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DOE Seeks Less Threat Reduction Funding, Group Says
The U.S. Energy Department is seeking nearly $300 million less for international WMD threat reduction programs in its next budget than it received for this fiscal year, the Partnership for Global Security said last week (see GSN, March 11). The fiscal 2009 budget request covering several programs operated by the agency’s National Nuclear Security Administration is $972.8 million. Those programs received $1.271 billion in this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, according to the group’s budget analysis. It linked a number of the cuts to the pending completion of nonproliferation programs. If the proposed spending plan is approved as it stands, funding for the International Nuclear Material Protection and Cooperation program would drop from $624.5 million to $429.7 million. The reduction comes as work finishes on security projects at Russian military and civilian nuclear sites. The budget for Nonproliferation and International Security programs would be reduced slightly from $150 million this year to $140.5 million. All but one of the project’s subprograms would see budget reductions. The Treaties and Agreements effort, though, would receive an additional $12 million. The Elimination of Weapons-Grade Plutonium Production program would receive $141.3 million as it completes the effort to shut down plutonium-producing energy reactors in Meanwhile, the Energy Department has requested a more than $26 million funding increase for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, a program to remove weapon-usable uranium from undersecured nuclear research reactors around the globe. The budget would rise from $193.2 million to $219.6 million (Partnership for Global Security release, March 20).
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