The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will get its full-year appropriation on time for the 2019 fiscal year, after President Donald Trump on Friday signed a multi-agency appropriations act that includes more than $15 billion for the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency.
Overall, the NNNSA will get a roughly 4-percent year-over-year raise for fiscal 2019 That is about 1 percent more than the White House requested. The whole Department of Energy will get $35 billion: about a $1-billion raise compared with 2018 and some $5.5 billion more than the White House requested.
Within NNSA, the weapons activities budget would rise almost 4.5 percent from 2018 to about $11 billion, defense nuclear nonproliferation would drop 3.5 percent to about $2 billion, as requested, and naval reactors would get a roughly 10-percent raise to around $1.8 billion.
Notably, the bill provides $65 million for the NNSA to begin converting an unspecified number of W76 warheads into the low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead called for in February as part of the administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.
Elsewhere, the W80-4 life extension program got a roughly 65-percent boost to $255 million, under the “minibus” that also funds the Veterans Affairs Department and the legislative branch. The White House wants to accelerate the warhead refurbishment program so the W80 is ready to fly aboard the next-generation cruise missile, the Long-Range Standoff Weapon, the Pentagon wants to start deploying in the late 2020s.
The bill agrees to the House’s plan to boost the NNSA’s infrastructure and operations budget above the requested level. The account, which mostly funds maintenance and improvements at eight main field sites, will receive a little more than $3 billion in 2019: nearly 4 percent lower than the 2018 budget, but about 3 percent more than requested for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
Meanwhile, Congress provided only $220 million for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) under construction at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina: almost a 35-percent cut from 2018 levels and in line with the White House’s request. However, the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act signed in August directs the agency to use any funding available to continue building the facility, including funding left over from prior appropriations bill.
An NNSA spokesperson has said the carry-over funding available for the MFFF is “sufficient to cover outstanding project liabilities and execute the work expected to be approved in the final appropriations bill.”
The NNSA wants to convert the plutonium-disposition plant into a factory for nuclear-warhead cores called plutonium pits. The converted MFFF facility would complement a pit plant planned at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The bill also has $53 million for the NNSA to continue development work on a so-called interoperable warhead that could conceivably fly on future Air Force and Navy missiles. That includes the next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile, the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, that would replace the W-78-armed MinuteMan III in the late 2020s, according to current Pentagon plans.
