The White House is seeking $16.5 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for fiscal 2020: a roughly 8-percent increase from just over $15 billion in 2019 that, a senior Department of Energy official said this week, includes more funding for a controversial low-yield nuclear warhead.
The NNSA completed the first of these modified, submarine-launched, ballistic missile warheads in February and plans to begin deliveries to the Navy by Sept. 30.
On a conference call with the media Monday, the DOE official declined to say how much funding the NNSA wants for the low-yield warhead in the budget year beginning Oct. 1. Last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, said the NNSA would need $60 million for W76-2 in 2020: a little less than the $65 million Congress provided for 2019.
Whatever the 2020 request, it “completes development and production of the W76-2 warhead,” the White House wrote in a budget summary released Monday.
The NNSA has said it plans to convert “a small number” of W76-1 high-yield warheads into low-yield W76-2s at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. The Donald Trump administration says the U.S. needs the low-yield warhead to deter Russia from using similarly powerful weapons to win a war it starts, but cannot finish, with conventional weapons.
The DOE official declined on Monday to say how much the semiautonomous stockpile steward wants to spend on any particular NNSA program. The department plans to release its detailed budget justification documents — which run hundreds of pages and include detailed spending breakdowns — next week, a second DOE official said on the call.
In a press release issued after the call this week, the NNSA identified the target 2020 budget levels for its three main spending accounts:
- $12.4 billion for Weapons Activities, which funds life extension and modification programs for five nuclear weapons, including the W76-2. That is nearly 12 percent, or roughly $1.3 billion, above the 2019 appropriation of about $11 billion. It is also some 4 percent, or $500 million, more than the agency last year predicted it would seek for weapons programs in 2020.
- About $2 billion for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation: a little more than 3 percent, or about $60 million, over the 2019 appropriation of $1.9 billion. That is about as much funding as NNSA predicted last year it would seek for 2020. The nonproliferation account handles worldwide elimination of dangerous fissile material, and pays for the ongoing wind-down of the cancelled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The NNSA canceled the plutonium disposal plant in October.
- $1.6 billion for Naval Reactors, down about 8 percent, or more than $150 million, from almost $1.8 billion for 2019. The decrease for the account responsible for building nuclear reactors for naval warships reflects the comparatively smaller amount of work the NNSA expects to do in 2020, relative to 2019, the agency wrote in its press release. However, the latest request is about 10 percent lower than what the agency last year predicted it would seek for fiscal 2020.
Defense Nuclear Nonpro Gets Small Boost to Tackle Two-State Pit Complex, MFFF Replacement
At a total of about $2 billion, the NNSA’s requested 2020 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation budget “provides significant resources for strategic materials processing capabilities,” such as planned pit plants at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the first senior DOE official said on Monday’s conference call.
The pit plant at Los Alamos’ Plutonium Facility already exists. The NNSA has been expanding the facility under the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project, which the agency expects to cost $2.5 billion to $3 billion over the eight years ending in fiscal 2024. Los Alamos is on the hook to make 30 pits a year by 2030, under the goals set in Donald Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.
The NNSA plans to build the Savannah River pit plant, which does not exist yet and is not authorized or funded by Congress, on the site of the MFFF. The converted MFFF will have to produce 50 pits a year by 2030, to meet the administration’s goals — something NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty has said is “not going to be an easy task.”
To that end, the NNSA’s 2020 budget will also fund the dilute and dispose program that will replace MFFF. Rather than converting 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium at the MFFF, the Energy Department now plans to chemically weaken the material at planned Savannah River facilities, blend it with concrete-like grout called stardust, and bury the resulting mixture deep underground at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The first senior DOE official would not say how much the NNSA wants to spend on MFFF conversion or dilute and dispose in fiscal 2020.
