REPORT: NNSA WEAPONS PROGRAM SET FOR BOOST IN FY 2014 BUDGET REQUEST

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons program is expected to get another boost when President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget is released today, though the agency’s nonproliferation account would take a significant hit, according to a report released yesterday by the Center for Public Integrity. According to the report, the President is set to ask for approximately $7.7 billion for the NNSA’s weapons program, about $500 million more than the program’s current funding level of $7.227 billion. Much of the increase would go to fund high priority modernization work on the W76, B61, W78/88 and for construction of the Uranium Processing Facility. NNSA’s nonproliferation work would be cut by about $460 million below what it currently received in funding, $2.45 billion, with the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, as expected, taking a significant hit. The MOX program would receive about $330 million in FY 2014, about half of what it was previously expected to need. The decrease to nonproliferation funding, which is expected to hit the Second Line of Defense and Global Threat Reduction Initiative hard, would be partially masked by the move of nuclear counterterrorism incident response—which was the source of a $247 million request from the President in FY 2013—from the weapons program to the nonproliferation account.