Nuclear Watch New Mexico
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 26, 2012
Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.920.7118, jay@nukewatch.org
Watchdog Groups Call for Greater Contractor Accountability and
Resignation of NNSA Administrator
Santa Fe, NM – Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Project on Government Oversight are
calling upon the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to
resign. The final straw is today’s news that a seven year $213 million project to upgrade the
security perimeter at nuclear weapons plutonium facilities at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory (LANL) is facing substantial delays and up to $25 million in cost overruns.
This follows a long litany of NNSA failures and cost overruns under Administrator Tom
D’Agostino’s leadership. Here are some of the major issues for just this year:
• In February NNSA indefinitely delayed the proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research
Replacement-Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos after spending ~$425 million in
design. Estimated costs rose from $660 million in 2004 to up to $6 billion today.
• In July three peace activists (including an 84-year old nun) managed to cut through three
fences and walk by malfunctioning security devices to pour blood on a new facility at the Y-12
Plant near Oak Ridge, TN, that stores up to an estimated 400 tons of highly enriched uranium.
• Also in July, appropriations subcommittee chairwoman Senator Diane Feinstein disclosed
that NNSA’s planned B61 bomb Life Extension Program will cost $10 billion, $4 billion more
than previously reported.
• In September the contractor building NNSA’s MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility announced it
would cost $2 billion more than its earlier $4.8 billion estimate.
• Also in September the DOE Inspector General issued a report indicating that the W76 Life
Extension Program will cost $200-plus million more than previously estimated, and that NNSA
has failed to accomplish even half of the refurbishments scheduled to date.
• By September 30, the end of fiscal year 2012, NNSA failed to achieve the already repeatedly
postponed goal of fusion ignition at the $5 billion National Ignition Facility (originally estimated
at $1 billion).
• NNSA failed to supply reports for five-year budget projections and a Stockpile Stewardship
and Management Plan, both legally required by Congress on the agency’s near-term
programmatic priorities and related costs.
• Early this month NNSA acknowledged that the design of its proposed $6.5 billion Uranium
Processing Facility at Y-12 (originally estimated at $600 million) cannot fit all its intended
equipment. It’s back to the drawing board, despite spending $500 million over three years in
design work. Added to this, NNSA has pledged to Congress that it will not start construction of
the UPF until its design is 90% complete. However, the Government Accountability Office has
reported that much of the new uranium processing technology is still not proven, casting into
doubt when 90% UPF design can ever be completed.
In January 2007 Linton Brooks, the previous NNSA Administrator, was fired for far less serious
delinquencies, the loss of control of classified documents at LANL and the hacking of NNSA
employees’ social security numbers. Those two instances came nowhere close to the gravity of
the recent security breech at Y-12.
According to media reports, as a punitive measure in response to LANL’s security perimeter cost
overruns, NNSA is considering lowering the pending financial award for the limited liability
corporation running the Lab. NNSA bases its financial contractor awards on annual
“Performance Evaluation Reports,” which Nuclear Watch New Mexico had to sue to obtain for
fiscal year 2011. In the past NNSA has been all too prone to rubberstamp these reports, for
example rating security program management as “excellent” and physical security as “good” at
Y-12, which an eighty-four year old nun has thoroughly punctured.
Specifically at LANL, up until 2006 the University of California (UC) was awarded ~$8 million
annually for nonprofit management of the Lab. Since that time, annual management awards for
the for-profit Los Alamos National Security, LLC (composed principally of the Bechtel Corp.
and UC) have risen to $76 million for FY 2011, a 10% increase above the previous year, while
Lab jobs have been slashed by 10%. In addition, overhead on LANL’s annual institutional
budget of ~$2.3 billion continues to run at 50%.
In spite of all of this, NNSA contractors have been pushing hard for less federal oversight.
According to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board the fiscal year 2013 Performance
Evaluation Plan for management and operation of LANL “is radically different than previous
years’ plans in that it is shorter, more subjective, and contains considerably less detail and
specificity.” Sandia Lab openly boasts of how there will be a “more trusting, transparent
government/contractor relationship… with unconstrained measures… promot[ing an] ‘eyes
on/hands-off’ approach to oversight and performance evaluation” by the federal government.
This is a completely wrong direction that Nuclear Watch NM insists must be reversed.
The new Performance Evaluation Reports for fiscal year 2012 are due the first week of this
coming December. Nuclear Watch NM Director Jay Coghlan commented, “We’ll sue again if
denied access to the government’s report card that awards tens of millions of dollars to
inefficient, for-profit management at Los Alamos. When we do get that report we expect to see
the contractor held accountable for poor performance and its profits diminished. Further, we call
on NNSA Administrator Tom D’Agostino to step down given the agency’s chronic failures
across the national nuclear weapons complex. And if he doesn’t do the right thing and resign
then we call upon the in-coming president NOT to reappoint Mr. D’Agostino for more failed
leadership of a dysfunctional agency.”
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The Project on Government Oversight’s press release is available at www.nukewatch.org.
FY 2011 Performance Evaluation Reports are also available at www.nukewatch.org.
The Sandia quotes are available at http://pogoarchives.org/m/nss/sandia-lab-news-20100710.pdf, page 5.
The Safety Board quote is available at
http://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/Board%20Activities/Reports/Site%20Rep%20Weekly%20Report
s/Los%20Alamos%20National%20Laboratory/2012/wr_20120928_65.pdf
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