67 Percent of DOE Budget Overlooked During Confirmation Hearing of Steven Chu for DOE Secretary

While it is no surprise that the parochial interests of Senators dominated the questions directed at Steven Chu, Obama's pick for DOE Secretary, at today's confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, it is a surprise that there were virtually no substantive questions about the nuclear weapons complex.

A report released just yesterday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that at least 67 percent of DOE's budget goes to nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs.  This is 14 times what DOE spends on all energy-related research and development, which was the main focus of today's questions from the Committee, whose members wanted to hear about federal jobs and contracts trickling down to their states for wind turbines, coal, nuclear power stations, and biofuels.  The Senators did not ask what actions Chu would take to redirect DOE's $52 billion $15.9 billion for nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs to DOE's other responsibilities: energy-related R&D; general science, space, and technology programming; nuclear security; and nonproliferation efforts.

One big problem is that the Energy and Natural Resources Committee is tasked with Chu's confirmation hearing, even though it does not authorize DOE's nuclear weapons programs--that's the purview of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Confirmation hearings generally provide an important opportunity for oversight, but this hearing offered few clues as to how Chu will handle the enormous questions facing DOE's nuclear weapons complex.

Here are several questions that Chu should be asked:

1. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is located right next to a residential community, and recent security test failures demonstrate that the Lab cannot safely secure its bomb-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU).  While the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has promised to remove the material by the end of 2012, this process can be safely and securely accomplished sooner with strong leadership from the Secretary.  In 2007, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found NNSA's efforts to consolidate special nuclear materials to be sluggish and disorganized.  A past Secretary appointed a departmental task force to ensure that an unsecure site was deinventoried after years of delay.  Would you be willing to appoint a task force to oversee the expeditious removal of Livermore Lab's material?


2. DOE has committed to down-blending 12 metric tons (MT) of HEU, so that this dangerous and expensive-to-secure excess bombmaking material can be put to use as low enriched uranium reactor fuel.  This fuel can be sold or bartered as a valuable asset to DOE and the federal government.  However, these 12 metric tons are only a fraction of the hundreds of metric tons of HEU that DOE has in its stockpile, with no long-term plan for its use or disposition.  For example, 300-400 MT of HEU is being stored in a World War II-era wooden building at the Y-12 National Security Complex.  Will you require an accounting of DOE's HEU stockpile, with hopes of moving more of this dangerous material and generating billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury?


3. For at least a decade, DOE has not implemented internal recommendations to federalize its protective force.  Federalization would improve the security of the weapons sites by fully implementing protective policies from headquarters to the site level and creating a necessary level of standardization.  Right now, the task of protecting U.S. nuclear labs and production facilities lies in the hands of a number of for-profit security contractors.  The not yet publicly released DOE-commissioned Comparative Analysis of Contractor and Federal Protective Forces At Fixed Sites highlights the importance of federalization in eliminating work shortages and ensuring that the guard forces' benefits are in line with the significant risks of their jobs.  Will you make federalization a key part of the new administration's efforts to improve the security of nuclear materials and prevent nuclear terrorism on U.S. soil?


4. Many believe that the entire whistleblower protection function within DOE is fatally flawed.  This creates an environment in which employees who have bravely spoken out about dangerous workplace conditions, flawed security, or other misconduct continue to be marginalized, while needed reforms get ignored.  For example, one government employee who got promoted for his efforts to significantly increase safety at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was then summarily transferred to a do-nothing job in the boondocks, requiring a daily commute of more than four hours.  The majority of cases of inappropriate federal contractor behavior brought by employees to the Office of Hearings and Appeals result in outright dismissals.  How would you restore integrity to the process and integrate independent oversight into the disposition of these cases?  Will you ensure that employees have a guaranteed right to a final review of their Office of Hearings and Appeals' ruling by the Secretary’s office, or will the Office of Hearings and Appeals continue to provide the role in a quasi-surrogate fashion?


5. Studies from DOE Labs and the JASON panel have concluded that the plutonium pits in the U.S. stockpile are viable for up to 100 years.  However, NNSA's Final Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (SPEIS) authorizes the production of up to 20 plutonium pits a year at LANL up until the Nuclear Posture Review in 2009 or later.  In addition to being unnecessary and requiring the construction of costly new facilities, pit production sends the wrong message to the international community about U.S. efforts to drawdown its stockpile.  As an alternative, scientists could be given a finite amount of plutonium to use for perfecting a prototype pit.  This would retain their technical capacity, while not creating more pits.  To prevent the wasteful spending of critical funds and manpower, would you consider directing LANL to utilize the warm standby concept instead of going forward with additional pit production?


6. Both the Inspector General and the GAO have repeatedly recognized problems with DOE's contract administration and oversight of large-scale construction projects.  Yet, Complex Transformation has paved the way for a number of multi-billion large-scale and unnecessary new construction projects, namely the Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12 National Security Complex, and tje Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at LANL.  Will you freeze both projects until there is a serious national defense rationale for these facilities?


7. Some agencies that have sought to tap into the enormous research, infrastructure, and manpower of DOE labs through work-for-others arrangements have been discouraged by DOE's lack of attention to cost and schedule.  In addition, DOE lab overhead rates are not competitive.  What can be done to make DOE's work-for-others arrangements more affordable and accessible to other federal agencies?


8. Many who have extensively worked with or within DOE have concluded that too much of the programmatic weapons work functions as a jobs program.  What is your strategy for redirecting valuable resources to real national security priorities, and challenging the resulting opposition from vested interests?


9. Are you willing to sit down with the Inspector General to talk about its years of unimplemented recommendations to the DOE--such as those to finalize the design of the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility, so that the plutonium can be immobilized and thus require less costly security--and to learn why the recommendations were made and how to best address any problems identified?

There is still time for Chu's answers to these questions to be included in the record.  Also, as the body that authorizes nuclear weapons activities, perhaps the Senate Armed Services Committee should schedule its own hearing with Chu.

-- Ingrid Drake and Peter Stockton

UPDATE: On a related note, POGO will be kicking off the 2009 session of our Congressional Oversight Training Series (COTS) later this month with a seminar on "How the Nomination/Confirmation Process Can Be an Oversight Opportunity".  All congressional staff are invted to attend.

CORRECTION: Although POGO’s main point is accurate--that 2/3 of DOE’s budget is nuclear weapons-related--upon further review of the Carnegie Endowment's report, we realized we misstated DOE’s share of nuclear weapons-related spending.  The correct number is $15.9 billion.  Our press release incorrectly attributed to DOE the total amount spent by several agencies (including DOE) on nuclear weapons and related programs.

Comments

[John Usher]

Why question the DOE nominee about things he has no control over like the budget and how it is spent? Congress assigns the budget for DOE line by line. DOE has essentially no freedom in how the money is allocated.
Why push for more (and more) oversight when excessive, ineffective oversight is a key reason DOE overhead rates are not competitive?
How about some common sense in getting congress to pass a meaningful, considered budget with some specifc measures of success attached?
Let's address these problems at their source and not lay them at the feet of a political appointee.