LANL Director Charlie McMillan

Staff Report

The public will get a first glimpse under the hood of the next era of American nuclear weapons this week, when key officials in the complex stand for questions during a hearing of a House Armed Services subcommittee scheduled for Thursday.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan is set to be among those appearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The meeting at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. will address “Oversight Review of Infrastructure Needs and Projects Ready for Immediate Implementation in the Nuclear Security Enterprise.”

Along with McMillan, witnesses scheduled to speak include Frank Klotz, Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration; Mr. James McConnell, Associate Administrator for Safety, Infrastructure, and Operations, NNSA; Michelle Reichert, Deputy Enterprise Manager Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), LLC (Pantex/Y-12); and Sean Sullivan, Chairman
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), the federal regulator for defense-related nuclear safety.

McConnell has been in his post since September 2012. Sean Sullivan is the newly appointed board chairman of DNFSB, who took over as chairman on January 23, 2017, having served on the board since 2012.

Also on Thursday, the Trump administration is expected to release a budget outline for Fiscal Year 2018. The White House has announced that the outline will contain topline numbers for department and agency budgets.

The top line defense discretionary number is $603 billion,” said Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary during a briefing Feb. 27.  The figure amounts to a $54 billion increase in defense spending, which the administration proposes to offset by a $54 billion reduction in non-discretionary spending, Spicer said.