NEWS: FY 2005 Nuclear Weapons Initiatives Funding

[John Jacobus <crispy_bird@YAHOO.COM>]

>From another server:

-----------------------------------

FYI

The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science

Policy News Number 154: December 3, 2004



FY 2005 Nuclear Weapons Initiatives Funding



The omnibus appropriations bill that will be sent to

President Bush in coming days does not contain funding

for research on low-yield nuclear weapons and the

"bunker buster" nuclear weapon.  Congress also did not

provide money for site selection for a new facility to

produce plutonium pits, and did not provide money for

enhancing test readiness at the Nevada Test Site.



Selections from the Joint Explanatory Statement

follow.  The entire statement language can be accessed

at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/omni2005/index.htm under

Division C; reference the section entitled "Weapons

Activities" more than mid-way through the document. 

Note that all amounts specified below must be reduced

by the 0.8% across-the-board reduction.



DIRECTED STOCKPILE WORK:



"The conferees do not provide $9,000,000 for advanced

concepts research on new weapons designs, but the same

amount is made available for the Reliable Replacement

Warhead program to improve the reliability, longevity,

and certifiability of existing weapons and their

components. The conference agreement provides

$270,087,000 for DSW Stockpile services.  No funds

have been provided for the Robust Nuclear Earth

Penetrator (RNEP)."



PIT MANUFACTURING:



The Joint Statement on plutonium pits, the device used

to trigger a thermonuclear warhead, set forth the

following conditions:



"For the pit manufacturing and certification campaign,

the conference agreement provides $265,671,000. The

conference agreement provides $132,005,000 for W88 pit

manufacturing and $60,960,000 for

W88 pit certification, the same as the budget request.

Providing the requested level of funding will ensure

that the NNSA maintains its commitment to produce a

certified W88 pit by 2007. The conference agreement

provides $13,500,000 for Pit Manufacturing Capability

and $7,000,000 for Modern Pit Facility. The conferees

agree that funding for Modern Pit Facility cannot be

used to select a construction site in fiscal year

2005."



NEVADA TEST SITE READINESS:



The Bush Administration sought funding to reduce the

current 24-36 months needed to test a nuclear weapon

at the Nevada Test Site.  The House version of the

Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill

rejected this request.  The Senate appropriations

committee never released its own version of the bill. 

While the omnibus bill contains customary funding for

the test site, it does not include the requested money

for enhancing test site readiness.  See

http://www.aip.org/fyi/2004/082.html for an

explanation of the House position.



INERTIAL CONFINEMENT FUSION:



The Statement also covered inertial confinement fusion

ignition and high yield, as well as inertial fusion

technology:



"Inertial Confinement Fusion Ignition and High

Yield.--The conferee agreement includes $541,034,000

for the inertial confinement fusion ignition and high

yield program. This represents a $25,000,000 cut of

the NIF project baseline. An additional $46,000,000 is

provided to support expanded research in non-NIF

related ICF research including petawatt and

high-energy petawatt laser development.

Funding also enables continued development of the

beryllium shell targets currently envisioned for

ignition demonstrations in 2010.

This target, if successful, may enable advancement of

the 2014 date for ignition specified in the budget

request documentation, a date which represents a 4

year slip from the original goal of 2010. Since

demonstration of ignition by 2010 was the rationale

provided for construction of NIF under the current

baseline funding, the conference is extremely

concerned with suggestions of major delay in that date

and requires that effort focus on achieving that goal

on the timescale originally proposed. Until very

recently, the beryllium shell and fill tube design was

not considered viable, but it is now viewed by the

program managers as the best option for regaining the

2010 ignition goal. Significant risks are associated

with this design however, which is why this target

design was not considered earlier in the program. To

estimate the probability of success for this new

target design, the conference mandates that a full

review of NIF progress and the use and promise of this

target be accomplished by an outside panel of experts,

the JASONs, to validate the current NIF construction

baseline and the outlook for ignition with this target

design. As part of this validation, experiments should

be designed and completed on alternative drivers, such

as LLE at the University of Rochester and the Z

machine at Sandia National Laboratories, to increase

confidence in the performance of this target. The

conference further requires that these experiments, as

well as the JASON review, be used to develop a

position paper authored by the NNSA Laboratory and LLE

Directors by June 2005, discussing the promise of this

target design to achieve ignition on the original

schedule of 2010, 4 years ahead of the date specified

in the current Budget. The conference is also aware

that the laser glass used in the Japanese GEKKO

program, which is identical to the optics used in the

NIF project, has significantly degraded in efficiency

over time. The conference requests the JASONs

undertake a study utilizing the Japanese laser optic

operations as a measure to determine if the NIF laser

optics are performing as originally estimated and what

impact this will have on the project, the ability to

achieve ignition by 2010 and the overall lifecycle

costs of replacing the optics more frequently. The

conference provides $5,000,000 for the development of

advanced target fabrication and diagnostic techniques

required to support experiments at Omega, Z machine

and NIF employing advanced materials. Target

fabrication and manufacturing capabilities are

critical in fielding increasingly sophisticated

experiments."



"Inertial Fusion Technology.--The conferees also

include $25,000,000 to continue development of high

average power lasers and supporting science and

technology, the budget request for the Naval Research

Laboratory, and $73,469,000 for the University of

Rochester, an increase of $28,000,000 over the budget

request. The additional funding is provided to the

University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser

Energetics for the OMEGA Extended Performance (EP)

Facility in support of the nation's stockpile

stewardship program. The conference recommendation

includes $9,000,000 to initiate double-shift

operations and assessments and initial development and

testing of Z-pinch inertial fusion energy. The

conference recommendation includes $1,000,000 to the

University of Nevada-Reno for magnetized plasma/laser

interaction studies at the Nevada Terawatt Facility,

using the Zebra pulse power machine and the Leopard

short pulse laser system."



###############

Richard M. Jones

Media and Government Relations Division

The American Institute of Physics

fyi@aip.org    http://www.aip.org/gov

(301) 209-3094

##END##########





=====

+++++++++++++++++++

"That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part."

Thomas Jefferson



-- John

John Jacobus, MS

Certified Health Physicist

e-mail:  crispy_bird@yahoo.com





		

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