Despite White House promises and a signed agreement to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by December 31, 2011, Pentagon Officials, such as Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  have encouraged the Iraqi government to consider allowing a contingency force of roughly 10,000 U.S. troops to remain and train Iraqi security forces.

The Iraqi government would have to make a formal request for U.S. troops to stay past the deadline and President Talabani and Prime Minister Al-Maliki have agreed to begin negotiations.  But the verdict could tear the fragile government apart.  

Both Sunni and Shi’a blocs in the parliament have spoken out against the troop extension and have warned that it could incite further insurgent violence.  Muqtada Al-Sadr, an important Al-Maliki ally and former head of the Mahdi Army- turned politician, wants the U.S. out.  On his website, in Arabic and English, he wrote to U.S. forces, “[G]o back to your families who are waiting for your arrival impatiently, so that you and we, as well, lead a peaceful life together.”  However, if U.S. troops stay, Al-Sadr threatened to reunite his army, which caused much of the insurgent violence up to 2007, and target the “occupier.”

Pentagon officials have advocated  keeping a contingency force in Iraq because they fear that Iraqi security forces will be unable to maintain stability after U.S. withdrawal and will be unable or unwilling to quell what the Pentagon believes is Iran’s growing influence on Iraqi politics and the insurgency.  

By promoting a deadline extension in Iraq, Pentagon officials are ignoring the evidence that the U.S. presence is provoking an insurgency.   U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart Bowen Jr.,Bowen notes that attacks on U.S. troops by Shi’ite and Sunni militias and rocket attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad have increased.  Shi’ite militias state their goal as driving American forces out by the deadline.  Keeping troops in Iraq past 2011 will create a backlash and has the potential to degrade rather than increase security.

Iranian influence in Iraq is also a serious concern for the U.S. because Iran benefits from a weak neighbor.   Still,  as the Center for American Progress’ Ben Armbruster writes, “if countering Iranian influence is now the standard for consideration of the U.S. military staying in Iraq past 2011, then American forces would probably stay in Iraq forever.”   Iran has long involved itself in Iraqi affairs, “ U.S. bellicosity and blunders” in the region, as James Zogby, Director of the Arab American Institute explained, has given Iran new clout in Iraq.  Continued U.S. presence will not stop Iran from trying to realize its national interests; only the Iraqis can minimize that influence.

Even if the Iraqi government makes the risky decision to retain a contingency force, let’s hope that the White House recognizes that it is a strategic error to do so and ends American military involvement in  this war for good.

In a recent interview with the Los Alamos Monitor, Kingston Reif correctly noted that, given the current budget environment and the recently passed debt limit deal, Congress is likely to continue to closely scrutinize the major construction projects within the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).  

In February 2011, the new Republican-led House proposed to cut over $300 million from NNSA’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 request of $7 billion for weapons activities in its version of a year long continuing resolution for FY 2011 (nearly all of this money was restored in the final continuing resolution passed by Congress in April).

On July 13, the House approved the FY 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, which includes a cut of nearly $500 million to the FY 2012 request of $7.63 billion for weapons activities and a reduction of over $150 million to the Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel program (see here for my full analysis of the bill).  Even with a $500 million cut to weapons activities in FY 2012, the Committee’s recommendation is still a three percent increase over the FY 2011 level.  NNSA would still have more than enough money to maintain a safe, secure, and reliable stockpile.

In its report on the bill, the Appropriations Committee stated that “the economic crisis requires that NNSA proceed with its modernization activities in a responsible manner and the Committee is seriously concerned with the recent cost growth reported for construction of the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) and the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) Project.”

NNSA has a long history of poor management and cost overruns, which has made it a fixture on the Government Accountability Office’s “High Risk List”.

This cost growth is actually far worse than previously understood.

In 2010, the DOE examined cost overruns for 15 of its most expensive programs over the past decade. Of the 15 programs, six are managed by NNSA. The charts linked to below contain shocking information from that analysis.

Unsustainable Cost Growth

Chart 1 shows the percentage of cost growth compared to each project’s original cost estimate. In 2010, the total increase for all of these programs from their initial baseline cost estimate was $11 billion. In every case, construction cost $100 million more than the original baseline. Four of the programs, the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF), Mixed Oxide Fuel Plant (MOX), the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), and the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) more than doubled in cost before NNSA signed off on their design. MOX and the UPF are still under construction.

NNSA has not even picked a location for the PDCF.

Click here to see a chart of cost growth in major DOE construction projects.

Since DOE’s analysis was completed, two projects have grown even more expensive: the CMRR, which does not appear in the chart above, and the UPF. The CMRR, which was originally estimated to cost $350 to $500 million, is now estimated to cost up to $5.9 billion, almost a 500% increase in cost.

When it was first proposed in 2005, the UPF was estimated to cost $500 million. As of last year that cost had grown to $6 to $6.5 billion. The most recent reports say that the facility could cost up to $7.5 billion. That is a 700% increase in cost over the past five years.

Tough Choices Ahead

Over the next decade, NNSA is planning to complete construction of the CMRR, UPF, MOX and the PDCF. Considering DOE’s history, costs for all of these programs will continue to grow.

In light of the debt limit deal’s new spending cap for defense programs, Congress should search for budget savings by asking tough questions about the affordability and mission of these large-scale NNSA construction programs. In a time of fiscal constraint, Congress should make the best use of our resources and shouldn’t waste precious tax dollars on questionable programs that are constantly over budget.  

In the near term, the Senate should follow the House’s lead and oppose early construction of the CMRR before design activities for the facility are completed.  

Given the incredible cost growth for construction of the CMRR and UPF, Congress should also require NNSA to assess the impact of building one facility before the other.  The bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States stated in its 2009 final report that if funding couldn’t be found, the CMRR should be built before the Uranium Processing Facility proposed for Oak Ridge, Tenn., instead of concurrently with it.

Congress could also demand greater accountability from NNSA in cases when facilities (such as the UPF and the CMRR) that are not completely designed have increased in cost by more than 100%.  In such cases NNSA should be required to go back to the drawing board and come up with a less expensive plan.

Finally, Congress should continue its close scrutiny of the MOX program. Earlier this year, the House voted to significantly reduce funding for the PDCF facility because NNSA failed to make basic decisions about design and construction. The PDCF is needed to provide feedstock for the MOX facility. Without progress on the PDCF facility, the MOX program is essentially dead in the water.

A young Mark Hatfield, a naval officer who commanded landing craft in some of the bloodiest battles of World War II, entered Hiroshima shortly after the city had been incinerated by an atomic bomb.  As he recalled it:

This experience led to Senator Mark Hatfield’s long opposition to war and to the nuclear arms race. He was a man of conscience, and possessed a sense of right and wrong which overrode party loyalty.

He served five terms from 1967 to 1997, the longest tenured U.S. Senator in Oregon history. Council for a Livable World was proud to support him throughout his Senate career. Indeed, Hatfield represented a brand of Republican moderation that has largely been obliterated in United States politics.

When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, he launched a massive military buildup and abandoned the SALT II nuclear arms treaty.  Senator Mark Hatfield was the only Republican Senator to oppose the enormous Reagan military expansion.

In 1989, he delivered an eloquent speech in which he argued that peace through strength – the watchword of the Reaganites – was a fallacy.  He argued:

Hatfield and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) were the prime sponsors of a Senate resolution endorsing a mutual and verifiable nuclear weapons freeze (Hatfield originated the concept of an arms moratorium in 1979 which became the freeze). While the freeze was never adopted, it mobilized a generation of anti-nuclear weapons activists that helped to limit the Reagan nuclear build up.

Hatfield also led the fight against neutron weapons. In 1984, as chairman of the subcommittee that funded Department of Energy warhead production, he killed the plan to produce 155 mm neutron artillery shells. He was active in the fight against the MX missile, in fact offering the first amendment to kill the new system in 1979 when few were concerned about the issue.

Then there was the fight against the production of deadly new nerve gas weapons requested by President Reagan.  Working with Sen. David Pryor (D-AR) and a bipartisan pair in the House, the two Senators fought the Reagan Administration to a draw for several years. Indeed, there were not one, not two, but three Senate tie votes on a chemical weapons convention that had to be broken each time by then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush. It was the same Bush who as President negotiated and signed the Chemical Weapons Convention banning all production or possession of chemical weapons.

In 1992, Hatfield helped lead the fight that stopped United States nuclear testing. His amendment with Sen. Jim Exon (D-NE) calling for a nine-month U.S. testing moratorium was approved 55 – 40. After President George H.W. Bush signed the legislation, the United States ended nuclear explosive testing.  The moratorium has been in place for nearly 20 years.

Hatfield usually opposed military intervention abroad. Indeed, he was anti-war before he arrived in the U.S. Senate.  At a National Governors Association meeting in 1965, he opposed President Lyndon Johnson’s military build up in Vietnam. At that time, there were few Democrats or Republicans who were willing to speak out. There were only two Governors who opposed a resolution supporting the war; George Romney of Michigan, Mitt Romney’s father, was the other.

One of his first acts in Congress was to join with Senator George McGovern (D-SD) in the McGovern-Hatfield amendments to stop the Vietnam War. He opposed military intervention in Central American and the first Gulf War as well, one of only two Republicans to vote against going to war in the Persian Gulf.

I disagreed with Senator Hatfield on the issue of abortion. He was firmly in the anti-abortion camp.  But I admired what could be described as his pro-life consistency based on firm religious principles: he opposed abortion, he opposed the death penalty and he opposed war. There may not be another Senator who had held this straight line position.

When he first ran for Senate in 1966, his anti-war stance became an issue as his Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Robert Duncan, vigorously supported the war. Duncan argued that the U.S. had to fight the Communists in the buffalo grass of Vietnam rather than the rye grass of Oregon. But Hatfield was supported by the staunchly anti-war Democrat Wayne Morse, and won a narrow 52%-48% victory.

Mark Hatfield was always a model of courtliness and unfailingly gracious with his colleagues and constituents. He was a gentleman in every sense of the word who could work well with colleagues despite their antithetical views. He represented honesty and integrity at their best.

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, who once served as a Hatfield intern, remarked on Hatfield’s death:  “He inspired many to public service, encouraging them to work to do what is right rather than what is convenient or popular.”

On August 4, Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin described what he labeled the top eight foreign policy and national security issues facing Congress that have stalled because of the debt ceiling crisis.  According to Rogin, lawmakers will take up many of these issues when they return to work after the August recess.

“Arms Control” comes in at #4 on Rogin’s list. The Senate’s ratification of the New START treaty was an important achievement, he writes, but the hard-fought battle over the treaty killed “the appetite on Capitol Hill and in the White House for another long battle over an international arms control treaty.”

While one can question this point, especially when Rogin quotes New START treaty opponent Jon Kyl to bolster his case (Kyl was tired of the treaty before it was even negotiated), Rogin might consider some nuclear risk reduction measures that Congress can act on immediately and enjoy bipartisan support.

Indeed, while Washington, DC has been riven between Democratic-Republican open warfare on the debt ceiling, below are three issues on which many in the two parties can unite that may help pave the way for action in the coming months…

Reverse reckless cuts to nuclear terrorism prevention programs

The House-passed Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill (H.R. 2354) reduces the administration’s FY 2012 request for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative by $85 million (or 17%).  This is the key program in the effort to lock down and eliminate dangerous nuclear and radiological materials around the world at an accelerated rate and keep our nation safe from nuclear terrorism.  The cut comes on the heels of a $123 million (or 22%) cut to the Global Threat Reduction Initiative below the FY 2011 request in the final FY 2011 Continuing Resolution.

There is an overwhelming bipartisan consensus that the greatest threat to U.S. national security is the threat of nuclear terrorism.  The Global Threat Reduction Initiative is America’s first line of defense against this threat.  The irresponsible House reductions to this program the last two budget years are difficult to comprehend, since they would set back efforts to counter most serious threat confronting our national security: the threat of nuclear terrorism.

The House cut would have been worse but for an amendment offered by Reps. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) to restore $35 million to the program, which the House adopted on a voice vote.  Republican Energy and Water Subcommittee Chairman Peter Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) backed the amendment.  The Senate should capitalize on their bipartisan leadership and restore full funding to the Global Threat Reduction Initiative when it takes up the Energy and Water bill in September.  

Approve enabling legislation for the 2005 amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) and the 2005 International Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (ISCANT)

Signed in 2005 during the George W. Bush administration, the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material requires parties to protect nuclear facilities and material that is stored and used domestically.  The provisions in the original 1980 convention only required physical protection for nuclear material during international transport.  The amended Convention fills a critical gap in physical protection of nuclear material.

The International Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism establishes an international framework to strengthen cooperation among countries in combating nuclear terrorism and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Convention also provides a legal basis for international cooperation in the investigation, prosecution, and extradition of alleged offenders.

Both treaties were approved with strong bipartisan support in September 2008.  But the U.S. can’t ratify the Conventions until both houses of Congress approve implementing legislation to criminalize certain offenses.

At the April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., the Obama administration pledged to accelerate efforts to complete ratification procedures for the two treaties. The administration submitted draft implementing legislation for consideration to the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees in April 2011.

U.S. ratification of the Conventions will bolster the cooperative international effort to prevent nuclear terrorism.  Congress should approve them as soon as possible.

Insist that civilian nuclear cooperation agreements contain the highest nonproliferation standards

On April 14 the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved H.R. 1280, which would amend the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to require Congressional approval of civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with foreign countries that do not pledge to foreswear the development of uranium enrichment and reprocessing technologies.

(Yes, that word was unanimous, meaning that members of both parties came together in support of the bill.)  

The legislation would also require that a recipient country has signed, ratified, and is fully implementing the Additional Protocol, which grants the International Atomic Energy Agency expanded powers to detect undeclared nuclear material and activities.

Co-sponsored by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Ranking Member Howard Berman (D-CA), the bill does not require that new civilian cooperation requirements contain a prohibition on the development of enrichment and reprocessing capabilities.  Rather, if a new agreement does not contain such a prohibition, a simple majority in both the House and the Senate would be required to approve the agreement.

The Obama administration has joined forces with the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Heritage Foundation in opposing the legislation.  In a July 15 statement, the State Department argued that if the bill were enacted, “the United States would see a significant drop in the number of states willing to conduct nuclear cooperation with our country.”

Reps. Ros-Lehtinen and Berman have said that they are willing to work with the administration and the nuclear industry to address their concerns by refining certain provisions of the bill as it moves through the legislative process.  However, the core feature of the legislation asking states to forswear the development of enrichment and reprocessing technologies will help to strengthen the global norm against the spread of these technologies and U.S. leadership on nonproliferation.

Congress should follow the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s lead and work with the Obama administration to promptly approve H.R. 1280.

I co-authored an op-ed with Dr. Igor Khripunov in the Korea Times titled “Time to Think Nuclear Safety-Security” in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and in the run-up to the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul.

Click here or here or click Read More.

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Published in the Korea Times on August 9, 2011 (Korea Standard Time).

Time to Think Safety-Security

By Igor Khripunov and Duyeon Kim

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster gave terrorists and other malefactors a tip. By targeting nuclear plants, they can wreak havoc comparable to that wrought by an earthquake and tsunami, crippling a great economic and military power.

True, no terrorist attack has ever released radiation from a nuclear facility. That’s no guarantee one never will. But the likely ramifications boggle the mind.

Nuclear safety and nuclear security share the goal of protecting humans and the

environment by assuring that nuclear power plants operate at acceptable risk levels. People driven by malice with access to a nuclear site could stymie this goal. Cutting outside power to the reactor, damaging the site’s emergency diesel generator or otherwise degrading the reactor cooling system could well cause a Fukushima-like meltdown.

A terrorist version of Fukushima is plausible ? with all the human suffering, economic dislocation and national humiliation the March 2011 cataclysm entailed.

Or, as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon put it in April when visiting the site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, “At a time when terrorists and others are seeking nuclear materials and technology, stringent safety systems at nuclear power plants will reinforce efforts to strengthen nuclear security.” Both safety and security must be enhanced at nuclear installations around the world.

That sounds like common sense, but safety and security aren’t the same thing. Security is about defending against deliberate acts. Safety is about responding to equipment malfunctions that may compromise operational effectiveness. Safety workers face no “enemy” unless human beings consciously cause a hardware failure. One effort is interactive, the other is not ? giving rise to very different outlooks on how to manage emergencies.

The challenge is that for safety the guiding principle is transparency and across-the-board involvement, while for security it’s about intelligence gathering and confidentiality, including post-event investigation. If safety professionals are supposed to reach out to the public, their security counterparts are traditionally secretive. However, there are clear areas where the two coincide, and it is this safety-security interface that needs to be strengthened.

Leadership must arrange procedures so that security and safety measures reinforce, rather than handicap, each other.

Should multiple hazards coincide ? say, a natural disaster like Fukushima or a terrorist strike _ plant personnel must respond to each emergency simultaneously. The key lies in coordinating these twin efforts. Separate organizations within the plant staff oversee safety and security. They must appreciate the differences between the two and work toward unity of effort to handle a complex and possibly multi-hazard emergency.

This starts before a disaster ever occurs. Safety and security measures cannot be improvised on the fly during a crisis. They must be built into a plant throughout all phases of its service life, from design and construction to routine operation to decommissioning and dismantlement. Safety and security thus begin at the drawing board, with an assessment of candidate sites for the plant and the design of the installation itself.

Assessing ? and continually reassessing ? risk is crucial throughout the plant’s lifetime. Realistic estimates factor in a wide range of hazards, not to mention combinations of hazards. Confronted with complex disasters, nuclear managers must organize, recruit, train, and lead safety and security personnel in a way that helps the leadership react flexibly and quickly. Instilling the right habits and traits in responders ? the right culture ? is critical.

Fukushima has demonstrated that technical fixes are not enough, though vitally important.

The human factor is the critical factor in endeavors such as nuclear security and safety. This lesson must not be wasted on us.

Yet it could be. Disquietingly, just three months after Fukushima, the European Union conducted “stress tests” to evaluate the safety of European nuclear plants. Brussels did not evaluate security precautions, citing “confidentiality” and opposition from member governments. A June declaration by the International Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged “multiple severe hazards” but, similarly, neglected the security dimension.

If a wakeup call is still necessary, it came from homegrown Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who detonated a powerful bomb in downtown Oslo last month before gunning down over 70 people on a small island. Breivik posted a 1,500-page manifesto on the Internet beforehand, giving detailed instructions about how to use weapons of mass destruction. Included were specific recommendations on how to sabotage nuclear plants.

It is high time to develop a new paradigm of nuclear safety and security that protects life while spreading the blessings of nuclear power.

The special session to be hosted by Secretary-General Ban in September 2011 in New York and the second Nuclear Security Summit in March 2012 in Seoul are the two major international events that can inject the political will needed to implement more effective and integrated safety-security measures.

Unless we learn lessons from past failures, we may soon repeat them on a far larger scale.

Dr. Igor Khripunov is distinguished fellow at the University of Georgia Center for International Trade and Security and Duyeon Kim is deputy director at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation (both in the United States).