Civilian nuclear weapons programs would get a little more funding than requested in fiscal year 2024 if a budget bill released Wednesday by a House panel becomes law.
The House Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water’s version of the fiscal 2024 spending bill provides $48.8 billion for the Department of Energy (DOE), $133 million more than the current fiscal year but a $3.6 billion overall cut from the Biden Administration’s request for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
The subcommittee will markup its version of the bill beginning at 9 a.m. on Thursday. Though the legislation cuts overall spending on DOE, defense programs and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would receive significant funding increases over the 2024 budget request under the subcommittee’s bill.
The subcommittee’s bill would provide $23.9 billion for the NNSA, which is $1.8 billion more than the current budget and about $100 million more than the administration requested for fiscal 2024.
That includes $19 billion for NNSA weapons activities, which is in line with the administration’s 2024 budget request and a $1.6 billion increase from the current fiscal year.
Naval reactor funding “to support the operational nuclear fleet, Columbia-class submarine reactor development, and research and development for current and future generations of nuclear-powered warships” comes in at $1.94 billion under the subcommittee’s bill, a slight decrease from the administration’s $1.96 billion request. It is also a slight cut from the $2 billion naval reactor budget for the current fiscal year.
Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation would get $2.3 billion, a slight decrease from the $2.5 billion in the 2024 request.
The subcommittee’s version of the appropriations bill “fully funds all major stockpile modernization activities, including the W-93” submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead that will eventually replace the W76-1 and W88 Alt-370 warheads on the Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles carried by Ohio-class submarines.
It also “provides additional funding for plutonium pit production, the Uranium Processing Facility, and the nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N) program,” the subcommittee said in a statement on Wednesday.
The draft fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – released Tuesday by the House Armed Services Committee – includes $70 million for development of a SLCM-N that would carry a sea-launched variant of the W80-4 warhead. The administration’s 2024 budget request included no funding for the program. The NDAA, which the House Armed Services Committee will consider next week, would authorize $389 million for the W93 warhead,
The NDAA also includes a total of $2.9 billion for plutonium pit production modernization, split between the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. That is an increase of $142 million compared with the administration’s 2024 budget request. The draft NDAA prescribes $760 million for the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
