Between 1997 and 2006, the Y-12 National Security Site in Tennessee, responsible for the manufacturing and redevelopment of complex nuclear warhead components, suffered 21 fires and explosions, several roof leaks, and a ceiling collapse. [1] The circumstances across Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) sites have not improved much since then; in fiscal year 2021, NNSA faced a deferred infrastructure maintenance backlog of $6.1 billion. [2] Decades of strategic and budgetary neglect have left the United States’s nuclear enterprise infrastructure – the complex of national security laboratories, manufacturing plants, and test sites, each tasked with maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile and guaranteeing the effectiveness of the nuclear deterrent – ill-suited for contemporary security challenges. While the United States has recognized the need to prepare for sustained competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and begun to make meaningful preparations for this, its nuclear enterprise infrastructure remains derelict. Without robust infrastructure to enable a flexible and capable nuclear deterrent, the United States risks giving Russia and the PRC an incentive to engage in an arms race in which the United States would be uncompetitive. The United States should therefore overhaul its nuclear enterprise infrastructure to be better prepared for the extant threat environment.
The Threat Environment
The United States’s current nuclear arsenal and enterprise infrastructure are the products of the post-Cold War unipolar moment. Successive presidential administrations deprioritized nuclear weapons, and the United States gradually reduced the size and complexity of its arsenal. The national security establishment simultaneously perceived Russia and the PRC to be somewhat benign actors and shifted its focus to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency missions. Successive presidential administrations relied on arms control frameworks to stabilize the U.S.-Russia nuclear dyad and homeland missile defenses to outpace ballistic missile threats from North Korea and Iran.
The United States’s nuclear arsenal and its nuclear enterprise infrastructure were calibrated for a different threat environment than what it faces today. For the first time in its history, the United States now faces two adversarial nuclear peers. The PRC has rapidly built up its nuclear forces, and the Department of Defense (DOD) estimates that it will field more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030. [3] Meanwhile, Russia has successfully executed a decades-long nuclear modernization effort, which includes tactical nuclear capabilities that Russia could use to threaten nuclear escalation and deter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from entering a regional conflict. [4] There is also growing evidence that the PRC and Russia are collaborating on nuclear matters. For instance, Russia has provided fuel for the PRC’s fast-breeder reactors – reactors that generate fissile plutonium from non-weapons-grade uranium or thorium isotopes – which the PRC may use to produce additional plutonium to sustain its nuclear breakout. [5] Collaboration between Russia and the PRC presents the prospect of near-synchronous acts of opportunistic aggression in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The United States must therefore be capable of addressing both threats simultaneously. Given the atrophied state of the defense industrial base, however, the United States likely could not fight two concurrent great power wars. The prospect of concomitant acts of Russian and Chinese aggression has therefore put the United States at a disadvantage in terms of conventional forces, which could lead it to rely more on its nuclear arsenal for deterrence. [6]
Why Nuclear Enterprise Infrastructure Matters
During the Cold War, the United States’s nuclear enterprise infrastructure was the primary basis for deterrence. At the height of its productive capacity, it produced 1,000 plutonium pits – spheres containing plutonium compressed by explosives in a warhead that cause a chain reaction that then produces a nuclear blast – per year at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado. [7][8] This high rate of production enabled flexibility in the face of a daunting adversary. The strength of nuclear enterprise infrastructure enabled the United States to produce a wide range of nuclear weapons quickly as new challenges arose. In the current threat environment, a robust nuclear enterprise would both enable a flexible approach and disincentivize an arms race.
Productive flexibility is necessary to address the threat from Russia and the PRC because they are each nominally capable of significant nuclear weapons production. Russia’s nuclear production complex can likely process thousands of warheads each year. [9] It may, however, be strained in the near term by competing production priorities to supply munitions for Russia’s war against Ukraine. Meanwhile, the PRC has expanded its warhead production, plutonium production and extraction, uranium enrichment, and tritium production capabilities. [10] The PRC’s productive capacity is somewhat limited in the near-term, however, as the two reprocessing plants needed to extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel will likely not come online until 2025 and 2030, respectively. [11] The current asymmetry in productive capacity also incentivizes Russia and the PRC to engage in an arms race because they have an advantage over the United States in arms production. Alternatively, a robust nuclear enterprise would signal resolve and limit the gains Russia or the PRC could plausibly gain from an arms race. [12]
A Complex Problem
The U.S. military’s strategic deterrence mission relies on both the broader defense industrial base (DIB) and NNSA infrastructure. The DIB supplies nuclear weapons delivery systems, like the future B-21 Raider bombers and the Columbia-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). As I argued in the previous issue of The Hamiltonian, the DIB is atrophied and can neither reliably deliver new capabilities into warfighters’ hands in a timely manner nor produce munitions at the scale necessary to sustain reserves. [13] Indeed, the three major nuclear weapons delivery platform modernization Programs of Record (POR) now face delays. [14] DOE and NNSA manage the United States’s nuclear enterprise infrastructure, which includes weapons labs and national security sites that are responsible for producing plutonium pits and warheads.
The United States’s nuclear enterprise infrastructure is dangerously inadequate. The Congressionally-appointed bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission, which released its final report in late 2023, found that the United States lacks the “production capacity to deliver new nuclear warheads with newly manufactured pits.” [15] To rectify this, NNSA intends to produce 80 plutonium pits annually by 2030. Figure 1 illustrates how the network of DOE/NNSA nuclear enterprise sites contributes to producing and sustaining the nuclear stockpile. DOE/NNSA has planned to split pit production between the PF-4 plutonium fabrication facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, responsible for producing 30 pits per year by 2026, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, responsible for producing 50 pits per year by 2030. [16] In March 2022, however, Admiral Charles Richard, then the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), testified that NNSA would not achieve its 80-pits-per-year objective on time. [17]
Whether DOE/NNSA can manufacture enough pits and warheads is dependent on the modernization and recapitalization of nuclear enterprise infrastructure. NNSA is currently executing at least 18 major modernization and recapitalization projects, many of which bear on the sites in Figure 1. Collectively, these 18 projects are 16 percent over budget and projected to take nine percent longer to complete than the schedule baseline. [18] Even if the current modernization effort was completed on time, however, the Strategic Posture Commission assessed that it would not be sufficient for future deterrence needs. [19] DOE and NNSA therefore now face the challenge of completing the existing modernization POR and preparing to scale up the nuclear enterprise complex in the long-term for sustained great power competition.
The United States is also struggling to produce many of the industrial elements needed to assemble warheads. Many of the production plants have not been adequately maintained or upgraded since the 1990s to keep pace with the national security laboratories. [20] For instance, the
United States can only produce tritium, the hydrogen isotope fused with deuterium to boost the explosive yield of thermonuclear weapons, at the Tennessee Valley Authority Watts Barr nuclear reactor, a civilian nuclear reactor that uses low-enriched uranium (LEU). Tritium is an unstable isotope with a half-life of 12.4 years, so tritium stocks must be replenished frequently. However, the United States may be unable to produce tritium in the near-term because it does not have the facilities to enrich LEU for the Watts Barr reactor, and it cannot import LEU from abroad for Watts Barr because it is used to support the nuclear weapons program. NNSA expects that it will begin to run out of LEU by the mid 2020s, leaving it without the fuel needed to produce tritium. [21] Unfortunately, as of January 2023, NNSA had not developed a comprehensive life cycle cost estimate for the projects it is using to reconstitute the plutonium pit production capability or the various subordinate infrastructure activities needed for tritium, lithium, high explosives, depleted uranium, and microelectronics. [22] Without an assessment of the total cost of reconstituting its plutonium pit production and warhead assembly complex, NNSA is unlikely to succeed in balancing competing priorities and may be unable to deliver modernized warheads in the near term. As Figure 1 shows, the nuclear weapons product flow is complex, and it depends on services provided across the country. If any one of these sites is unable to provide the precursors for warhead assembly or the services needed to guarantee the safety and effectiveness of the warheads, NNSA will not be able to ramp up production or sustain the existing arsenal.
Complicating matters further, DOD and DOE/NNSA must also synchronize their procurement of delivery platforms and warheads because both are needed for a weapon to be deployable. If, for instance, the next-generation Sentinelintercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) platform was delivered before the Future Strategic Land-based Warhead, it could not be fielded upon delivery. The Nuclear Weapons Council is responsible for ensuring synchronization between DOD and DOE/NNSA, but supply chain issues and unpredictable authorization and appropriations processes can interfere with planning. DOD is, at present, undertaking six major modernization programs simultaneously: the Sentinel ICBM, the Columbia-class SSBN, the Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile, the B-21 Raider, the Long-Range Standoff cruise missile, and the F-35A Dual Capable Aircraft. [23] DOE/NNSA must be able to deliver new warheads for each of these POR while also sustaining legacy capabilities to ensure that they remain viable until new systems can be fielded. Effective synchronization of these delivery schedules by the Nuclear Weapons Council, however, is circumscribed by the Congressional authorizations and appropriations processes. Unfortunately, DOD and DOE/NNSA appropriations are managed by different Appropriations Subcommittees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, which can complicate synchronization upstream of the Nuclear Weapons Council’s purview. [24] Effective synchronization is another important step in ensuring that capabilities are delivered in a timely manner.
Addressing the inadequacy of extant DOE/NNSA infrastructure and the modernization POR will be challenging. The White House and National Security Council should surge resources to supplement nuclear enterprise infrastructure modernization and recapitalization efforts. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm could, for example, use their Defense Production Act (DPA) Title I authorities to require nuclear enterprise contractors and subcontractors to prioritize nuclear arsenal procurement and sustainment contracts. This authority could be useful for expediting the procurement and installation of equipment and infrastructure at Los Alamos and the Savannah River Site. Moreover, under Title VII of the DPA, Secretary Granholm could establish a National Defense Executive Reserve, which would enable DOE/NNSA to train a cadre of subject-matter experts to oversee infrastructure modernization and recapitalization.
Finding a Long-Term Solution
The United States cannot rely on an approach that delivers new warheads just as legacy systems are retired. DOD, DOE/NNSA, and USSTRATCOM must recognize that both military capabilities and productive capacity are the arbiters of effective competition and deterrence. To that end, the government should undertake comprehensive studies of the Russian and Chinese nuclear production complexes. Such an approach would situate relative nuclear production capabilities within the context of strategic competition between the United States, Russia, and the PRC for DOD and DOE/NNSA planners. This appraisal of competitive dynamics and nuclear productive capabilities could inform planning for successive delivery systems and enterprise infrastructure modernization programs to help the United States retain the upper hand. It could also provide DOD and DOE/NNSA with long-term benchmarks for nuclear enterprise infrastructure expansion. Furthermore, DOD and DOE/NNSA should evaluate their existing planning mechanisms and whether they can efficiently ensure synchronous procurement of delivery systems and warheads. They could consider, for instance, integrating the strategic deterrence POR in DOD’s Future Years Defense Program with NNSA’s Future Years Nuclear Security Program to unify budgetary planning.
To ensure that the United States’s nuclear enterprise infrastructure is adequately resourced for the future deterrence mission, the relevant stakeholders must work effectively and synchronously. Congress, DOD, DOE/NNSA, and USSTRACOM must all coordinate their respective appropriations and planning processes. They should also identify the funding burden associated with modernizing the nuclear enterprise infrastructure and increasing the tempo of future warhead production. The question of funding was largely absent in the Strategic Posture Commission Report, but it is an important factor to consider when planning for a sustained, expensive effort. The emergence of two nuclear peers demands a robust U.S. strategic deterrent underpinned by flexible and capable nuclear enterprise infrastructure. While complex, the problem is not unsolvable. DPA authorities, different procurement methods, and a novel approach to planning and programming are each viable mechanisms to strengthen the United States’s nuclear enterprise infrastructure.
Eli Glickman ’25 served as the President of the AHS chapter at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is majoring in Political Science.
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Notes:
[1] Robert Alvarez, “Y-12: The Poster Child for A Dysfunctional Nuclear Weapons Complex,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 4, 2014, https://thebulletin.org/2014/08/y-12-poster-child-for-a-dysfunctional-nuclear-weapons-complex/.
[2] “Fiscal Year 2023 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan – Biennial Plan Summary: Report to Congress,” United States National Nuclear Security Administration, April 2023, 5-20, https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2023-04/FY23%20SSMP_FINAL.pdf.
[3] “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2023: Annual Report to Congress,” United States Department of Defense, 2023, 103-104, https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/19/2003323409/-1/-1/1/2023-MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA.PDF.
[4] Brad Roberts, et al., “China’s Emergence As a Second Nuclear Peer: Implications for U.S. Deterrence Strategy,” Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Spring 2023, 17, https://cgsr.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/CGSR_Two_Peer_230314.pdf.
[5] Patty-Jane Geller and Jack Kraemer, “Russia Helping China Speed Up Its Nuclear Buildup. U.S. Unprepared to Counter It,” The Heritage Foundation, March 20, 2023, https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/russia-helping-china-speed-its-nuclear-buildup-us-unprepared-counter-it.
[6] Robert Soofer, “Explaining the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review and Why it Matters,” in Keith B. Payne, ed., “Expert Commentary on the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review,” National Institute for Public Policy, March 2023, 122, https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/OP-Vol.-3-No.-3.pdf.
[7] “Plutonium Pit Production,” National Nuclear Security Administration, April 2019, https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/plutonium-pit-production-mission.
[8] Bruce T. Goodwin, “Nuclear Weapons Technology 101 For Policy Wonks,” Center for Global Security at Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, August 2021, 20, https://cgsr.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/CGSR_NW101_Policy_Wonks_11-04-21_WEB_v5.pdf.
[9] Robert P. Ashley, Jr., “Russian and Chinese Nuclear Modernization Trends: Remarks at the Hudson Institute,” United States Defense Intelligence Agency, May 29, 2019, https://www.dia.mil/Articles/Speeches-and-Testimonies/Article/1859890/russian-and-chinese-nuclear-modernization-trends/.
[10] “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2023,” 109-110.
[11] Hui Zhang. “China starts construction of a second 200 MT/year reprocessing plant.” International Panel on Fissile Materials, March 21, 2021, https://fissilematerials.org/blog/2021/03/china_starts_construction.html.
[12] Kimberly Budil, et al., “Toward a More Competitive U.S. Approach,” in Brad Roberts, ed., “Stockpile Stewardship in an Era of Renewed Strategic Competition,” Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, April 2022, 71, https://cgsr.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/CGSR_Occasional_Stockpile-Stewardship-Era-Renewed-Competition.pdf.
[13] Eli Glickman, “Supplying the Arsenal of Democracy,” The Hamiltonian, no. 3, 2023, https://hamiltonian.alexanderhamiltonsociety.org/issue-three/supplying-the-arsenal-of-democracy/.
[14] Madelyn R. Creedon, et al., “America’s Strategic Posture: Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States,” Institute for Defense Analyses, 2023, 44, https://www.ida.org/-/media/feature/publications/a/am/americas-strategic-posture/strategic-posture-commission-report.ashx.
[15] Creedon, et al., “America’s Strategic Posture,” 51.
[16] “Nuclear Matters Handbook Revised [2020],” 53-56.
[17] United States, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, “Testimony on United States Strategic Command and United States Space Command in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2023 and the Future Years Defense Program,” United States Space Command, March 8, 2022, https://www.spacecom.mil/Newsroom/News/Testimony/SASC-Hearing-Transcript/.
[18] “National Nuclear Security Administration: Assessment of Major Projects,” GAO-23-104402, United States Government Accountability Office, August 2023, 13-16, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-104402.pdf.
[19] Creedon, et al., “America’s Strategic Posture,” 51.
[20] Anton Tran, “An American Vital Interest: Preserving the Nuclear Enterprise Supplier Base,” Air War College, February 15, 2012, 5, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD1018608.pdf.
[21] “The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Overview of Department of Energy Sites.” R45306, Congressional Research Service, March 31, 2021, 31-32, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/R45306.pdf.
[22] “Nuclear Weapons: NNSA Does Not Have a Comprehensive Schedule or Cost Estimate for Pit Production Capability,” GAO-23-104661, United States Government Accountability Office, January 2023, 50-51, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-104661.pdf.
[23] Drew Walter, “Sustaining and Strengthening Nuclear Deterrence through the Inflection Point,” in Brad Roberts and William Tobey, eds., “The Inflection Point and the U.S. Nuclear Security Enterprise,” Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, October 2023, 48, https://cgsr.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/CGSR-Inflection-OP-FullBook-10-04-2023-v4-Web.pdf.
[24] “Nuclear Matters Handbook Revised [2020],” Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, 2020, 212, https://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/NMHB2020rev/docs/NMHB2020rev.pdf.
Image: “Victory Day Anniversary Parade dress-rehearsal, Tverskaya Street, Moscow, Russia, May 5, 2008., MBR Topol” by ru:Участник:Digr, retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moscow_Parad_2008_Ballist.jpg. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Chart: (Figure 1), “Nuclear Matters Handbook Revised [2020],” Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, 2020, 53, https://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/NMHB2020rev/docs/NMHB2020rev.pdf.
