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Fiscal Cliff" Prompts Fresh Push for U.S. Nuke Spending Cut

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By scooby
Good stuff here

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/fiscal-cliff-talks-prompt-new-call-curb-us-nuke-spending/

Fiscal Cliff" Prompts Fresh Push for U.S. Nuke Spending Cut

WASHINGTON -- Dozens of Democratic lawmakers have revived a call for $100 billion in U.S. nuclear weapons spending reductions over 10 years as Congress pushes to enact $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions by the beginning of January.

"Unchecked spending on nuclear weapons threatens to push us over the fiscal cliff," Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and 44 other House Democrats stated in a Dec. 4 letter to the top Democratic and Republican lawmakers in both chambers, citing the term popularly used to refer to the anticipated funding moves. "We know there is plenty of waste in the nuclear weapons budget."

The lawmakers singled out plans to refurbish approximately 400 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs, a project expected to cost roughly $10 billion. They also cited the scheduled construction of a new highly enriched uranium processing facility in Tennessee; the effort is projected to cost between $4.2 billion and $6.5 billion.
Comments:
Anonymous said...
I wonder why they didn't site NIF which is directly weapons related and cut their funds by 50% or more immediately. I guess good snow-jobs pay off. I do think they're going to cut LANL for the next five years. Again, it's time for a 3&3 VSIP and save the jobs for the young who need another 30-45 years before they can retire. helloooo !!! NNSA, Anyone in their ?
December 16, 2012 8:56 AM
Anonymous said...
"Dozens of Democratic lawmakers have revived a call for $100 billion in U.S. nuclear weapons spending..."

This from the same bunch that hasn't passed a budget in 3+ yrs. Congress spills more than $10bil/yr.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The weapons budget at the NNSA complex is headed down. Like it or not, the weapons complex is going to be much smaller in the near future. Costs (esp. overhead) are clearly out of control. Putting for-profit companies like Bechtel and BWXT in control of the labs and other facilities has not saved taxpayer money. It's has only made costs rise dramatically!

Here are just a few examples:

The B-61 refurbishment project won't last much longer due to out of control costs and the lack of qualified staff at places like SNL to even handle the project. One report issued several months ago projected that SNL would have to hire an additional 600 technical specialists to accomplish the B-61 project. I doubt they could find that many qualified and cleared individuals even if they were lucky enough to see an enormous increase in the B-61 budget, which they won't. This huge project will soon be dead due to both costs, lack of qualified expertise & politics.

CMRR is already dead. Rising costs killed it off.

NIF is on 3 years of life support and will then be shut off due to lack of progress and poor design choices.

Even the Y-12 UPF project is beginning to come under the aim of the budget cutters. The project management appears to be woefully inadequate. The Y-12 project management team couldn't even correctly compute the required ceiling height for this facility and had to then make expensive engineering changes to correct their mistakes.


There are many more examples of things gone totally amok in the NNSA complex that will soon have serious budget repercussions but you get the idea.
12/19/2012 1:21 PM
Anonymous said…
There are about 80 liberals in the House and about 130 tea-party-ers.

That leaves only about 220-230 possible members of the House with functioning brains.

almost Hopeless.



12/27/2012 10:47 PM
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