President Obama to Nominate Klotz as Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and NNSA Administrator
Published: Mon, 08/05/13
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President Obama to Nominate Klotz as Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and NNSA Administrator
The White House
August 1, 2013
The White House
August 1, 2013
On Thursday, August 1, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Lieutenant General Frank G. Klotz, USAF (Ret) as Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and Administrator for Nuclear Security of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The President also intends to nominate Steven Croley as General Counsel for the Department of Energy.
Klotz Background: Warren Mishap No Bar To START
Colin Clark, DoD Buzz
November 9, 2010
"My sense is that the START Treaty ought to be ratified and ought to be ratified as soon as possible." Those are the words of one of America's most experienced and respected nuclear arms experts, Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, who also happens to be the man in charge of protecting, arming and delivering the Air Force's share of nuclear weapons.
Klotz, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command and who was director for nuclear policy and arms control for two years at the National Security Council, put his considerable reputation on the line as he addressed calls by conservatives to kill the treaty. Some of them argue that the Warren Air Force base mishap, which left crews unaware of the status of 50 missiles for 46 minutes and triggered the deployment of nuclear missile security forces, marks "one of the most serious and sizable ruptures in nuclear command and control in history."
Those words appear in a Heritage Foundation email sent out today. Here is how Heritage described the incident: "On October 24, 2010, at the Warren Air Force base in Wyoming, the United States Air Force lost communication with a sizeable portion of America's nuclear deterrent: a squadron of nuclear-armed 50 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)."
Here is how Klotz described it. He said the missile crews "...temporarily lost the ability to monitor the status of 50 missiles..." The problem was caused by an "equipment malfunction in one of the silos." Once the crews had gone through their checklist and isolated the problem they were able to fix it. Klotz told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast today that this is not the first time such incidents had occurred. "I think it has absolutely no link at all to the START Treaty," he said. Two "similar events" took place in 1998, he added. Senior Air Force leaders have been at pains to make clear that the US retained the ability to launch the missiles and never lost command and control between the silos and the national command authority.
GOP Sens. Jon Kyl and John Barrosso have argued the nuclear enterprise is underfunded and believe the new START Treaty could worsen the situation. "The recent failure reinforces the need for the United States to maintain 450 ICBMs to ensure a strong nuclear defense," Barrasso has said. "Before ratifying this treaty, the Senate must ensure we modernize our own nuclear weapons and strengthen our national security."
A congressional aide who follows nuclear issues closely said this after seeing Klotz' comments: "The significance of the FE Warren event is that the reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent needs to be taken into account when determining how many nuclear delivery systems are necessary to carry out U.S. deterrence requirements. At lower numbers of operationally deployed nuclear weapons, the implications of what happened at FE Warren become more important to consider. I'm not suggesting that our deterrent capability was weakened by what occurred, just that it should give one pause when considering lower force levels -- particularly after New START, which we know is the intention of this administration."
Kyl has never wavered in his opposition to the new START Treaty. Klotz's views, no matter how authoritative, are likely to be dismissed since the administration supports the new treaty and Klotz is a serving officer who is expected to support the administration's position, Kyl and his are likely to argue. But Klotz stepped out this morning, putting his personal experience and judgment on the line and he deserves to be taken seriously.
August Recess Leaves Unfinished Business
NPR
August 3, 2013
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Scott Simon is away. I'm Linda Wertheimer. Members of Congress are back in their home districts this morning at the start of a five-week summer recess. They left town with more of a whimper than a bang. They leave a whole lot of unfinished business. We're joined now by NPR congressional correspondent, Tamara Keith. Welcome.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Thank you.
WERTHEIMER: Let's start with what the Congress did accomplish. There was student loan legislation. What else?
KEITH: That was it. That was a big thing, and we're expecting a Presidential signature on that sometime soon. Other than that, the Senate confirmed a new ATF director and an ambassador to the U.N.
WERTHEIMER: That's Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
DANIEL ELLSBERG: And Firearms, which had been highly controversial and has taken years to get done, and they've done that. In the House, they passed a lot of message bills in the last week, including a vote just before they left town to partially repeal the President's health care law, known as Obamacare. It was a 40th vote that they've taken to either fully or partially repeal or defund the law.
KEITH: And House Speaker John Boehner says that when they come back, they'll be doing more of that.
WERTHEIMER: Now for what they did not do. This week, the House pulled its transportation spending bill without even voting. And in the Senate, that version of the transportation bill fell on a procedural vote. Where does that leave the budget process?
KEITH: It's been a disaster for many years now and it's not working this year either. There are 12 appropriation bills that in theory have to be passed each year. So far the House has passed four of them. The Senate has passed none. And this is all supposed to happen before September 30th to keep the government funded and open for business.
So they return from recess in September, the House will have just nine working days before a possible government shutdown, yet there's really no pretense that Congress will finish all of these appropriations bills. The more likely outcome is what's called a continuing resolution, sort of a temporary measure to keep things funded for a little while.
WERTHEIMER: Now, the last time they got backed up against the wall like this, they came up with a sequester.
KEITH: The automatic spending cuts that resulted from the last debt ceiling fight, which was two years ago. Well, we're now headed for another debt ceiling fight this fall and the sequester is around and causing some problems on Capitol Hill. I think that this week, the failure of those two transportation bills pointed to a problem with the sequester, which is that folks are having a hard time making these cuts real.
And I think there's a growing belief that they have to do something about the sequester. What is probably going to happen is that that will get wrapped up in the effort to continue to fund the government for the rest of the year and, if I were betting, it would also get wrapped up in the next debt-ceiling fight, which is set to come around November.
WERTHEIMER: Now recess, of course, sounds like it would be fun and games, but members of Congress do actually go back to their districts, so they do have town hall meetings. And in 2009, those meetings marked the rise of the Tea Party and concentrated opposition to the President's health care law. Do you think this recess will be able to gin up any kind of interesting political movement?
KEITH: I think immigration activists are hoping to put pressure on House members to pass some sort of comprehensive immigration reform. The Senate had already done it; the House seems disinterested in doing it. Also, the folks who want to defund Obamacare are hoping to get some momentum behind that push by holding town halls of their own and attending other town halls to really push hard on members to get them to try to threaten the government shutdown if Obamacare isn't defunded.
WERTHEIMER: NPR congressional correspondent, Tamara Keith. Are you going to travel with any of these members of Congress and watch any of this going on?
KEITH: I am. My big plan is to go to Arkansas. There's an exciting senate race shaping up there, and also one of these Obamacare town halls is happening, so I'm hoping to attend that.
WERTHEIMER: Well, thank you very much for joining us today.
KEITH: Thank you.
NNSA Defends B-61 Update Amid Possible New Price Hikes
Global Security Newswire
August 2, 2013
The National Nuclear Security Administration continues to defend a controversial project to modernize the U.S. stockpile of B-61 nuclear gravity bombs, even though further cost increases appear likely as a result of congressionally mandated federal spending cuts.
The most recent NNSA program cost projection anticipates that $8.2 billion could be required for refurbishing and consolidating four different versions of the air-dropped munition, according to a classified report given to Congress in the spring.
The initial production batch is not anticipated to come before March 2020 -- a half-year longer than earlier timelines. The delay is due to fiscal 2013 sequestration reductions, which tacked on roughly $200 million more to the project's overall cost, according to Donald Cook, NNSA deputy administrator for defense programs, who spoke with Inside the Pentagon.
Potential fiscal 2014 sequestration cutbacks could mean even more schedule delays, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in additional program costs, Cook said.
The Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this summer approved spending legislation that would reduce funding for the program by $168 million. If that spending cut passes into law, it would lead to even more lengthening of the project schedule, according to Cook.
"And if we stretch out the program, that means it's going to cost more," the NNSA deputy administrator said.
The B-61 refurbishment program has come under criticism from legislators and arms control proponents, who contend that the semiautonomous Energy Department agency could pursue instead a less-costly overhaul of the gravity bomb.
Cook defended the more expensive and sweeping approach that the agency is taking.
"We were learning that the less expensive ways of approaching this weren't going to work because we had more problems with the bomb," he reportedly said.
Conway threatens to sue feds over Paducah plant
Associated Press
August 2, 2013
PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway threatened Friday to sue the U.S. Department of Energy if its cleanup of a uranium enrichment plant falls behind schedule, keeping up pressure from state leaders to hasten the work and find a new operator for the Cold War-era facility that's being shut down.
Conway also said the department gave its commitment to request an additional $35 million in the next fiscal year for cleanup at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which has supplied enriched uranium to nuclear powers plants.
USEC Inc., which leases the plant from DOE, said in May it planned to cease production and lay off most of the plant's approximately 1,100 workers. The average salary for plant workers, including benefits, is $125,000. The mass layoffs will cause ripple effects throughout the regional economy in far western Kentucky.
State leaders are urging DOE to keep to a strict cleanup schedule and to expedite efforts to find a new operator in hopes of preserving jobs at the plant.
Conway said he warned top DOE officials recently that he is prepared to go to court if the agency falls behind in the cleanup.
"If the federal government does not live up to its legal obligation to clean up the site at Paducah or they don't meet the milestones, I intend ... to take whatever action is necessary -- be it shaming them, arbitrating, filing a lawsuit or whatever to make them live up to their legal and their moral obligation here," he said.
Conway also said he received an "ironclad assurance" from Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman that the Paducah plant will not become a dumping ground for nuclear material from other states if a containment facility is built on site to secure contaminated waste generated at the Kentucky facility.
Currently, DOE has $142 million in the budget for cleanup at the plant, situated 10 miles outside Paducah, Conway said. He said DOE indicated it will seek to raise that to $177 million in the next fiscal year. Conway said it will be a multi-billion-dollar cleanup.
"That is significant money," he said of DOE's additional request. "But it is nowhere near what is going to be necessary to get this job done."
Conway, a Democrat in his second term as attorney general, is considering a run for governor in 2015.
Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear said he discussed the plight of the Paducah plant workers in a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden this week.
"I shared that one of our top priorities is to create a successful, productive and safe future for that facility and its 1,100 employees," Beshear said. Biden was receptive and indicted he would talk to DOE about it, Beshear added.
Some of the state's top political leaders also have met with U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz about the Paducah plant.
U.S. Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, all Kentucky Republicans, also have been pushing DOE on the cleanup and search for a new operator.
McConnell, the Senate's top-ranking Republican, has pressed DOE to ensure that any work to re-enrich depleted uranium material at the plant remains at the Paducah facility. McConnell planned to meet with local officials about the plant during a visit to the area Saturday.
Following a pair of meetings in which McConnell, Paul and Whitfield pressed the case to Moniz, DOE "expedited its plan to review private sector proposals to re-use the facility's material and agreed to favor those planning to keep redevelopment in Paducah," said McConnell spokesman Robert Steurer.
Union leaders also are making the case for the plant with DOE officials.
Jim Key is a vice president of the United Steelworkers Local 550, which represents about 580 USEC workers at the Paducah plant. He said union leaders are pressing DOE for a "decontamination and decommissioning" project to retain the workforce. That work would remove equipment inside processing buildings.
The goal is to provide work until a new operator can be found or new nuclear-related work can be secured, he said.
Another option is to transfer government-owned land at the site that wasn't part of the enrichment work to other federal agencies to bring new manufacturing work, Key said.
The Paducah plant opened in 1952 to develop enriched uranium for military reactors and to produce nuclear weapons. The plant began selling uranium for commercial reactors in the 1960s, and has been operated since the late 1990s by Bethesda, Md.,-based USEC.
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