A group of nuclear security experts lashed out at the Obama Administration’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget request yesterday, suggesting that cuts to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation account and State and Defense Department threat reduction work represented a “major step backwards in the fight against nuclear terrorism.” The Fissile Materials Working Group, which is made up of more than 60 nuclear security experts, took specific aim at cuts within the NNSA’s nonproliferation budget.
The Administration asked for $93 million for the Second Line of Defense Program, cutting $169 million as it recasts the program to focus on sustaining the existing radiation detection equipment that has already been installed around the world, and reduced funding for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative by $32 million—from $498 million in FY2012 to $466 million in FY201—as it defers some radiological source recovery and security work. “The nuclear terrorism threat is still out there. Congress and the administration need to provide enough money so that critical efforts to reduce the risk are not slowed by a lack of funds,” said Matthew Bunn, a member of the group’s steering committee and Co-Principal Investigator with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University. “Rather than cutting back, we need to expand our efforts to secure and consolidate nuclear stockpiles around the world and not let our imagination be constrained by our budget.”
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