Los Alamos contract links Texas A&M to nuclear weapons research
A contact awarded by the National Nuclear Security Administration to Texas A&M on Friday will not only bring jobs and revenues to the Texas university system but also will bring more Texans into decision-making around U.S. nuclear weapons research and production.
The award gives Texas A&M, the University of California, and Battelle Memorial Institute control over Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico through a joint limited liability company called Triad National Security. The value of the contract is $2.5 billion yearly.
Los Alamos is most famous for creating the first ever nuclear bombs, which were used in the war against Japan in 1945.
The laboratory today routinely performs work for the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, according to the Energy Department, and it helps report annually on the state of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Its role includes the design, certification, and assessment of nuclear weapons. Los Alamos’ assessments in turn inform Washington policy-makers involved in regular ‘nuclear posture reviews,’ which determine the sizing, deployment, and delivery mechanisms of the nuclear arsenal.
Although the United States has never had an open conflict with another nuclear-armed power, the U.S. Strategic Command, National Security Council, and other federal security organs regularly rehearse for the possibility.
In the Trump Administration’s most recent nuclear posture review, published in February, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced plans to restore U.S. capacity to produce new nuclear warheads, saying he would require the National Nuclear Security Administration — the parent agency of Los Alamos labs — “to produce at least 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030.” An estimated 30 of those plutonium pits will be built at Los Alamos, according to journalism outfit ProPublica.
Plutonium pits produce the metal cores necessary for triggering a reaction inside a nuclear weapon.
In a press release announcing Texas A&M’s success in securing the contract for Los Alamos Laboratory, U.S. Under-Secretary for Nuclear Security Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty said, “The lab will continue to be a critical resource to ensure the future safety and security of the United States as we begin work on new endeavors, like the effort to recapitalize our plutonium pit mission.”
Texas A&M University President Michael K. Young, upon hearing of the contract award, thanked the university’s Dean of Engineering M. Katherine Banks and other “faculty and staff within the university and across the university system who were involved in the proposal.”
Smaller ‘tactical’ nuclear warheads
According to Mattis, the defense secretary, over the past several decades the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure has “suffered the effects of aging and underfunding.” He wants to see research laboratories like Los Alamos boost their ability to produce new U.S. nuclear warheads on short notice.
This would serve both a long-term purpose of being able to maintain and replace existing, aging nuclear warheads, as well as give the U.S. the ability to deploy new weapons. Most of the current U.S. nuclear arsenal consists of warheads that were designed for delivery by long-range missiles, aircraft, or submarines toward a target across the globe, such as the former Soviet Union. These missiles carried powerful high-yield warheads. Recently, however, the Trump Administration announced plans for the development of less powerful ‘low-yield’ warheads that could be deployed in conflict scenarios apart from full-scale nuclear war.
The stated rationale for this plan, according to the February review report, is that it would help deter Russia from using a low-yield nuclear weapon of its own. Given that the U.S. lacks low-yield weapons of its own, but has only the more powerful bombs, the U.S. would not have any comparable way of responding without escalating to a full-scale nuclear war, Mattis argued.
“Russia’s belief that limited nuclear first use, potentially including low-yield weapons, can provide such an advantage is based, in part, on Moscow’s perception that its greater number and variety of non-strategic nuclear systems provide a coercive advantage in crises and at lower levels of conflict,” the Defense Secretary wrote. “Recent Russian statements on this evolving nuclear weapons doctrine appear to lower the threshold for Moscow’s first-use of nuclear weapons.”
“Correcting this mistaken Russian perception is a strategic imperative,” said the Defense Secretary, before directing the National Nuclear Security Administration, of which Los Alamos Laboratory is a part, to “develop for deployment a low-yield SLBM [submarine-launched] warhead to ensure a prompt response option that is able to penetrate adversary defenses.”
Texas A&M’s contract was awarded for a five-year period with five one-year options thereafter, for a total of 10 years.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has hailed Texas A&M University for winning the contract with the nuclear agency. In a press release he said, “I am proud of the expanded contributions our state will make towards our nation’s defense… I commend Chancellor Sharp and the Texas A&M University System for securing this contract that will provide significant opportunities for skilled workers trained in Texas to make lasting contributions to our national security.
In addition to nuclear weapons research, Los Alamos Laboratory also researches space exploration, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing.
