural
uranium is this same 0.07% U-235 before it is removed from the earth. For certain key nuclear weapons components,
uranium typically is enriched to more than 90% U-235. Uranium enriched to greater than 20% uranium-235 is called
highly enriched uranium. The enrichment process leaves large quantities of uranium with almost all U-235 removed,
called depleted uranium.
30 See https://www.energy.gov/lm/sites/lm-sites/considered-sites. Also, many of the sites used in support of nuclear
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these facilities performed nonnuclear materials production and fabrication operations; in other
cases, they performed operations with radioactive materials alongside ongoing nonnuclear
civilian operations.
In the second phase, during the early 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission consolidated many
of these functions into a smaller number of larger GOCO facilities constructed throughout the
United States. This consolidation reduced the AEC’s reliance on the smaller COCO facilities and
was expected to result in economies of scale at a time when overall production increased
dramatically to meet the need of the Cold War stockpile buildup. Many facilities performed
multiple functions. To provide sufficient capacity to meet the needs of the expanding stockpile,
some operations were performed at multiple facilities. By late 1952, the AEC had several new
production plants planned or under construction, and it was expanding existing plants. These
included plants at Savannah River, SC; Oak Ridge, TN; Hanford, WA; Fernald and Miamisburg,
OH; Rocky Flats, CO; Largo, FL; Albuquerque, NM; and Kansas City, MO.
The third phase of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex coincided roughly with the end of the Cold
War. With President George H. W. Bush’s 1991 decision to withdraw most nonstrategic nuclear
weapons from deployment, the cancellation of several ongoing warhead programs, and the
signing of arms control agreements that limited the numbers of deployed nuclear forces, the need
for new nuclear warheads diminished and the number of warheads in the U.S. nuclear stockpile
began to decline sharply.31 In addition, in 1992, Congress enacted a moratorium on U.S. nuclear
weapons testing when it attached the Hatfield-Exon-Mitchell amendment to the 1993 Energy and
Water Development Appropriations Act.32 President George H. W. Bush signed the bill into law
(P.L. 102-377) and President Clinton extended the moratorium three times before signing the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996.33 Although the Senate declined to
consent to ratification of the CTBT in 1999, the United States has not conducted any explosive
nuclear tests since September 1992, before the moratorium entered into force.34 The United States
also has not designed and produced a new nuclear warhead since production of the W88 warhead
ended in 1992.35
weapons production operations during this period have been analyzed as part of the petition evaluation process for the
Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (42 U.S.C. 7384 et seq.) See https://www.dol.gov/
owcp/energy/ and https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/ocaseeoi.html and https://ehss.energy.gov/Search/Facility/
findfacility.aspx.
31 See Appendix A.
32The United States conducted 1,054 nuclear weapons test explosions between 1945 and 1992. See Appendix B and
U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office, United States Nuclear
Tests: July 1945 through September 1992, Las Vegas, NV, September 2015, p. xv, https://www.nnss.gov/docs/
docs_LibraryPublications/DOE_NV-209_Rev16.pdf.
33 This amendment banned testing before July 1, 1993; set conditions on a resumption of testing; and then banned
testing after September 1996 unless another nation tested.
34 For details on the CTBT and the Senate debate on its ratification, see CRS Report RL33548, Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty: Background and Current Developments, by Mary Beth D. Nikitin.
35 The United States has maintained its warheads through life extension programs and warhead alterations, rather than
by designing and producing new warheads. In FY2021, NNSA requested funding for a “concept assessment” for the
W93 sea-based warhead. While DOD officials indicated that this warhead is not a life-extension of a previous program,
they referred to it as a “new program” not a “new warhead.” See Aaron Mehta, "Inside America’s newly revealed
nuclear ballistic missile warhead of the future," Defense News, February 24, 2020.
https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2020/02/24/inside-americas-newly-revealed-nuclear-ballisticmissile-warhead-of-thefuture/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB%2002.25.20&utm_term=Editorial%20%20Early%20Bird%20Brief.
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Regulatory challenges, costs and concerns regarding environmental, safety, and health issues at
existing nuclear weapons facilities, along with reductions in the size of the stockpile and growing
public scrutiny, prompted a significant reduction in the number of facilities producing nuclear
warheads and associated nuclear materials.36 By the mid-1990s, the number of sites working to
maintain U.S. nuclear weapons had declined to the current nine sites, and a TVA reactor, in seven
states. The remaining facilities not only continued to operate, but they often sought budget
increases to address urgent safety and environmental issues and to repair and replace aging
infrastructure. With the heightened focus on environmental and health issues, in FY1995, for the
first time, the DOE budget for Environmental Management exceeded DOE’s budget for nuclear
weapons production.
When these nuclear weapons operations shut down, there was typically no clear plan in place for
follow-up operations. Perhaps most significantly, the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado ceased
plutonium production operations in June 1989 without clear plans to restore pit capacity
elsewhere. In addition, when operations ceased at Hanford, Rocky Flats, and the Savannah River
Site, significant amounts of special nuclear materials were in the midst of processing activities,
which posed significant safeguards, security, and safety challenges. When DOE’s efforts to restart
the K-reactor at the Savannah River Site failed and caused tritium contamination in the Savannah
River in 1991,37 a new tritium
Rocky Flats
productions capacity had to be
During the Cold War, the Rocky Flats Plant, located about 16
developed using commercial power
miles northwest of Denver, CO, produced plutonium pits and
reactors.38
other components for the primary stage of nuclear warheads,
along with associated chemical processing of plutonium scraps
Over time, DOE developed the capacity
for reuse. It produced around 1,000 pits per year and supplied
at alternative facilities to meet most of
most of the pits used in U.S. nuclear weapons. In June 1989,
the stockpile needs. For example, new
the FBI executed a search warrant (widely reported as a law
nonnuclear hydrodynamic testing
enforcement “raid”) at the site, based on evidence of violations
facilities were constructed at Los
of environmental laws. DOE halted plutonium pit production
operations at Rocky Flats in December 1989 largely because of
Alamos and Livermore National
a lack of waste storage capacity. Without Rocky Flats, the
Laboratories. The Tennessee Valley
United States does not have an industrial-scale capability to
Authority nuclear power reactors
manufacture new plutonium pits. Los Alamos Laboratory has
provided tritium production capacity.
the ability to fabricate small numbers of pits, and Rocky Flats’
responsibilities for nonnuclear primary components have been
Further, in the absence of nuclear
transferred to Y-12 and Kansas City.
weapons testing, the United States has
adopted a science-based program to
maintain and sustain confidence in the reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. This program,
established in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (P.L. 103-160) and
amended by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (P.L. 111-84, §3111), is
designed to ensure “that the nuclear weapons stockpile is safe, secure, and reliable without the
use of underground nuclear weapons testing.” However, as discussed below, plutonium pit
capacity at LANL has not been able to keep pace with NNSA’s stated needs for the stockpile.
36 William Lanouette, Tritium and the Times: How the Nuclear Weapons-Production Scandal Became a National Story,
Harvard JFK School, Shorenstein Center, May 1990, https://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/
r01_lanouette.pdf?x78124.
37 Hamby, D.D., et al, Emergency Response Monitoring Activities and Environmental Impact of the K-Reactor
Aqueous Tritium Release of December 1991, WSRC-92-186, February 1992.
38 U.S. Department of Energy, Consolidated Record of Decision for Tritium Supply and Recycling, 64 Federal Register
26369, May 14, 1999.
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Table 1. U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex
Sites and Functions
Materials
Production
Research,
Development
and Testing
Component
Fabrication
Assembly and
Disassembly
Current Sites
Livermore National
Lab
x
Los Alamos National
Lab
x
x
Sandia National Lab
x
x
Pantex Plant
x
Oak Ridge Y-12
x
Savannah River Site
x
x
Kansas City National
Security Complex
x
Nevada National
Security Site
x
Supporting Sites
TVA Watts Bar 1 & 2
WIPP
x
a
a
a
a
Source: National Nuclear Security Administration, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan,
November 2017.
a. WIPP does not perform these operations, but it plays a vital role in the disposal of transuranic waste
generated by facilities and operations performing these functions, thereby ensuring compliance with AEA
and other legal obligations and allowing continued operations at these sites.
The Current Nuclear Weapons Complex
The current nuclear weapons complex, which NNSA refers to as the Nuclear Security Enterprise,
includes “NNSA Headquarters (located in Washington, DC; Germantown, MD; and Albuquerque,
NM), the NNSA field offices, the three national security laboratories (two of which also have
production missions), the four nuclear weapons production facilities, and the Nevada National
Security Site.”39 Two other facilities are essential for maintaining the stockpile: (1) the TVA’s
Watts Barr nuclear power reactor in Tennessee, which produces tritium, a relatively short-lived
nuclear material vital to modern nuclear warheads, and (2) the WIPP site in New Mexico, which
is used to manage, isolate, and store plutonium-bearing wastes from the warhead operations at
other sites.40 The site descriptions that follow do not describe the headquarters or field offices, but
focus instead on the laboratories, testing, production, and support facilities more commonly
known as the nuclear weapons infrastructure. The sites are largely government-owned,
contractor-operated facilities.41
39 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and
Management Plan, Report to Congress, Washington, DC, November 2017, pp. 1-6, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/
files/2017/11/f46/fy18ssmp_final_november_2017%5B1%5D_0.pdf.
40 WIPP also manages and stores waste shipped from other DOE sites, as a part of the Environmental Support mission.
41 For a description of this arrangement, see Sandia National Laboratories, Government Owned/Contractor Operated
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According to NNSA, the primary mission of national security laboratories “is to develop and
sustain nuclear weapons design, simulation, modeling, and experimental capabilities and
competencies to ensure confidence in the stockpile without nuclear explosive testing.” The
laboratories also “engage in long-term research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E)
activities” for the nuclear weapons mission, as well as “apply science, engineering, and
technology to solve other national challenges.”42
Five production facilities produce and assemble materials and components for nuclear weapons.
Some weapon components must be replaced on a regular basis (e.g., tritium produced by TVA
reactors and processed at Savannah River Site), while others are produced on an as-needed basis,
as part of the program to extend the life of the nuclear arsenal. Two of the facilities—the Pantex
Plant near Amarillo, TX, and Y-12 in Oak Ridge, TN—are also responsible for dismantling
retired weapons and storing most of the plutonium and highly enriched uranium that exists
outside of weapons.
The Nevada National Security Site near Las Vegas, formerly a test site, no longer conducts
nuclear explosive tests, but it still maintains several facilities needed for other types of testing
critical to the stockpile stewardship program. The site also maintains the capability to resume
nuclear explosive testing in a two- to three-year time frame, if ordered to do so by the President.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico manages plutonium-contaminated
(transuranic) waste produced by nuclear weapons facilities, such as Los Alamos National
Laboratory, Savannah River Site, and Pantex. Without WIPP, nuclear warhead operations
generating plutonium-contaminated waste would be restricted because of the limited quantity of
such waste that can be stored onsite.43 WIPP’s strategic plan prioritizes the management of newly
generated wastes from ongoing nuclear warhead missions.
National Security Laboratories
NNSA operates three national security laboratories whose primary mission is to “develop and
sustain nuclear weapons design, simulation, modeling, and experimental capabilities and
competencies.”44 Historically, two of the three laboratories—Los Alamos and Livermore—were
responsible for the design of all U.S. nuclear weapons. Specifically, they designed the physics
package, which is the integrated nuclear warhead. The warhead includes the primary (plutonium
pit and related initiators, high explosive lenses, reflectors), the secondary (consisting largely of
lithium deuteride and a booster gas canister), and the supporting case surrounding these
components. Today, all three laboratories are engaged in activities that help “ensure confidence in
the stockpile without nuclear explosive testing.” According to NNSA, the laboratories also “apply
science, engineering, and technology to solve other national challenges.”45 For decades, the
Heritage, Fact Sheet. https://www.sandia.gov/about/history/goco.html.
42 National Nuclear Security Administration, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, p. 1-6,
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/11/f46/fy18ssmp_final_november_2017%5B1%5D_0.pdf.
43 U.S. Department of Energy, WIPP Strategic Plan Operations Through 2050, 15-GM.14, Rev. 0, June 17, 2016.
44 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and
Management Plan, Report to Congress, Washington, DC, November, 2017, p. 1-6. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/
files/2017/11/f46/fy18ssmp_final_november_2017%5B1%5D_0.pdf.
45 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and
Management Plan, Report to Congress, Washington, DC, November, 2017, p. 1-6. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/
files/2017/11/f46/fy18ssmp_final_november_2017%5B1%5D_0.pdf.
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Livermore and Los Alamos labs were run as nonprofit entities managed by the University of
California. Since 2006, each has been managed by a for-profit limited liability company.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), known as the birthplace of the U.S. nuclear weapons
program, was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project.46 The laboratory is located on
approximately 34.7 square miles in northern New Mexico, about 35 miles from Santa Fe.
According to NNSA, Los Alamos “is a design laboratory responsible for the safety and reliability
of the nuclear explosives package in nuclear weapons.”47 Although it shares warhead design
responsibilities with Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos is solely responsible for the
nuclear design and engineering of the B61, W76, W78, and W88 warheads. It also manages the
life extension and alteration programs affecting the W76 warhead, the B61-12 bomb, and the
W88 warhead.48 These programs replace aging components in existing warheads with “newly
manufactured and sometimes modernized components.”49
In addition to its work on nuclear warheads design and life extension, Los Alamos develops and
sustains “design, simulation, modeling, and experimental capabilities and competencies to ensure
stockpile confidence without nuclear testing.”50 It conducts regular evaluations of warheads, with
its surveillance data and experimental and computational simulations informing annual
assessments of the nuclear stockpile. According to NNSA, it “possesses unique capabilities in
neutron scattering, enhanced surveillance, radiography, and plutonium science and engineering.”
Los Alamos has the unique capability within the weapons complex for plutonium processing and
fabrication. It maintains the capability to work with special nuclear materials—plutonium and
highly enriched uranium—and maintains the capability to produce limited numbers of plutonium
pits (the explosive cores of nuclear weapons). Although it maintains the capacity to produce up to
30 pits per year, it has rarely succeeded in producing more than 10-15 per year, as a result of
safety and operational concerns. In 2013, safety issues led to a shutdown at the PF-4 building at
Los Alamos, and it has not produced any operational pits since that time.51
Over the years, Los Alamos has faced a number of questions about its safety culture, with
numerous incidents that could have caused significant problems, including “criticality”
episodes.52 The lab sits on a seismic fault, leading to concerns that an earthquake, and subsequent
46 Union of Concerned Scientists, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fact Sheet, October 2013, p. 1,
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nwgs/nuclear-weapons-complex/los-alamos-factsheet.pdf.
47 https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/locations.
48 NNSA, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, p. 1-7, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/
files/2017/11/f46/fy18ssmp_final_november_2017%5B1%5D_0.pdf.
49 Union of Concerned Scientists, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fact Sheet, October 2013, p. 1,
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nwgs/nuclear-weapons-complex/los-alamos-factsheet.pdf.
50 NNSA, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, p. 1-7, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/
files/2017/11/f46/fy18ssmp_final_november_2017%5B1%5D_0.pdf.
51 R. Jeffrey Smith and Patrick Malone, Safety Problems at a Los Alamos Laboratory Delay U.S. Nuclear Warhead
Testing and Production, Center for Public Integrity, Washington, DC, June 20, 2017, https://apps.publicintegrity.org/
nuclear-negligence/delayed-warheads/.
52 The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has identified numerous defects related to Seismic Safety.
See DNFSB, Technical Report 39: Opportunities for Risk Reduction at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Plutonium
Facility through the Minimization of Material-at-Risk, September 21, 2015. More recently, the DNFSB found that
these seismic risks may pose long-term concerns with criticality safety and fire suppression in plutonium facilities. See
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damage to or fire in the facilities, could lead to the release of radiation, although this has not
happened since its inception.
Los Alamos National Laboratory currently employs about 12,700 people. In FY2020, it had an
operating budget of $2.58 billion, with $1.95 billion (76%) allocated to nuclear weapons
activities.53 The request for FY2021 was $3.43 billion, with $2.91 (85%) billion allocated to
weapons activities.54
In 2006, NNSA awarded the management and operations contract for LANL to Los Alamos
National Security (LANS)—a Limited Liability company (LLC) comprising the University of
California; Bechtel National, Inc.; the Babcock & Wilcox company; and URS Corporation. The
contract with this LLC is due to expire on September 30, 2018, but was extended to allow for a
four-month transition period to a new contractor, Triad National Security.55 NNSA announced, on
June 8, 2018, that it had awarded the management and operating contract for LANL to this new
LLC, which consists of Battelle Memorial Institute, the Regents of the University of California,
and the Regents of Texas A&M University.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was established in 1952, as a companion and
sometime competitor to Los Alamos National Laboratory in the research and development of
nuclear weapons. The laboratory’s main facilities are on a 1.3-square-mile site in Livermore, CA,
about 45 miles east of San Francisco; a second site, known as Site 300, is located about 15 miles
east of Livermore and is used for testing nonnuclear explosives.
Livermore designed the first nuclear warhead for a U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missile and
the first warheads for multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs). Within the active
stockpile, it is solely responsible for nuclear design activities for the B83 bomb, W80 warhead,
and W87 warhead. It is also responsible for the life extension program for the W80-4 cruise
missile warhead and for the development of the first interoperable warhead (IW1).56
As is the case with Los Alamos National Laboratory, Livermore develops and sustains design,
simulation, modeling, and experimental capabilities and competencies to ensure stockpile
confidence without nuclear testing.57 It conducts regular evaluations of warheads, with its
surveillance data and experimental and computational simulations informing annual assessments
of the nuclear stockpile. According to NNSA, Livermore’s “core capabilities include high
performance computing, high energy density physics, plutonium research and development,
hydrodynamic and weapons engineering environmental tests, advanced manufacturing and
materials science, and tritium target development and fabrication.”58
https://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/document/3590/ltr_201713_32311.pdf.
53 http://www.lanl.gov/about/facts-figures/budget.php.
54 Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Laboratory Tables Preliminary, DOE/CF-0168
(February 2020), at page 42.
55 https://www.lanl.gov/about/leadership-governance/index.php.
56 Testimony Before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee Committee on Armed Services U.S. House of Representatives
Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Request for Nuclear Forces Witness Statement of Dr. Arthur T. Hopkins, Principal Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs April 15, 2015.
57
LLNL, “Stockpile Stewardship at 20 Years,” Science and Technology Review, July 2015.
58 National Nuclear Security Administration, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan,
November 2017, p. 1-6.
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Livermore is also home to the National Ignition Facility (NIF), “the world’s largest and highestenergy laser.” According to NNSA, NIF “is designed to perform experimental studies of fusion
ignition and thermonuclear burn, the phenomenon that powers the sun, the stars, and modern
nuclear weapons.”59 As part of NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship program, NIF is intended to
“enable researchers to gain fundamental understanding of extreme temperatures, pressures and
densities—knowledge that helps ensure the current and future nuclear stockpile is safe and
reliable.” During its construction, NIF faced significant delays and cost overruns. Although NIF
allows for significant scientific research, it has not yet reached “ignition,” the sustained, highenergy-yield nuclear fusion reaction present in a nuclear weapon.60 Some in DOE have
questioned whether it can ever achieve this goal.61
Livermore National Laboratory employs approximately 7,400 people. In FY2020, it had an
operating budget of $1.89 billion, with $1.59 billion (84%) allocated to nuclear weapons
activities.62 The FY2021 budget request of $2.02 billion included $1.79 billion (89%) for nuclear
weapons activities at Livermore National Laboratory.63
Livermore National Laboratory is managed and operated by the Lawrence Livermore National
Security, LLC. This LLC, which took over management in 2007, includes Bechtel National,
University of California, Babcock & Wilcox, the Washington Division of URS Corporation, and
Battelle.
Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) was established in 1949 to conduct the nonnuclear
engineering development associated with nuclear weapons. Its primary location, including its
executive management offices and larger laboratory complex, is located in Albuquerque, NM.
SNL has a principal laboratory in Livermore, CA, immediately south of the Lawrence Livermore
Lab. Sandia operates at a number of other locations, as well, including the Tonopah Test Range
(TTR) between Reno and Las Vegas, NV; the Weapons Evaluation Test Laboratory (WETL) at
Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX; and five additional sites around the country.64
While Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories design the nuclear explosive packages
for U.S. nuclear weapons, Sandia designs, develops, and tests the nonnuclear components that are
required to arm, fuze, and fire a weapon to military specifications. Sandia is also responsible for
the systems integration of U.S. nuclear weapons, including integration with DOD’s nuclearcapable delivery vehicles. In addition, Sandia participates in the warhead life extension programs,
as it is responsible for the nonnuclear components of each weapon. It also manufactures some
specialized components, like neutron generators, and maintains a backup capability to produce
batteries and high-explosive components. In addition, similar to LLNL and LANL, Sandia
contributes to the annual stockpile assessment process, providing annual safety, security, and
59 https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations.
60 National Nuclear Security Administration, Office of Defense Programs, 2015 Review of the Inertial Confinement
Fusion and High Energy Density Science Portfolio: Volume I, Washington, DC, March 2016, p. 8,
http://www.firefusionpower.org/ICF_HED_Review_Report_2015_Update.pdf.
61 David Kramer, “NIF May Never Ignite, DOE Admits,” June 17, 2016, https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/
PT.5.1076/full/.
62 https://www.llnl.gov/about.
63 Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Laboratory Tables Preliminary, DOE/CF-0168
(February 2020), at page 37.
64 http://www.sandia.gov/locations/index.html.
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reliability assessments of the nonnuclear components in U.S. nuclear weapons. It operates a
number of specialized test facilities, including the Z machine, which Sandia identifies as “the
world’s most powerful and efficient laboratory radiation source. It uses high magnetic fields
associated with high electrical currents to produce high temperatures, high pressures, and
powerful X-rays for research in high energy density science.” According to information provided
by Sandia, Z allows scientists to study materials under conditions similar to those produced by the
detonation of a nuclear weapon, and it produces key data used to validate physics models in
computer simulations.65
Sandia National Laboratories employs approximately 14,500 people. Sandia’s budget, in FY2020,
totaled $3.92 billion.66 Within this FY2020 total, $2.52 billion was provided by NNSA, and $2.06
billion (82%) was allocated to nuclear weapons activities. The FY2021 DOE budget request of
$2.8 billion included $2.4 billion for weapons activities at Sandia.67
Sandia National Laboratories was managed by Sandia Corporation from 1949 to 2017. Originally
a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Electric, Sandia Corporation was a Lockheed Martin
company from 1993 to 2017. Since 2017, it has been managed and operated by National
Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell
International, Inc.
Testing and Research
Nevada National Security Site
The Nevada National Security Site (NSSS) is located about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, on a
1,300-square-mile tract surrounded by the federally owned Nevada Test and Training Range. In
total, it sits on an unpopulated area of more than 5,400 square miles, nearly the size of the state of
Connecticut.68 Its remote location and large size were important factors when, in 1950, the
Atomic Energy Commission concluded that the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range in
Nevada satisfied nearly all of the established criteria for a continental proving ground for U.S.
nuclear weapons tests.69 In 1955, the name changed from the Nevada Proving Grounds to the
Nevada Test Site (NTS). In 2010, the name changed again, to the Nevada National Security Site,
to better reflect the evolving mission of the site in an era when the United States no longer
conducts explosive nuclear tests.70
65 http://www.sandia.gov/z-machine/index.html.
66 https://www.sandia.gov/about/facts_figures/index.html
67 Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Laboratory Tables Preliminary, DOE/CF-0168
(February 2020), at page 82.
68 Union of Concerned Scientists, Nevada National Security Site, October 2013, https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/
files/legacy/assets/documents/nwgs/nuclear-weapons-complex/nevada-national-security-fact-sheet.pdf.
69 Prior to establishing the test site at the Nevada Proving Ground, the United States had conducted tests in seven other
states and other locations in Colorado (including the first nuclear explosion, the Trinity Test, near Alamagordo, NM). It
also conducted three atmospheric tests in the South Atlantic and 106 tests in the South Pacific (primarily at Bikini
Atoll, Christmas Island, Enewetak Atoll, and Johnston Island). See U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear
Security Administration Nevada Field Office, United States Nuclear Tests: July 1945 through September 1992, Las
Vegas, NV, September 2015, p. xv, https://www.nnss.gov/docs/docs_LibraryPublications/DOE_NV-209_Rev16.pdf.
70 https://www.nnss.gov/pages/about.html.
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The United States conducted its first atmospheric nuclear test at the NTS on January 27, 1951,
and conducted 100 atmospheric tests at the
site through July 1962. Atmospheric testing
Nuclear Weapons Tests
ended in 1963, after the United States signed
The United States conducted 1,054 nuclear weapons
the Limited Test Ban Treaty, but underground
test explosions between 1945 and 1992 underground,
above ground, above and below the ocean, in the
nuclear testing continued at the site through
atmosphere, and in space. Twenty-four of these tests
1992. The United States conducted 828
were in cooperation with the United Kingdom (see
underground tests at the NTS, with the last
Appendix B). The 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty
occurring on September 23, 1992. The United prohibited all but underground nuclear tests. These
were the primary means by which the United States
States has not conducted any explosive
both determined whether its nuclear weapons designs
testing since that time because Congress
would work and confirmed that the weapons remained
passed, and President George H. W. Bush
reliable and effective as they aged.
signed, a moratorium on nuclear testing.
In early 1995, the Clinton Administration announced it would extend the moratorium until the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) entered into force, assuming it was signed by September
30, 1996.71 The United States signed the CTBT in 1996, but the Senate did not give its advice and
consent to ratification in 1999. Nevertheless, each subsequent Administration has reaffirmed the
U.S. commitment to abide by a moratorium on nuclear testing. The Trump Administration
reaffirmed this position in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, stating that “the United States will
not seek Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but will continue to
observe a nuclear test moratorium that began in 1992.”72 In spite of this support for the
moratorium, however, press reports from May 2020 indicate that the Trump Administration
discussed possibly conducting an explosive test to convince Russia and China to accommodate
U.S. demands in arms control negotiations.73
The United States now maintains confidence in the safety and reliability of its nuclear stockpile
through science-based stockpile stewardship, but it maintains the ability to resume underground
nuclear testing, “if required, for the safety and effectiveness of the Nation’s stockpile, or if
otherwise directed by the President.”74 According to NNSA, the amount of time it would take to
prepare for and conduct a test would depend on the details of the test, and any test “would be
conducted only when the President has declared a national emergency … and only after any
necessary waiver of applicable statutory and regulatory restrictions.” NNSA estimates that it
could conduct a simple test within 6 to 10 months and a fully instrumented test to address
stockpile needs within 24-36 months of a decision to proceed.75
Since the cessation of underground testing in 1992, the nuclear weapons mission at NNNS “has
evolved to include subcritical experiments and other Stockpile Stewardship Programs designed to
71 For details, see CRS Report RL33548, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty: Background and Current
Developments, by Mary Beth D. Nikitin.
72 Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, Report, Washington, DC, February 2, 2018, p. 63,
https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINALREPORT.PDF.
73 John Hudson and Paul Sonne, "Trump administration discussed conducting first U.S. nuclear test in decades,"
Washington Post, May 22, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-administration-discussedconducting-first-us-nuclear-test-in-decades/2020/05/22/a805c904-9c5b-11ea-b60c3be060a4f8e1_story.html?utm_campaign=EBB%2005.26.20&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Sailthru
74 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, FY 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and
Management Plan, Report to Congress, Washington, DC, November 2017, pp. 3-26, https://www.energy.gov/sites/
prod/files/2017/11/f46/fy18ssmp_final_november_2017%5B1%5D_0.pdf.
75 Ibid., pp. 3-26.
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ensure the Nation’s remaining nuclear weapons remains safe, secure, and effective without fullscale nuclear testing.”76 These include nuclear and nonnuclear experiments essential to
maintaining the stockpile. According to NNSA, the site is not only the primary location where
experiments using radiological and other high-hazard materials can occur, but is also the only
location where “highly enriched-driven plutonium experiments” can be conducted.
The Nevada National Security Site employs approximately 1,900 people. Its budget in FY2020
was $510 million and included $357 million (70%) for nuclear weapons activities; the budget
request for FY2021 was $744 million, of which $588 million (79%) was allocated to nuclear
weapons activities.
The Nevada National Security Site is managed and operated by Mission Support and Test
Services, LLC MSTS). The company is a limited liability company consisting of Honeywell
International Inc., Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., and HII Nuclear, Inc.
Production
Kansas City National Security Campus
The original facility known as the Kansas City Plant provided aircraft engines for Navy fighters
in World War II; it began producing nonnuclear components for nuclear weapons in 1949.
Originally located at the Bannister Federal Complex, in Kansas City, MO, the facility moved in
2013 to the new Kansas City National Security Campus (NSC), about eight miles south of the
original facility, with the relocation completed in mid-2014. According to NNSA, it invested in
the new site because aging facilities and increasing maintenance and operations costs impeded
operations at the old site.77
The Kansas City NSC is responsible for the procurement and manufacturing of nonnuclear
mechanical, electronic, and engineered material components for nuclear weapons. While some of
these components are produced at Los Alamos National Laboratories, about 85% are produced at
Kansas City. According to NNSA, the NSC is also responsible for evaluating and testing
nonnuclear weapon components.78
The Kansas City NSC employs approximately 4,100 people. Its budget for FY2020 of $1.01
billion included $957.6 million (95%) for nuclear weapons activities. The budget request for
FY2021 was $1.2 billion, with $1.13 billion (94.6 %) allocated to weapons activities.79
The Kansas City NSC is managed and operated by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing &
Technologies, LLC. The contract was renewed in 2015.
76 https://www.nnss.gov/pages/about.html.
77 NNSA, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, p. 1-9, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/
files/2017/11/f46/fy18ssmp_final_november_2017%5B1%5D_0.pdf. See also Union of Concerned Scientists, Kansas
City Plant, Fact Sheet, October 2013, https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nwgs/nuclearweapons-complex/kansas-city-plant-fact-sheet.pdf.
78 NNSA, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, p. 1-9, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/
files/2017/11/f46/fy18ssmp_final_november_2017%5B1%5D_0.pdf.
79 Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Laboratory Tables Preliminary, DOE/CF-0168
(February 2020), page 32.
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Savannah River Site (SRS)
The 310-square-mile Savannah River Site is located near Aiken, SC, along the Savannah River,
which forms the state’s border with Georgia. It was constructed during the early 1950s to produce
the tritium and plutonium-239 to be used for U.S. nuclear weapons.80 Five reactors operated at the
site from 1953 to 1988 to produce these materials.81 The site also operated a number of support
facilities, including two chemical separations reprocessing plants, a heavy-water extraction plant,
a nuclear fuel and target fabrication facility, a tritium extraction facility, and waste management
facilities.82
Although DOE hoped to resume reactor operations at SRS, this did not happen. During a test run
of the K-reactor in “late December 1991, a leak in one of the … heat exchangers released 150
pounds of tritiated water into the Savannah River, …[and] public utilities downstream from the
Site closed their intake valves until the contaminated water had passed.” After a brief start-up in
1992, DOE announced a permanent shutdown in 1993.83
During the 1980s, work at SRS began to shift from the production of nuclear materials to waste
management and environmental remediation, including operation of the Defense Waste
Processing Facility to encapsulate part of the 37 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste stored
in 49 underground tanks. As a result of this shift in emphasis, the Department of Energy’s Office
of Environmental Management is the landlord at the SRS; NNSA is a tenant. The tritium
organization within the Savannah River Tritium Enterprise (SRTE) performs most of the weapons
activities at the site.
SRS no longer operates its nuclear reactors, and, therefore, no longer produces tritium. It does,
however, recycle tritium from dismantled warheads. It also extracts tritium from tritiumproducing burnable absorber rods irradiated in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) Watts
Barr commercial power reactors 1 and 2 in Tennessee.84 DOD sends depleted tritium reservoirs to
the SRS, where they are emptied and refilled with a mixture of tritium and deuterium gases. SRS
then sends the refilled reservoirs back to DOD. SRS is the only facility in the nuclear security
enterprise that has the capability to extract, recycle, purify, and reload tritium.85
80 Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen needed to boost the yield of nuclear weapons. Because it has a half-life of
12.4 years and degrades at a rate of 5.5% per year, the tritium in nuclear weapons must be replenished regularly.
81 DOE restarted the K-reactor briefly in 1991 after several years of upgrade investments. After tritium contamination
was discovered in the Savannah River and downstream drinking water sources, however, the reactor was again
shutdown, never to restart. Hamby, D.D., et al, Emergency Response Monitoring Activities and Environmental Impact
of the K-Reactor Aqueous Tritium Release of December 1991, WSRC-92-186, February 1992.
82 https://www.srs.gov/general/about/history1.htm.
83See DOE, Savannah River Site at Fifty, Stewardship and Legacy, 2003, p. 518, https://www.srs.gov/general/about/
50anniv/Chapter%2020.pdf. DOE had initially decided to operate all three remaining reactors (see Record of Decision;
Continued Operation of K, L, and P Reactors, Savannah River Site, Aiken, SC. February 11, 1991, 56 Federal Register
5584), but newly confirmed Secretary Hazel R. O’Leary decided to cease operations at the final reactor (i.e., K) on
September 24, 1993.
84 Tennessee Valley Authority, Production of Tritium in Commercial Light Water Reactors, Record of Decision, 82
Federal Register 16653 (April 5, 2017). The TVA intends to a second reactor at Watts Bar (WBN2) for tritium
production in FY2021 for the first time. See Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Volume
1: National Nuclear Security Administration; Federal Salaries and Expenses; Federal Salaries and Expenses; Weapons
Activities; Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation; Naval Reactors, DOE/CF-0161, page 178, March 2019.
85 See Savannah River Tritium Enterprise, February 2013 - 11PA00218, at https://www.srs.gov/general/news/
factsheets/tritium_esrs.pdf.
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SRS also provides interim storage for much of the excess plutonium in the United States and
maintains responsibility for the surplus plutonium disposition program, although this effort is in
flux. Under this program, the DOE planned to blend surplus plutonium removed from U.S.
nuclear weapons with uranium to make mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.
DOE had proposed conducting the fuel fabrication operations at a new Mixed Oxide Fuel
Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the SRS. Although construction on the MFFF began in 2007, the
program faced delays and escalating costs. Because of the cost increases, the Obama
Administration slowed the project in FY2013 and FY2014 to consider “alternative plutonium
disposition strategies.” The original plutonium disposition plan developed in the Clinton
Administration had similarly involved alternatives to MOX for plutonium disposition.86
The Trump Administration, in its FY2018 request to Congress, supported the proposal to
“terminate the MOX project and pursue the dilute and dispose strategy as an alternative.”87 Under
this strategy, DOE would dilute the surplus plutonium with other materials and dispose of it in the
WIPP facility in New Mexico.88 Per a congressional mandate,89 the National Academy of
Sciences reviewed DOE’s dilute and dispose plutonium strategy and concluded, inter alia, that
DOE’s “plans to dilute and dispose at least 34 MT of surplus plutonium provide a technically
viable disposition alternative to the MOX plan, provided that implementation challenges and
system vulnerabilities that currently exist within the plan are resolved.”90
In May 2018, NNSA announced that it planned to “repurpose the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication
Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to produce plutonium pits while also
maximizing pit production activities at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.”91 This
would support NNSA’s decision to pursue a new approach for plutonium pit production to meet
the requirement of producing a minimum of 80 pits per year by 2030, as outlined in the 2018
Nuclear Posture Review. NNSA expects the “repurposed” the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility to
produce at least 50 pits per year by 2030, while Los Alamos would produce “no fewer than 30
pits per year” in the same time frame.92 NNSA’s budget request for FY2020 requested $420
86 U.S. Department of Energy, Record of Decision for the Storage and Disposition of Weapons-Usable Fissile Materials
Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, 62 Federal Register 3013 (January 21, 1997).
87 For details on the MOX program, see CRS Report R43125, Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Plant and Plutonium
Disposition: Management and Policy Issues, by Mark Holt and Mary Beth D. Nikitin.
88 As it had in the FY2018 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 115-91), Congress mandated in the FY2019
NDAA (P.L. 115-232) that the Secretary of Energy continue to “carry out construction and project support activities
relating to the MOX facility,” but it again authorized the Secretary of Energy to waive this requirement if the Secretary
meets a number of requirements stated in the FY2018 NDAA. See John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2019, P.L. 115-232, §3119. Also, see Conference Report to Accompany H.R. 5515; H.Rept. 115-874;
Pages 658 and 1119. July 15, 2018, https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5515/actions.
89 U.S. Congress, House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Energy and
Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2017, 114th Congress, 2nd sess., H.Rept. 114-532, April 26, 2016
(Washington, DC: GPO, 2016), pp.114-115.)
90 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2020. Review of the Department of Energy's Plans for
Disposal of Surplus Plutonium in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
https://doi.org/10.17226/25593.
91 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Joint Statement from Ellen M. Lord and Lisa
E. Gordon-Hagerty on Recapitalization of Plutonium Pit Production, Washington, DC, March 10, 2018,
https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/joint-statement-ellen-m-lord-and-lisa-e-gordon-hagerty-recapitalizationplutonium-pit.
92 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Plutonium Pit Production, Fact Sheet,
Washington, DC, April 2019, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/05/f62/2019-05-13-FACTSHEETplutonium-pits.pdf.
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million to support design activities at Savannah River and begin the modifications needed to
produce the required 50 pits per year by 2030. While Congress approved the requested amount in
the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 (P.L. 116-94), it mandated, among other
things, that the Department of Energy provide the Appropriations Committee with quarterly
briefings status of the projects in this area. In its budget request for FY2021, NNSA sought 441.9
million for plutonium activities at Savannah River, with $200 million allocated to Plutonium
Modernization and $241.9 million allocated to Plutonium Processing. These programs support
efforts to plan for operations at the new pit facility, to work on its design, its site and facility
preparation, and to begin long lead procurement.
In addition to the activities described above, the SRS stores, processes, and eliminates radioactive
wastes left over from the production of nuclear materials. DOE’s Environmental Management
Program is pursuing extensive environmental remediation, waste management, and facility
decommissioning at the SRS. DOE expects this process to be complete by 2065, at a total lifecycle cost of $97-$115 billion..93
The Savannah River Site employs approximately 11,200 people. Most are employed on
environmental clean-up projects; fewer than 1,500 of SRS’s employees work in the tritium
extraction program. The SRS budget for FY 2020 was $2.41 billion, of which $753 million (31%)
was weapons related. Approximately 60% of the SRS budget for FY2020 was appropriated for
Environmental Management activities. The FY2021 budget request for SRS was $2.62 billion, of
which $867 million (33%) was for weapons activities.94
During the Cold War, the SRS was managed and operated by the DuPont Corporation. Currently,
it is managed and operated by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC, a partnership including
Fluor Daniel, Newport News Nuclear, and Honeywell.
Pantex Plant
The Pantex Plant is located on a 25-square-mile site 17 miles northwest of Amarillo, TX, in a
region referred to as the Texas panhandle. During World War II, it served as an Army munitions
plant, responsible for assembling artillery shells and bombs. It closed after the war, but reopened
in 1951 “as a facility to handle nuclear weapons, high explosives, and nonnuclear component
assembly operations.”95 Since 1975, it has been the only facility in the United States where
nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled. During the Cold War, Pantex would return the
components of nuclear weapons to either Rocky Flats (plutonium primaries) or the Y-12 plant
(uranium secondaries) after dismantling the warheads. Because Rocky Flats closed in 1992,
Pantex now stores thousands of excess plutonium pits.
Because the United States no longer produces new nuclear warheads, the mission at Pantex has
shifted from assembling nuclear weapons to refurbishing existing warheads, as a part of the Life
Extension programs, and disassembling retired weapons. Pantex is also responsible for the
development, testing, and fabrication of high-explosive components.
93 DOE, FY2019 Budget Request DOE/CF-0142 (March 2018), vol. 5, p. 110.
94 Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Laboratory Tables Preliminary, DOE/CF-0168
(February 2020) at page 87. Excludes Savannah River Laboratories, Savannah River Operations Office and Savannah
River Site Office.
95 Union of Concerned Scientists, Pantex Plant, Fact Sheet, October 2013.
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According to NNSA, Pantex has 3,266 employees.96 The Pantex budget for FY2020 was $885
million, of which $879 million (99.3%) was directed to weapons activties. NNSA requested a
budget of $1 billion for Pantex for FY2021, with $992 million (99.1%) allocated to the weapons
activity account.97
Pantex is managed and operated by Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC, a corporate subsidiary
of Bechtel National, Lockheed Martin Services, ATK Launch Systems, and SOC, LLC.
Y-12 National Security Complex
The Y-12 National Security Complex is located on a 5.3-square-mile site in the Oak Ridge
Reservation, about 20 miles west of Knoxville, TN. As part of the original Manhattan Project, Y12 was built in 1943 to enrich uranium in the isotope U-235. It produced the uranium used in the
“Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. In addition to the Y-12 site, DOE also operates
the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (known as “X-10”) about 10 miles southwest of Y-12. During
the Cold War, the facility included a third site, known as K-25, which was responsible for
enriching uranium through a gaseous diffusion process.
The Y-12 site continues to manufacture nuclear weapons components from uranium and lithium.
It manufactures all U.S. nuclear weapons
secondaries, canned subassemblies (CSAs), and
U.S. nuclear weapons have two stages: a primary
(the plutonium pit) and a secondary. The secondary
radiation cases, and it is the only source for
contains highly enriched uranium and is contained
enriched uranium components for nuclear
within a canned subassembly. A uranium-lined
weapons. It also contributes to life extension
radiation case encloses both the primary and canned
programs by producing refurbished, replaced,
subassembly.
and upgraded weapon components. In addition,
Y-12 serves as the main storage facility for highly enriched uranium; conducts dismantlement,
storage, and disposition of highly enriched uranium; and supplies highly enriched uranium used
in naval reactors.98
NNSA is currently building a new Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at Y-12. Intended to
replace aging infrastructure at Y-12, this facility is projected to be completed by 2025 and to cost
$6.5 billion. However, as is the case with many NNSA construction projects, the facility has
experienced delays and increases in its expected costs. When completed, the facility is expected
to be capable of producing 50-80 canned secondaries per year.99
96 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Fiscal Year 2020 Stockpile Stewardship and
Management Plan, Report to Congress, Washington, DC, July 2019, p. D-50, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/
2019/08/f65/FY2020__SSMP.pdf.
97 Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Laboratory Tables Preliminary, DOE/CF-0168
(February 2020) at page 75.
98 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Fiscal Year 2020 Stockpile Stewardship and
Management Plan, Report to Congress, Washington, DC, July 2019, p. D-70, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/
2019/08/f65/FY2020__SSMP.pdf.
99 The original 2004 estimate expected costs of between $600 million and $1.1 billion. Costs escalated, in part, because
NNSA had to redesign the facility after discovering, in October 2012, that not all the necessary equipment would fit in
the planned building. Union of Concerned Scientists, Y-12 National Security Complex, Fact Sheet, 2013,
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nwgs/nuclear-weapons-complex/y-12-complex-factsheet.pdf.
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The Y-12 National Security Complex employs approximately 4,632 people. The Y-12 budget was
$1.89 billion in FY2020, of which $1.84 billion was related to weapons activities.100 NNSA has
requested $2.24 billion for Y-12 in its budget for FY2021, of which about $750 million was
allocated to the UPF project.
The Y-12 National Security Complex is managed and operated by Consolidated Nuclear Security,
LLC, which is a corporate subsidiary of Bechtel National, Lockheed Martin Services, ATK
Launch Systems, and SOC, LLC.
Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Barr Reactor (TVA)
As noted above, when the last of the reactors at the Savannah River Site ceased operations in the
early 1990s, DOE lost the capacity to produce tritium within the nuclear weapons complex. It can
still recycle tritium from dismantled warheads at SRS; according to NNSA, the process of
recovering and recycling tritium provides the majority of the inventory needed to meet current
requirements. This will be insufficient to maintain the stockpile in the future, as current stocks of
tritium continue to degrade. As a result, since 2003, NNSA has been producing tritium by
irradiating Tritium-Producing Burnable Absorber Rods (TPBARs) in the Watts Bar Unit 1
(WBN1) nuclear power reactor owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).101 In addition to
producing tritium, this reactor burns domestically produced low-enriched uranium and produces
electricity for domestic use.
NNSA has been extracting tritium from the TPBARs since FY2007. According to NNSA
estimates, Watts Barr will need to produce 2,800 grams of tritium over two 18-month reactor
cycles by 2025 to meet the needs of the stockpile. The TVA had previously relied on WBN1, and
intends to use its unit #2 (WBN2) for tritium production. In its FY2021 budget request DOE
indicated it intended to “[c]ontinue irradiation of 1,792 TPBARs in WBN1 and commence
irradiation of 960 TPBARs in WBN2.”102 The TVA announced it intent to begin using its Watts
Bar 2 reactor for the first time for tritium production after it resumes operations from a routine
refueling outage that started in October 2020.103
Support
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is located on a 10,240-acre site near Carlsbad, NM. It serves as
the disposal facility for plutonium-contaminated transuranic waste from nuclear weapons
production facilities, and is the world’s only operating geologic repository for nuclear waste.
Transuranic waste can be dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. The waste shipped to
WIPP is stored in specialized casks and placed in caverns excavated from thick salt beds 2,150
100 Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Laboratory Tables Preliminary, DOE/CF-0168
(February 2020), at page 112. Excludes Y-12 Site Office, Oak Ridge Operations Office and Oak Ridge National
Laboratory.
101 Tritium is produced by irradiating lithium-aluminate pellets with neutrons. TPBARs are similar in dimension to
reactor fuel rods; with irradiation, the tritium is produced and captured on getters.
102 Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Volume 1: National Nuclear Security
Administration; Federal Salaries and Expenses; Federal Salaries and Expenses; Weapons Activities; Defense Nuclear
Nonproliferation; Naval Reactors, DOE/CF-0161, February 2020 at page 178.
103 Exchange Publications, Watts Bar 2 to Start Weapons Tritium Production When Current Refueling Outage Wraps,
November 17, 2020.
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feet below the earth’s surface. The salt beds are used for this purpose because they are free of
flowing water, easily excavated, impermeable, and geologically stable.104
The first shipment of such transuranic waste arrived at WIPP from Los Alamos in 1999.
Subsequently, substantial quantities of waste have been moved there from Livermore, Rocky
Flats, Savannah River, Hanford, Idaho National Laboratory, and other DOE sites. While NNSA
does not currently list WIPP as a part of the National Security Enterprise, it serves a vital role as
the sole disposal site for transuranic waste generated by nuclear weapons facilities and is
therefore essential to ongoing operations across the weapons complex.
WIPP missions include: (1) disposal of TRU waste generated by ongoing nuclear weapons
production activities; (2) disposal of TRU waste generated during “cleanup” operations by DOE’s
Environmental Management program, and (3) disposition of plutonium declared “surplus” from
stockpile needs. Among DOE management challenges is balancing these missions with limited
resources, especially WIPP disposal capacity.105 NNSA has faced long-standing questions about
whether WIPP will be able to meet the future needs of the nuclear security enterprise. Projected
WIPP capacity decreased as a result of operational incidents, including disposal rooms
contaminated with radioactivity after an incident in 2014 that remain off limits,106 and ceilings in
some rooms collapsing sooner than expected. The Government Accountability Office (GAO)
reported that WIPP did not have sufficient space to dispose of all defense TRU waste,107 and that
“DOE does not have assurance that WIPP’s planned additional physical space will be constructed
before existing space is full, which would result in a potential interruption to disposal
operations.”108
WIPP capacity was also affected when the State of New Mexico, in December 2018, approved a
permit modification request adjusting the volume capacity calculations that effectively increases
the amount of potential waste disposal.109 In 2020, a report of the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that even with the changed volume capacity
calculation, WIPP’s legal volume capacity would likely be exceeded by existing disposal
demands.110
Various stakeholders continue to seek a greater share of limited WIPP capacity, requiring DOE to
deconflict allocation. For example, elected state officials and other stakeholders near the Los
Alamos site have expressed concern about the sufficiency of DOE’s plans to dispose of 30
104 http://wipp.energy.gov/geologic-disposal-safety-case.asp [URL-only footnotes are discouraged under CRS policy].
105 WIPP capacity of defined primarily by statutory limits establish by the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act (P.L. 102-579,
as amended)
106 In 2014, an underground vehicle fire and an incident where a drum storing plutonium waste burst open, releasing
radiation, led to the closure of WIPP for three years. See DOE, Accident Investigation Report: Phase 1 Radiological
Release Event at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant on February 14, 2014 (April 2014); also see https://www.epa.gov/
radiation/2014-radiological-event-wipp.
107 GAO, Plutonium Disposition: Proposed Dilute and Dispose Approach Highlights Need for More Work at the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plan, GAO-17-390, September 2017, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-390.
108 GAO, Nuclear Waste Disposal: Better Planning Needed to Avoid Potential Disruptions at Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant, GAO-21-48, November 2020, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-48
109 State Of New Mexico, Secretary of Environment, In The Matter Of The Hazardous Waste Bureau Class 3
Clarification of TRU Mixed Waste Disposal No. Hwb 18-19 (P) Volume Reporting Permit Modification to the WIPP
Hazardous Waste Facility Permit Secretary's Order Approving Draft Permit, December 21, 2018. See at
https://www.env.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/05/HWB-18-19-P-Secretarys-Order-Approving-DraftPermit.pdf.
110 https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25593/review-of-the-department-of-energys-plans-for-disposal-of-surplus-plutoniumin-the-waste-isolation-pilot-plant. [URL-only citations discouraged.]
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shipments111 of TRU waste from Los Alamos to support weapons activities and remedial action
milestones.112 The State of Idaho and DOE agreed in 2019 to modify a 1995 Settlement
Agreement that obligates DOE to provide 55% of “all transuranic waste shipments received at
WIPP for [Idaho National Laboratory (INL)] transuranic waste, including retrieved buried waste,
each year until shipments from INL are complete” in exchange for allowing a one-time shipment
to INL of spent nuclear fuel.113
The WIPP budget from the FY2020 appropriations was $400 million. The FY2021
budget request included $388 million for WIPP,114 and $413 million was enacted.115
Issues for Congress116
As Congress conducts oversight of DOE’s and NNSA’s management, operations, and programs,
and as it authorizes and appropriates funds for the Nuclear Security Enterprise, it may address a
wide range of issues that have been of concern, and contentious, some for years. This section
reviews five topics that Congress has addressed in hearings and legislation relating to the nuclear
weapons complex and NNSA: (1) the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, (2) organization
and management at NNSA, (3) infrastructure recapitalization, (4) plutonium pit production, and
(5) concerns about access to necessary supplies of tritium.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
The Department of Energy has recently altered the authorities of the Defense Nuclear Facilities
Safety Board, which, according to press reports, could affect public and congressional access to
information about incidents at the facilities in the nuclear security enterprise.117
Congress created the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) in 1988, as an
independent oversight organization to provide advice and recommendations to the Secretary of
Energy regarding public health and safety at the defense nuclear facilities managed by the
111 DOE, EM CY21 Mission and Priorities,
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2021/03/f83/EM%20CY21%20Priorities%20One%20Page%20Final%203.3.pd
f
112 Susan Montoya Bryan, “New Mexico demands more of US when addressing nuclear waste,” Sante Fe New
Mexican, March 16, 2021.
113 White, William (DOE), Rita Baranwal (DOE, Brad Little (Govenor of Idaho) and Lawrence Wasden (Attorney
General of Idaho), Supplemental Agreement Concerning Conditional Waiver of Sections D.2.E and K.1 OF 1995
Settlement Agreement, 6 November 2019. See at https://gov.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/74/2019/11/doe-inl2019-supplemental-agreement-signed.pdf
114 Department of Energy, FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request; Laboratory Tables Preliminary, DOE/CF-0168
(February 2020) at page 109.
115 Explanatory Statement Submitted by Mrs. Lowey, Chairwoman Of The House Committee On Appropriations,
Regarding the House Amendment To The Senate Amendment To H.R. 133, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, of
the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021; Congressional Record, Vol. 155; No. 218; December 21, 2020; page 102 at
https://www.congress.gov/116/crec/2020/12/21/CREC-2020-12-21.pdf-bk4.
116 Issues related to waste management (e.g., plutonium disposition), environmental contamination and safety
challenges within the nuclear weapons complex, associated costs (now expected to exceed $400 billion), and safety
limitations to operations are outside the purview of this report and therefore not addressed in this section.
117 Patrick Malone, The Trump Administration Reins in a Nuclear Weapons Safety Watchdog, Center for Public
Integrity, Washington, DC, August 30, 2018, https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/08/30/22191/trump-administrationreins-nuclear-weapons-safety-watchdog.
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Department of Energy.118 According to the DNFSB, its mission is “to inform the Secretary, in the
role of the Secretary as operator and regulator of the defense nuclear facilities of the Department
of Energy, in providing adequate protection of public health and safety at such defense nuclear
facilities.”
Historically, the board has had access to the all the sites in the nuclear weapons complexes “to
assess accidents or safety concerns that could pose a grave risk to workers and the public.”
However, according to recent press reports, DOE issued a new order in May 2018 that “outlines
new limits on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board—including preventing the board from
accessing sensitive information and imposing additional legal hurdles on board staff.”119 Critics
of this order argue that it is an effort to limit transparency and weaken the board’s ability to
conduct oversight; this recent action follows reports, from 2017, indicating that the chairman of
the board had recommended “downsizing or abolishing the group,” a position supported by some
of the contractors managing sites within the nuclear weapons complex.120
Organization and Management at NNSA
As noted earlier, responsibility for the nuclear weapons program has moved, over the years, from
the Army, to the Atomic Energy Commission, to the Energy Research and Development
Administration, and then to the Department of Energy in 1977. In 2000, Congress established the
semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration as part of DOE to manage both the
nuclear weapons complex and nonproliferation activities. The NNSA has also sometimes
included the Office of Environmental Management. These reorganizations stem, in part, from
long-standing concerns about the management of the nuclear weapons complex. Many reports
and legislative provisions have been written over the past several decades to address this issue.121
In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (P.L. 112-239), Congress
established the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security
Enterprise and directed the panel to make recommendations on “the most appropriate governance
structure, mission, and management of the nuclear security enterprise.” In its report to Congress,
the panel stated the following:
The panel finds that the existing governance structures and many of the practices of the
enterprise are inefficient and ineffective, thereby putting the entire enterprise at risk over
the long term. These problems have not occurred overnight; they are the result of decades
118 For details on the history of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Board, see U.S. Library of Congress, Defense Nuclear
Facilities Board: The First Twenty Years, prepared by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, September
2009, https://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/page/DNFSB%20Twenty%20Year%20Report.pdf.
119 Rebecca Moss, “Trump Administration Neuters Nuclear Safety Board,” Santa Fe New Mexican, July 22, 2018,
https://www.propublica.org/article/nuclear-safety-board-information-access-trump-administration.
120 Patrick Malone and R. Jeffrey Smith, “GOP chair of nuclear safety agency secretly urges Trump to abolish it,” The
Center for Public Integrity, October 19, 2017, https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/10/19/21217/gop-chair-nuclearsafety-agency-secretly-urges-trump-abolish-it.
121 See, for example, U.S. Department of Energy, Audit Report on “Management of the Nuclear,” Washington, DC..,
September 2000, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/igprod/documents/CalendarYear2000/ig-0484.pdf;
Department of Defense, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Nuclear Capabilities, Report Summary,
Washington, DC, December, 2006, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/defenseReviews/NPR/
DSB_Nuclear_Capabilities_Foster_Welch.pdf; and William J. Perry, Chairman and James R. Schlesinger, Vice
Chairman. America’s Strategic Posture—The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture
of the United States, Washington, DC, 2009, https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/
America's_Strategic_Posture_Auth_Ed.pdf; and GAO, High-Risk Series: Progress on Many High-Risk Areas, While
Substantial Efforts Needed on Others GAO-17-317 (February 15, 2017).
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of neglect. This is in spite of the efforts of many capable and dedicated people who must
nonetheless function within the confines of a dysfunctional system.…
One unmistakable conclusion is that NNSA governance reform, at least as it has been
implemented, has failed to provide the effective, mission-focused enterprise that Congress
intended.122
The panel’s recommendations included
strengthening presidential guidance and oversight of the nuclear enterprise;
establishing new congressional mechanisms for leadership and oversight of the
enterprise;
replacing NNSA with a new Office of Nuclear Security within DOE, renamed to
the Department of Energy and Nuclear Security, with the Secretary responsible
for the mission; and
building a culture of performance, accountability, and credibility.
NNSA, in its review of the report, supported many of the suggested changes in management and
contracting within NNSA, but it did not support the proposed changes in the name and structure
of the organization or its leadership.
Congress has recently expressed continuing concerns with NNSA’s organization and
management, and has noted its lack of progress in implementing many of the recommendations
from the 2014 report. For example, the Senate version of the FY2019 Defense Authorization Bill
sought to address these issues by clarifying the roles and authorities of the National Nuclear
Security Administration in a way that would provide NNSA with greater authority to act without
oversight from the Department of Energy. The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its report on
the Senate version of the legislation, (S.Rept. 115-262) states that “delays and cost overruns in the
NNSA’s weapons programs and recent disagreements about major programs associated with
weapons activities evince the tensions inherent in the current organizational structure.” Therefore,
according to the committee report, the legislation would “implement a number of
recommendations of the Augustine-Mies panel and other studies” by making “the Administrator
of the NNSA responsible for a number of duties currently assigned to the Secretary of Energy,
clarify the lines of authority at the DOE to emphasize the role of Administrator, and expand the
remit and authority of the Administrator in statute.”123
The conference report on the FY2019 Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 5515) struck the Senate
language from the final bill. However, the conferees did review the long-standing congressional
concerns with NNSA management and highlighted several of the reports that called for change in
NNSA’s organization and management procedures. The report noted that “almost 4 years have
elapsed since the Augustine-Mies Panel made its recommendations, and almost 6 years have
elapsed since the 2013 statement of managers described the nuclear security enterprise as
broken.”
122 Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise. See Hearing before the
Subcommittee on Strategic Forces of the Committee on Armed Services House of Representatives, 113-94; Hearing
Held (March 26, 2014), at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg87857/pdf/CHRG-113hhrg87857.pdf.
123 For more details on this provision, see Matthew Daly, “Defense bill would curb Cabinet control of nuclear agency,”
Military Times, July 23, 2018, https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/07/22/defense-bill-wouldcurb-cabinet-control-of-nuclear-agency/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=
ebb%2023.07.18&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief.
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The conferees then argued that “continued cost overruns on major projects, critical capital
acquisition decisions mired in dispute, ongoing safety and security concerns, and delayed
infrastructure modernization projects indicate that significant progress has not been made.” They
concluded by noting that they expected “appropriate levels of engagement by the Secretary of
Energy, the Deputy Secretary of Energy, and the Administrator for Nuclear Security with the
committees of jurisdiction on priority atomic energy defense programs to ensure that the NNSA
meets the military requirements set by the Department of Defense while making efficient and
responsible use of taxpayer dollars.”124
Infrastructure Recapitalization
As mentioned earlier, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review noted that “the U.S. nuclear weapons
infrastructure has suffered the effects of aging and underfunding” over the past several decades.
NNSA’s administrators have testified to Congress about the backlog in deferred maintenance, and
about the need to invest promptly to replace aging facilities so that the United States can maintain
a “safe, secure, and effective” nuclear arsenal. There is little question that Congress, at this point,
understands and generally supports the need for attention to this problem, but questions remain
about whether NNSA has placed a high enough priority on this effort in its budget proposals and
program management.
NNSA’s recapitalization projects are funded through its budget for Infrastructure and Operations
(I&O). The budget for this activity has shown steady growth over the past few years, with
Congress often adding funds above the budget request. For example, NNSA requested nearly a
20% increase in funding for I&O funding between FY2016 and FY2017, and Congress further
increased this amount by $86.4 million. NNSA did not request an increase in I&O funding for
FY2018, but Congress provided $3,117.8 million in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018
(P.L. 115-141), an increase of more than 10% and more than triple the increase from FY2016 to
FY2017. NNSA requested $3,002.7 million for this program area in FY2019 and Congress
approved $3087.9 million. The House report (H.Rept. 115-697) had specifically raised concerns
that NNSA was “undercutting the investments needed to address the entirety of its aging
infrastructure problems and to build a nuclear weapons workforce that possesses the skills and
knowledge needed to design, develop, test, and manufacture warheads” to “pay for the projected
costs of its major nuclear modernization programs.”
NNSA requested $3,208.4 million for Infrastructure and Operations in its FY2020 budget.
Although the Senate increased this request, the House had reduced it to $2990.3 million.
Congress, in the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 (P.L. 116-94), provided $3,151.4
million.
Within the I&O budget, funding for recapitalization, the program that NNSA claims is key to
arresting the declining state of NNSA infrastructure, has shown mixed results. NNSA requested
$667.3 million for recapitalization in FY2017, an increase of almost 90% over the appropriated
level of $352.5 million in FY2016. In the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017, Congress
provided $743.1 million, but NNSA requested only $427.3 million in FY2018. Budget documents
note that this reduction reflected the completion of the work at the Bannister Federal Complex in
Kansas City. Congress, however, provided $612.6 million for this program area, noting it had
included “funds above the budget request to address the NNSA’s high-risk excess facilities and
deferred maintenance.” NNSA requested $540.7 million in FY2019. The House recommended
124 H.Rept. 115-874, John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, Conference Report to
Accompany H.R. 5515.
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$612.6 million, to restore funding to the FY2018 level, but the Senate reduced the request to $425
million. In its Conference Report, Congress approved $559 million.
NNSA requested $583 million for Recapitalization in its FY2020 budget. The House Energy and
Water Development Appropriations Committee (H.Rept. 116-83) recommended $556.7 million.
The Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Committee (S. 2470, S.Rept. 116102) approved $600 million. Congress provided $583 million in the Further Consolidated
Appropriations Act, 2020 (P.L. 116-94).
Table 2. NNSA Funding for Infrastructure and Operations
Millions of Dollars
FY2016
FY2017
FY2018
FY2019
FY2020
Budget
Requesta
$2,126.2
$2,722
$2,808
$3,003
$3,208.4
Enacted
$2,279
$2,808
$3,118
$3087.9
$2990.3 (House)
$3319.4 (Senate)
$3151.4
(Conference)
Budget
Request
$257.7
$667.3
$427.3
$540.7
$583
Enacted
$352.5
$743.1
$612.6
$559
$556.7 (House)
$600 (Senate)
$583
(Conference)
Infrastructure
and Operations
(I&O)
Recapitalization
(within I&O)
Sources: NNSA Budget Documents, congressional appropriations reports.
a. In FY2016, Congress combined parts of the Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities budget line with the
Infrastructure and Safety budget line to form I&O. The budget request on this table represents the
equivalent of what would be included in the I&O budget line in future years.
Pit Production
On May 10, 2018, NNSA announced that the Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) had approved its
plan to meet the requirement of producing a minimum of 80 plutonium pits per year by
repurposing “the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South
Carolina to produce plutonium pits while also maximizing pit production activities at Los Alamos
National Laboratory in New Mexico.” According to NNSA, this alternative would provide
capacity for “at least 50 pits per year produced at Savannah River and at least 30 pits per year at
Los Alamos.” NNSA claimed that this approach “is the best way to manage the cost, schedule,
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and risk of such a vital undertaking” and “represents a resilient and responsive option to meet
Department of Defense (DOD) requirements.”125
The United States has sought to establish a significant and reliable pit production capability in the
years since the Rocky Flats plant ceased plutonium operations. In 2014, CRS found many
projects had been proposed over the years, but none had been successfully completed. Moreover,
key parameters, such as cost, schedule, proposed facility site, and capacity, had changed from one
proposal to the next.126
Currently, the United States has the capacity to produce small numbers of pits in the PF-4
building at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The facilities needed to support this effort at Los
Alamos are aging, with one particular building, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Facility
(CMR), dating from the early 1950s. The facilities at Los Alamos have been unable to produce
anywhere near the requisite 15-30 pits per year, and it ceased operations entirely in 2013,
following a safety lapse. It has slowly begun to restore its production capability, producing one
demonstration pit in recent years.
The Obama Administration proposed a plan to replace the aging CMR with a new Chemistry and
Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility (CMRR) to expand the capacity for pit production at
Los Alamos to 30-50 pits per year. However, escalating cost estimates and budget reductions led
first to a delay and then to the cancellation of the CMRR. Instead, NNSA planned to expand
capacity at Los Alamos by constructing smaller buildings, known as modules, both to control
costs and to expand the facilities in a timely manner. This plan remains in place, but it has been
joined by a plan to repurpose the MFFF facility at Savannah River to expand capacity from 30-50
pits per year to a minimum of 80 pits per year.
As Congress reviews the Administration’s plan for pit production, it may address a number of
questions, including
the expected total cost of the plan, along with the relative cost of repurposing
MFFF for pit production as compared with the construction of new modules at
Los Alamos;
the rationale for ramping up pit production by 2030, when many experts argue
that existing pits could remain effective for more than 80 years; and
whether the plan will, as NNSA claims, improve “the resiliency, flexibility, and
redundancy of our Nuclear Security Enterprise by not relying on a single
production site.”127
Congress may also address the question of why the United States needs to produce a minimum of
80 pits per year. DOD and the NNSA argue that the United States will need new pits to support
some warhead life extension programs (LEPs) and to replace pits in weapons as they age.
125 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Joint Statement from Ellen M. Lord and Lisa
E. Gordon-Hagerty on Recapitalization of Plutonium Pit Production, Washington, DC, May 10, 2018,
https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/joint-statement-ellen-m-lord-and-lisa-e-gordon-hagerty-recapitalizationplutonium-pit.
126 CRS Report R43406, U.S. Nuclear Weapon “Pit” Production Options for Congress, by Jonathan E. Medalia, p. 18
(available to congressional clients upon request from the author of this report).
127 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Joint Statement from Ellen M. Lord and Lisa
E. Gordon-Hagerty on Recapitalization of Plutonium Pit Production, Washington, DC, May 10, 2018,
https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/joint-statement-ellen-m-lord-and-lisa-e-gordon-hagerty-recapitalizationplutonium-pit.
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However, the pit production capacity that NNSA has considered necessary has varied greatly.
During the George W. Bush Administration, NNSA sought to construct a modern pit facility with
the capacity to produce from 125 to 450 pits per year in single-shift operation.128 In 2005,
Congress rejected the Modern Pit Facility, viewing this capacity as excessive.
During the Obama Administration, the Nuclear Weapons Council determined that, to meet the
likely demands of future LEPs, NNSA would need a pit production capacity of 50 to 80 pits per
year. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2013, Andrew Weber,
then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs,
stated that “there is no daylight between the Department of Energy and the Department of
Defense on the need for both a near-term pit production capacity of 10 to 20 and then 30 by 2021,
and then in the longer term for a pit production capacity of 50 to 80 per year.”129 But, as noted
above, the Nuclear Weapons Council has now certified that NNSA needs to produce a minimum
of 80 pits per year by 2030. Neither the NPR nor NNSA’s recent announcement indicates why the
goal has increased.
Congress sought some of the information needed to answer these questions in the National
Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (H.R. 5515). In Section 3120, Congress mandated
that DOD seek an independent assessment of NNSA’s preferred plutonium strategy from a
federally funded research and development center (FFRDC). It also mandated that NNSA submit
a report to Congress that detailed a plan to produce 30 pits per year at Los Alamos National
Laboratory by 2026 and a detailed plan for designing and carrying out production of plutonium
pits 31-80 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in case the repurposed MFFF facility at Savannah
River was not operational and producing pits by 2030.
The legislation also mandated that the Chairman of the Nuclear Weapons Council and the NNSA
Administrator brief Congress on the implementation plan for the plutonium strategy, and that the
Chairman certify, annually through 2025, that the plutonium pit production plan is on track to
meet the military requirement of 80 pits per year by 2030. The final version of the bill did not,
however, include two reporting requirements that were included in the House version of the bill.
One requested a report on the rationale for the Nuclear Posture Review’s change in the annual
plutonium pit requirement from 30-50 pits to “at least 80 pits” from a previous requirement of
“50-80 pits,” and the second requested a study on the potential to reuse existing plutonium pits.
Tritium Production
Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, is used to boost the yield (the amount of energy released
upon detonation) of nuclear weapons. Because it has a half-life of 12.4 years and degrades at a
rate of 5.5% per year, the tritium in nuclear weapons must be replenished regularly. As noted
above, the U.S. nuclear weapons program currently uses tritium produced at the TVA Watts Bar
reactor and processed at the SRS. To meet the demand for tritium in the weapons program in the
future, DOE is seeking to add tritium production to a second reactor at Watts Barr.
Long-standing U.S. policy has sought to separate domestic nuclear power plants from the U.S.
nuclear weapons program—this is not only an element of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy but
128 U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, “Site Alternatives: Modem Pit Facility,”
October 2002, p. 2-27.
129 Testimony of Andrew Weber, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense
Programs, in U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Hearing to
Receive Testimony on Nuclear Forces and Policies in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year
2014 and the Future Years Defense Program, April 17, 2013, p. 15.
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also a result of foreign “peaceful-use obligations” that constrain the use of foreign-origin nuclear
materials.130 This issue became a concern when DOE decided to use the Watts Bar reactor to
produce tritium for nuclear weapons, as the reactor also produces electricity for the domestic
market. As a result, the reactor is required to burn U.S.-origin low-enriched uranium.
The United States, however, no longer has the capacity to enrich uranium for use in nuclear
power plants. The last U.S. enrichment facility, a gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah, KY, closed
in 2013. With two reactors operating to produce tritium for nuclear weapons, NNSA expects that
hat existing stocks of U.S.-origin low-enriched uranium will begin to run out in the mid-2020s.
NNSA is currently examining plans to extend the stockpile until around 2030.131 NNSA has not
yet articulated a strategy to acquire the fuel needed to produce tritium in the long term. Options
for acquiring low-enriched uranium could include building a new centrifuge plant inside the
United States, at the possible cost of billions of dollars over more than 10 years; blending down
highly enriched uranium, at the risk of depleting stocks needed to fuel naval nuclear reactors; and
using foreign-origin low-enriched uranium, with potential implications for U.S. nonproliferation
policy.132
130 U.S. Department of Energy, Tritium and Enriched Uranium Management Plan through 2060, Report to Congress,
Washington, DC, October 6, 2015, p. 11, http://fissilematerials.org/library/doe15b.pdf.
131 U.S. Government Accountability Office, NNSA Should Clarify Long-Term Uranium Enrichment Mission Needs and
Improve Technology Cost Estimates, GAO-18-126, February 2018, https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/690143.pdf. See,
also, https://www.tva.gov/Environment/Environmental-Stewardship/Environmental-Reviews/Production-of-Tritium-ina-Commercial-Light-Water-Reactor; https://www.energy.gov/nepa/eis-0161-tritium-supply-and-recycling.
132 Franklin C. Miller and John R. Harvey, “Commentary: The looming Crisis for US Tritium Production,” Defense
News, March 6, 2017, https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/03/06/commentary-the-loomingcrisis-for-us-tritium-production/.
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Appendix A. U.S. Nuclear Stockpile
Figure A-1. U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile: 1945-2014
Source: U.S. State Department, Fact Sheet, April 27, 2015. https://20092017.state.gov/t/isn/npt/statements/241165.htm
Table A-1. Current U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Associated Delivery Systems
Warhead Type
Delivery System
Design Laboratory
Service
W78 reentry vehicle
warhead
Minuteman III ICBM
LANL/SNL
Air Force
W87 reentry vehicle
warhead
Minuteman III ICBM
LLNL/SNL
Air Force
W76-0/1 reentry body
warhead
Trident D-5 SLBM
LANL/SNL
Navy
W88 reentry body
warhead
Trident D-5 SLBM
LANL/SNL
Navy
B61‐3/4/10 Non‐
strategic bomb
F-15, F-16
LANL/SNL
U.S. Air Force
Select NATO Forces
B61-7 strategic bomb
B-52 and B-2 bombers
LANL/SNL
Air Force
B61-11 strategic bomb
B-2 bomber
LANL/SNL
Air Force
B83-1 strategic bomb
B-52 and B-2 bombers
LLNL/SNL
Air Force
W80‐1 Air‐launched
cruise missile warhead
B-52 bomber
LLNL/SNL
Air Force
Source: National Nuclear Security Administration, Fiscal Year 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan,
November 2017, p. 1-3.
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Appendix B. U.S. Nuclear Testing
Table B-1. U.S. Nuclear Weapons Tests: 1945-1992
By Location of Test
Location
U.S.
U.S. and U.K.
1,026
28
Total South Atlantic
3
0
Total Pacific
106
0
Bikini Atoll
23
0
Christmas Island
24
0
Enewetak Atoll
43
0
Johnston Island
12
0
Other
4
0
Other (within U.S.)
13
4
Near Alamagordo, NM
1
0
Amchitka Island, AK
3
0
Near Carlsbad, NM
1
0
Central Nevada
1
0
Near Fallon, NV
1
0
Near Farmington, NM
1
0
Near Parachute, CO
1
0
Near Hattiesburg, MI
2
0
Nevada Test and Training Range
1
4
Near Meeker, CO
1
0
Nevada National Security Site
904
24
Atmospheric
100
0
Underground
804
24
Total
Source: U.S. Department of Energy, NNSA Nevada Field Office, United States Nuclear Tests: July 1945 through
September 1992. DOE/NV-209-Rev 16, September 2015.
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Author Information
Amy F. Woolf
Specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy
James D. Werner
Section Research Manager
Disclaimer
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under the direction of Congress. Information in a CRS Report should not be relied upon for purposes other
than public understanding of information that has been provided by CRS to Members of Congress in
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Congressional Research Service
R45306 · VERSION 5 · UPDATED
35
This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.