Morning Briefing - November 20, 2017
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November 20, 2017

NNSA Touts Role in Multilateral Nonproliferation Program

By ExchangeMonitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Thursday touted its role in a multilateral nonproliferation program aimed at sharpening international expertise in nuclear nonproliferation verification.

In a press release, the NNSA said it — along with agencies from Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom — recently participated in an exercise dubbed “LETTERPRESS” at the former U.K. weapons base Royal Air Force Honington. The exercise is one of many planned in the multiyear Quad Nuclear Verification Partnership.

The partnership aims to promote technical expertise among nations charged with verifying that other nations have complied with nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament measures. The group also plans to promote nuclear verification standards to give those responsible for verification a ubiquitous technical reference, according to the NNSA’s press release.

The agency did not say when LETTERPRESS wrapped up, but the “highly realistic arms control exercise” was on the slate for late October, according to a statement the United Kingdom delivered to a U.N. panel in Vienna in May. According to that statement, the U.K. would brief the U.N. about the results of the test next year.

The Donald Trump administration has been friendlier to NNSA’s nuclear verification activities than to the agency’s nonproliferation budget as a whole.

In the fiscal 2018 budget request it delivered to Capitol Hill in May, the administration proposed increasing the annual budget for the agency’s nuclear verification subprogram by about $3 million to just over $32 million.

Among other things, the subprogram “conducts U.S.-led missions to monitor and verify, dismantle, and disable proliferant nuclear fuel cycle programs around the world,” according to the 2018 budget request. The subprogram, part of NNSA’s nonproliferation and arms control program, also examines how U.S. weapons sites are affected by international arms control and nonproliferation agreements.

Overall, the Trump administration wants to cut the NNSA nonproliferation budget nearly 5 percent to about $1.9 billion in fiscal 2018. The House, in a 2018 appropriations bill approved in July, recommended cutting the budget about 1 percent more than the White House. The Senate Appropriations Committee, on the other hand, recommended only about a 2-percent cut for this account.

The federal government is currently funded under a continuing resolution that freezes spending at 2017 levels until Dec. 8. Congress will have to pass either another continuing resolution or a permanent appropriations bill to keep the government funded after that.

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NEW: Via public records request, I’ve been able to confirm reporting today that a warrant has been issued for DOE deputy asst. secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition Sam Brinton for another luggage theft, this time at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid airport. (cc: @EMPublications)

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