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| | | published Tuesday, February 02, 2010 | 690 Views :: 0 Comments | |  |
Obama Requests $11 Billion for Nuclear Agency
Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010
By Martin Matishak
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration yesterday unveiled a spending plan that would increase funding for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration to $11.2 billion in the next fiscal year (see GSN, Jan. 29).
The agency, a semiautonomous branch of the Energy Department, would receive a 13.4-percent budget increase in fiscal 2011 to maintain the country's nuclear stockpile and conduct nonproliferation activities around the globe, according to the White House funding request.
More than $7 billion would be devoted beginning Oct. 1 to "weapons activities," which ensure the safety and performance of the nation's atomic stockpile. The amount is a $624 million increase from this year.
Another $2.7 billion would be funneled to the agency's Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation program, a hike of 25.8 percent above fiscal 2010. That effort seeks to secure nuclear materials around the globe that could be used for weapons and convert them for peaceful purposes.
The remaining funds would go to other agency efforts, including its national laboratory network and its naval reactor program.
The budget boost marks the down payment in a more than $5 billion increase planned over the next five years to maintain the U.S. nuclear complex and deterrent. The move was telegraphed last week in a Wall Street Journal commentary by Vice President Joseph Biden.
The newly minted budget request "highlights our critical role in implementing the nuclear security vision" President Barack Obama laid out in his Prague speech last spring, NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino told reporters yesterday.
Weapons activities funding would include more than $2 billion for stockpile support, an increase of 25 percent from the present funding level. Those funds would finance the agency's "stockpile management program," which includes evaluations of the condition of weapons, maintenance, assembly and dismantlement.
The program, as written into law by Congress for fiscal 2010, lays out a series of principles intended to annul the controversial Reliable Replacement Warhead program proposed during the George W. Bush administration.
The principles call for the management program to increase the reliability and security of the United States' nuclear weapons stockpile; reduce the likelihood of the resumption of underground warhead testing; cut the size of the stockpile; decrease the risk of accidental detonation; and reduce the risk that any part of the arsenal could ever be used against the United States or its allies.
The money would support ongoing life-extension programs for the W-76 warhead, which is deployed on the Navy's Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile, and the refurbishment of the B-61 gravity bomb, according to the text of the spending request.
Those dollars also would finance a study to evaluate future options for maintaining the W-78 warhead carried by Minuteman 3 ICBMs.
The average age of a warhead in the U.S. stockpile is 27 years, according to D'Agostino. The nation's arsenal "has never been this old before," he said during a conference call with reporters.
About $1.6 billion from the weapons activities account would be spent on science, technology and engineering "campaigns" within the agency, which the Energy Department has defined as multiyear, multifunctional efforts to develop and maintain the capabilities needed assess the safety and reliability of the stockpile without underground testing.
The president's appeal is an increase of $154 million from fiscal 2010 appropriations and, if approved, would "restore sufficient funds for ... science and technology that support stockpile assessment and certification in the absence of nuclear testing," the spending request says.
In addition, more than $2.3 billion would be spent on infrastructure, budget documents show.
The bulk of that money would bankroll completing the design and beginning construction of the chemistry and metallurgy research facility replacement at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the uranium processing facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, according to D'Agostino.
The new facilities will help the agency change from an "old, large nuclear weapon complex into a 21st century nuclear security complex," the NNSA chief said, adding that the existing buildings would soon be more than 70 years old.
The agency's three largest laboratories -- Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia -- would receive a total of nearly half a billion dollars to carry out their work.
The NNSA funding proposal has already come under fire from those in the arms control community who believe that spending more on the U.S. nuclear arsenal contradicts the president's nonproliferation goals.
"The administration has argued that the massive increases in nuclear weapons proposed in this budget are necessary to maintain a robust nuclear deterrent," said Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
"This is simply not true," he said in a statement. "The United States currently has a stockpile of 10,000 warheads that are certified as reliable. The new production facilities proposed in this budget will allow the Department of Energy to introduce untested nuclear weapons designs into the previously reliable nuclear stockpile."
Yesterday D'Agostino defended the increased spending for stockpile support and nonproliferation efforts, saying more money is needed because the country needs the best nuclear weapons facilities, scientists and engineers, even as it moves toward eventual disarmament.
Nuclear Nonproliferation
The proposed NNSA budget includes roughly $2.7 billion to fund the agency's Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation effort, which encompasses a number of programs designed to stop the spread of nuclear materials.
"It's the largest nonproliferation program in the world, bar none," D'Agostino told reporters.
The lion's share of funding -- about $560 million -- would go to the Global Threat Reduction Initiative to accelerate the removal and disposition of "high-priority" vulnerable nuclear material, such as highly enriched uranium, from overseas sites. The program also converts additional HEU-fueled research reactors to use proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium fuel.
Funding for the agency's Fissile Materials Disposition programs would grow by 47 percent -- an increase of $328.8 million -- to continue construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and associated buildings at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to shore up U.S. plutonium disposal. It also includes the first $100 million of a $400 million U.S. commitment to sustain Russian plutonium disposal.
The budget request includes $57 million for the International Material Protection and Cooperation program. The effort is designed to enhance the security of vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapon-usable nuclear material in "countries of concern" and improve the ability to detect the illicit trafficking of those materials, according to an agency fact sheet.
Obama does have a goal set for the number of warheads that will be eliminated this year, the NNSA chief said. The figure will be included in the Nuclear Posture Review, he added.
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