Energy & Water Subcommittee Hearing on the FY05 Budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration: Testimony of Admiral Frank L. Bowman, Director of the Naval Reactors Program, NNSA
United States Senate Committee on Appropriations
STATEMENT OF ADMIRAL FRANK L. BOWMAN, U.S. NAVY DIRECTOR, NAVAL REACTORS U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY BEFORE THE SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE 23 MARCH 2004
Thank you for inviting me to testify today on Naval Reactors' FY05 Department of Energy/ National Nuclear Security Administration budget request in what will be my last of 8 years as Director, Naval Reactors.
Let me also thank you for the faith you continue to demonstrate in the Naval Reactors Program. Through your steadfast support, our nuclear fleet remains deployed around the world today, prosecuting the Global War on Terrorism while protecting our interests and deterring aggression. Nuclear propulsion continues to prove itself essential by providing the flexibility, speed, endurance, and multimission capability required for the United States Navy to meet its global commitments. The nuclear propulsion plants, developed with funding supported by this subcommittee, enable many of the impressive capabilities our nuclear-powered ships possess. Let me begin by discussing the capabilities and accomplishments of the nuclear-powered Fleet-the Program's principal product.
TODAY'S NUCLEAR-POWERED FLEET
Our nuclear fleet includes 10 of our Nation's 12 aircraft carriers, each of them providing 4½ acres of sovereign U.S. territory from which we can rapidly begin and sustain continuous combat operations, without having to negotiate basing rights on-and overflight rights across-foreign soil. Nuclear power enhances the capability of these warships to surge and to sprint where needed and arrive on station ready for round-the-clock power projection and other combat operations. Sustained high-speed capability enables a rapid response to world circumstances, giving the Combatant Commanders the ability to surge these ships from one crisis to the next without dependence on slower fleet tankers.
Our 54 operational attack submarines (SSNs) possess the inherent characteristics of stealth, endurance, mobility, firepower, and multimission flexibility. They provide guaranteed access to the world's oceans and littorals, monitor those who may act counter to our interests, and conduct reconnaissance in preparation for conflict. Our SSNs can covertly monitor an adversary's actions without the risk of political or military escalation-a particularly valuable capability since adversaries understand and can sometimes avoid other methods of reconnaissance. If tensions escalate, these SSNs can provide Tomahawk strikes or deliver special operations forces from their undisclosed locations without warning, inside an adversary's defensive umbrella. Our "high-tech" SSNs make our Navy the envy of other navies throughout the world.
This summer, the Navy will deliver the first-of-the-class USS VIRGINIA to the Fleet, close to the shipyard's schedule that was established over a decade ago. Float-off and christening occurred in August 2003 and the reactor was taken critical for the first time on January 27, 2004. Final construction work is being completed, and shipboard acceptance testing is ongoing. When the reactor went critical for the first time, the actual control rod position was virtually the same as predicted by our analysis over 6 years ago-within 0.2 percent.
The VIRGINIA Class Operational Requirements Document, approved in September 1993, called for the ship to be the first nuclear-powered submarine designed for post-Cold War missions. Specifically, VIRGINIA is built to dominate the littorals without sacrificing undersea dominance in the open ocean. In a single platform, the VIRGINIA class will combine a unique mix of stealth, endurance, agility, and firepower to fulfill vital national security roles, even in areas denied to other U.S. assets. There are nine follow-on VIRGINIA-class submarines under contract, five of which are in the multiyear contract authorized by Congress last year.
The remaining ships in the nuclear fleet include 14 strategic ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), 4 former SSBNs being converted to guided missile/multimission submarines (SSGNs), and one deep submergence vehicle (NR-1). Our 14 TRIDENT ballistic missile submarines are the survivable leg of our strategic deterrent arsenal and therefore provide the cornerstones of our national security at the lowest cost. The 4 TRIDENT submarines now undergoing conversion to SSGNs will exploit the submarine's tremendous mission volume and 22 large interfaces with the sea to deploy futuristic payloads and special operations forces. These multi-mission stealth platforms will provide the combatant commanders with littoral warfare and land-attack capabilities that will be truly transformational. The deep-diving, nuclear-powered research submarine NR-1 provides unique military mission support to the Navy and valuable oceanographic research to the scientific community.
Now I'd like to discuss our work in a little more detail. Naval Reactors' number-one priority has always been and continues to be providing safe, effective, and reliable nuclear propulsion to the men and women who are at sea, defending our national interests. Most of our funding goes to that purpose.
Today, Naval Reactors supports 104 reactor plants (one more than the number of commercial reactors in the United States) in 83 nuclear-powered warships, the NR-1, and four training and test reactor plants. The ships are welcomed in more than 150 ports of call in more than 50 countries. In all, we have operated safely for more than 5,500 reactor years and steamed over 130 million miles.
Naval Reactors' technical support for these ships is more important than ever. Today, the average age of a nuclear-powered warship in our Navy is 18 years, but it will increase to more than 24 by 2012. As these ships age, the technical work necessary to maintain their performance places a greater demand on Naval Reactors' DOE budgets. This challenge is my primary concern. As I said earlier, your support remains vital, and I am confident we will continue to build on our successes.
On 8 March of this year, the Secretary of Energy assigned to Naval Reactors a project to develop, design, deliver, and operationally support a civilian nuclear reactor for space exploration missions under NASA's Project Prometheus. Since this work is exclusive of our core naval nuclear propulsion work and is assigned as a DOE civilian project to NR, NASA will budget for and fund this work throughout the effort. Our initial work will begin this year to establish a working relationship with our new partners at NASA and to define the elements of the reactor design.
FY05 DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY BUDGET REQUEST
Naval Reactors' FY05 DOE budget request is $797.9M, an increase of about 3 percent (after inflation) compared to FY04. One of the major activities enabled by this modest increase is continued development of the Transformational Technology Core. Additionally, this increase supports continuing development of a production-line system for the preparation of dry storage of spent nuclear fuel. This production-line system is needed to meet a court-ordered obligation to move all spent fuel stored in Idaho into dry storage by 2023 and to be among the early shipments of fuel to the national spent fuel repository. Finally, this increase supports ongoing facility upgrades at Program sites.
The majority of the Naval Reactors FY05 DOE budget request funds our work in sustaining 104 operational reactors. This work involves continual testing, analysis, and monitoring of plant and core performance especially as these plants age. The nature of our business demands a careful, measured approach to developing and verifying nuclear technology; designing needed components, systems, and processes; and implementing them in existing and future plant designs. Demanding engineering challenges and long lead times to fabricate the massive, complex components require many years of effort before technological advances can be introduced into the Fleet.
Most of this work is accomplished at Naval Reactors' DOE laboratories. These laboratories have made significant advancements in extending core lifetime, developing robust materials and components, and creating an array of predictive capabilities. These advancements allowed the Navy to extend the service life and intervals between major maintenance periods for nuclear-powered warships to reduce ship offline time for maintenance. Increasing ship availability also increases the Navy's warfighting capabilities and supports the Navy's ability to surge when needed.
For example, a recent Navy decision to delay a major overhaul and refueling of the aircraft carrier, USS CARL VINSON (CVN 70), was made possible in part by our continual monitoring of core performance and subsequent analysis to establish that the ship had sufficient nuclear fuel remaining to safely operate during this extended period. This decision enabled the Navy to fund nearer term priorities without adversely impacting the Fleet.
New plant development work at the Program's DOE laboratories is focused on continuing the reactor design for the CVN-21 aircraft carrier. Design for the CVN-21 nuclear propulsion plant is well underway. CVN-21 is the first new aircraft carrier designed since the 1960's NIMITZ class. The CVN-21 reactor plant will build on technology developed for the three generations of submarines designed since NIMITZ. Compared to the NIMITZ-class propulsion plant, the CVN-21 propulsion plant will provide three times the electrical generation and distribution capacity, and will require about 50 percent fewer Reactor Department personnel. This modern technology will enable increased warfighting capability and operational availability, while lowering life-cycle costs.
Another aspect of DOE laboratories' development work is the Transformational Technology Core (TTC). The TTC is a direct outgrowth of the Program's advanced reactor technology work. The TTC will use new core materials to achieve a significant increase in core energy density (that is, more energy in the core without increasing reactor size, weight, or space). The TTC will be forward-fitted into the VIRGINIA-class submarines, which will be the mainstay of the submarine fleet for future decades, without the need to redesign the ship. The importance of TTC is becoming more evident as we depend on our SSNs more in the current national security environment. The goal is to achieve at least a 30 percent increase in energy.
We are also prudent stewards of the environment. The four prototype reactors at the Naval Reactors Facility (NRF) in Idaho are defueled and in an environmentally benign, safe layup condition; site and reactor plant dismantlement work is planned for future years. The two shutdown prototype reactors at the Kesselring site in New York have been inactivated and defueled, and major dismantlement work was completed in FY03. Other dismantlement work at Kesselring Site is continuing. Dismantlement work and unrestricted radiological release at the Windsor site in Connecticut are complete, and approval from the EPA and the State for chemical release for unrestricted future use and property transfer is expected later this year.
NAVAL REACTORS FY05 DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY BUDGET DETAIL
Naval Reactors' technical budget request is categorized into four areas of technology: Reactor Technology and Analysis; Plant Technology; Materials Development and Verification; and Evaluation and Servicing. This approach supports the integrated and generic nature of our DOE research and development work. The results of Naval Reactors' DOE-funded research, development, and design work in the following technology areas will be incorporated into future ships and retrofitted into existing ships.
. The $232.1M requested for Reactor Technology and Analysis will continue work on the design for the new reactor for CVN-21. These efforts also support a portion of the design of the TTC, a new high-energy core that is a direct outgrowth of the Program's advanced reactor technology work. TTC will support national security demands by providing additional energy for one or a combination of:
o Extended ship life
o More operating hours per operating year
o Higher ship transit speed
o Increased available energy to enable future innovations, such as the ability to recharge off-board undersea and air autonomous vehicles, or any other use for energy yet to be conceived.
The increasing average age of our existing reactor plants, along with future extended service lives and reduced maintenance periods, place a greater emphasis on our work in thermal-hydraulics, structural mechanics, fluid mechanics, and vibration analysis. These factors, along with longer-life cores, mean that for years to come, both the reactor plants and the reactor cores will be operating beyond our previously proven experience base. To counter this, our improved analysis tools and understanding of basic nuclear data will allow us to predict performance more accurately and thereby better ensure safety and reliability throughout the extended life.
. The $155.5M requested for Plant Technology provides funding to develop, test, and analyze components and systems that transfer, convert, control, and measure reactor power in a ship's power plant. Reactor plant performance, reliability, and safety are maintained through a full understanding of component performance and system condition over the life of each ship. The request supports both the goal of enhancing steam generator performance and the goal of reducing lifecycle costs by eliminating the need for expensive inspection and maintenance. In addition, development work for improving VIRGINIA steam generator performance is needed for the plant to exploit the additional energy available from the TTC. Naval Reactors is developing components to address known limitations or to improve reliability of instrumentation and power distribution equipment by replacing obsolete equipment that is increasingly difficult to support. Additional technology development in the areas of chemistry, energy conversion, plant arrangement, and plant components will continue to improve reactor performance and support Fleet operational requirements.
. The $150.8M requested for Materials Development and Verification funds material analyses and testing to provide the high-performance materials necessary to ensure that naval nuclear propulsion plants meet Navy goals for extended warship operation and greater power capability. More explicitly, materials in the reactor core and reactor plant must perform safely and reliably for the extended life of the ship. Testing and analyses are performed on the fuel, poison, and cladding materials to verify acceptable performance, as well as to develop materials with increased corrosion resistance and lifetime capability. Testing and development of reactor plant materials also leads to improvements such as more resilient materials that we are incorporating into our newest designs.
Funds in this category also support a portion of Naval Reactors' work at the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), a specialized materials testing facility operated by the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, Science, and Technology that we use to test reactor core and plant materials specimen. The specimen are subsequently examined at the Expended Core Facility (ECF) at NRF or the Radioactive Materials Laboratory at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory to obtain data used to support both core and plant materials development. This enhanced knowledge of materials performance has been key to technical breakthroughs in extending core life. Although Naval Reactors is not responsible for ATR, it is important to our continued efforts to understand material behavior. ATR is more than 35 years old now, and I understand that the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Science and Technology has identified a need for increased funding to keep it viable for years to come. I support this funding.
. The $172.0M requested for Evaluation and Servicing sustains the operation, maintenance, and servicing of land-based test reactor plants and part of Naval Reactors' share of ATR operations. Reactor core and reactor plant materials, components, and systems in these plants provide important research and development data and experience under actual operating conditions. These data aid in predicting and subsequently preventing problems that could develop in Fleet reactors. With proper maintenance, upgrades, and servicing, the two operating test reactor plants and the ATR will continue to meet testing needs for quite some time.
Evaluation and Servicing funds also support the implementation of a dry spent fuel storage production-line that will allow us to put naval spent fuel currently stored in water pits at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center and at ECF into dry storage. Additionally, these funds support ongoing cleanup of facilities at all Naval Reactors sites to minimize hazards to personnel and reduce potential liabilities due to aging facilities or changing conditions.
PROGRAM INFRASTRUCTURE AND ADMINISTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS
In addition to the budget request for the important technical work discussed above, infrastructure and administrative funding is required for continued support of the Program's operation and infrastructure. Specifically, the FY05 budget request includes:
Facility Operations: $50.8M is requested to maintain and modernize the Program's facilities, including the Bettis and Knolls laboratories and ECF, through Capital Equipment purchases and General Plant Project upgrades.
Construction: $7.2M is requested to refurbish and replace Program facilities. This includes funding for the construction of the ECF Dry Cell project in Idaho, a project that will significantly improve Naval Reactors' ability to process naval spent fuel for dry storage. The requested funding also supports construction of a replacement industrial facility building at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory to consolidate non-irradiated material development fabrication and characterization (i.e., determining material properties) activities, which are currently located in five separate, aging buildings.
Program Direction: $29.5M is requested to fund Naval Reactors' DOE personnel at Headquarters and the Program's field offices, including salaries, benefits, travel, and other expenses. This staff maintains oversight of the Program's extensive day-to-day technical and administrative operations, while continuing to ensure compliance with environmental, safety, and other regulatory requirements-all of which, notwithstanding our excellent record, necessitate substantial effort.
PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENTS, GOALS, AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Naval Reactors has a long history of operating with the highest levels of integrity and operational accountability. The Naval Reactors Program has always been dedicated to continual improvement. We use semiannual reviews of short and long-range plans to adjust and refine work priorities. Work is broken up into thousands of discrete "deliverables," each assigned to an individual responsible for completion of the task on schedule. Monthly financial reports from contractors are used to compare actual performance against projected performance. Additionally, Naval Reactors Headquarters closely oversees its management and operating contractors through periodic reviews, formal audits, performance appraisals, and close integration with our resident field offices.
For the FY03 end-of-year performance results, my Program met or exceeded all major performance targets. We ensured the safety, performance, reliability, and service life of operating reactors for uninterrupted support of the Fleet. We exceeded 90 percent utilization availability for our training and test reactor plants. As of today, U.S. nuclear-powered warships have safely steamed over 130 million miles. Naval Reactors developed new technologies, methods, and materials to support reactor plant design, which included attaining the FY03 goal of 99 percent design completion of the next-generation submarine reactor. We continued design of the propulsion plant for the next-generation aircraft carrier, which is on schedule to meet the planned ship construction start in FY07. Additionally, Naval Reactors maintained its outstanding radiation protection program and its environmental performance: no Program personnel have ever exceeded the applicable annual or lifetime Federal limits for radiation exposure, and Program operations had no adverse impact on health or on the quality of the environment.
Naval Reactors has met or expects to meet or exceed all FY04 performance targets, which are to achieve 90 percent utilization availability for operation of our training and test reactor plants; to safely steam on nuclear power about 2 million more miles; to complete the next-generation submarine reactor design deliverables (design is complete); to complete 60 percent of the CVN-21 reactor plant design; to have no personnel exceed the annual Federal limit for radiation exposure; and to have no adverse impact on human health or the quality of the environment.
CONCLUSION
The ongoing support of the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development is one of the most important factors in our success story. The subcommittee has recognized the requirements and demands the Program confronts daily: a continuing need for power projection and forward presence far from home, which strains our limited number of nuclear ships; an aging nuclear fleet; and the funding required to meet these commitments today and in the future.
The unique capabilities inherent in nuclear power have played a vital role in our Nation's defense over the past 50 years. With your support, this legacy will continue far into the future as the Nation meets each new threat with strength and resolve. Naval Reactors' record is strong, the work important, the funding needs modest.
Thank you for your support.
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