unique in that there is no sister laboratory that has the same competencies or does the same mission. We do have a small site in California, 1,000 people there, 7,000 at our site in Albuquerque, so it is not exactly a balance of peers. And so what we have done is we have red teams within the New Mexico site as well as an independent red team in California. And as I say in my testimony, things are very spirited and contentious. We believe it is like the Congress. You have got to get the information on the table and debate it. Now, these are very highly classified debates, so I worry about passing around questions of vulnerabilities of our warheads outside of the community that is set up to keep it secure. But there is a very important point of the difference, I can tell you, between Sandia and my two sister labs. When we have a charge made that there is a vulnerability or perhaps a problem posited by one of the red teams, we then figure out a way to test it. And we go out and test it to see if the charge is real or not. My colleagues under the test moratorium cannot do that for the most important functions of their devices, and in my mind that is the strongest reason why you want to keep two nuclear weapon design labs in perpetuity, because there is no other way than to depend on the balance between the two. I said in my testimony, we do something else. We red team our red teams. And it is a group we put together about 4 years ago, selecting the very best of our retirees, and I am sorry to use this term, but I mean it in an honorable way, the real "curmudgeons" within our system who probe and ask the tough questions. We assemble them as a separate red team to look at our process and to judge those minority reports: Were they given the right attention; how did you go about to settle it? It helps me know that we have done a complete job in what we do. Dr. BROWNE. Mr. Chairman, maybe I could clarify a little bit. I don't know if I made myself clear. Let me clarify. I certainly am not opposed to the transparency of our process or the oversight or anything. The only concern really deals with this-what level of detail does everybody else need to do their job? Because if it gets to the point where all I am doing is passing on 25 other assessments and signing my name, I don't think you are getting value out of the judgment that I am trying to put in. I try to integrate information from a lot of different sources when we submit our annual assessment. I was just concerned that perhaps this would be utilized in a way that would deflect us from the purpose of the certification, that is all. Mr. WELDON. I appreciate that. I wanted to clarify for the record that our language did not require the entire red team report but rather-but rather, the recommendations and then the comments of the director in light of those recommendations. Dr. ANASTASIO. Čan I have one more comment? I forgot to mention that you did ask about the red teams. That is something, like Los Alamos, that we at Livermore have also instituted both for the annual certification process, but as well, the W-80 life extension program. We have already constituted the red team internally inside the laboratory that incorporates-a designer for the Los Alamos National Laboratory is the leader of that red team. Mr. WELDON. Thank you. Mr. Taylor. Mr. TAYLOR. I would like to open this up to each of you and I am curious what effect, if any, has President Bush and Putin's nuclear weapons agreement had on your laboratory activities? Second question, follow-up, would be: What are the two major concerns that each of you have regarding your role or your facility's role in the nuclear stewardship program? What are your two major concerns regarding your facility's role in the Stockpile Stewardship Program that you would like to make us aware of and that needs to be addressed? Dr. BROWNE. Why don't I start with the Bush-Putin agreement to reduce the size of those stockpiles. That has not had a significant effect on the business of the laboratory at this point. I think what it does is it heightens our awareness, though, of the importance of the safety and reliability of the weapons that will remain in our stockpile. Obviously the smaller the stockpile, the more reliability you have to have in those fewer weapons. In terms of our day-to-day work, it has not had an effect on our planning because, so far at least, the guidances at this change in the number of weapons systems that were responsible for those that are on alert. The second part, the two major concerns that I would have is this balance question that came up earlier. If we really don't watch the balance in the program, we can fool ourselves by either going, one direction or the other, too far. Too much science, too little manufacturing, too much manufacturing, not enough science, where we don't really know what we are manufacturing. So that is a concern for me is how we achieve that right balance. For me personally, the other major concern is I have an aging facility, an aging laboratory. It was built in the 1950 time period at the beginning of the Cold War, the development of the hydrogen bomb. We are responsible not only for the science and research but also a lot of manufacturing at our site. We talked about plutonium pits. We have beryllium facilities, we have detonator facilities and so on. The facilities I have are in terrible shape, they are aging. John Gordon's facilities initiative is something that has to be sustained at the plants and labs if we are going to succeed. So that is a concern of mine. A lot of times when I read various comments. It basically says the only problem on aging is at the plants. It certainly isn't the plants. But I would tell you, at our site that is one of my biggest concerns. Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, sir. Dr. ROBINSON. Let me try the question of the two biggest worries. I testified in 1999 on the question of ratification of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that our biggest problems lie 15 to 20 years out when the current staff who has designed all the weapons will no longer be in the program. That is an aging that we have no way to turn back. And bringing new people on and trying to be sure what is in their heads is the same as was in the heads of the people who designed the system is a daunting challenge. Now, a few years ago, I was even more pessimistic because I worried whether we could get the Nation's top scientists to come to our laboratories as they did in previous decades, because no one want ed to be the keepers of the doomsday machine, a response we actually got from an applicant. They wanted at a chance to be in a very vigorous career. Now, there is one positive of the tragedy of September 11th, and that is the young generation in college today recalibrated themselves and we are getting applicants, all three of us, like we never did before. The very top people. We hired 550 people in the last year, the highest cumulative grade point average in our history. These are the A-plus students across the board. But we still have a challenge to bring them up in an era without nuclear testing and be sure we can count on them. We say that the role of nuclear testing in the past was not only to test the design but to test the designers, and we have got to find other ways to do that. The second one is a serious problem that has been growing in recent years and I think needs more attention. We discussed, Mr. Thornberry, the need for balance. Let me talk about balance between the attention we pay to the warheads and the attention the Department of Defense pays to the delivery vehicle for those warheads. Their budgets have been slipping and there is a constant fight for funds to do flight testing and other things. And we are now behind in flight testing. And over the decades many of the major problems that we found in warheads and fixed were never seen until we did a flight test. So it is very important that we keep the balance between DOD. It doesn't help for us to assure you with extreme confidence the warheads will go off if it cannot get to its target. Dr. ANASTASIO. Let me agree with John Browne on the question of the treaty between Bush and Putin. Certainly over the five years, that has little impact on the direct activities of at the laboratory. Mr. TAYLOR. Dr. Robinson, you did not mention the treaty, the agreement. Dr. ROBINSON. I am sorry. I think General Gordon's testimony, the written testimony he gave for this hearing, is very solid in saying that the requirements to keep a lower operationally deployed stockpile, the 1,700 to 2,200 weapons and a responsive stockpile, the combination of those two judgments changes our workload very little. We still have to keep eight systems certified, we have to do our work and make sure all of those can work. And, in fact, the maintenance requirements are hardly reduced of those that must be ready within months in the responsive stockpile. Our workload is changed very little by that. Dr. ANASTASIO. I would add to that, if we continue to go down in numbers, as Admiral Byrd said, your confidence in an individual weapon has to start going up. And I believe that we need to continue to think through what certification means and I think we need to refine even further some of the concepts about certification as you go to small numbers. But as far as the workload goes over the next five years, I think that is not a dramatic change with the treaty. As far as the two major concerns, I would have two from a national perspective; then I would like to add one from a laboratory perspective. I think the first, I would say, is we are embarked, over this five or six years now, to take on simultaneously the refurbish ment of three weapons systems and put new pit production into place or trying to recapitalize the complex. We are working on the maintenance backlog at all the sites. We are bringing up new tools and capabilities and we are training new generations of experts to deal with extra new issues that none of us ever looked at before with new tools and new programs. Doing all that simultaneously is a big challenge and it will take a really concerted, strong leadership and partnership amongst all of us at the labs and plants at NNSA to make that happen. But the thing that worries me the most is that if you look back at our history, there is no reason to expect that in our future we won't have a very significant major surprise with an issue in the nuclear physics package for one of our weapons. So will we have the wherewithal at that time when that surprise comes to handle that issue in a timely fashion? And again as we go to smaller numbers, the potential impact of that surprise could go up for the Nation. So I think that is one of my big concerns. For the lab itself, I worry most about-efficiency of operations is a big issue. The burden of all of the processes that we have in place both internally and externally to do work has grown and grown. General Gordon has stated his commitment to try to reduce that. We are doing that same thing inside the laboratory. But those inefficiencies hurt most in our experimental programs, the places where you are building parts, you are building hardware, you are trying to do an experiment. The burden of operations falls most heavily on that. The Stockpile Stewardship Program is still an experimentally based program, just one that doesn't get to use a nuclear test right now. So as we think about bringing on the new generation, it is those opportunities to do experiments in the place that will test out the judgments of our new people. And if we have more and more difficulty getting those experiments done, then there are less and less opportunities to train our people and have confidence in their judgment as they go forward in their careers. Mr. THORNBERRY [presiding]. Mrs. Tauscher. Dr. Browne, it is always good to see you. Dr. Robinson, it is great to see you, too. Thank you both for your leadership. Dr. Anastasio, I always believed that you were the best candidate for the director of Livermore, and you sure don't act like somebody who has never testified before. This is an excellent Dr. ANASTASIO. I am in shock being-I am sorry. Ms. TAUSCHER. Stay in shock, because this is an excellent maiden voyage. Thank you all for being here. Let me just ask you, Dr. Anastasio, I know that we have got Advanced Simulation and Computing Initiative (ASCI) at Livermore, we have got the NIF that is going to be hopefully operational next wear. All of these different powerful simulations, critical, crucial cence that we are doing. You have done, you know, improvements tohydrodynamic testing. There is just a bunch of really unbelievable things that we actually have accrued because we chose not to There has to be an ancillary benefit generally to our country, think that may be hard to quantify. But it seems that that has really been able to bridge us into this area of attracting the right kind of human capital. Clearly the unintended consequence, and a great benefit of the tragedy of September 11th, is that people are able to channel their patriotism and move forward, in that we are able to recruit out of these great American institutions, that have brain-drained the world for 75 years, the best people. Can you just talk briefly, all three of you, starting with Mike, about what the science actually has done besides the obvious? And what we can perhaps hope that it will do in the short term? Is there a metric we can use to kind of make the point? Because I think that while we focus on certification, which is crucial, and while we look at the deterrence, I think that there is another story here that is really about the science that we do at the lab and who we are as Americans. That is very important to tell. I think it actually gives us other things to talk to our colleagues about when we are looking for 218 votes, for folks that you know never liked the weapons program and don't know why we can't go down to zero faster than we are going to, that I think is an important story for the investment we made. Dr. ANASTASIO. Thank you for your comments. Yes, I think the capabilities we have been developing through the stewardship program, as I said, have been crucial to our embarking on the tasks we have before us and our ability to certify in the future. As you said there are also, the computing, the NIF, the DHART, the Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA) that is being developed at Sandia, they are the kinds of tools that are the state-of-the-art. We are able to do world-class science on those tools. An example is the ASCI Alliance Program where we explicitly partner with universities, again recognizing that the labs working in a closed environment is not a model that works under stockpile stewardship very well. We need to draw on the extensive scientific capability around the country and the world. The ASCI Alliance Program is an opportunity to actually partner with them, use the capabilities we are developing in the laboratories, make it available to them in an appropriate way, and help grow new generations of people who will be ready to come in a few years as their academic career evolves to the laboratory. So they are the kind of tools that let us do world-class science, connect ourselves with the outside academic community, draw on their talents and generate a pipeline of outstanding young people who can be the next generation of people at the laboratory. And then, of course, lots of words and publications that get done in the academic world that comes as a part of that. Dr. ROBINSON. Mrs. Tauscher, let me first talk about some of the benefits that I believe are going to be accrued, and they will be accrued all over the country. One you are very familiar with, and that is the enhanced UV lithography which was born because these large computers are ushering in a completely new era of how to design and move to manufacturing. The computers allow us to build a product in the computer to analyze it through its entire life cycle, all the conditions it will face, before you build the first one. And the commercial community was very excited and put up now $280 |