The administration on Thursday released a one-page unclassified summary of the classified report sent to lawmakers. That summary shows that spending on modernization of the nuclear weapons complex over the decade will reach $80 billion, growing from $6.4 billion this year to $7 billion in coming years and eventually topping $8 billion beginning in 2016. The growing costs reflect not just construction of facilities but also the refurbishment and possible replacement of some warheads in the next decade, all without the need for testing, according to the summary.

An additional $100 billion is to be spent on strategic nuclear delivery systems such as bombers and land- and submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. Research is underway on a new strategic bomber and a new class of strategic submarines.

You can download the unclassified summary (“Fact sheet on 1251 report”) on the State Department website here.

What will all this money go toward? Much of the funding will likely go to large infrastructure projects, building nuclear weapons facilities that will allow the US to ramp up nuclear weapons production in the future. When the funding for just 2011 was proposed in February, I blogged about three of these facilities that will cost billions over the next decade and, taken together, will lock in US nuclear weapons production for years to come.

Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR) – While there is a need to upgrade the facility due to safety and seismic concerns, the new facility is also being designed to allow for increased plutonium pit production – the bomb cores of nuclear weapons. Currently, the US has the capacity to produce up to 20 “pits” per year at Los Alamos. This new facility would allow the US to produce between 50-80 plutonium pits per year. With this production capacity, a future administration could quickly churn out more or new nuclear weapons.

Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) – The UPF facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee is a uranium manufacturing facility that could increase warhead production capacity. It would allow for 50-80 uranium secondaries to be produced each year.

Kansas City Plant – This facility creates the non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons, such as fuses. The new facility in Missouri will be funded privately in the future, instead of by the federal government. Groundbreaking for the new facility may begin this summer.

What could we do instead with this funding? The possibilities are endless. Especially in this economy, there is no shortage of places where funding for nuclear weapons could be better spent.

Earlier this week, I was in Nevada as part of our campaign work to support the New START treaty and cut the nuclear weapons budget. Nevada continues to have the highest foreclosure rate in the nation: 1 in 69 households.  According to the National Priorities Project tradeoff calculator, Nevadans could be using their tax dollars for housing:

Taxpayers in Nevada will pay $158.3 million for proposed nuclear weapons in FY2010. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided: 845 Affordable Housing Units.

In Missouri, the local Kansas City council declared a 180 acre soybean field “blighted” to allow construction of the new nuclear weapons facility to proceed. At the same time that municipal funding will go toward the new Kansas City Plant facility, the Kansas City Missouri School Board “voted to close 26 schools on Wednesday night. As a result of that vote, 700 employees, including 300 teachers, will lose their jobs.”

The National Priorities Project calculates that:

Taxpayers in Missouri will pay $269.5 million for proposed nuclear weapons in FY2010. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided: 5,347 Elementary School Teachers for One Year.

Keep in mind this is the tradeoff for just one year of nuclear weapons funding. For the next decade, we will be spending far more than we do this year if we do not act now to reduce the nuclear weapons budget and realign our nuclear weapons program toward disarmament. Rather than creating new facilities to build up our nuclear weapons stockpile or create new nuclear weapons, the US needs to move toward shrinking our nuclear weapons arsenal and instead funding programs to dismantle nuclear weapons we don’t use.

Below is an alert we sent to some of our supporters on the nuclear pork in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Click on the following committee links to check if your representative is a member of a key committee that decides how much funding nuclear weapons will actually get. If your representative is on either the House Armed Services Committee or the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, please take action and email your representative.

Next year’s budget has just been released and while it has a spending freeze for most domestic programs, there’s plenty of nuclear weapons pork. The nukes budget comes in at roughly $7 billion, getting a ten percent increase.

It’s outrageous, unnecessary, and expensive.

Worst of all, the budget has hundreds of millions in nuclear pork for several new facilities that would enable the U.S. to increase its capacity to create new nuclear weapons in the future. A new plutonium pit facility in New Mexico would allow for a huge increase in the production of plutonium pits – the bomb cores of nuclear weapons. These facilities could cost taxpayers $3 billion each in the long run. Meanwhile, funds to dismantle nuclear weapons we no longer need have been slashed.

The budget has millions for new nuclear weapons facilities we don’t need. Ask your representative to cut nuclear pork today!

The international community is coming together in May to evaluate progress on the cornerstone treaty of nuclear disarmament. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligates nuclear weapons states – like the U.S. – to work toward nuclear disarmament in exchange for non-nuclear weapons states not acquiring them. Other countries are looking to the U.S. for signs that we are serious about living up to our nuclear disarmament obligations, and this budget undermines our credibility.

Last year, your emails and calls created the grassroots pressure that successfully eliminated pork for the nuclear weapons complex from the economic stimulus. Please email now and ask your representative to cut funding for these new facilities.

Analysis of the Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Request

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

“Proposed DoE funding also includes large increases for a facility that will expand plutonium production in Los Alamos, New Mexico and for a new highly enriched uranium production facility near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, each estimated to cost about $3 billion. The Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project (CMRR) plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory increased from $97 million in FY 2010 to $225 million in FY 2011. Y-12’s Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) also increased to $115 million from $94 million in FY 2010.”

Click here to download a PDF of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s budget briefing book.

Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

Click here for ANA’s press release.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico

Click here for their blog post on the budget.

Project on Government Oversight

Click here for their blog post on the budget.

Tri-Valley CAREs

Click here for their press release.

Upcoming activities on nuclear weapons

1. For Peace and Human Needs: Nuclear Disarmament Now! is a new website with resources on activities and demonstrations being planned for the May NPT Review Conference. Hundreds of organizations from the U.S. and around the globe are taking new steps to renew the commitment to a nuclear free world. The website includes an online petition on nuclear disarmament.

2. Groundbreaking is expected in April for a major new production facility, the Kansas City Plant, that will be responsible for 85% of all components for possible new designs and/or half-century life extensions of existing U.S. nuclear weapons. Protests and demonstrations in Kansas City are currently being planned, just before the NPT Review Conference that begins May 3. Contact Nuclear Watch New Mexico for more information.

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cjbrenchley/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Funding for nuclear weapons programs is now at almost $7 billion — a 10% increase from last year. Released yesterday, the Fiscal Year 2011 budget for the Department of Energy increases funding for nuclear weapons activities by $661 million and increases funding for defense nuclear non-proliferation by $550 million, an artificially high number that includes other programs.

Though the president has often spoken of the long-term national security goal of achieving a nuclear weapons free world, this budget sends the wrong message to the international community by investing so heavily in the nuclear weapons complex. Most disturbing is the fact that facilities that would enable the U.S. to increase its capacity to create new nuclear weapons in the future received large funding increases. Funding for the dismantlement of nuclear weapons actually decreased. As a major international conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) approaches in May, it will be hard for the U.S. to be able demonstrate it is fulfilling its disarmament obligations with this kind of budget. Showing progress toward disarmament will be critical to winning the support of the international community for greater non-proliferation measures.

The White House offered an early preview of the rationale behind the budget last week, with an OpEd by Vice President Joe Biden in the Wall Street Journal stating:

For as long as nuclear weapons are required to defend our country and our allies, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal. The president’s Prague vision is central to this administration’s efforts to protect the American people—and that is why we are increasing investments in our nuclear arsenal and infrastructure in this year’s budget and beyond.

Ensuring the nuclear weapons arsenal is safe and secure certainly makes sense, and each year the stockpile has been certified to be in good working order. However, the types of infrastructure investments made in this budget seem to have less to do with that goal and more to do with the need to gain the votes of 8 Republican Senators in order to ratify upcoming nuclear weapons treaties. It’s hard to say if the budget’s nuclear pork for new facilities will satisfy the weapons labs and Republicans. In December, 41 senators (all Republicans and Independent Joe Lieberman) sent a letter to Obama stating that “modernization” of our nuclear arsenal (read new nuclear weapons) are needed. Though the budget invests in the infrastructure that creates the capacity for new nuclear weapons, no explicit funding was giving for a new nuclear weapon program like the Reliable Replacement Warhead. The Kansas City Star reports:

Some experts said the administration apparently is hoping its plan to boost spending on nuclear weapons will persuade enough Republicans to join Democrats in ratifying the new treaty with Russia and a global ban on underground testing known as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty….

Iran and North Korea, however, could argue that the plan contradicts Obama’s pledge to cut the U.S. arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world in their campaigns to blunt U.S.-led efforts to halt their nuclear programs.

Other countries could see increased U.S. spending for nuclear weapons as backsliding by Obama, whose strategy helped win him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

“The tightrope the president has to walk is to put in enough funding to ensure everyone that the weapons will remain safe, secure and effective, but not so much that it looks like a new arms buildup,” said Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation that underwrites arms control programs. “There is no question that some counties, friends and foes, will see the increased spending as a sign of U.S. hypocrisy.”

Below is a breakdown of some of the main programs in the administration’s proposed budget to keep an eye on as Congress begins debating what to fund.

Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR) – Funding increase to $225 million, up from $97 million in 2010.

The new CMRR facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico would allow for increased plutonium pit production — the bomb cores of nuclear weapons. A few years ago, President Bush unsuccessfully sought to increase plutonium pit production capacity from its current levels to up to 125 pits per year. The Department of Energy continued to push for a pit production capacity of 50-80 pits per year instead of the current capacity of 20 pits per year. The new CMRR would allow for this increased pit production capacity, creating the capability in the future to churn out new pits for new weapons.

Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) – Funding increase to $115 million, up from $94 million in 2010

The UPF facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee is a uranium manufacturing facility that could increase warhead production capacity. Total costs for UPF and CMRR could climb to more than $3 billion (though officially the costs are still “to be determined”), with large increases over the next 4 years.

Dismantlement of nuclear weapons – Funding cut from $96 million in 2010 down to $58 million for FY 2011.

Strangely, as a new treaty between the U.S. and Russia on nuclear weapons reductions is being finalized, funding for dismantling nuclear weapons we no longer need has been cut by roughly one-third.

Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation – Funding increase to $2.7 billion, a 25.8 percent increase from 2010

At first glance, this seems like a big increase until you dig a little deeper and see that $217 million of the increase actually goes to a program that funds a mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication plant in South Carolina, not nuclear nonproliferation. While there is still an increase for nuclear nonproliferation programs, it’s not quite as much as a bump as we would hope.

Securing loose nuclear material worldwide is one of the smartest investments we can make to keep America and the global community safe from the threat of nuclear terrorism. President Obama has talked about his goal of securing vulnerable nuclear material and weapons within four years and will be convening a summit in April to discuss nuclear security.

B61 Study on Life Extension Program (LEP) – Funding increases to $251 million from $32 million in 2010

Funding for this program now makes little sense. The B61 gravity bomb, a tactical nuclear weapon, is currently only deployed in Europe, where a number of our NATO allies have recently begun to question whether or not it is actually needed. The foreign ministers of Sweden and Poland made the case in a New York Times Op-Ed this week arguing for the elimination of tactical nuclear weapons on the way to a nuclear weapons free world. If Europe no longer wants tactical nuclear weapons, why bother spending money on a study for extending the life of the B61?

Kansas City Plant – This facility is transitioning from being government funded to privately funded in the future

Groundbreaking is expected in April (just before the NPT Review Conference that begins May 3) for a major new production facility, the Kansas City Plant (KCP), in Missouri. KCP will be responsible for 85% of all nonnuclear components used in nuclear weapons.

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amagill/ / CC BY 2.0

]]> http://blog.nuclearweaponsfree.org/2010/02/2011-budget-analysis-of-the-10-increase-in-nuclear-weapons-funding/feed/ 0