N.M. nuke spending would grow

N.M. nuke spending would grow By John Fleck and Michael Coleman Albuquerque Journal Thu, Apr 11, 2013 The Obama administration Wednesday proposed a 23 percent increase in the budget for U.S. nuclear weapons research, manufacturing and maintenance over the next five years. The increase, which in part would fund work at Los Alamos and Sandia labs in New Mexico, is an effort to refurbish aging nuclear weapons and the labs and plants needed to maintain them, even as the nation reduces the size of its nuclear stockpile, federal officials said during a series of budget briefings. The budget request asks Congress to provide $7.89 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons activities in fiscal year 2014, up from $7.56 billion this year. By 2018, the proposed weapons activities budget would rise to $9.29 billion in 2018, according to the budget request. At Los Alamos, overall spending by the NNSA and other programs within the Department of Energy would rise from $1.83 billion this year to $1.96 billion in 2014, a 7 percent increase. Included in that is a nearly $32 million increase in environmental cleanup money. The budget proposal also includes money to study alternatives at Los Alamos to the construction of a new plutonium research center, an over-budget multibillion-dollar project the Obama administration put on hold a year ago. The idea is to find a way to build a “smaller and cheaper” project that will still meet the needs for plutonium research and bomb part manufacturing, acting NNSA chief Neile Miller told reporters in a telephone briefing. At Sandia National Laboratories, total spending by the NNSA and other Department of Energy programs in 2014 would be $1.81 billion, essentially unchanged from the current year. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, a nuclear waste disposal site, would get $203 million under the proposed budget, down from $215 million this year. Overall, New Mexico spending by the Department of Energy, primarily nuclear weapons work but also other research at the labs and elsewhere, would rise from $4.48 billion to $4.65 billion next year, a 4 percent increase. New Mexico’s fiscal gain is South Carolina’s loss. NNSA officials slashed money for an over-budget South Carolina plutonium disposal program as a way of making ends meet, officials said Wednesday.