The National Nuclear Security Administration will apparently wait until at least December for the funding increase the White House has proposed, as Congress is expected to move quickly on a short-term spending bill that will hold the federal budget at current levels for the first three months of fiscal 2018.
The move would, at least temporarily, put a halt to the NNSA’s plans to pour money into life-extension and modernization programs for existing nuclear armaments including the W80-4 warhead and B61-12 gravity bomb; accelerate construction and modernization of plutonium pit-production facilities; and increase funding for plutonium experiments essential to maintaining the potency of existing fissile materials.
It would also stop the Department of Energy from transferring unneeded nuclear-weapon facilities out of the NNSA’s budget and provide a time-out in the perennial fight over whether to continue building a massive facility in South Carolina to eliminate 34 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium the U.S. says it no longer needs.
Multiple news outlets including have reported that congressional leaders are eyeing a three-month stopgap spending measure known as a continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown after the fiscal 2017 appropriation runs out after the stroke of midnight Sept. 30. Continuing resolutions extend spending levels from the previous fiscal year into the next, while prohibiting agencies from starting new projects.
The Trump administration requested some $14 billion for the NNSA in fiscal 2018, a more than 7.5-percent increase from 2017. The House in July approved an energy budget plan that would provide a little less than that, while a Senate spending bill that cleared that chamber’s Appropriations Committee before the August recess would provide a roughly 6-percent increase for the NNSA.
The stockpile-steward’s nuclear weapons programs would be the primary beneficiary of the administration’s request. The White House requested over $10 billion for 2018, a more than a 10.5 percent increase from 2017. The House matched that request, while the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended a roughly 8-percent increase.
Meanwhile, a continuing resolution would leave the NNSA’s nonproliferation budget some 4.75 percent higher than the roughly $1.8 billion the White House requested. The House has proposed slashing the nonproliferation budget even more, by about 5.5 percent to roughly $1.77 billion. Senate appropriators proposed a roughly 2-percent cut to almost $1.84 billion.
A continuing resolution would also mean a reprieve for the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction at DOE’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
The Trump administration, like the Barack Obama administration before it, wants to cancel the massive facility that is intended to turn 34 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium into fuel for commercial reactors. Instead, the White House wants to dilute the plutonium, blend it with concrete-like grout, and bury the mixture at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
The Senate committee’s 2018 DOE appropriation would cancel MOX, while the House’s bill would keep the project going, as would a continuing resolution — at least for now.
A stopgap spending bill would also delay Trump administration plans — to which both the House and Senate committee have essentially agreed — to transfer unused NNSA facilities at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex to the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management for cleanup.
The Trump administration wanted to start $225 million worth of transfers to Environmental Management from the NNSA in 2018. The House, which besides the Lawrence Livermore and Y-12 facilities would also transfer a facility at Idaho to EM, approved $75 million of transfers. The Senate committee approved $55 million.
Congress is slated to return to Washington on Sept. 5, after the U.S. Labor Day holiday.
