For immediate release 22 December 2020

Permalink * Prior press releases

Unprecedented Increase in Warhead Spending Approved by Congress

Los Alamos increase largest by far, primarily to establish plutonium factory complex for warhead cores

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell

Albuquerque, NM -- Last night Congress passed H.R. 133, a 5,593-page bill combining annual appropriations for the whole federal government, a Covid relief package, and other legislation. Division D (joint explanatory statement, including binding conditions, reports required, and appropriations tables) includes funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

Overall, Congress appropriated $19.73 billion (B) for NNSA, just 0.2% less than the $19.77 B requested.

NNSA's warhead programs ("Weapons Activities") were given $15.35 B, just 1.65% ($257 million, M) less than the $15.60 B requested. Most of the funds cut were shifted to Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, which gained $229 M (11%) over the requested amount.

(There are other covid-response-related funds available to NNSA contractors from CAREs Act appropriations and possibly in the covid relief sections of this Act. These are not included here.)

While the conferees did not significantly adjust NNSA's bottom line, the joint explanatory statement was to our eye relatively detailed, with an emphasis on transparency. Funds were shifted slightly, and the conferees placed fiscal controls and reporting requirements on some programs.

No funding for any warhead sustainment program, modernization program, or production capability was cut from the request. There was a minor ($90 M, 4%) increase in production modernization (e-p. 176). Warhead dismantlement spending was increased by $6 M (12%) (e-p. 174). Cuts totalling $296 M were made in maintenance and repair (6%), infrastructure and safety (7%), and a new funding line for early-stage conceptual project planning (88%) (e-p. 180).

One of those areas where detailed reports are required is plutonium warhead core ("pit") production (p. 108), which is fully funded at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to the tune of $837 M, the Savannah River Site (SRS) at $442 M, and elsewhere at $91 M, for a total FY21 pit production commitment of $1.37 B.

LANL pit production costs do not include all related construction (table and charts, slides 23-27), which if included take LANL's FY21 funding for plutonium modernization to $1.08 B. Complex-wide, total plutonium modernization expenses from FY19 through FY25 are expected to be $11.67 B, with much more to follow (slide 23).

As noted by the conferees (p. 108), there is no "resource-loaded integrated master schedule" -- in other words, any detailed plan -- for pit production. One is required.

The Weapons Activities funding provided by Congress in this bill is greater -- both in absolute amount in constant-dollars and in year-on-year growth -- than at any prior time in U.S. history. The U.S. is now spending annually, in constant dollars, more than three times what the US did for comparable activities during the Cold War. See the following chart.

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At LANL, the funds provided last night will increase warhead activities by 49% from FY20, to $2.91 B, and increase all DOE spending at LANL by 33% year-on-year, to $3.43 B (FY21 Laboratory Tables).

In terms of total DOE spending and NNSA Weapons Activities spending, LANL is now by far the best-funded site in the nuclear warhead complex. This year's increases at LANL are far more than at any other site in the NNSA complex (FY21 Laboratory Tables).

LANL's non-DOE funding, called "Strategic Partnership Projects" (SPP, formerly "Work For Others") was $427 million (M) in FY2019 (slide 4) and has been growing, suggesting a total LANL budget in the general range of $3.9 B for FY21. Within this figure, the bill approved $226 M in Environmental Management (EM) ("cleanup") spending at LANL (e-p. 186).

The recent budget history of LANL is shown below, in then-year and in constant November 2020 dollars.

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For reference, the average total spending at LANL over the 1943-1989 period was about $1.03 B in 2020 dollars, a little more than one-fourth the FY21 level (source: LANL historical cost database, Study Group files; for chart see p. 4 here or contact us for a simpler version).

Nuclear weapons activities will also increase for FY21 at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), DOE funding for which will rise by roughly 11% (FY21 Laboratory Tables).

Statewide in New Mexico, warhead spending will jump 25% year-on-year, reaching nearly $6 B; overall DOE spending in New Mexico will rise by about 15% to about $7.6 B (State Tables).

Study Group Director Greg Mello:

"These huge budget increases are NNSA's attempt to overcome chronic poor planning by throwing money at what by now amounts to structural management failures. NNSA's ultra-privatized, ultra-opaque business model, and the unique-in-government powers to evade oversight that it has gradually amassed, have led to egregious waste and fiscal abuse.Much of this has become politically invisible to Congress, because it is so routine. NNSA is now spending triple what its predecessor agencies spent during the Cold War for the same kind of work, and for a far smaller arsenal that is turning over on a far slower pace.

"This year's unprecedented sharp rise in spending indicates that a very different budget process occured this year. To make a long story short, the Secretary of Energy and Office of Management and Budget lost control of the NNSA budget this year, because a small cabal of nuclear weapons insiders at NNSA, DoD, and Congress blackmailed the President, almost exactly one year ago to the day.

That aside, NNSA's gold-plated operations are a feature, not a bug. Unspoken purposes of NNSA funding are to enrich contractors and provide pork-barrel spending for the congressional delegations that represent the sites and states. When those parochial interests are combined with the Cold War ideology now running rampant in Washington, gold rush conditions are created.

"Last night's spending increases are so huge they are like wartime increases, but they lack any real justification, let alone wartime discipline. A leaked 2016 memorandum indicates that President-elect Biden is already well-aware of this problem and some of its causes.

"One of the realizations of the incoming administration is going to be that NNSA must accept some now-inevitable delays in warhead modernization, and in the operation of its planned plutonium infrastructure. Plutonium warhead core ("pit") manufacturing will not be up to speed by 2030.

"Hopefully the incoming administration will also see the wisdom of scaling back the arms race now well underway. The U.S. does not need new kinds of nuclear weapons -- to say the least."

There are additional comments of a local flavor in this press release from February of this year.  The spending increases requested then have now happened.

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