BUDGET PROPOSAL COULD DELAY LANL CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS.

Byline: SUE VORENBERG

Funding for nuclear nonproliferation areas set for increase in plan

By Sue Vorenberg

The New Mexican 

Funding for some nuclear activities -- including a controversial plutonium facility called the CMRR -- at Los Alamos National Laboratory could drop by about $90 million if the 2010 National Nuclear Security Administration budget is approved by Congress.

The budget, released by NNSA on Thursday, includes reduced funding and time delays for the lab's Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility, or CMRR. The facility is being built to house analytical chemistry, metallurgy and plutonium research facilities. It also includes an area where plutonium bomb cores called pits could be manufactured.

"We've slowed down the rate of some of the design work on the CMRR facility," said NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino during a phone conference with reporters Thursday afternoon.

Cuts would also hit some other construction projects at the lab, with minor cuts to supercomputing and some cuts in defense nuclear security spending.

Along with the cuts, however, come increases in funding for some nuclear nonproliferation areas, including about $10 million for research and development, $16 million for accountability and $15 million for verification work, he said.

"It's a bit of a slowdown on the construction and design side and an increase in the nonproliferation side," D'Agostino said.

The agency is trying to fund two major construction projects in the nuclear complex at the same time, the CMRR and a uranium processing facility at the Y12 plant in Tennessee.

But there's not enough money for both, which is why NNSA is slowing the process on each of them by delaying design work, said Jerry Talbot, assistant deputy administrator for Nuclear Safety and Operations.

"Instead of taking money out of one project and moving it toward another, we stretched out the decision on both of those projects," Talbot said.

Officials are also waiting for the Obama Administration's Nuclear Posture Review, expected late this year or in early 2010, before deciding on more fixed budgets for the projects, D'Agostino said.

"In essence, the nation needs these facilities," he added.

Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, said he was pleased with the delay and reduced funding for the CMRR, because he doesn't want it to be used to make new nuclear weapons components.

"As little as three months ago a budget was submitted to Congress, a Bush budget, and it was $172 million next year for the CMRR," Mello said.

That money would have significantly ramped up construction on the facility. This year, NNSA spent about $97.2 million, and under the new budget, in 2010, NNSA will spend $55 million, he added.

In contrast to that, increases in nonproliferation funding are a positive change, Mello said.

"The NNSA portion of LANL spending declines about 6 percent overall in this budget," Mello said. "It would have declined more but there's a welcome increase in nonproliferation programs, where LANL has unique skills and the work has to be done."

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