The White House’s fiscal 2017 budget request released today increases proposed funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to $12.9 billion.
The $4.15 trillion budget boosts NNSA funding from the currently appropriated $12.5 billion and projects a total request of $131.9 billion for fiscal years 2017-2026. The agency’s increased funding level to maintain the U.S. nuclear stockpile, modernize nuclear security infrastructure, and conduct nonproliferation activities, is currently $1.1 billion higher than the fiscal 2015 level.
Base discretionary funding for the Department of Energy (DOE) under the budget request would increase slightly from the current $29.6 billion appropriated to a request of $30.2 billion.
According to a DOE budget fact sheet, the NNSA’s funding request includes $1.8 billion for defense nuclear nonproliferation for “securing or eliminating nuclear and radiological materials worldwide, preventing proliferation of nuclear technologies, and ensuring that the United States is ready to respond to nuclear and radiological incidents at home and abroad.”
The funding decreased for these activities, which currently receive $1.9 billion, is due to prior year carryover balances and cuts to MOX, the NNSA said. It said the budget request will help the agency “advance technical capabilities to monitor foreign nuclear weapons program activities, diversion of special nuclear material, and nuclear detonations,” while also building capacity worldwide to secure nuclear and radiological material.
The budget proposes a series of cuts and consolidations that are projected to save over $14 billion in the next fiscal year. Among these is a $55 million reduction in the 2017 request for plutonium disposition. The administration is requesting $285 million for a changed approach to disposing of surplus weapon-usable plutonium, a significant reversal from the $340 million currently appropriated for the MOX facility at SRS in South Carolina. The DOE fact sheet highlighted the termination of MOX and said a different plutonium dilution and disposal program would enable DOE to execute targeted disposal “disposal many years sooner and at far less cost than with MOX.”
Department of Defense (DoD) funding would also increase from a base of $521.7 billion to $523.9 billion.
Of the funding that is allocated annually from the DoD to the NNSA, the budget would decrease the DoD’s budget authority and increase that of the NNSA by about $1.7 billion annually in fiscal years 2018, 2019, and 2020, and $1.8 billion in fiscal 2021. A total of $16.3 billion would move from the DoD to the NNSA from 2018 to 2026. According to the budget document, “DOD and NNSA are reviewing NNSA’s outyear requirements and these will be included in future reports to the Congress.”
The DOE fact sheet said a requested $9.2 billion would be put toward NNSA nuclear stockpile activities including the W88, B61, W76, and W80 life-extension programs. It said the budget “accelerates weapons dismantlement by 20 percent compared to prior year plans” and increases exascale computing funding “to improve the performance of the nuclear weapons computer modeling and simulation tools needed to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear stockpile without conducting nuclear tests.”
The NNSA said in a press release that the budget request will also allow it to recapitalize aging research and production infrastructure, including the Chemistry and Metallurgical Research Replacement Facility project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex, in addition to addressing the agency’s deferred maintenance issues.
The DOE’s budget request for naval reactors, $1.4 billion, is 3.2 percent higher than the fiscal 2016 appropriation level and will enable the NNSA to develop the reactor for the Ohio-class submarine replacement, among other projects.