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, 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 “many years sooner and at far less cost than with MOX.”
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