Skip to main content

NNSA WEAPONS FUNDING PROJECTED TO APPROACH $10B BY FY 2019

Weapons Complex Morning Briefing
March 17, 2014

NNSA WEAPONS FUNDING PROJECTED TO APPROACH $10B BY FY 2019

Funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons program is projected to continue to grow over the next five years, reaching nearly $10 billion by Fiscal Year 2019, according to the Obama Administration’s detailed budget justification for the agency that was released this weekend. The Administration requested $8.3 billion for the weapons program in FY 2015, a $533 million increase, and more of the same is expected in FY 2016, with the Administration projecting it will need $8.9 billion for the weapons program that year. Funding is projected to steadily increase before reaching $9.7 billion in FY 2019. The highest priced item in the NNSA’s budget is work on the B61 life extension program. The Administration requested $643 million for the program in FY 2015, and funding for the program is expected to steadily increase, reaching $729 million in FY 2018 and $726 million in FY 2019.

Meanwhile, funding for the NNSA’s nonproliferation account is expected to get a small boost in FY 2016 before leveling off through FY 2019, the budget request reveals. The agency requested $1.6 billion for the agency’s nonproliferation account in FY 2015, down $399 million from FY 2014 enacted levels. Funding is projected to be $1.7 billion in FY 2016, and largely flatline through FY 2019.

The budget details this weekend also shed a little more light on extra spending on the Administration’s wish list for FY 2015. Dubbed the “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative,” (OGSI) the Administration said it wants another $600 million for the NNSA’s weapons and nonproliferation accounts that would be above the Congressionally established budget cap for FY 2015. According to the budget details, which do not include any specifics about the funding, the OGSI money would be used to “accelerate modernization and maintenance of nuclear facilities” by “accelerat[ing] funding for infrastructure infrastructure planning and improvements found in the Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities program.” It would also boost nonproliferation funding with extra money for “R&D to advance proliferation detection and nuclear detonation detection capabilities; efforts to remove and eliminate, or secure and safeguard vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials worldwide; and efforts to limit or prevent the illegal transfer and illicit trafficking of weapons-usable nuclear and other radiological materials.” Additional money would also go toward cybersecurity programs.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Trump is to gut the labs.

The budget has a 20% decrease to DOE office of science, 20% cut to NIH. NASA also gets a cut. This will  have a huge negative effect on the lab. Crazy, juts crazy. He also wants to cut NEA and PBS, this may not seem like  a big deal but they get very little money and do great things.

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...

Rumor corner

LLNS may have excluded the wrong people in last VSSOP? The exclusions were based on outdated job categories and related skills. ULM are now thinking that in the future, job categories and functional areas will have to be re-defined. The next VSSOP/ISP will be based on the new categories and functional areas. The questions I have are: 1) Why didnt they think of that before the transition. It seems like their style is “change things as you go”. Planning is out the window! 2) Who will give input on the new changes? The next RIF apparently is going to be more lucrative than the VSSOP. Depending on the length of employment, a RIFed person, not only gets their 1 week pay per year of service but also from 30 to 120 days notice, essentially 30 to 120 days pay. Please feel free to comment on the rumors or add new ones you actually heard.