Nuclear programs receive money for upgrades.

• Author: Pappalardo, Joe
• Position: UPFRONT

The Energy Department is allocating more money for monitoring and improving the nation's aging supply of nuclear weapons and concurrently is laying a foundation for the construction of new warheads.

Two paramount issues face the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). First, the agency must keep the nuclear arsenal safe and reliable, and, second, it must draft a plan to keep the weapons operational for future decades.

This requires opening new facilities to create more critical parts, developing technology for monitoring the current stockpile and working out a blueprint for the creating of replacement warheads.

"We are gaining a more complete understanding of the stockpile every year," Linton Brooks, NNSA administrator, told a House Armed Services Committee panel. "This is made possible by using ... cutting-edge scientific and engineering tools, as well as extensive laboratory and flight tests."

The United States' nuclear stockpile is drawing down to levels stipulated in the Treaty of Moscow--between 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed strategic warheads. The stockpile of warheads will also be reduced, according to a 2004 report to Congress. The government's new posture is set to be in place by 2012.

While NNSA's 2006 budget request for weapons activities has only risen less than l percent from 2005, some specific areas may receive greater attention. Work directly related to the stockpile has risen 11 percent to $1.4 billion, money that has been dedicated to life extension programs of existing weapons.

The funding increase would modernize three other systems--B61, W76 and W80 nuclear weapons. These projects are to be competed between 2006 and 2009, Brooks said. A rehabilitation program for the W87 "Peacekeeper" was finished in September. Scientists modernize these weapons using hydrodynamic tests, laser studies, flight test diagnostics and complex modeling and simulation in place of actual explosive testing. In the early 1990's the United States instituted a moratorium on such tests.

Ironically, the modeling and simulation work being done to support this effort has decreased nearly 5 percent from 2005's allocated funding. The most recent request for advanced simulations and computing is $660.8 million. Much of this work will build on existing programs--tweaking the physics and radiological material models to reflect new research and better match the systems next in line for rehabilitation, such as the W76 "Poseidon," a...