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Opening
Statement of Chairman Terry Everett
Hearing on
the Department of Energy's Fiscal Year 2005
Budget Request for Atomic Energy Defense
Activities
The Strategic
Forces Subcommittee meets today to receive
testimony on the Department of Energy’s fiscal
year 2005 budget request for Atomic Energy
Defense Activities. I want to apologize in
advance for these somewhat crowded quarters
today – a HASC schedule change required us to
shift locations.
I welcome
Ambassador Linton Brooks, Administrator of the
National Nuclear Security Administration, and
the Honorable Jesse H. Roberson, Assistant
Secretary for Environmental Management at the
Department of Energy. Ambassador Brooks will
cover the NNSA budget request for fiscal year
2005. The NNSA request is for just over 9
billion dollars and consists of funding for
Weapons Activities, Defense Nuclear
Nonproliferation, Naval Reactors and the
Office of the Administrator. Assistant
Secretary Roberson will provide testimony on
the Department of Energy’s request for defense
environmental management – she will tell us
about the progress the Department is making in
accelerating the schedule and reducing the
cost of clean-up at numerous sites around the
country. The Environmental Management budget
request is for over $7 billion.
We have a lot
of ground to cover today, and I want to allow
each of our members as great an opportunity as
possible to ask questions, so I will be brief.
Likewise, I would ask our witnesses to please
be brief with their prepared remarks – the
entirety of your written testimony will be
entered into the record. Last week, this
subcommittee met in closed session to discuss
issues associated with nuclear weapons
including Advanced Concepts and the Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator. This session, in
contrast, is open under rule 9 of the
Committee. I would ask members for their
cooperation in keeping their line of
questioning unclassified. Questions of a
classified nature should be submitted as
written questions for the record following
appropriate procedures.
Ambassador
Brooks, I know you have challenges – restoring
capabilities within a defense nuclear complex
that was largely built over 50 years ago,
continuing to support certification of the
nuclear stockpile without testing, and
implementing additional security measures to
counter the new Design Basis Threat. While we
understand that the Department of Defense is
in the final stages of completing its
Strategic Capabilities Assessment to review
the future size of the nuclear stockpile, we
can expect nuclear weapons to remain a
cornerstone of our national security posture
for the foreseeable future.
Our
science-based approach to stewardship is
critical to the difficult technical challenge
of verifying the safety and effectiveness of
our nuclear arsenal in the absence of testing.
As the number and variety of weapons in the
stockpile come down, it is more important than
ever to maintain confidence in those weapons
remaining through our science and engineering
campaigns. I look forward to your assessment
of where we are with our stockpile today, and
where we are headed in the future.
Assistant
Secretary Roberson has the monumental task of
cleaning up a Cold War legacy of 114
contaminated sites resulting from more than
half a century of R&D, production, and testing
of nuclear weapons. The magnitude of the
problem is apparent when one considers that
over 40 percent of the funds requested for
atomic energy defense activities – 7.7 billion
dollars – support this undertaking. The
Department’s Environmental Management team has
undertaken a commendable but daunting
challenge to both accelerate site cleanups and
reduce costs.
As recently as
two years ago, the life cycle cost estimate
for cleanup of legacy sites stood at 220
billion dollars, …with work at some of our
most contaminated sites not reaching
completion until 2070. In fiscal year 2003,
the Department embarked on an aggressive
reform effort to refocus emphasis from risk
management to real risk reduction. The current
plan calls for completion of all remediation
efforts by 2035, at a cost savings of more
than 50 billion dollars. I look forward to
hearing of your progress across the complex.
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