The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) agreed to share a strategic management plan it is preparing for sustaining microelectronics infrastructure at the Sandia National Laboratories with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which wants the nuclear-weapon agency to appoint a more powerful manager for the program.
The plan will be ready around December 2020, NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty wrote in a letter appended to the office’s latest report about the semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy, “NNSA Needs to Incorporate Additional Management Controls Over Its Microelectronics Activities
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The NNSA believes the plan “will address the underlying questions raised in the audit report,” Gordon-Hagerty wrote.
In the report published Tuesday, the GAO mostly focused on the radiation-hardened microelectronics the NNSA produces for nuclear weapons at the national laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M. Such electronics can function in high-radiation environments, such as the site of a nuclear explosion.
Congress’ investigative arm wrote its latest report at the behest of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which inserted the requirement for a harder look at NNSA microelectronics programs in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The panel’s strategic forces subcommittee counts Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) among its members.
A few months after the 2019 NDAA became law, the NNSA opted to spend about $1 billion over 20 years to maintain the current microelectronics infrastructure at Sandia through 2040, rather than building an entirely new, multibillion-dollar microelectronics production plant at the lab.
“DOE and NNSA require their programs and projects to establish an overarching management plan that describes the procedures to define, execute, and monitor a program or project as well as establishing specific requirements in a variety of areas such as cost estimating and performance management,” according to the summary of the GAO report. “NNSA has not established a similar management plan to oversee and coordinate its microelectronics activities.”
The office recommended Gordon-Hagerty give the agency’s unidentified microelectronics coordinator — appointed in 2019, but apparently without the full support of the NNSA Office of Defense Programs — a budget to manage, and the authority to write a management plan and requirements document for the refurbishments planned at Sandia.
Gordon-Hagerty neither agreed nor disagreed with the recommendation, according to the GAO report.