The combined appeal for the campaigns is a roughly $50 million increase over the fiscal 2011 request.
Meanwhile, $2.7 billion would be spent on agency infrastructure, including final design and construction work on the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement site at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee.
Both projects are set to achieve 90 percent "design maturity" late in the next budget cycle, which is when the nuclear agency will finalize the baseline construction cost and schedule for each.
Nuclear Nonproliferation
As the nuclear agency's weapons activities would experience a boost from the last fiscal year, its nonproliferation work would drop from $2.7 billion sought for the 2011 budget to $2.5 billion for the funding year beginning Oct. 1.
The program most affected by the new spending plan would be the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which would see its funding drop from a proposed $559 million in fiscal 2011 to slightly more than $508 million.
The initiative aims to secure and remove "high-priority" vulnerable nuclear material, such as highly enriched uranium, at overseas sites. It also converts HEU-fueled research reactors to use proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium fuel.
The threat reduction program will see a drop off because it was "front-loaded" in the last budget request to meet the president's goal of securing the world's loose nuclear materials within four years, according to D'Agostino. The program was to have ramped up by $225 million from the $334 actually appropriated in fiscal 2010. That, though, has yet to occur amid the continued budget standoff.
In addition, several projects under the initiative were completed or nearly wrapped up last year, added Harrington. She cited HEU-removal operations in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus.
"There was a real significant increase in our operational tempo in the latter half of the year," Harrington told reporters.
The agency also did not request funding for the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement that calls for Russia and the United States to each eliminate no less than 34 metric tons of excess nuclear-weapon material beginning in 2018 (see GSN, April 14, 2010).
Another effort that would see less money in fiscal 2012 is the International Nuclear Materials Protection and Cooperation program, which is responsible for enhancing the security of vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapon-usable nuclear material in other countries and improving states' ability to detect the illicit trafficking of those materials. The program, which was to receive $590 million in fiscal 2011, would receive $571 million in the new budget cycle, roughly the same amount as 2010.
Yesterday, the NNSA chief dismissed any suggestion the White House was backing off its pledge to lock down all nuclear materials around 2013. His statement came after a coalition of nuclear security organizations and specialists last week called for Congress to approve all requested fiscal 2011 funds for programs aimed at safeguarding sensitive materials around the world.
"We are highly committed to the president's goal of securing material in four years. Period. Bar none," D'Agostino told reporters. He noted the initiative has successfully removed highly enriched uranium from 19 nations and is working with 16 additional countries to remove the last of their materials.
This article originally appeared in Global Security Newswire, produced independently by National Journal Group under contract with the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group whose mission is preventing the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
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