The Bush administration’s proposed fiscal 2003 budget would reduce spending on security for nuclear weapons laboratories by more than $50 million, Slate reported Friday (see GSN, Jan. 23).

The fiscal 2003 budget proposes $655 million for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, according to Slate.  Included in the proposal are a 4 percent reduction for secure transportation assets and an 8 percent reduction for safeguards and security.

The U.S. Energy Department, which heads the NNSA, is being a conscientious spender, said NNSA spokeswoman Lisa Cutler.

“We’re in the midst of an analysis of our ongoing security needs,” Cutler said.  “It’s possible that there will be an additional request” for fiscal 2003 funding.

Soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Congress allocated an additional $106 million to the Energy Department to help improve security, Cutler said.  Most of those funds, however, are being spent on one-time increases and will be gone before the next budget begins.  Most agencies that received increases after the Sept. 11 attacks requested and received increases in their fiscal 2003 budgets, said John Pike, a national security analyst at Globalsecurity.org.

Nuclear laboratory security, however, has not increased since Sept. 11, said Peter Stockton, a consultant for the Project on Government Oversight.

One promising measure, the transfer of a small nuclear reactor from the Sandia National Laboratories to a more secure underground area, had its budget wiped out, Stockton said.  The budget proposal reduced funding for the transfer from $28 million to nothing, he said.

“That program was the one positive step the [Energy Department] had taken in years,” Stockton said.  “In next year’s budget, they simply axed it” (Eric Umansky, Slate, Feb. 15).

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