
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) can only wait five to seven more years before beginning a potentially costly life-extension program on the megaton-class B83 gravity bomb, a senior agency official said Wednesday in a budget hearing. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) coaxed the estimate out of Charles Verdon, deputy administrator for NNSA Defense Programs, during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. Feinstien, ranking member of the panel that writes the Senate’s first draft of the annual…