WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation office needs to end programs that have served their purpose, the head of that office told a panel of scientists here Wednesday.
“We know how to start a project, but we don’t know how to kill it,” Brent Park, NNSA deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation, said during an open meeting of the National Academies Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board. “We need to learn to declare success.”
He was responding to a question from board member William Tobey, who once held the position Park holds now, about the Donald Trump administration’s proposed cuts within NNSA defense nuclear nonproliferation operations.
Park did not say exactly which programs are past what he considers their logical sunset dates, but the Donald Trump administration’s 2020 budget request points a finger.
The overall nonproliferation budget would actually rise 3% to about $2 billion, under the Trump administration’s request. However, the NNSA’s Global Material Security account, which seeks to secure fissile and radioactive materials from terrorists worldwide, would be cut about 15% to some $340 million.
Domestic and international radiological security programs would take the biggest whack of all, if the White House’s 2020 budget request beomes law: roughly 30% and 23%, respectively, for 2020 budgets of about $90 million and $60 million.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), chair of the House Appropriations panel that will write the first draft of the NNSA’s 2020 budget bill, is concerned that the agency wants to shrink nonproliferation spending while plowing more money into nuclear weapons programs.
Asked by Tobey if defense nuclear nonproliferation could use more funding than what the White House seeks for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, Park said, “We’re OK.”
