This afternoon the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee approved the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill.  The Subcommittee received an allocation of $31.625 billion, approximately $57 million below the FY 2011 enacted level, but $986 million above the FY 2012 House enacted level.  The full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the bill tomorrow.  No amendments were offered in Subcommittee but amendments are expected to be offered in Committee tomorrow, although probably not on the NNSA portion of the bill.  You can read the official Subcommittee summary of the bill here.

According to Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) opening statement (the full text of the bill will not be released until tomorrow), the Subcommittee appropriated $11.05 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration, an increase of $528 million (or 5%) above the FY 2011 appropriation and an increase of $451 million above the FY 2012 House enacted level.

Within NNSA, the Subcommittee appropriated $2.383 billion for the Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Account, an increase of $109 million (or 4.7%) above the FY 2011 enacted level and an increase of nearly $300 million over the FY 2012 House enacted level.  The appropriation is $167 million below the President’s FY 2012 request of $2.549 billion.

Sen. Feinstein stated that the Subcommittee’s highest priority within NNSA was to fund nonproliferation and nuclear material security programs in support of the goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years.  While we will have to wait for the release of the bill text tomorrow for confirmation, the additional funding looks like good news for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (the key program in the effort to secure vulnerable nuclear materials), which the House cut by $85 million below the FY 2012 request.

On the weapons side, the Subcommittee appropriated $7.190 billion, an increase of $294 million over the FY 2011 enacted level and an increase of $99 million over the FY 2012 House enacted level.  The appropriation is $440 million less than the President’s FY 2012 request of $7.63 billion.

The future schedule for the bill is unclear.  Most people I talked to at the hearing did not believe the bill would go to the Senate floor, and that final funding levels will be decided in conference between the House and Senate.  It’s also not clear whether an agreement can be reached before the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

Stay tuned for more tomorrow when the final bill text is available.  

Okay, IAEA, we need to talk about your timing.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have a new Safeguards Report on Iran, but… well, I guess if you’re tuned into Nukes of Hazard right now you’re probably not on your way to the beach anyway (or maybe you are?) so here’s what you need to know:

On one hand, the IAEA is “increasingly concerned” about “the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”  

On the other hand, while the report is anything but “evidence of Iran’s transparent and peaceful nuclear activities,” it does show a moderately increased level of cooperation by the country, a level that could be significant if maintained.

The report details a visit by the Deputy Director General for Safeguards to Iran from August 14-19, 2011.  During his visit, the Deputy Director General was allowed access to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant (which was down at the time), the enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow, the IR-40 Reactor and Heavy Water Production Plant (HWPP) at Arak, and the conversion and fuel fabrication facilities at Esfahan.  In addition, Iran provided access to “an installation where research and development (R&D) on advanced centrifuges was taking place,” along with “extensive information” on its current work on advanced centrifuges, which has fallen behind its originally conceived timeframe.

According to the report, Iran estimates that between September 14 and August 20, 2011, approximately 45.7 kg of UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235 was produced.  This would result in a total of approximately 70.8 kg of UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235 having been produced since the process began in February 2010.  

Ultimately, Iran’s decision to continue producing 20%-enriched uranium beyond the needs of the Tehran Research Reactor is increasingly concerning, but before folks tack on to those two new words used by the IAEA, they would be wise to calculate the real time remaining and consider the steps that can still be taken with regard to diplomacy, as well as the considerable messiness of the other option.

The report is due to be discussed by the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors at a meeting September 12-16.

But Bush’s Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) still mark an extraordinary moment in history, the point at which it might be said that the US truly won the Cold War. For decades, the superpowers had been piling warhead upon warhead. As historian Raymond L. Garthoff has noted, Bush’s September speech and Gorbachev’s response were a time when the arms race ran in reverse—downhill. Furthermore, the PNIs showed that ponderous negotiations aiming at a treaty were not the only way to cut nuclear arsenals. Unilateral arms control turned out not to be an oxymoron. And it was perhaps a good example of the deftness with which Bush handled the US response to the USSR’s collapse and Russia’s rebirth as a separate state.

Peter Grier, “When the Nuke Plan Changed”.  Air Force Magazine, September 2011.  Read the whole thing; it’s really an excellent piece on the origins of the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, the 1991 reductions in U.S tactical nuclear weapons order by President George H.W. Bush, which led the Soviet Union to take similar steps, dramatically increasing U.S. security.

Yesterday, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) began construction of a new 45,000 square foot $142 million high explosives facility at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas. The public account (which cites the wrong cost estimate) of the groundbreaking primarily focused on how the new facility, called the High Explosives Pressing Facility (HEPF), will replace old buildings and increase efficiency. In reality, the HEPF is part of a plan to significantly increase the United States’ capacity to produce high explosives for nuclear weapons.

According to NNSA planning documents, the Pantex Plant is in the process of increasing its capacity for manufacturing high explosives for nuclear weapons from 1,000 to 2,500 pounds per year. As part of that plan, the HEPF will almost double the number of explosive hemispheres Pantex produces, from 300 to 500 hemispheres per year (explosive hemispheres are part of a weapon’s Nuclear Explosive Package).

In theory, the HEPF will allow Pantex to produce explosives for up to 250 warheads per year. In practice, this facility will be used to generate explosives to replace those in existing nuclear weapons and for testing purposes. According to the Department of Energy’s Fiscal Year 2012 budget request, “this project [the HEPF] will provide a new high explosive (HE) main charge pressing facility with capability and capacity to meet the needs of changing weapon complexity, projected workload, and the Life Extension Program activities in the future including the W76, W78, and W88 Programs.” The budget also states that current explosives in nuclear weapons could be replaced with Insensitive High Explosives, another possible motivation for building a facility with a greater production capacity.

Why Does NNSA Need to Produce More Explosives For Fewer Weapons?

A couple months ago, I was at an event with an NNSA official who was talking about the nuclear weapons complex. I asked the official why NNSA was building facilities with greater production capacity if the number of U.S. nuclear weapons was decreasing. The official’s answer was that nuclear weapons production facilities were being sized to fit the amount of work being planned, not the number of weapons in the stockpile.

This has always seemed like an odd answer to me.  Shouldn’t there be a relationship between the size of the stockpile and the amount of work needed? Shouldn’t both of those things help to inform the size of the production facilities? The HEPF is a good example of this paradox.

That being said, however, an analysis of current trends cannot help but lead one to assume that it is unlikely that there will be any American nuclear weapons based on European soil ten years hence. That decision cannot be seen in advance as either good or bad; it is just likely. It is time to start thinking about the Alliance’s preferred alternatives.

Jeffrey A. Larsen, “Future Options for NATO Nuclear Policy, August 30.  Larsen is president of Larsen Consulting Group and an adjunct professor at Denver, Northwestern, and Texas A&M universities. He is also a retired Air Force command pilot and the first director of the Air Force Institute for National Security Studies.  He has written extensively on tactical nuclear weapons.

For more information on NATO’s dilemma as it pertains to the future of dual capable aircraft, check out the following useful sources, including a piece by yours truly:

Parting words: Gates and tactical nuclear weapons in Europe (Link)

NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control (Link)

Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Germany: Time for Withdrawal? (Link)