Annual GAO Report Gives Civilian Nuke Agency Credit for Improved Contractor Oversight

摘要

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has improved oversight of contracts and operations since last year, but the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency could stand to do more, the Government Accountability Office said this week in its annual update on high-dollar, “high-risk” issues. The NNSA “has continued to show leadership commitment to improving contract and project management,” the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) said in the latest High Risk Series report. Key for the NNSA going forward is ensuring that the integrated schedule in development for producing pits — the fissile, plutonium triggers of thermonuclear weapons — complies with best practices, providing better schedule estimates and enacting management controls and coordination of programs and activities. The NNSA is on the hook by federal law to make 80 pits a year by 2030 using planned facilities at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The pits will initially be for W87-1 warheads intended for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent: the replacement for the Minuteman III silobased intercontinental ballistic missile.