nuclear-news

Runaway costs of USA’s unnecessary B61 nuclear bomb project

The escalating cost of the B61 LEP adds to NNSA’s abysmal record of underestimating costs of nuclear weapons programs. It follows enormous budget overruns of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California,….

the U.S. should phase out its remaining non-strategic nuclear weapons, delay and redesign the B61 LEP, and focus its resources on maintaining the strategic nuclear weapons and
conventional forces that are actually needed 

B61-12: NNSA’s Gold-Plated Nuclear Bomb Project, FAS Strategic Security Blog, . By Hans M. Kristensen, 26 July 12 Escalating cost estimates for the B61 Life- Extension Program threaten to make the new B61-12 bomb the most expensive ever.

The disclosure during yesterday’s Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing that the cost of the B61 Life Extension Program (LEP) is significantly greater that even the most recent cost overruns calls into question the ability of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to manage the program and should call into question the B61 LEP itself.

If these cost overruns were in the private sector, heads would roll
and the program would probably be canceled.

At the hearing yesterday, Senator Dianne Feinstein revealed that NNSA
recently told her that the $4 billion cost estimate they provided in
the FY2011 Stockpile Stewardship Management Plan was too low and that
they would need $4 billion more to complete the program. Two months
ago I reported that the cost had increased to $6 billion.

NNSA’s new cost estimate is already being challenged, this time by the
Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office, which
only a few days ago increased the estimate by another $2 billion to a
whopping $10 billion.
But get this: the already too high B61 LEP cost estimate does not
include other pricy elements of the B61 modernization program. In
addition to the LEP itself comes a new guided tail kit assembly that
the Air Force is developing to increase the accuracy of the B61. The
cost estimate for that tail kit has recently increased by 50 percent
from $800 million to $1.2 billion……
The escalating costs may eventually make the B61 LEP the most
expensive nuclear weapons program (per warhead unit) in the U.S.
arsenal. Already the projected B61 LEP cost far exceeds the cost of
the W76 LEP, which probably involves three times as many warheads as
will produced by the B61 LEP. As Nick Roth points out, the new $10
billion estimate is equivalent to two-thirds of what NNSA planned to
spend on life extending all the other warhead types in the US arsenal
over the next twenty years!…..
Implications and Recommendations

The escalating cost of the B61 LEP adds to NNSA’s abysmal record of underestimating costs of nuclear weapons programs. It follows enormous budget overruns of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the Chemistry and
Metallurgy Research Replacement – Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at Los
Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and the Uranium Processing
Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge in
Tennessee…..

As mentioned above, if these cost overruns happened in the private
sector, heads would roll and the program would probably be
canceled……
Whatever the best way forward, the U.S. should phase out its remaining
non-strategic nuclear weapons, delay and redesign the B61 LEP, and
focus its resources on maintaining the strategic nuclear weapons and
conventional forces that are actually needed for U.S. and allied
security in the foreseeable future.
http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2012/07/b61-12gold.php

July 28, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war