ECA Update: June 4, 2013
Published: Tue, 06/04/13
House Armed Services Committee releases FY14 defense authorization bill
ECA House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon released his version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 (H.R. 1960) on June 3. This version of the bill contains all the marks from the various subcommittees.
Regarding NNSA, the summary accompanying the release says, "In response to gross violation of security at America's nuclear facilities, the proposal implements several initiatives to improve security at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), including requiring the NNSA Administrator to annually certify the security of nuclear weapons, materials, and classified information and providing enhanced accountability measures for federal employees that endanger security at the nation's nuclear weapons facilities."
For more information on the DOE/NNSA portion of the bill, see the May 2013 edition of the ECA Bulletin here. The story, "House Maintains Critical Focus on NNSA Operations in Draft FY 2014 National Defense Authorization Act" is on page 7.
The Chairman's Mark of the bill is available here.
The full House Armed Services Committee will mark up the bill on June 5 at 10:00 AM (EST). A webcast will be available here.
House panel to mark up defense authorization bill
Jeremy Herb, The Hill June 3, 2013 The House Armed Services Committee is gearing up for its longest week of the year as it holds the marathon markup of the Defense authorization bill.
The sweeping Pentagon policy bill authorizes more than $500 billion in Pentagon spending and covers a wide array of policy. Unlike the Senate Armed Services panel, it is an open markup where the most heated defense issues are debated well into the night.
The hearing begins at 10 a.m. Wednesday and continues until all amendments have been considered, and the bill is passed. It typically concludes sometime around 2 a.m. the following morning. This year, as always, there are a host of contentious issues that will be considered.
The biggest debate revolves around sexual assault and the military, a hot issue after a Pentagon report estimated there were 26,000 assaults last year.
The Armed Services Personnel subcommittee included measures in legislation it approved last month that would bar commanders from being able to overturn guilty verdicts in a post-trial review process.
That change to the military judicial code has been endorsed by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, but some lawmakers want to go further and take the cases outside of the military's chain of command. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) is expected to offer amendments to do so during this week's markup.
The day before the House panel markup, the Senate Armed Services Committee will host the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and all of the service secretaries in a rare joint appearance to testify on the various sexual assault proposals.
The hearing will have 20 witnesses in all -- including 12 top military officials on one panel -- and it will give the military brass an opportunity to weigh in on what they think should be done to curb sexual assaults within the ranks.
The bill with the most at stake is likely Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's (D-N.Y.), which proposes giving the decision to prosecute major criminal cases like sexual assault to military prosecutors and not commanders.
Gillibrand has made a major push for her legislation, with some support on both sides of the aisle, but Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and other senior lawmakers on the committee haven't signed on.
In addition to sexual assault, there are a number of other issues to watch out for as the Defense authorization bill goes through the sausage-making machinery this week.
One of the fiercest surrounds a potential third East Coast missile defense site.
Republicans on the House Armed Services panel have said they will include $250 million to fund the new site, while Democrats argue that it isn't necessary.
There's also surely going to be plenty of talk surrounding sequestration, as the Pentagon's 2014 budget proposal is $52 billion above the caps set by the Budget Control Act.
The bill from the House Armed Services panel, however, is not expected to take the lower Defense budget figures into account, just as the House-passed budget did not.
The busy week for the committee begins Monday morning, when it will release the chairman's mark of the authorization legislation. That bill from Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) will serve as the jumping off point for the slew of proposed amendments that will follow two days later.
Alexander said he's 'pretty well had it' with cost-growing DOE projects Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground May 30, 2013 Before Sen. Lamar Alexander's speech Wednesday at the Tennessee Valley Corridor Summit, I asked him about the Uranium Processing Facility and reports that it's on the verge of going over the top end of its cost range (currently set at $4.2 billion to $6.5 billion).
I asked the senator, who's been a big supporter of UPF, if there was a price tag that is too high to support. Here's what he said:
"Well, we'll have to decide that. One thing I want to make sure is we don't start constructing the facility until we have a design. And then I want it to be more like the big Spallation Neuron Source which we built a few years ago that (now ORNL Director) Thom Mason was in charge of. Once we knew the design and we knew the cost, even though the number was big ($1.4 billion), they stayed on time and on budget. I've pretty well had it with these big Energy Department projects that start out costing a billion dollars and end up costing $6 billion. We can't afford that. And we can use the money much more wisely, either to reduce the debt or to pay for energy research."
Is there a price tag that is simply too high?
"Well, I'm not going to say that. This is an essential building. As long as you're going to have a nuclear weapons defense system, you have to have a uranium facility to process what we use in our weapons. We have to have that. But we don't have to spend an extra billion dollars on it when we have a big debt and we could use the money better for energy research or for education scholarships or for other needs."
Agencies should plan for up to 10% cut in FY15, OMB says Sean Reilly, Federal Times May 30, 2013 Agencies' fiscal 2015 budget requests should be 5 percent below the amounts President Obama outlined for them in April, Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Burwell said in instructions released Wednesday.
And to give the White House more budget-cutting options, agencies should also lay out additional reductions to bring discretionary funding totals to 10 percent below what Obama set for 2015 in his fiscal 2014 budget plan, Burwell said in the guidance posted on OMB's website.
The guidance is similar to what OMB issued last year; it is noteworthy for its position that agencies should again ignore the possibility of another sequester. Obama's 2014 budget request includes "a balanced approach with more than enough deficit reduction to cancel sequestration," Burwell said.
For the first time, however, OMB orders agencies to add a separate section spelling out ways to reduce program fragmentation, duplication and overlap. Those recommendations should address Government Accountability Office suggestions in the same area, Burwell said.
Agencies are also supposed to couple updated strategic plans with their 2015 budget submissions that provide "an ambitious yet realistic expectation of the impact achievable as a result of proposed budget policy," she said.
Draft strategic goals and objectives, along with agency priority goal areas, are due to OMB by Monday. Fiscal 2015 budget submissions are likely due in the fall.
Layoff notices coming for MOX workers Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle June 3, 2013 Employees for Savannah River Site's beleaguered mixed oxide facility could begin receiving layoff notices this week because of federal budget cuts and a possible change in direction for the government's plutonium disposition project.
In an e-mail to workers, Shaw Areva MOX Services President Kelly Trice said deep cuts in President Obama's fiscal year 2014 budget request will reduce funding for the MOX plant and require personnel reductions by the end of the fiscal year.
The need for layoffs, he said, will trigger a federal act requiring a 60-day notice for plant closings or mass layoffs.
"The first notices to employees will occur by the end of this week and will follow over the next few months as needed to address the budget shortfall," Trice's e-mail said.
Trice did not disclose how many of the project's 2,100 workers might be laid off.
The MOX facility, which is about 60 percent complete, is the cornerstone of the National Nuclear Security Administration's plan to dispose of surplus plutonium by blending it into commercial nuclear fuel.
The plant has become increasingly expensive and behind schedule, with construction costs recently revised from $4.9 billion to $7.7 billion. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Energy proposed cutting $132.7 million, or 29.3 percent, from the project's 2014 construction budget, citing rising costs that might have rendered the plant "unaffordable."
In addition to slowing construction, the department also plans to "assess alternatives" to MOX - a sign that critics believe could herald the abandonment of a facility where more than $4 billion has already been spent.
Trice said there are scenarios that could reduce the impact of budget cuts. He said that in the case of a budget standoff in Congress, a resolution to keep the government running would "most likely keep all government spending at current levels, including MOX."
Cleanup of K-25, former nuclear construction site, nearing completion Associated Press May 27, 2013 OAK RIDGE, Tennessee -- Cleanup of a former nuclear construction site is moving into the final phases.
Most of the K-25 building, a mile-long, U-shaped structure that was the world's largest building at the time of its construction during World War II, has already been demolished. All that remains is one section of what was the building's east wing, and workers last week started removing the transite panels from its exterior.
The Knoxville News Sentinel reported (http://bit.ly/13cxJ9A) that more than 2,800 of the transite panels, which contain asbestos, must be removed before demolition can begin on the final section sometime this fall. Each of those panels measures 8 feet by 4 feet.
Bechtel Jacobs Co., UCOR's predecessor as cleanup manager, began the demolition of K-25 in December 2008. All told, more than $1 billion has been spent on the cleanup project that generated massive volumes of radioactive and hazardous waste -- most of which was trucked to a landfill on a $20 million haul road constructed specially for this project.
K-25 was the world's first gaseous diffusion plant, which processed uranium in a gaseous form to separate isotopes and concentrate the fissionable U-235 for use in atomic bombs and fuel in nuclear reactor.
The historic facility was shut down in the early 1960s, because other uranium-enrichment facilities were in operation and the U.S. had a surplus of bomb-grade uranium in storage.
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