Nuclear Budget: Bombs Explode, Anti-Terror Programs Wane, Boondoggles Bust

On the radar: NNSA budget winners and losers; Ignoring fiscal headwinds; Bell tolls for MOX; Model transparency; Wargames on the peninsula; and Bushehr shaky on safety.

April 11, 2013 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Alyssa Demus

NNSA budget winners & losers - Bombs win: B-61 Life Extension Program (+45.5%), W76 warhead Life Extension Program (+19%), W78/88 warhead Life Extension (+$235 million).

--Losers: Global Threat Reduction Initiative (-15%), International Nuclear Materials Protection and Cooperation (-36%).

--Boondoggles: MOX Fuel Plant (-26%), National Ignition Facility (-27%), CMRR (still dead). Jay Coghlan at Nuke Watch New Mexico has the numbers. (pdf) http://bit.ly/12M2J41

Unrealistic budgeting - The Obama administration requested $7.87 billion for nuclear weapons activities, $300 million more than the continuing resolution for FY13. Unfortunately, this request “doesn’t take into account the fiscal headwinds now blowing across the federal budget and it ignores some common-sense cost savings strategies on some of the most costly projects,” write Daryl Kimball and Tom Collina at Arms Control Now.

--”It will be up to Congressional budget appropriators to make the tough, practical choices about what is really necessary and what is affordable.” http://bit.ly/16V2Fvo

Friendly reminder - As Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said last year, “While modernizing the nuclear weapons stockpile is important, it cannot come at the expense of nonproliferation activities.” Kingston Reif at Nukes of Hazard has the quote and some early budget analysis. http://bit.ly/10Oid1X

Reality strikes MOX - Discussing the MOX plant cut, briefing documents from the White House Office of Management and Budget said, “This current plutonium disposition approach may be unaffordable, though, due to cost growth and fiscal pressure. While the Administration will assess the feasibility of alternative plutonium disposition strategies, resulting in a slowdown of MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility construction in 2014, it is nonetheless committed to the overarching goals of the plutonium disposition program to: 1) dispose of excess U.S. plutonium; and 2) achieve Russian disposition of equal quantities of plutonium.” (PDF, p. 90) http://1.usa.gov/ZP48is

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Report - “A New START Model for Transparency in Nuclear Disarmament” by Tamara Patton, Pavel Podvig and Phillip Schell for UNIDIR. http://bit.ly/10VVZdi

--Individual country reports (pdf). http://bit.ly/XFcdMo

Gaming it - The U.S. military recently ran a wargame to test U.S. nuclear and chemical response capabilities. The scenario: the regime of “North Brownland” aka North Korea fell, and “the U.S. had to surge troops to secure the country’s nuclear stockpiles.”

--Result: “the U.S. troops had immediate problems surging into the North Korea-like country. V-22 Ospreys zoomed U.S. soldiers deep beyond the border, but with reinforcements so far behind they were quickly surrounded by the enemy and needed to be pulled out.”

--Capabilities needed: the military concluded “in the end it takes the U.S. a force of 90,000 troops and 56 days to secure [the] nuclear weapons.” Other analysts’ projections are much higher at 200,000 troops, report Jake Tapper and Jennifer Rizzo at CNN. Full story here http://owl.li/jXZ2q

Tweet - @ABC: Situation "normal" for foreign diplomats in North Korea, embassy tells ABC News abcn.ws/XtZOZD

Shaky on safety - A 6.3-magnitude earthquake, with an epicenter 100 miles from Iran’s Bushehr reactor, destroyed 800 homes and killed 37 people. “The Bushehr reactor, which was completed in 2011, sits at the intersection of three tectonic plates and is designed to endure earthquakes up to a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale. So this was a very close call,” notes Ali Vaez.

--”The reverberations that shook the ground in Bushehr should serve as a wake-up call for Iran to improve its nuclear safety standards.” Full post at Foreign Policy. http://atfp.co/Zp5wbK

See above - “Iran Plans to Build More Nuclear Reactors in Quake-Prone Area” from Reuters. http://owl.li/jY5D1

Tweet - @lrozen: US NSA Tom Donilon to see Russian officials, maybe Putin, on missile defense in Moscow Monday 4/15. http://bit.ly/16Pid5M

Events:

--”Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the World.” Panel with Joe Cirincione, Philip James Walker, and Isaiah Wilson III. April 12 from 3:30-4:50 at the Conference on World Affairs, Boulder. Details here. http://bit.ly/151dxf0

--”Unhappy Endings: Apocalypse Now!.” Panel with Chip Berlet, Joe Cirincione, Howard Schultz, and Isaiah Wilson III. April 13 from 10:30-11:50 at the Conference on World Affairs, Boulder. Details here. http://bit.ly/151dwb7

--"The Strength of Dialogue: In Honor of JFK's Commencement Address (1963-2013)," Sergei Khrushchev, Brown University; former Rep. James Symington (MO); John Beyrle, former Ambassador to Russia; Vladimir Pechatnov, MGIMO University, Moscow; and Allen Pietrobon, American University. April 13 2:00-6:00 p.m. @ American University. Details here. http://goo.gl/dyBeR

--”The Future of the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent.” Amb. Linton Brooks. April 15 12:30-1:30 p.m. @ American Security Project. Details here. http://goo.gl/fnZc6