Kaine tours CAER for sequestration research

Sen. Timothy M. Kaine said he gathered ideas in New London Friday to shape the nation’s budget and continue funding for Lynchburg-area research on nuclear power for aircraft carriers, submarines and civilian energy plants.

Kaine said he picked up confirmation during a tour of the Center for Advanced Engineering and Research that federal budget cuts — known as sequester — are affecting the nation’s core war-fighting abilities.

Bob Bailey, the center’s director, told Kaine sequester cuts have affected its work with the U.S. Department of Energy.

Those cuts to DOE affect training for nuclear technicians who maintain reactor cores and engines on carriers and submarines, Kaine said.

“There’s a little bit of a myth that core war-fighting issues have been held harmless from sequester,” he said.

Kaine said he planned to use that information in talks with fellow members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We can’t go around saying core war fighting hasn’t been affected by sequester,” Kaine said.

Bailey told Kaine the sequester cuts have affected maintenance of the nation’s 104 reactors in plants that generate much of the nation’s electricity.

After his tour, Kaine said he expects Congress to do two things about the budget.

First, he said he expects the House and Senate to pass another continuing resolution to keep the government operating beyond the Oct. 1 deadline.

Second, Kaine said momentum seems to be building to pass a real budget by December to, “at a minimum, replace sequester.”

Sequester never was designed to take effect, Kaine said, but it did because Congress couldn’t agree on a budget.

The sequester will continue to make 10-percent, across-the-board spending cuts every year until it’s replaced with a real budget that includes targeted, strategic cuts without harming national defense and the economy, Kaine said.

During talks with Bailey and B&W officials Jeff Helfinger and Doug Lee, Kaine described visit Newport News Shipbuilding yard and seeing a nuclear reactor’s core being lowered into the new Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.

Helfinger and Lee told Kaine the carrier’s reactor was built in B&W’s Lynchburg plant and “that’s the biggest reactor we’ve ever shipped out of Lynchburg.”

Kaine said part of his reason for visiting the New London research facility was to learn more about how the reactors are built.

“I was amazed at the degree of hand crafting that was involved,” as opposed to automated manufacturing processes, Kaine said.

Kaine’s tour included an up-close look at B&W’s scale modular reactor, which is being tested in an 85-foot tower in New London. The company has a 2022 target date for its first such reactor, called the mPower, to begin operation in a power plant.

“So few people in Virginia, outside the Lynchburg area, know this strategic expertise is here,” Kaine said.

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