Statement of Clay Sell
Deputy Secretary of Energy
Before the
House Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies
April 26, 2006
Chairman Hobson, Representative Visclosky and members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss our plans to revitalize and transform NNSA’s
nuclear weapons infrastructure to make it fully responsive to national security needs. In this
effort, we have benefited greatly from the work of the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board
(SEAB) Task Force on the Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure recently chaired by Dr.
David Overskei. I will report today on our plans to implement several of the Task Force’s
recommendations.
Introduction
The Department is committed to ensuring the long-term reliability, safety and security of the
nation’s nuclear deterrent. Stockpile stewardship is working; the stockpile remains safe and
reliable. This assessment is based not on nuclear tests, but on cutting-edge scientific and
engineering experiments and analyses, including extensive laboratory and flight tests of warhead
components and subsystems. Each year, we are gaining a more complete understanding of the
complex physical processes underlying the performance of our aging nuclear stockpile.
To assure our ability to maintain essential military capabilities over the long term, however, and
to enable significant reductions in reserve warheads, we must make progress towards a truly
responsive nuclear weapons infrastructure as called for in the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).
The NPR and its follow-on assessments have led to conceptual breakthroughs in our thinking
about nuclear forces, breakthroughs that have enabled concrete first steps in the transformation
of those forces and associated capabilities. Very importantly, the NPR articulated the critical
role of the defense research and development (R&D) and manufacturing base, of which a
responsive nuclear weapons infrastructure is a key element, in the NPR’s New Triad of strategic
capabilities. We have worked closely with the Department of Defense (DoD) in establishing the
following guidelines for stockpile and infrastructure transformation:
• ensure long-term safety, reliability and security of the nation’s nuclear deterrent,
• support current stockpile while transforming to a future stockpile and infrastructure,
• execute the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program to enable transformation to
a responsive infrastructure,
• respond on appropriate timescales to adverse geopolitical change, or to technical
problems with warheads or strategic delivery systems, and
• provide opportunities for a smaller stockpile to meet the President’s vision for the lowest
number of warheads consistent with the nation’s security.
