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Rebranding the nuclear weapons complex won't reform it
They want to rename DOE to "Department of Energy and Nuclear Security",
because nuclear weapons are a major part of DOE's responsibilities.
http://thebulletin.org/rebranding-nuclear-weapons-complex-wont-reform-it7935
Rebranding the nuclear weapons complex won't reform it
Robert Alvarez
01/18/2015
Several years ago, my daughter brought her future husband home for the first time for dinner. He was then a uniformed officer in the Office of Naval Reactors, housed in the Energy Department. I was serving in the Energy Department at that time as well and was more than curious about what this prospective son-in-law did there. Over dessert, in the tradition of Adm. Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, he politely insisted that Naval Reactors runs itself, in de facto isolation from DOE management, as codified by law. Unlike Energy Department management, which he spoke of disparagingly, his main responsibility was to make sure contractors report and fix their mistakes. “If our contractors don’t flog themselves sufficiently," he said, in all seriousness, “we do.”
Although it is also technically under the aegis of the Energy Department, the US nuclear weapons complex has operated for decades on an entirely different philosophy. Called “least interference,” it is a philosophy based on an “undocumented policy of blind faith in its contractors’ performance,” in the words of a 1996 Government Accountability Office report. Despite several attempts at reform, the Energy Department's management of the weapons complex was widely conceded to be an extraordinary and expensive mess.
In late November of last year, with little fanfare, the latest in a long line of advisory panels recommended ways to fix the dysfunctional administration of the nuclear weapons research and production complex, which commands more than 40 percent of the Energy Department’s budget. The Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise calls for elimination of the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Agency, which Congress established within the Energy Department in 1999, and for the nuclear weapons program to be placed under the direct control of a rebranded Energy Department, henceforth to be known as the Department of Energy and Nuclear Security.
Given that the panel was dominated by members with ties to weapons contractors, it comes as no surprise that the panel's report advocates a reduction in federal oversight of contractors that run the complex, in effect doubling-down on the least-interference policy that is at the heart of so many weapons complex problems.
<snip>
Rebranding the nuclear weapons complex won't reform it
Robert Alvarez
01/18/2015
Several years ago, my daughter brought her future husband home for the first time for dinner. He was then a uniformed officer in the Office of Naval Reactors, housed in the Energy Department. I was serving in the Energy Department at that time as well and was more than curious about what this prospective son-in-law did there. Over dessert, in the tradition of Adm. Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, he politely insisted that Naval Reactors runs itself, in de facto isolation from DOE management, as codified by law. Unlike Energy Department management, which he spoke of disparagingly, his main responsibility was to make sure contractors report and fix their mistakes. “If our contractors don’t flog themselves sufficiently," he said, in all seriousness, “we do.”
Although it is also technically under the aegis of the Energy Department, the US nuclear weapons complex has operated for decades on an entirely different philosophy. Called “least interference,” it is a philosophy based on an “undocumented policy of blind faith in its contractors’ performance,” in the words of a 1996 Government Accountability Office report. Despite several attempts at reform, the Energy Department's management of the weapons complex was widely conceded to be an extraordinary and expensive mess.
In late November of last year, with little fanfare, the latest in a long line of advisory panels recommended ways to fix the dysfunctional administration of the nuclear weapons research and production complex, which commands more than 40 percent of the Energy Department’s budget. The Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise calls for elimination of the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Agency, which Congress established within the Energy Department in 1999, and for the nuclear weapons program to be placed under the direct control of a rebranded Energy Department, henceforth to be known as the Department of Energy and Nuclear Security.
Given that the panel was dominated by members with ties to weapons contractors, it comes as no surprise that the panel's report advocates a reduction in federal oversight of contractors that run the complex, in effect doubling-down on the least-interference policy that is at the heart of so many weapons complex problems.
<snip>
