By George Lobsenz
The White House Office of Management and Budget helped broker a deal under which the Defense Department has agreed to help plug funding shortfalls in the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program in future years, sister publication The Energy Daily has learned.
The disclosure was made in a Dec. 22 letter from Energy Secretary Steven Chu to OMB Director Peter Orszag commenting on proposals in the OMB “passback” budget plan sent to DoE late last year. The passback responded to initial DoE budget requests for fiscal year 2011.
In the letter, obtained by The Energy Daily, Chu said the Pentagon had agreed to provide $145 million to cover projected shortfalls in two weapons programs administered by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous DoE agency that runs the department’s nuclear weapons complex.
“Regarding the $290 million out-year shortfall that was previously identified for [NNSA] science, technology and engineering programs and the [warhead] surveillance program, we have agreed with DoD [the Department of Defense] to share evenly the cost of the shortfall, at $145 million each,” Chu said in the letter.
The reference to an “out-year” shortfall means funding gaps identified in future-year budget plans being developed by the Obama administration in conjunction with its upcoming fiscal 2011 budget proposal, which is to be released early next month.
The additional funding for the warhead surveillance program–which is key to assuring reliability of aging U.S. warheads–follows reports that the program has lagged on key elements of its warhead evaluations.
In particular, the JASONs, an independent panel of nuclear weapons experts, last year issued a report specifically expressing concern about the surveillance program, which conducts detailed examination and testing of a small number of each type of warhead each year to ensure no reliability problems are developing.
“Surveillance of stockpile weapons is essential to stockpile stewardship,” said an unclassified executive summary of the JASONs report. “Inadequate surveillance would place the stockpile at risk.
“We find that the surveillance program is becoming inadequate. Continued success of stockpile stewardship requires implementation of a revised surveillance program.”
Chu, in his letter to Orszag, indicated that the new cost-sharing agreement with the Pentagon was part of strong overall support shown by OMB for NNSA.
“I want to emphasize my appreciation for OMB’s efforts to help us achieve important increases in funding for all the programs of the NNSA,” the secretary said. “Among these, the agreement that your staff helped us to negotiate with the Department of Defense for the funding of the nuclear weapons program is especially welcome.”
Chu did not provide any additional details about the scope or other specifics of the cost-sharing agreement with DoD, which drives much of NNSA’s research and production agenda through its warhead needs.
Other parts of Chu’s letter indicate that President Obama plans to propose a significant 13 percent increase in NNSA’s budget for fiscal 2011–but that OMB was providing less than DoE had initially requested for its weapons programs.
A chart in the letter showed that DoE requested $11.7 billion for NNSA in fiscal 2011, up from the $9.88 billion provided by Congress to NNSA in the current 2010 fiscal year.
OMB initially responded in its passback proposal to provide $11.08 billion for NNSA for fiscal 2011.
Upon further discussions with DoE, OMB agreed to provide another $130 million for NNSA, making for a total of $11.21 billion, or about 13 percent above fiscal 2010 funding levels.
Obama has shown particular interest in bulking up NNSA’s programs on nuclear nonproliferation, which is one of the president’s signature issues.
The administration in budget planning documents last year outlined proposals to increase NNSA nonproliferation funding by more than $800 million over the next 10 years to accelerate U.S. efforts to secure weapons-usable nuclear materials in other countries.
In addition, Republican senators have made it clear to the administration that they will not support new international arms control or nonproliferation treaties unless Obama provides adequate funding to NNSA to maintain and refurbish the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.