Budget request for Nevada National Security Site indicates slight increase

The Obama administration's 2012 budget request for the Nevada National Security Site will be about the same, if not slightly more, than the site's current budget but significantly less than in the heyday of full-scale nuclear weapons tests.

Overall, the figures released Monday by National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Thomas D'Agostino reflect the changing role of the sprawling proving ground, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, that for most of six decades was known as the Nevada Test Site. Last year's name change reflects the site's increased role to improve nuclear security worldwide and meet nonproliferation goals, D'Agostino said.

Under the budget request, funding for programs at the test site, the NNSA's Nevada Site Office in North Las Vegas and the Remote Sensing Laboratory would be more than $388 million, $29.1 million more than the fiscal year 2011 request and $17.5 million more than what was appropriated in 2010.

The budget numbers do not include money that test site programs receive as reimbursement for work for other government sectors, such as the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.

In the current fiscal year, work for other agencies accounts for some
$190 million, which makes the budget for the test site and North Las Vegas facilities roughly $550 million. NNSA officials expect work-for-others funding next year will be about the same as this year, but those figures weren't available Monday.

About 3,000 people work at the test site and the agency's local offices. Employment peaked at 11,000 workers, and the budget reached $1.4 billion, in 1989 at the end of the Cold War. Much of the money was used to conduct full-scale nuclear weapons tests, which were put on hold indefinitely after the last nuclear test in 1992.

In a conference call Monday with reporters, D'Agostino outlined NNSA's $11.78 billion budget request to invest in a modern national security enterprise, implement the president's nuclear security agenda and improve the way NNSA does business and manages its resources.

If approved by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama, the budget for fiscal year 2012, which starts Oct. 1, would be a 5.1 percent increase over the $11.2 billion for this year.

Of that, most of the 2012 budget request would be spent on weapons activities, $7.6 billion, which is an 8.9 percent increase, $621 million, over Obama's 2011 request.

At the test site, some of that money is reflected stockpile work and science campaign activities. Funding for stockpile work such as plutonium experiments and high-explosive, pulsed power experiments is projected to be cut in 2012 by more than half of its 2010 appropriation: $20.8 million, down from $51.2 million in 2010, and $37.9 million in 2011.

But science campaign money used for testing nuclear materials properties and developing models to study plutonium is expected to increase from $23.7 million in 2010 to $32 million in 2012, up from $28.5 million this year.

Anne Harrington, NNSA's deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation, said the test site will play a pivotal role in demonstrating technologies to detect nuclear weapons materials to keep them out of the hands of terrorists and rogue nations. One project focuses on enabling scientists to remotely detect solid, fuel-cycle remnants from nuclear reactors.

The 2012 budget request calls for continuing to spend more than $46 million on nuclear counterterrorism incident response.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.