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Overview
Funding Summary
 Historical
Totals |
What
is Counted |
FY
2007 Budget Proposal |
| FY 2005 Budget Cycle |
Budget Concerns |
Related
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| Key
Issues |
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From Fiscal Year (FY) 1992 through FY 2006, the United States Government budgeted approximately $13.4 billion in 2005 dollar (some $11.8 billion without adjusting for inflation) to the task of working cooperatively with other countries to dismantle and secure nuclear, biological, chemical weapons, materials, expertise, and means of delivery.[1] Of that amount, roughly $8.2 billion in 2005 dollars ($7.4 billion in unadjusted appropriations) have been for programs with a significant focus on reducing the threat posed by insecure nuclear warheads, material, and expertise.[2] The remainder has gone towards programs aimed at eliminating Russian and other chemical weapons stockpiles, destroying former Soviet weapons delivery systems, and dismantling the former Soviet biological weapons complex.
This web section, in addition to analyses of all the key programs relating to controlling nuclear warheads, materials, and expertise, includes an Interactive Budget Database. The content of the budget database is much broader than the rest of this web section, as it includes year-by-year budget data for all cooperative threat reduction programs, whether they are related to nuclear warheads, materials, and expertise or not. The database allows users to prepare budget tables for any program or set of programs they choose. In addition to the budget database, the analyses of individual programs in this web section include narrative descriptions of the budgets for those programs, along with tables and graphs detailing each program's current and historical budgets. Users interested in budget details are encouraged to use the budget database and these program-by-program budget descriptions.
Historical Totals, by Program Goals
Congress launched the Nunn-Lugar initiative in FY 1992 by authorizing the Department of Defense to shift up to $400 million from other programs to pay for programs to dismantle and control the Soviet Union's weapons of mass destruction, subject to certain restrictions and certification requirements. Over time, programs pursuing similar goals have been added at the Department of Energy and the Department of State, leading the total cooperative threat reduction budget to climb slowly above $1 billion per year. Only a portion of that funding is devoted to nuclear weapons, materials, and expertise, while the rest goes to other threat reduction activities.
The funding devoted to controlling nuclear warheads, materials, and expertise can be divided into efforts focused on Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials, Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling, Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel, Monitoring Stockpiles and Reductions, Ending Further Production of Nuclear Material, and Reducing Stockpiles of Nuclear Material (see below for a detailed discussion of which programs we include in each of these categories).
From FY 1992 through FY 2006, a total of $4.288 billion in constant, 2005 dollars has been budgeted for Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials, of which the largest single program, the Material Protection, Control, and Accounting program, has accounted for $2.460 billion in constant dollars (from both the Departments of Defense and Energy). This has been far and away the aspect of controlling nuclear warheads and materials that has received the most funding over the years.
Since FY 1992, programs working to Stabilize Employment for Nuclear Personnelhave received the next largest portion of funding. Since the earliest days of cooperative threat reduction with the former Soviet Union, in addition to securing the actual physical nuclear and other WMD material, the United States has been working to "secure" the human capital associated with the former Soviet weapons of mass destruction complexes—the weapons design expertise of scientists and engineers, and the workers with access to sensitive materials and facilities. All told, since 1992, the United States Government has allocated $1.155 million in constant dollars for efforts aimed at stabilizing these "custodians" of nuclear and other knowledge and access. (Because in many cases only aggregated data is available, we have counted all of this funding under the category of controlling nuclear warheads, materials, and expertise, although a substantial fraction of these efforts has in fact gone to experts from the former Soviet Union's chemical, biological, and aerospace complexes, not just nuclear experts.)
Attempts to Reduce Stockpiles of Nuclear Material—both blending down of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and disposing of plutonium excess to Russia's defense needs—is the component of controlling nuclear warheads and materials that has received the next greatest amount of funding from the U.S. government, $1.011 billion in constant dollars through FY 2006. This amount does not include the billions of dollars that have been transferred to Russia under the HEU Purchase Agreement, under which the private U.S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC) acquires low enriched uranium taken from weapons HEU from the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM), and resells this material on the commercial nuclear fuel market (although it does include $325 million appropriated by Congress in 1999 for the U.S. Government to purchase uranium under the agreement to keep Russia from pulling out of the deal).
Another $996 million in constant dollars has been budgeted for Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling, a task that has received increased attention over the last several years. (Here, too, we have included the entire budgets of programs focused on controlling smuggling of weapons of mass destruction, even though only a portion of these focused on nuclear smuggling.) Roughly $479 million in 2005 dollars has been budgeted for Ending Further Production of Nuclear Material in the former Soviet Union. Finally, $290 million has been devoted to Monitoring Stockpiles of nuclear warheads and material and attempted reductions to those stockpiles.
FY 2007 Threat Reduction Budget Proposal
The proposed budget for programs focused on controlling nuclear warheads, materials, and expertise around the world, which we estimate at $1.077 billion, would drop new funding slightly below the amount provided in FY 2006, but if approved, this proposal would provide these programs approximately 20 % more, in nominal terms, than they had in FY 2005.
For context, for FY 2007 the administration proposed about a 6 % cut from the previous year in new budget authority for all the discretionary programs that are not related to the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of State and other international assistance efforts, or homeland security. The administration requested a 6.9 % increase over the previous year for the “core” Department of Defense discretionary military budget—that is, the budget other than supplemental appropriations for on-going combat and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. For discretionary homeland security funding (both inside and outside the Department of Homeland Security), the administration sought a 3.3 % increase. For the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other international assistance programs, the administration asked for 12.2 % more funding than those programs received in FY 2006.[3]
By clicking on the links, one can see for each goal the program-by-program changes in FY 2005 from the previous years:
- Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
- Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
- Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
- Monitoring Stockpiles and Reductions
- Ending Further Production
- Reducing Excess Stockpiles
Within the totals for controlling nuclear warheads, materials, and expertise, the proposal sought significant changes for a number of programs.
The Department of Energy (DOE) proposed to reduce new funding for the “core” Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) program—that is, excluding the anti-smuggling Second Line of Defense program—from $325.8 million to $289.2 million, an 11 % reduction. The reduction would be borne by programs working on the Rosatom Weapons Complex (down $28.8 million, to $56.5 million), Civilian Nuclear Sites (down $25.6 million, to $21.2 million, thus relying on prior-year balances to support work that now includes countries outside the former Soviet Union), and the Material Consolidation and Conversion program (down $10.9 million, to $16.8 million). Increased funding was proposed for work on securing warhead storage sites managed by the Russian Navy Complex and by Russia ’s Strategic Rocket Forces and 12 th Main Directorate. For the National Programs and Sustainability line, DOE requested a substantial increase over the previous year, from $ 29.7 million to $48.1 million, as DOE works to ensure that MPC&A upgrades provided in Russia and elsewhere will be sustained (though the FY 2007 level would still be well below the FY 2005 level of $56.0 million for this work).
The Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), which is working to “identify, secure, remove, and/or facilitate the disposition of high-risk, vulnerable nuclear and radioactive materials around the world,” sought $106.8 million for FY 2007, a $9.8 million increase over the previous year. The Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) program and the Russian Research Rector Fuel Return (RRRFR) effort would both receive important increases if Congress approved the requested FY 2007 budget; RERTR would go up to $32.1 million, from $24.7 million, while RRRFR would more than double its new funding, from $14.7 million to $30.0 million. The GTRI proposal also included $1 million for Global Research Reactor Security; funding for this effort was shifted out of the International Nuclear Security program at DOE, to group efforts to remove material from vulnerable research reactors with work to secure research reactors where material remains. The $1 million for FY 2007 would pay for security upgrades at only one facility.
The administration proposed reducing new funding for the Global Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program from $39.6 million to $28.1 million, a 28.9 % reduction. This budget item funds both the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI) and the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP). If approved, this amount would be the lowest amount of annual funding for these combined programs since FY 1996.
In contrast with DOE’s proposed cuts to its programs to redirect and re-employ weapons scientists, the State Department proposed to increase new funding for its Nonproliferation of WMD Expertise program, from $52.1 million in FY 2006 to $56.2 million in FY 2007. This program supports the International Science and Technology Centers in Moscow and Kyiv, as well as modest redirection efforts in Iraq and Libya.
For the program to shut down three plutonium producing reactors in Seversk and Zheleznogorsk by replacing their heat and energy with coal-fired plants, DOE requested $206.6 million, an 18 % increase over FY 2006 in funding.
The Fissile Materials Disposition program requested $603.3 million, up from $468.8 million in FY 2006 (which had been a cut from the FY 2005 level of $619.1 million). All of that increase was for the program to dispose of surplus U.S. plutonium and highly enriched uranium; the administration sought no new funding for the effort to dispose of Russia’s excess plutonium, planning instead to spend $34.7 million left over from the supplemental funding Senator Pete Domenici managed to get appropriated originally in FY 1999.
The Second Line of Defense program, which installs radiation detection equipment at border crossings and key shipping “Megaports,” sought $124.0 million, up from $97.0 million in FY 2006. $83.9 million of the new funding would support installation of radiation detection equipment at an additional 63 foreign sites, increasing the total non-Megaport sites with completed installations to 167. DOE believes it can complete installations at 3 Megaports with $40.1 million in new funding, down from the $73.2 million allocated for FY 2006.
Though smaller than the proposed increase for DOE’s Second Line of Defense program, the Export Control and Related Border Security Assistance program at the State Department requested a $2.1 million increase in new funding, from $43.0 million to $45.0 million.
Our Legislative Summary page provides the latest information on each stage of the congressional process of reviewing the administration's proposal and setting the final appropriation levels that the president must either sign or veto.
Recap of the FY 2006 Budget Cycle
The FY 2007 budget proposal comes on the heels of a FY 2006 budget season in which Congress added significant funding beyond the administration's initial request for the MPC&A account, but reduced funding levels for other programs. All told, Congress provided a net increase of approximately $96.0 million over the administration’s original request of $982.2 million.[4]
Three programs accounted for almost all of the $134.4 million gross increase over the FY 2006 administration request. The offsetting decrease was driven largely by a significant cut to one program, coupled with a 1 % across-the-board rescission for FY 2006 that Congress used to offset supplemental funding to cope with the 2005 hurricanes and avian flu.
The most significant outcomes from the FY 2006 budget cycle included the following. [5]
The final FY 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, after accounting for the rescission, provided $80.3 million more than the administration’s $245.5 million request for the “core” Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) program, for a FY 2006 total of $325.8 million. The conferees provided this increase over the request, in the words of their report, to “accelerate the new opportunities to secure nuclear warhead storage sites resulting from the Bratislava Summit agreement.”[6] The House and Senate negotiators reconciling their two bodies’ original versions of the bill put in over $40 million more than either of their houses had originally deemed necessary, though each of those initial bills had been voted on well after Presidents Bush and Putin had met in Bratislava.
For DOE’s program to eliminate weapons-grade plutonium production in Russia, negotiators from the House and the Senate settled on an amount that, after accounting for the rescission, resulted in $174.4 million in FY 2006 funding, a level about midway between the House’s initial amount of $197 million and the Senate’s proposed level of $152 million. The administration had originally only asked for $132 million, $44.6 million below the final appropriation. The FY 2006 budget for this effort is nearly three times greater than the $67 million budget for FY 2005.
DOD, following a congressionally approved procedure, reallocated $10 million into its Nuclear Weapons Storage Security program in Russia, increasing the FY 2006 budget to $84.1 million, instead of the $74.1 million request.
For the program to aid Russia in disposing of its excess weapons plutonium, both the House and Senate originally had endorsed the administration’s requested amount of $64 million, but the final Energy and Water Appropriations bill combined with the rescission resulted in only $34.2 million in new money for FY 2006. House and Senate negotiators cut the request despite noting in their report that the dispute with Russia over liability for the project has been resolved and that work can move forward.
Congress directed that the GTRI program set aside up to $7 million in FY 2006 funds to support conversion of as many as four U.S. university research reactors from a highly enriched uranium (HEU) core to a low-enriched uranium (LEU) core.[7] Congress also required DOE to use $3 million from the funding provided for the Nonproliferation and International Security subaccount to provide grants to institutions of higher learning and non-profit organizations for research on nuclear nonproliferation and detection of chemical and biological weapons. No one grant may be larger than $225,000.
Issues and Concerns for Budgets Going Forward
A number of issues face the programs under each of these goals.
Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
In FY 2005 and 2006 Congress added unrequested funding for the MPC&A program and for GTRI. For FY 2007, the administration sought to slightly reduce the FY 2006 budget for MPC&A, the most critical part of the mission to control nuclear weapons and materials.
Even though Congress has provided some extra funding and has made clear that GTRI enjoys broad authority to offer incentives to convince research reactor operators and their host countries to remove vulnerable HEU, a funding increase targeted at GTRI could give program officials greater freedom and greater motivation to explore incentives to convince facilities and states to give up nuclear material that could fuel a terrorist nuclear attack. There are often powerful incentives driving facility operators and their host states to want to retain their HEU; GTRI program officials trying to counteract those incentives should not be unduly limited by funding inadequacies.
Similarly, for material that cannot be removed from vulnerable sites, additional funding could enable DOE to provide security upgrades for more facilities, to defend against a greater threat. UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which was passed largely through the initiative of the Bush administration, creates a binding legal obligation on every country on earth to put in place “appropriate effective” security and accounting for their nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction stockpiles.[8] Additional funding in FY 2007 beyond DOE’s proposed $6 million budget for the International Nuclear Security effort and $1 million for the Global Research Reactor Security under GTRI would make it possible both to improve security more rapidly at more sites, and to invest in more substantial upgrades that could defend against more sophisticated threats.
As the MPC&A program completes the installation of security upgrades at facilities in Russia, DOE expects costs to decrease for the overall program. Balanced against the costs of equipment installation will likely be broadened efforts to ensure security improvements are sustained by the Russians themselves. Though the FY 2007 proposal for sustainability would be an increase over the previous year, it would still provide fewer resources than the effort received in FY 2005 (FY 2007 proposal: $48.1 million; FY 2006 appropriated: $29.7 million; FY 2005 appropriated: $56.0 million). Additional resources may well be needed, in FY 2007 or in the future, to fully support efforts to ensure that gains in security for Russian nuclear weapons and material are sustained into the future.
Future funding will also need to accommodate expanded MPC&A cooperation with countries outside the former Soviet Union. For FY 2005, Congress provided $55 million in supplemental funding for MPC&A efforts outside of the former Soviet Union, but in FY 2007, DOE requested only $21.2 million for the budget line that covers both the last work to be completed at Russian civilian nuclear sites and work in other countries. Additional funding will likely be needed to sustain any DOE push to expand and accelerate MPC&A cooperation beyond the former Soviet Union.
Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
Budgets for this aspect of preventing nuclear terrorism—that is, programs working to improve other countries’ ability to identify and intercept trafficking in illicit nuclear material even after such material is removed from a facility—have grown dramatically since the 9 / 11 attacks. In real terms, the FY 2006 budget for programs serving this goal was nearly three times what it had been in FY 2001.[9] Collectively, from FY 2002 through FY 2006 these programs have had over three times more funding than they would have if the FY 2001 budget had been kept the same in real terms. The Second Line of Defense program at DOE went from a budget under $2 million in FY 2001 to a proposed budget for FY 2007 of nearly $124 million.
This growth trend is very likely to continue. DOE, DOD, and the State Department each continue to operate some type of border security assistance program, and there is a long list of concerns about countries’ capacities to secure their borders against nuclear smuggling. With the Megaports Initiative within the Second Line of Defense program, DOE continues to install radiation detection systems at major ports overseas. DOE hoped to install equipment at up to 35 ports overseas, but anticipated that the FY 2007 proposal would only allow the total number of ports completed to rise to 13.[10] With heightened attention focused on port security following the controversy over the bid by a United Arab Emirates company to operate ports in the United States, a program to increase the chances of detecting nuclear cargo before a ship even departs for U.S. shores will likely continue to receive robust funding.
Furthermore, as with security for materials, UNSCR 1540 created a legal obligation for all 191 member states of the United Nations to put in place “appropriate effective” controls on the movement of WMD and related materials across their borders.[11] Most of these states will require assistance to put effective controls in place. A U.S.-led effort to help countries around the world truly meet the UNSCR 1540 mandate will likely require that these U.S.-sponsored programs have additional money and personnel with which to work.
Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
The cumulative FY 2007 budget proposed for the programs in this category was a drop from the previous year.[12] Overall, the budgets for these programs have been largely stable in nominal terms over the last several years; because of inflation, real annual budgets in this area have been declining.
Nevertheless, these programs have been interested in taking on more work: the scientist redirection efforts at both the State Department and DOE stated in their budget justifications that they intended to conduct operations in countries outside the former Soviet Union, such as Iraq and Libya. For FY 2007 the State Department’s Nonproliferation of WMD Expertise program expected to go even further, seeking in FY 2007 to develop “a new targeted strategic engagement program for scientists, engineers and technicians with WMD-applicable expertise...in key regions where terrorists and proliferating states may be able to access this WMD-applicable expertise.[13] Congress and the administration must carefully review proposals to broaden the scope of these programs to ensure that additional funding demands do not undermine support for on-going efforts to cope with un- or under-employed nuclear expertise in the former Soviet states.
For instance, as noted above, for FY 2007 DOE requested a lower funding level for its Global Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, which contains both the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention and the Nuclear Cities Initiative. The administration’s proposed level would reduce these combined programs’ budgets to their lowest annual levels since FY 1996. This proposed reduction came despite the fact that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), using its Program Assessment Rating Tool, assigned GIPP its highest rating of “effective.”[14] The reduction came in part because the U.S.-Russian agreement governing NCI had expired, making it difficult to start new NCI projects; with the resolution of the U.S.-Russian liability dispute, however, DOE now has authority to negotiate a new NCI agreement.[15] DOE appears to have been betting that the program would be able to do the same with less money, as it expected annual performance in FY 2007 to match that of FY 2005, using the program’s metric of “Cumulative number of the GIPP target population of displaced Russian and former Soviet WMD experts who are currently employed in GIPP grants or long-term private sector jobs.”[16]
Presumably in part because of the stagnant or declining budget resources and the broadened ambitions, both the DOE and State Department programs are trying to elicit greater contributions from private partners in scientific redirection projects, and are increasing training and support so that scientists and their institutes can move away from U.S. support. For FY 2005 DOE reported that the cumulative non-U.S. Government (that is, private and foreign government) contributions equaled 65% of the cumulative DOE funding for GIPP; DOE hoped to reach 75% by FY 2007.[17] For FY 2005, the State Department’s Nonproliferation of WMD Expertise program said that private sector funding for collaborative projects equaled approximately 9% as a percentage of the U.S. funding provided for such projects (this figure does not include the projects funded by other countries through the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow—where contributions from the European Union and Canada outweigh direct contributions from the State Department—and the Science and Technology Center of Ukraine).[18]
Monitoring Stockpiles and Reductions
By far the least funded of these goals, programs focused on transparency and monitors received largely stable budgets over the last several years. But for FY 2006 Congress went even farther than the Bush administration had proposed in reducing funding for the Warhead and Fissile Material Transparency program; the FY 2006 budget is $10.2 million, as opposed to $16.4 million in FY 2005.
In general, though, funding is not the greatest constraint for these efforts; the most critical issues blocking or delaying progress are almost entirely policy issues.[19] Breakthroughs on these policy blockages would likely require additional funding to implement, however.
Ending Further Production
Budget estimates for the program to eliminate three weapon-grade plutonium production reactors in Russia rose in the FY 2007 proposal. For FY 2006, Congress provided $174.4 million for the program, though the administration had requested $132 million. The change was driven by the House Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which initially proposed FY 2006 funding of $197 million, based on skepticism that a DOE proposal to solicit additional funding from other governments would succeed.[20] DOE’s FY 2007 budget request was $206.7 million (in February 2005, before the congressional increase, DOE had anticipated that the FY 2007 budget would be $137.6 million).[21] To round out the program, DOE expected that it would request $182.0 million for the effort in FY 2008, $139.4 million in FY 2009, and $24.9 million in FY 2010.[22]
This program has become very expensive, if judged on the basis of cost per ton of plutonium whose production will be avoided. Nevertheless, in the past it received support from both the administration and the Congress, and there would be little point in trying to save money in the current year by spreading the funding over a longer period: doing so would only increase total costs and allow plutonium production to continue longer. But the rapidly rising budgets for this effort should not be allowed to cut into funding for even higher-priority programs in the struggle to prevent nuclear terrorism, such as MPC&A and GTRI.
Reducing Excess Stockpiles
In FY 2005 the program to dispose of Russia 's excess weapons plutonium escaped a House effort to halve new funding, but as noted above, for FY 2006 Congress sliced nearly $30 million from the $64 million request. For FY 2007, the administration proposed continuing at the lower level voted by Congress in FY 2006, using funds appropriated in FY 1999. In its FY 2007 proposal, DOE projected continuing at roughly that level in FY 2008 and FY 2009, and then returning to the earlier budgets in the range of $63 million per year in FY 2010 and FY 2011, presumably assuming that construction of facilities would be underway in Russia by then.[23] DOE and the State Department have also sought financing from other governments rather than having the United States pay entirely for this effort on its own (having secured $844 million in commitments by spring of 2006, counting U.S. commitments, enough to fund facility construction, but not operation). The Russian plutonium disposition program nevertheless faces many other issues that could still undermine the program’s future and the prospects for gaining additional foreign contributions for it.
For HEU, sufficient funds are in place to carry out the current approaches to disposition of U.S. HEU, and the purchase of Russian HEU, which is financed primarily through commercial means rather than government expenditure. If the United States and Russia decided to pursue a large-scale acceleration of the HEU blend-down rate, significant additional funding would be required.
What is Counted, What is Not, and Why
Different figures on how much has been spent on threat reduction to date are generally driven by differences in assumptions as to which programs are and are not included. Below, we describe which programs we have and have not included in our budget tabulations.
Guiding Principles
To the extent possible, we have used the government's definitions of which programs are and are not cooperative threat reduction.[24] In a few cases, however, we have added programs that clearly fit the definition of cooperative threat reduction but were not included in the government's analyses. In a small number of other cases, we have excluded budget lines that some government analyses have included. We have done this using three key principles:
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First, only U.S. government expenditures are included, not the expenditures of other governments, or amounts spent in commercial transactions (such as the HEU Purchase Agreement). Ultimately it would be desirable to have a broader database including all government expenditures on these matters worldwide, but collecting that data comprehensively is quite difficult to do.
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Second, to the extent we have been able to identify them, all programs focused on dismantling or controlling weapons of mass destruction and related technologies and expertise in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere are included. Thus, we have added to the total certain efforts such as funding for joint development with Russia of measures to verify warhead dismantlement, which are often not included in government totals of threat reduction spending.
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Third, we have generally not included programs whose principal focus is on controlling or reducing U.S. stockpiles. Thus, we have not included spending on programs to reduce U.S. stockpiles of plutonium and HEU—even though those programs may be important to Russian agreement to reduce Russia's comparable stockpiles—because they are primarily focused within the United States. If these programs were to be included, then logically the costs of dismantling U.S. missiles and bombers, destroying the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, securing U.S. nuclear weapons and materials, and the like should also be included, which neither the government nor other independent analysts ever do in their analyses of threat reduction budgets.
Previously, we did not include programs whose focus is international but not within the former Soviet Union, though we expressed the hope that in the future we would be able to collect enough data to provide comprehensive budget information on U.S. funding for threat reduction programs around the world, not only those focused on the former Soviet Union. We have now begun to show budget information for several programs (such as those focused on securing nuclear warheads and material or on interdicting nuclear smuggling) that might have begun with a focus on the former Soviet Union but have since expanded their scope to other geographical areas. We do this for two reasons. First, with many of these programs, it has become difficult, or even impossible, from the information made available by the administration and Congress to determine which spending in these programs is for the former Soviet Union and which is going elsewhere. Owing to the efforts of Senator Richard Lugar and others, the concept of cooperative threat reduction is expanding beyond the former Soviet Union. As we have often said, insecure nuclear material anywhere is a threat to everyone everywhere. It makes sense, then, that where possible we would include in our analysis funding that is working to solve this problem whether inside the former Soviet Union or not.
In an effort to maintain reasonable consistency with the tabulations of threat reduction funding by the government and other independent analysts, we do not include funding for every U.S. program that might have an impact in some way on nuclear or other WMD security. Thus, we do not include, for example, the costs to the U.S. government of supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency's safeguards regime, or other international nonproliferation organizations.
Ultimately a broader analysis is needed that would include U.S. spending (both public and private) on securing and reducing its own nuclear stockpiles and facilities, as well as U.S. spending (and other countries’ spending) on similar activities around the world. Much of this data, however—particularly countries' spending on securing their own nuclear weapons and materials—is secret, and would be nearly impossible to gather for a public database such as this one.
In reviewing these figures, it is also important to note that they represent the amount budgeted from the funds of a particular year, not necessarily the specific amounts spent in that year. Once Congress appropriates the funds, the administration typically has from one to three years to obligate those funds to specific contracts (though sometimes Congress makes the funds available indefinitely). Following that obligation of funds, the programs generally have five years to actually disburse the money that was set aside for those contracts (though again, this time limit can be set longer). As a result, the executive branch typically has significant balances of funding already budgeted that are awaiting obligation to a contract and then awaiting final disbursal to meet the terms of the contract. Indeed, Congress criticized the level of unspent funding balances among these programs, particularly with the Department of Energy, as discussed in our Legislative Update page.
Six Categories Related to Securing the Bomb
This section of the NTI website is focused on controlling nuclear warheads and materials. Hence, we have attempted to identify, within the overall threat reduction effort, the subset of programs focused on controlling those nuclear warheads and materials—and on stabilizing the human custodians of those warheads, materials, and the expertise needed to work with them. In nearly all cases this is a straightforward task, as programs are clearly identified as being focused on, for example, securing nuclear warheads, or ending production of plutonium. But in the areas of interdicting smuggling of materials and technologies related to weapons of mass destruction, and providing alternative employment to former weapons scientists, a number of the programs as they are now being implemented focus on all weapons of mass destruction, not just on nuclear weapons; rather than attempting to break out the nuclear portion—an enterprise that would inevitably be fraught with controversy—we have simply included the entire budgets for these efforts in our subset for controlling nuclear warheads, materials, and expertise. Thus, the total size of this subset is larger in our estimates than it is in reality, as we are including some spending that is in fact going to control chemical or biological weapons or expertise, or missile technologies and related expertise.
Within this subset of threat reduction programs, we have categorized the individual programs into six categories based on the goals of the individual programs, as described above:
- Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
- Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
- Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
- Monitoring Stockpiles and Reductions
- Ending Further Production of Nuclear Material
- Reducing Stockpiles of Nuclear Material
In the Interactive Budget Database, threat reduction programs that are not within this subset focused on controlling nuclear warheads and materials have a seventh category, "Other Threat Reduction."
We have attempted to provide enough information to allow users of the Interactive Budget Database and the other tables and graphs to discern for themselves what is and is not included in the totals provided for particular categories, by providing detailed program names for each item included, along with footnotes to describe interesting or exceptional cases requiring explanation. The database offers lists of every program we included in each of these categories, and provides budget data for each of them. In addition, the Interactive Budget Database allows users to ignore our definitions and create their own charts of data based on whatever subsets of programs they wish to choose. Interested readers are strongly encouraged to explore the database and to provide feedback about the information included in the database and the way it is presented. Some particular issues in each of the categories are described below, along with links to historical budget tables for each of the goals, which include lists of the programs included in each category.
Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
See Budget Table with
List of Programs Included
This category includes funding information on the Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) program (both the current DOE funding and the DOD program from the early days of cooperative threat reduction) as well as programs to provide security upgrades for warhead storage sites. It also includes funding for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, including work to convert research reactors around the world from highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium fuel, such as the Reduced Enrichment Research and Test Reactor (RERTR) program, and to remove altogether fissile material from vulnerable sites around the world.
Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
See Budget Table with List of Programs Included
Funding for DOD's International Counterproliferation Program and the WMD Proliferation Prevention program are included in full here, as they are focused on interdicting nuclear and other WMD materials attempted to be smuggled out of the states of the former Soviet Union—though in some cases the assistance is being provided to states beyond the former Soviet Union's borders. Unlike DOE's Second Line of Defense program—which is also included in full here—the DOD programs are not focused solely on helping countries stop nuclear smuggling, but as noted above, there is no way to discern what is focused on nuclear material and what is not, so the entire budgets for these efforts are included.
The State Department's Export Control and Border Security Assistance program provides assistance in both the former Soviet states and throughout the rest of the world. In the past, we had included only the funding directed at the former Soviet states, because our database was focused on programs within that region and the State Department had provided enough funding detail about this program to allow such a breakout. We are now attempting to track funding for these programs regardless of where they operate in the world, however, and in any case congressional deliberations never provided the level of detail necessary to track which portion was for the former Soviet states throughout the budget process. We therefore now include all of the funding for this program. A substantial, though not complete, part of the effort is in fact focused on interdicting nuclear smuggling, as evidenced by the program's provision of radiation detection monitors, so we have included 100 percent. We have treated as "Other Threat Reduction" the State Department's Georgia Border Security and Related Law Enforcement Assistance program, which is aimed at shoring up the integrity of Georgia 's borders, as that program is largely focused on non-nuclear activities.
Not included is DOE's Russia/NIS Export Control Assistance program, as this program is mostly focused on educating Russian government and industry about the appropriate mechanisms for preventing illegitimate export of WMD and conventional dual-use materials. The original DOD Export Control Assistance is not counted in this category for the same reason. Both are included as "Other Threat Reduction" in the database.
Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
See Budget Table with List of Programs Included
The State Department's Nonproliferation of WMD Expertise (which funds the International Science and Technology Centers program) and Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), and the DOE'sInitiatives for Proliferation Prevention do not solely focus on redirecting former Soviet scientists and engineers with nuclear expertise, but as noted above, their entire budgets are included here, because of the difficulty of breaking out how much of each is spent on nuclear scientists and engineers versus other scientists and engineers with WMD knowledge. The State Department's Biological Weapons Scientists Redirection program is not included here until the FY 2003 budget, when the program was merged into the NWMDE funding line, making further distinction impossible.
Reducing Stockpiles of Nuclear Material
See Budget Table with List of Programs Included
A major distinction with the totals provided here and others provided elsewhere is that only the Russian components of the efforts to dispose of the HEU and plutonium declared excess to military needs are included; similar efforts by the United States to dispose of its own excess HEU and plutonium are not included here, for reasons described above.
Also see historical budget graphs, along with a full listing of all the programs included in those categories, for Monitoring Stockpiles and Reductions ( see table) and Ending Further Production of Nuclear Material ( see table).
Other Threat Reduction
As noted above, this category in the Interactive Budget Database includes all the threat reduction programs that are not focused on controlling nuclear warheads and materials. These cover a wide range, from dismantling missiles and submarines to improving export controls to destroying chemical weapons to safeguarding collections of deadly biological agents. All DOD programs not listed in one of the nuclear categories but funded through the Former Soviet Union Threat Reduction account, the funding line at DOD used synonymously with the Nunn-Lugar program, are included in this category. Also included here is DOD's Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation program, aimed at remediation of the legacy of the weapons complex in the far north of the former Soviet Union.
The State Department's Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund is set up to support projects with a legitimate, urgent nonproliferation or disarmament purpose that for whatever reason cannot be funded with other authorities or available resources. Typically, Congress had replenished the fund with an annual appropriation of $15 million (though in the past two years the Bush administration has requested much larger replenishments). Others who follow funding levels for nonproliferation cooperation in the former Soviet have estimated that about half of the funding provided goes to projects inside the former Soviet states.[25] Originally, we followed that lead, but given the expanding global nature of threat reduction activities and the difficulty and arbitrariness of estimating the portion of a contingency fund that might go towards a particular activity in a particular geographic area, we have adjusted our database contents to include the entirety of funding replenishing the NDF each year.
A Few Examples of What is Not Included
Efforts supported by DOE and the State Department to enhance the operational safety of reactors in the former Soviet Union are not included at all in this analysis, as they are focused on threats to safety in these individual countries, not on threats to the security of the United States. As noted above, funding for global nonproliferation organizations is not included. Similarly, DOE's Nonproliferation and Verification Research and Development efforts are not included, because these efforts are not primarily cooperative and are not focused primarily on cooperative nuclear warheads and materials in the former Soviet Union.
Links
| Key Resources | |
 |
Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council (RANSAC), Federal
Budget & Congressional Updates (Washington, D.C.: RANSAC,
2004). William Hoehn and the rest of the RANSAC staff in Washington keep closely apprised of all legislative action concerning cooperative threat reduction programs, and provide excellent, detailed, well researched summaries of Congress and the administration's budget actions from year to year. |
|
Library of Congress, "Status of FY 2007 Appropriations Bills," Thomas: Legislative Information on the Internet. |
| With copies of all versions of bills and amendments considered and passed by Congress, all reports, and useful summaries of the actions taken on a bill—in many cases going back to the 93rd Congress (1973-1974)—the Library of Congress' Thomas site is an indispensable resource for tracking legislative action. Each year, it presents an extremely useful chart tracking the progress (or lack thereof) of the 13 appropriations bills needed to fund the operations of the federal government. | |
|
U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Home Page. |
|
U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), Defense Budget. |
|
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Management, Budget and Evaluation, Office of Budget. |
|
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Resource Management, International Affairs Budget. |
| These pages are essential stops for readers interested in learning more about not just the administration's FY 2005 budget, but past and future budget proposals from these three agencies. OMB's page deals with the budget of the government as a whole, so does not have much specific information on the programs dealt with in this section, but one can find all government-wide budget documents going back several year through their site (including an in-depth discussion of budget systems and concepts). The respective agencies' sites each make available the detailed justifications of their agencies' proposals for the current and several past fiscal years. The information provided by these agencies for past years in the current budget proposal (for instance, the information on FY 2003 in the FY 2005 budget proposal) is the single best source of information on the final amount budgeted for a given activity in a given fiscal year. | |
|
Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler (co-chairs), A Report Card on the
Department of Energy’s Nonproliferation Programs with Russia (Washington,
D.C.: The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, United States Department
of Energy, January 10, 2001). Download 4.5M PDF |
| A distinguished bipartisan panel concludes that "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states," and calls for a drastic increase in funding—from the current level of about $1 billion per year to funding of around $3 billion per year, still less than one percent of the entire defense budget—for addressing this threat, with the appointment of a high-level official responsible for developing and implementing a strategic plan to address the problem within 8-10 years. | |
|
"Update of the Budget Picture,” excerpt from Matthew
Bunn and Anthony Wier, Securing the Bomb
2006 (Washington, D.C.: Harvard University, Project on
Managing the Atom, and Nuclear Threat Initiative, Cambridge, Mass.,
and Washington, D.C., July 2006). Download Full Report (1.7M PDF) |
| Chapter of 2006 report discussing recent budget moves. Reports from 2005 (1.9M PDF), 2004 (1.2 M PDF), 2003 (538K PDF), and 2002 (190K PDF) have more on the budget picture. | |
| FOOTNOTES | |
| [1] | See discussion on this pagefor more on what programs we include and do not include in our analysis. This analysis draws heavily on the Federal Budget and Congressional Updates prepared by William Hoehn, and the staff of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. The authors are grateful to Hoehn for extensive discussions of issues relating to current and historical threat reduction budgets, and to several veterans of the cooperative threat reduction effort still within the U.S. Government. Any errors are entirely our own, of course. |
| [2] | The programs included and excluded in our calculations of total cooperative threat reduction spending and the portion devoted to controlling nuclear warheads, materials, and expertise, along with the criteria used to make these determinations, are discussed on this page as well. |
| [3] | Authors’ calculations based U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Fiscal Year 2007 Budget of the United States Government (Washington, D.C.: OMB, 2006; available as of 20 March 2006) |
| [4] | This comparison of what was requested to what was appropriated in FY 2006 does not yet include the supplemental request of $ 44.5 million for nuclear warhead storage security upgrades carried out by DOD that the Bush administration made in February 2006, because, at the time of this writing Congress had yet to complete consideration of that request. Adding more funds to the request but not to the appropriated total would distort the picture, making it appear as though Congress had rejected this supplemental request, which is unlikely. If Congress does appropriate the supplemental funding for FY 2006, both the total request figure and the total appropriated figure will increase, compared to those used here. |
| [5] | For a recap of the 2005 legislative session, see Anthony Wier, "Legislative Update," in Nuclear Threat Initiative Research Library: Securing the Bomb (Cambridge, Mass., and Washington, D.C.: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, and Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2006; available as of 1 April 2006). The highlights that follow are derived from that analysis. |
| [6] | U.S. House of Representatives, Making Appropriations for Energy and Water Development for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2006, and for Other Purposes, 109th Congress, 1st Session, House Report 109-275 (2005; available as of 20 March 2006). |
| [7] | These are the four university reactors for which no funding had previously been dedicated for conversion: Purdue University, Oregon State University, the University of Wisconsin, and Washington State University. In April 2005, DOE had announced that reactors at the University of Florida and Texas A&M University would be converted; DOE projected that conversions would be completed by late 2006. For more information, see Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier, "Removing Material from Vulnerable Sites," in Nuclear Threat Initiative Research Library: Securing the Bomb (Cambridge, Mass., and Washington, D.C.: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, and Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2004; available as of 2 February 2005). |
| [8] | United Nations, "1540 Committee" (New York: UN, 2005; available as of 25 February 2005). |
| [9] | Author’s calculations, using figures from the Interactive Budget Database. Inflation-adjusted figures were created using defense (DOD and DOE) and non-defense (State) deflators from Table 10.1, “Gross Domestic Product And Deflators Used in the Historical Tables: 1940 – 2011,” in U.S. Office of Management and Budget, FY 2007 President's Budget. |
| [10] | U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2007 Congressional Budget Request: National Nuclear Security Administration--Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, vol. 1, DOE/CF-002 (Washington, D.C.: DOE, 2006; available as of 24 February 2006) |
| [11] | United Nations, "1540 Committee." |
| [12] | None of the programs focus solely on redirecting former Soviet scientists and engineers with nuclear expertise (except for the Nuclear Cities Initiative component of the Global Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention), but their entire budgets are included here because of the difficulty of breaking out how much of each is spent on nuclear scientists and engineers versus other scientists and engineers with WMD knowledge. |
| [13] | U.S. Department of State, FY 2007 Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 2006; available at as of 20 March 2006), p. 140. DOE’s intentions are in U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2007 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Budget Request, p. 140. |
| [14] | U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2007 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Budget Request, p. 495. |
| [15] | Interview with DOE official, April 2006. |
| [16] | U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2007 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Budget Request, p. 497. |
| [17] | U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2007 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Budget Request, p. 497. |
| [18] | U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Program Assessment Rating Tool (Washington, D.C.: OMB, 2006; available as of 27 March 2006). |
| [19] | Matthew Bunn, Anthony Wier, and John Holdren, Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan (Cambridge, Mass., and Washington, D.C.: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, and Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2003), pp. 147-150. |
| [20] | FY 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations Act House Report. |
| [21] | U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2006 Congressional Budget Request: National Nuclear Security Administration--Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, vol. 1, DOE/ME-0046 (Washington, D.C.: DOE, 2005; available as of 27 February 2006), p. 505. |
| [22] | U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2007 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Budget Request, p. 523. |
| [23] | U.S. Department of Energy, FY 2007 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Budget Request, p. 523. |
| [24] | For a useful listing of all what the government at one point included as threat reduction programs, see U.S. Department of State, "Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative" (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, March 1999). |
| [25] | Hoehn, "Final Report of Activity in the First Session of the 108th Congress Affecting U.S.-Former Soviet Union Cooperative Nonproliferation Programs," op. cit., see Note xxiii. |
Written Anthony Wier. Last updated by Anthony Wier on July 28, 2006.
The Securing the Bomb section of the NTI website is produced by the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) for NTI, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. MTA welcomes comments and suggestions at atom@harvard.edu. Copyright 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.