By: Cassandra Peterson March 31st will mark the commencement of the fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit. The two-day summits began in 2010, following President Obama’s historic 2009 Prague speech, in which he pledged to work towards the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. While the last summit will likely make tangible […]
DOE
Center Holds Capitol Hill Briefing on Pentagon Budget
Our mission at The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation is to educate the public and policymakers on issues of peace and security. On February 26, we brought our mission directly to Capitol Hill.
Analysis of the DOE Nuclear Non-Proliferation Budget for Fiscal Year 2015
Curious how much money US lawmakers appropriated to prevent nuclear terrorism and the spread of nuclear materials for fiscal year 2015? Deep within the 1,600 page Cromnibus, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) received $1.616 billion dollars, a $337 million reduction from FY 14.
Some good programs went unfunded, like cooperative threat reduction work with Russia. Some bad programs were funded well above the Obama administration’s request, like the Mixed Oxide fuel program dubbed the “fuel to nowhere.”
** Click here for our full analysis of the NNSA’s FY15 nuclear nonproliferation budget
Fiscal Year 2012 Briefing Book Now Online
For Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, which begins on October 1, 2011, the Obama Administration has requested a base budget of $553 billion for the Department of Defense (DOD). This is $13 billion below the Pentagon’s Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) estimate, released last year, but represents about 3 percent in real growth over the funding the department would receive for FY 2011 under the current continuing resolution, which expires on March 4.
In addition, the Administration has requested $117.6 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a 26 percent decrease from last year’s request of $159.4 billion and represents the administration’s commitment to reduce troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan and place more strict rules on what can and cannot be included in the war spending request. In the past, additional funding has been made available through emergency supplemental appropriations, when needed. This remains a possibility for FY 2012. This brings the FY 2012 defense budget request to a total of $670.6 billion.
These numbers do not include nuclear weapons related spending in the Department of Energy (DoE) or other defense related funding.
In addition to an initial $670 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Administration has requested $18 billion for nuclear weapons activities at Department of Energy and $7 billion for additional non-Pentagon defense related activities. This brings total non-Pentagon defense related spending (053/054) to $25 billion, an increase of about $200 million over FY 2011.
Dueling Quotes of the Day, Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) Edition
Note: Sorry for the lite blogging as of late. Expect it to pick up over the next couple of weeks.
Asked if the final cost [of the UPF] will be somewhere between $4.2 billion and $6.5 billion, [John] Howanitz [B&W Y-12’s senior vice president for transformation and projects] replied: ‘That’s the question of the day. If you ask me today, I will tell you that based on the information we have acquired, the pricing we have on hand, I’m very confident that this is a good estimate. But I’m not at 90 percent design. …Will it go down? I don’t know. Will it go up? I don’t know. But, if someone were to say, can someone come in and validate this, I would welcome anyone to come in and look at our product — in fact, the government has — and we have a good product.”
Via Frank Munger, January 18, 2010
NNSA is developing 10 new technologies for use in the UPF and is using a systematic approach—Technology Readiness Levels (TRL)—to gauge the extent to which technologies have been demonstrated to work as intended….However, NNSA does not expect all 10 new technologies to achieve the level of maturity called for by best practices before making critical decisions….In addition, DOE’s guidance for establishing optimal TRLs prior to beginning construction is not consistent with best practices or with our previous recommendations. As a result, 6 of 10 technologies NNSA is developing are not expected to reach optimum TRLs consistent with best practices by the time UPF construction begins. If critical technologies fail to work as intended, NNSA may need to revert to existing or alternate technologies, possibly resulting in changes to design plans and space requirements that could delay the project and increase costs.
GAO Report on the UPF, November 2010
