December 22^nd, 2010

The U.S. Senate's ratification Wednesday of a disarmament treaty with Russia paves the way for a dramatic budget boost in the nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

The New Start agreement between the two major nuclear powers in the world established new numeric limits and procedures for reducing and verifying strategic nuclear weapons. 

Seven days of debate capped a year of deliberations in which the deteriorating infrastructure of the national weapons laboratories was a consistent theme. 

In exchange for Republican votes needed for a two-thirds majority to ratify the treaty, the Obama administration was called upon to strengthen its funding commitment for nuclear weapons to $85 billion over the next 10 years. The funding included multibillion-dollar nuclear facilities at LANL and at Y-12 in Savanna River. 

Anticipating this result, LANL has publicly described a dynamic era of new construction projected to employ a thousand workers at its peak a few years from now. 

For Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia national laboratories, the additional funding increases support for stockpile surveillance and life-extension projects to manage the existing inventory of nuclear warheads. 

Among other implications of increased capacity at Los Alamos will be the ability to increase the production capacity of nuclear pits from 20 to 30 a year to 50 to 80 — and perhaps more under certain circumstances.