The National Nuclear Security Administration would essentially receive its 2022 budget request under a spending bill the Senate Appropriations Committee marked up Wednesday, matching the funding the full House approved last week.
Unlike the House, however, Senate Appropriators approved the $72 million the Joe Biden administration sought for the planned W93 submarine launched ballistic missile warhead and the $10 million the administration wanted for a sea-launched variant of the W80-4: a refurbished cruise missile warhead to be used on the Air Force’s Long Range Standoff weapon.
The House proposed cutting the W80-4 sea-variant entirely, and proposed trimming almost $20 million from the W93 program, and drew a rebuke from the Biden administration for doing so.
Senate appropriators did tie one major string to the W80-4 funding, which also applies to some $98.5 million in requested funding for a B83 gravity bomb service life extension: the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in consultation with the Pentagon, has to certify that there is an operational requirement for the programs. If there isn’t, the NNSA administrator should give the money to other weapons, according to a report appended to the committee’s bill.
Overall, the Senate committee approved some $20 billion for the civilian nuclear weapons agency, including the roughly $1 billion sought for an upgraded plutonium pit factory at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and more than $600 million for work on a planned pit factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The upper chamber’s Appropriations Committee also had a word of warning for NNSA about funding for the agency’s planned two-state plutonium pit complex: turn over a requested 10-year research plan about plutonium and pit aging, or funding for the two pit factories gets such down.
“The Committee will be unable to continue to support the program without this information,” reads the bill report.
The full Senate had not scheduled a floor vote for the DOE appropriations bill at deadline for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. The House began its August recess away from Washington this week. The Senate was scheduled to begin its recess next week. The 2022 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
