NEW STUDY ESTIMATES COST TO U.S. OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AT $31 BILLION

By ExchangeMonitor

A new study sponsored by the Stimson Center puts the annual tab for maintaining the nation’s nuclear deterrent at as much as $31 billion, more than 50 percent more than the Administration’s own estimate of what it takes to steward the nuclear deterrent. The figure, which represents Fiscal Year 2011 spending, includes $8.2 billion in spending for the National Nuclear Security Administration primarily for the maintenance of nuclear warheads and the nation’s weapons complex, while $22.7 billion was spent by the Department of Defense for upkeep on the nation’s nuclear delivery systems, command and control, research and development and support costs. Extended over 10 years, the study’s authors suggested the nation will spend between $351 billion and $391 billion, which is significantly more than the Administration’s own $214 billion estimate.

Previous attempts to estimate how much the nation spends on nuclear weapons were significantly higher, including a 2009 estimate by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that suggested at least $52 billion was spent annually on nuclear weapons. That figure included work to clean up the nation’s Cold War era nuclear legacy, nonproliferation and missile defense, which the Stimson Center study did not include in its figures. Russell Rumbaugh of the Stimson Center, who authored the study with Stimson’s Nathan Cohn, said even with the study’s narrow definition of nuclear weapons spending, the study proves that official estimates undershoot the actual costs. “We tried to be conservative about the process,” Rumbaugh said during a briefing on the study yesterday. “We won’t be surprised if both sides of the analysis debate think we didn’t include enough.”

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