Stockpile Management (2020 DOE transition)

Book 2 - Issue Papers
Entire 2020 DOE Transition book As of October 2020

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its national security laboratories must annually assess the nuclear weapons stockpile and assure it remains safe, secure, reliable, and militarily effective without additional nuclear explosive testing.

Issue(s)

The annual assessment process provides assurance to the President of the United States and Congress that the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile is safe, secure, reliable, and militarily effective. Each year, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Defense (DOD) undertake a comprehensive evaluation to assess each warhead’s existing certification basis in light of new information generated by the Stockpile Stewardship Program. This process provides the ability to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent and is used to determine whether a nuclear test is required to address any technical issues within the stockpile.

The directors of the national security laboratories (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories) and the Commander of the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) provide an independent, comprehensive written assessment on the state of the nuclear weapons stockpile. They then provide the Secretary of Energy with an in person discussion on their assessments. To complete the cycle, the Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) prepares a joint memorandum, signed by the Secretaries of Energy and Defense, summarizing the overall assessment of the stockpile. This memorandum, combined with the Laboratory Director Letters and the USSTRATCOM Commander Letter, form the Report on Stockpile Assessments (ROSA). The ROSA is submitted to the President by February 1 of each year, and provides assurance that the nation’s nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, reliable, and militarily effective.

Annual assessment is required by public law, 50 United States Code Section 2525, which requires the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of Defense to submit an annual assessment to the President by February 1 of each year. The President, in turn, is required to transmit the final package to Congress by March 15 of that same year.

Status

The Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs issued the 2020 (Cycle 25) Annual Assessment Execution Plan to the directors of the national security laboratories on January 14, 2020. This plan provides the necessary requirements and milestones to complete the Annual Assessment Review process and provide the ROSA package to the President by February 1, 2021 and to the Congress by March 15, 2021.

Milestone(s)

Action for Cycle 25 Assessment	Date
Annual Assessment Reports published and distributed	July 27, 2020
Laboratory directors sign Annual Assessment Letters	Sep 30, 2020
USSTRATCOM Commander provides Annual Assessment Letter	Dec 1, 2020
Laboratory directors participate in Annual Assessment Review - brief the following: Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs NNSA Administrator Secretary of Energy	Dec 8, 2020 (tentative)
ROSA submitted to the to the President	Feb 1, 2021
President forwards the ROSA to Congress	Mar 15, 2021
Officials provide briefing to Congress, if ROSA is not forwarded	March 30, 2021

Major Decisions/Events

The Secretary of Energy will be briefed on the results of Cycle 25 by the three national security laboratory directors and select Department of Defense members on December 8, 2020 (tentative).

Background

The annual assessment process requires subject matter experts from the three NNSA design laboratories to apply broad-spectrum, rigorous analysis techniques to inform their assessment of the current safety, security, and military effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. These assessment tools and practices include focused experiments and integrated above ground experiments, computational simulations underpinned by past underground test data and modern experiments, and physical surveillance of randomly selected systems from the stockpile. The data collected by the laboratories are subject to peer review from other laboratories and red teams of nuclear weapons experts. The results of this rigorous process are captured in the laboratory system specific annual assessment reports and summarized in the Directors’ annual assessment letters. Recent Director’s letters reflect their assessment of the safety, reliability, and performance of the nuclear weapons stockpile, and affirmed that there is currently no technical requirement to perform a nuclear test.