The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) construction projects and nuclear warhead development programs have historically experienced major cost overruns, including at Livermore Lab. Tri-Valley CAREs has been advocating for more accountability for years, especially by Congress, who over and over again has been duped by NNSA’s low cost estimates into authorizing a program, only for the cost to skyrocket several years later when stopping the program would mean a huge waste of sunken expenditures.
A similar problem at DOD led Congress to enact the Nunn-McCurty Act in 2007. NNSA’s cost reporting and accountability to address these types of problems. The Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile suffered a “Nunn-McCurty Breach” that garnered significant attention. While NNSA has a requirement to report cost overruns to Congress, it is less stringent and effective than the Nunn-McCurty Act.
At the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s (ANA) 2024 DC Days, Tri-Valley CAREs brought up this issue as one ANA should address in our advocacy meetings with Members of Congress. Together, in over 80 meetings we advocated that a similar enforcement mechanism to the Nunn-McCurdy Act should be applied to NNSA .
Congressman John Garamendi (CA-08) agreed with us that NNSA needs to be held more accountable for cost overruns and his office worked on FY2025 NDAA report language with us to direct the the Government Accountability Office (GAO) , addressing bipartisan ways to curb excessive cost growth and poor cost estimating in the nuclear weapons complex.
In response, GAO issued a report titled “National Nuclear Security Administration: Agency Should Improve Cost Growth Notification Process” in September of 2025. The report concluded that NNSA has not implemented effective processes to manage cost growth notifications and issued some recommendations to Congress.
The report outlines NNSA’s specific cost reporting requirements, which have been required by law since 2011. Because the standards are specific and different for construction projects and nuclear weapons acquisition programs, the report analyzes them separately. However, the basics are similar, NNSA must notify the congressional defense committees when these projects and programs have set cost baselines and when costs will exceed certain thresholds relative to these baselines.
Both require that within 90 days after the cost growth notification, the NNSA Administrator or Secretary of Energy to provide a notification of whether the construction project or weapons program will be terminated or continued, and submit an assessment of the root causes of the cost growth.
If the project or program is continued, NNSA must certify the following:
- A revised total project or program cost baseline, with a per unit cost baseline, as appropriate, has been established.
- The continuation of the project is necessary to meet the mission of DOE/NNSA and there is no alternative that would meet the requirements of that mission.
- A management structure is in place that is adequate to manage and control the cost and schedule of the project going forward.
NNSA Construction Projects
The report found that NNSA has not generally provided formal notifications to congressional defense committees when the total costs for construction projects increase by 25 percent or more. As of April 2025, seven of NNSA’s 14 construction projects were experiencing cost growth that require, or are likely to require, congressional notification. Of the seven projects that are experiencing reportable cost growth, NNSA has only submitted two of the required cost growth notifications to congressional defense committees–neither of them being in a timely fashion.
One important difference between the Nunn-McCurdy DOD cost reporting standard and the standard at the NNSA is the “Termination Clause.” Nunn-McCurdy presumes termination of a program that exceeds the established cost overrun limit unless recertified by the Secretary of Defense. In contrast, when a project or weapon acquisition goes over the cost overrun limit at NNSA, the Secretary of Energy or NNSA Administrator must only “notify congressional defense committees whether a project or program is continued or terminated.” While this may seem like a minor difference, in practice the “presumed” termination at the DoD has been a source of media attention, embarrassment and been described as “painful” by DoD officials. While the NNSA’s easier “notification” requirement has been easily met without media attention. (And thus NNSA always decides to continue the program or acquisition)
NNSA Weapons Acquisition Programs
GAO’s review of total weapons costs and per unit weapons costs for weapons programs found that none were reporting cost growth that exceeded the notification limits. However, this reporting presents some flaws as NNSA has not baselined the cost of recent weapons programs and NNSA’s policy is to not treat changes in weapons program scope as requiring a cost growth notification. For example, NNSA officials stated that “delays to DOD’s associated weapons delivery platform program—the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program—have delayed accurate cost estimates for the W87-1 program.” What GAO isn’t saying is that this cost estimate delay is woefully behind schedule by multiple years and the program is getting full funding in the meantime.
GAO Recommendations
The GAO report forwards some recommendations for Congress that were suggested by NNSA during GAO’s investigation.Those recommendations are:
- The Administrator of NNSA should direct NNSA’s Office of Cost Estimating and Program Evaluation (CEPE) to establish a deadline and finalize its efforts to establish templates and implement a process for reporting timely cost growth notifications.
- The Administrator of NNSA should direct CEPE to establish a deadline and finalize its efforts to establish guidance on performing a root cause analysis that also traces to the required elements under the cost growth notification provision.
- The Secretary of Energy, in coordination with the Administrator of NNSA, should communicate to the relevant congressional committees suggested changes to the cost growth notification provision.
While these may in fact lead to some improvement, there are extensive findings in the report that Congress should also address to improve the process.
- One important difference between the “Nunn-McCurty” DoD cost reporting standard and the standard at the NNSA is the “Termination Clause.” Nunn-McCurdy presumes termination of a program that exceeds the established cost overrun limit unless recertified by the Secretary of Defense. In contrast, when a project or weapon acquisition goes over the cost overrun limit at NNSA, the Secretary of Energy or NNSA Administrator must only “notify congressional defense committees whether a project or program is continued or terminated.” While this may seem like a minor difference, in practice the “presumed” termination at the DoD has been a source of media attention, embarrassment and been described as “painful” by DoD officials. While the NNSA’s easier “notification” requirement has been easily met without media attention. (And thus NNSA always decides to continue the program or acquisition). An amendment or other legislation could be offered to change the standard at NNSA to mirror the Nunn-McCurty standard – when a project or weapon acquisition goes over the cost overrun limit at NNSA, the project is presumed to be terminated, unless it is recertified by the Secretary of Energy or NNSA Administrator.
- After a Nunn-McCurdy breach, if DOD moves forward with recertification of the program, the previous milestone is revoked, requiring DOD to conduct new milestone approval for the program that takes “restructuring” of the program with cost saving measures into account. The GAO report notes that “NNSA is not required to establish a new CD-2/3 milestone or Phase 3/6.3 approval” even when moving ahead with certification of the program or acquisition that is going substantially over cost. An amendment or legislation could require revocation of previous CD-2/3 milestone or Phase 3/6.3 milestone approval when an NNSA program breaches the cost overrun limits and require NNSA to “restructure” the program with cost saving measures taken into account, (like Nunn-McCurty requires).
- NNSA officials told the GAO that for weapon acquisition programs they “calculate the weapon per unit cost baseline as part of the annual SAR development process and report that information in a classified appendix.” Because one of the NNSA’s cost overrun notification rules for reporting to Congress is triggered by per unit costs going 50% over baselines, the information should be publicly available unless there is some compelling reason for classification. An amendment or legislation could require this per unit cost reporting be public in cases where it goes 50% or more over baselines.
- NNSA officials stated that “delays to DOD’s associated weapons delivery platform program—the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program—have delayed accurate cost estimates for the W87-1 program.” What GAO isn’t saying is that this cost estimate delay is woefully behind schedule by multiple years and the program is getting full funding in the meantime. An amendment or legislation should withhold funds for the W87-1 until a SAR and a lifetime cost estimate for the program is produced by NNSA. (I know similar amendments have been offered by this office in the past). Additionally, the GAO notes that “other ongoing weapons acquisition programs have not entered Phase 3/6.3 and therefore have not produced a SAR.” These programs are similarly delaying the SAR cost estimate phase while still getting substantial annual funding from congress, and a similar amendment or legislation could require SARs and lifetime cost estimates for those weapon acquisition programs.
- The GAO report notes that it found “seven projects that are experiencing reportable cost growth,” but it found that NNSA has only “submitted two of the required cost growth notifications to congressional defense committees. As noted above, the provision requires notification of cost growth within 30 days of the NNSA Administrator or Secretary of Energy determining that costs will exceed the 25 percent reporting threshold.” These include failure to report the massive 57% ($2.7 billion) cost overrun at NNSA’s Y-12 Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) Main Process Building. Amendments or legislation could withhold additional funding for these 5 programs until they report the cost overruns to congress and, if they decide to continue the program, submit the required; revised total project or program cost baseline, with a per unit cost baseline, as appropriate, has been established; certify that the continuation of the project is necessary to meet the mission of DOE/NNSA and there is no alternative that would meet the requirements of that mission; certify that a management structure is in place that is adequate to manage and control the cost and schedule of the project going forward; and finally, within 90 days of the cost growth notification, submit an assessment of the root causes of the cost escalation.
- GAO identified that in the few instances where NNSA complied with the requirement to provide the required “root cause analyses” to Congress, they were of “very poor quality.” The report acknowledges that “NNSA officials attributed the problems with the root causes to a lack of agency guidance on conducting root cause analyses,” and that NNSA, “could not provide a date for when this root cause assessment guidance document would be completed.” GAO goes on to note that “having such guidance, and a deadline to finalize it, would help NNSA accurately identify underlying causes of the cost increases for its projects and to identify and implement corrective measures to share with and apply to other construction projects.” Thus, an amendment or legislation directing NNSA with a deadline (NNSA suggested September 30, 2026) is in order.
Finally, Reps. John Garamendi (CA-08), Carlos Gimenez (FL-28) and Sara Jacobs (CA-51) and Chris Deluzio (PA-17) introduced the Nunn-McCurdy Reform Act of 2025 (H.R.4372) in July of 2025, which strengthens the current Nunn-McCurdy Act. Potentially that law could include NNSA in the overall Nunn-McCurty framework.
Tri-Valley CAREs is in contact with a letter to members of Congress about this GAO report. We hope Congress will act on these concerns and continue to advocate for accountability for NNSA and DOE. We will keep you posted!