Enter Nick Roth, of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability<\/a>, who went to watch T-D’Ag testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee (Subcommitte on Energy and Water Development). Nick observes that T-D’Ag wildly misrepresented the recent JASON<\/span> report on Lifetime Extension Programs, and got thumped pretty hard by Dianne Feinstein:<\/p>\n Tom D’agostino was explaining the findings about LEP<\/span>s in the latest JASON<\/span> report. Tom D’awg’s interpretation was if we don’t want to improve safety, security, and reliability, we continue doing what we do now. Senator Feinstein instantly interrupted explaining that was NOT<\/span> what the JASON<\/span>s said. Tom D’awg responded that he did not have the report in front of him.<\/p>\n Later in the hearing Senator Feinstein submitted the declassified JASON<\/span> study for the record and acknowledged that the original rationale for new pits has been refuted. She also said that she is going to arrange a meeting for the JASON<\/span>s to sit down with Tom D’awg.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n You can listen to the whole thing as a webcast<\/a>. T-D’ag draws Senator Feinstein’s ire at 29:24-30:04 and then later, at 51:30 she has the unclassified executive summary submitted for the record.<\/p>\n The report said, as Senator Feinstein noted correctly, something very different. Regular readers will remember that Arms Control Wonk acquired an early copy of the unclassified executive summary, titled Lifetime Extension Program (LEP<\/span>), JSR<\/span>-09-334E<\/a>. <\/p>\n The study plainly states that refurbishment and component reuse will allow improvement of safety, surety and reliability (to be precise, “margins”). Replacement would be necessary only in one, extreme instance — an effort to add “intrinsic” surety features (ie those inside the nuclear explosive package) to some<\/em> reentry vehicle warheads. (Elaine Grossman had a nice story<\/a> before I had a copy of the document.)<\/p>\n Either T-D’ag has limited reading comprehension, or he was foolish enough to think he could get one past Senator Feinstein. I don’t know which is worse.<\/p>\n I think that sometimes, because she is such an effective politician in terms of speaking plainly, that wonks underestimate Senator Feinstein. That is, as T-D’ag has no doubt noticed, a big mistake. I had the pleasure of hosting Senator Feinstein at one of my nuclear strategy dinners, watching her talk to Mort Halperin and Arnie Kanter all evening. She’s impressive, and not just “for a politician.” <\/p>\n At any rate she’s certainly a lot smarter than Tom D’Agostino. <\/p>\n So, the one time I met Tom D’Agostino, he called me “Jerry.” It was interesting moment, because I couldn’t decide whether he just suffered from some mild aphasia or was trying to be insulting. (Though, you know, Jerry Lewis is big in France.) I’ve since seem him speak a couple of times, and still can’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"