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Energy Secretary Bodman Visits Lawrence Livermore Lab

Posted on: Thursday, 4 August 2005, 18:00 CDT

Aug. 4--LIVERMORE - Federal Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman spent Wednesday at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory -- his first visit to a lab he considers a key component in national energy research.

"What goes on here is central to the mission of our department," Bodman said at a news conference at the start of his first visit to the lab as part of a tour of Department of Energy facilities across the country.

He devoted several hours to the lab's National Ignition Facility, a $3.5 billion superlaser designed to ignite nuclear fusion to mimic an exploding warhead and avoid the need for testing.

Bodman stopped short of supporting NIF's role in maintaining the country's nuclear arsenal, saying that one purpose for his visit was to see for himself, though he said his tendency was to believe lab officials that the laser is critical.

"But I want to verify it. This is a lot of money we're talking about," he said. "I will want to personally understand some of the details of that linkage before I draw my own conclusions."

Funding for NIF, now around 80 percent complete, is in jeopardy after the Senate completely cut construction money for the project. The House included full funding for NIF in its budget, and the two houses will reconcile the difference in conference this fall.

A recent draft report by the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board recommended consolidating nuclear materials such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium currently held at various facilities around the country -- including Lawrence Livermore -- into one location. Though Bodman said he couldn't comment directly on the report until it has undergone a public comment period and been officially released, he said the DOE is constantly reviewing the issue.

"Post-9/11, the entire security strategy for protecting special nuclear materials has had to be reassessed. When you are dealing with people who are apparently prepared to give their own lives and to carry out suicide missions, that changes the calculus that one must use," Bodman said.

He said he is satisfied with the protections already in place at the lab. But if such security is further bolstered, Bodman said he supports the idea of consolidating the nuclear materials.

Bodman said another key reason for his visit to Livermore is the Bush administration's push for a Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which would slowly swap out the current arsenal of aging weapons for newly designed and manufactured warheads easier and less costly to maintain. The DOE currently devotes around a third of its budget -- $8 billion to $9 billion -- to managing the stockpile, according to Bodman.

The challenge of the replacement program will be to have confidence in the reliability of the new weapons, which will have no history of testing, he said. The technology to do this would be developed at Livermore and the other nuclear weapons labs, Los Alamos and Sandia national labs.

Part of that program could involve NIF, and other more sophisticated analytical tools, he said.

Bodman said Livermore and the other DOE labs are very important to the war on terrorism as well. Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff visited Livermore and was briefed on biological and radiological detection technology being developed at the lab.

But beyond weapons and terrorism, work at the lab is important to the nation's scientific prowess, Bodman said, particularly as companies have largely abandoned their long-term research programs in today's corporate climate that demands earning performance.

"This really is the last bastion of support for the physical sciences in America. ... It used to be private industry did work of the sort of approach to what we do here," he said.

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Source: Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.)

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