{"id":130751,"date":"2016-02-24T11:01:26","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T18:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=130751"},"modified":"2016-02-24T11:01:26","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T18:01:26","slug":"got-a-quarter-of-a-trillion-dollars-or-a-half","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/02\/got-a-quarter-of-a-trillion-dollars-or-a-half\/","title":{"rendered":"Got a quarter of a trillion dollars? Or a half?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_76861\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-76861\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/WIPP-771x464.jpg\" alt=\"Monica Regalbuto, the Energy Department\u2019s assistant secretary for Environmental Management, said her division has set clear priorities, beginning with reopening the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, shown here. The deep geological repository for nuclear waste produced by the weapons program has been shut down since February 2014, when a series of accidents led to its contamination and a radiation leak escaped into the environment.\" width=\"771\" height=\"464\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/WIPP-771x464.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/WIPP-336x202.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/WIPP-768x462.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/WIPP-1170x704.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/WIPP.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Courtesy photo \/ Nuclear Regulatory Commission<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Monica Regalbuto, the Energy Department\u2019s assistant secretary for Environmental Management, said her division has set clear priorities, beginning with reopening the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, shown here. The deep geological repository for nuclear waste produced by the weapons program has been shut down since February 2014, when a series of accidents led to its contamination and a radiation leak escaped into the environment.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The environmental damage caused by decades of nuclear weapons production will take at least 60 more years to clean up and cost taxpayers nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars, according to the Energy Department\u2019s latest estimate, disclosed at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Feb. 23.<\/p>\n<p>The $240 billion tally was included in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armed-services.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/Trimble_02-23-16.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">prepared testimony<\/a> by an official of the Government Accountability Office, who estimated that an additional $280 billion dollars will be needed to finance the U.S. government\u2019s planned modernization of its nuclear warheads over the next 25 years.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This story was originally published\u00a0by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/2016\/02\/24\/19359\/got-quarter-trillion-dollars-or-half\" target=\"_blank\">The Center for Public Integrity<\/a>, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. Read more of their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/national-security\/arms\" target=\"_blank\">national security investigations<\/a> or follow them on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/publici\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>David Trimble, who directs the GAO\u2019s Natural Resources and Environment Division, remarked that the government faces challenges in its contracting procedures for this work, and in aligning \u201cits plans with future budgets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said the Energy Department\u2019s estimate of cleanup costs \u2014 as large at it is \u2014 was billions of dollars short of what the government will actually have to spend, because expenses associated with\u00a0fixing some additional\u00a0damaged sites were not included.<\/p>\n<p>Trimble also noted that the government\u2019s estimate of the final tally has been growing as the work proceeds. Over the last four years, for example, it grew by $77 billion. The Energy Department could do a better job of prioritizing cleanup work and tackling it more systematically, he said.<\/p>\n<p>This year, the budget for the Environmental Management component of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is $6.2 billion. President Barack Obama\u2019s budget request for fiscal year 2017 seeks $6.1 billion \u2014 a 1.6 percent reduction from the current level.<\/p>\n<p>Environmental Management oversees projects that include the stabilization and disposal of liquid waste held in tank farms at the Hanford Nuclear Site, uranium disposal at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, general cleanup of the highly plutonium contaminated grounds of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and many more tasks.<\/p>\n<p>While cleanup would get cut back, Obama has proposed to increase spending on weapons\u00a0modernization in the NNSA budget, from $8.8 billion to $9.2 billion, a 4.5 percent increase.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Monica Regalbuto, the Energy Department\u2019s assistant secretary for Environmental Management, said her division has set clear priorities, beginning with reopening the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The deep geological repository for nuclear waste produced by the weapons program has been shut down since February 2014, when a series of accidents led to its contamination and a radiation leak escaped into the environment.<\/p>\n<p>The plant plays a key role in the national nuclear cleanup campaigns, and while it\u2019s been shut, waste is piling up at sites around the country that are ill-equipped for long-term storage of such hazardous materials. Regalbuto said the repository is on track to begin accepting waste again in December 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Subcommittee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, criticized the NNSA for exceeding its budgets for such work and missing deadlines. \u201cWe\u2019re giving people pink slips that want to stay in the military,\u201d he said, because the nuclear work requires more funding than anticipated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Modernizing U.S. nuclear warheads and cleaning up the wastes will cost more than $520 billion, audit agency says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[171,275,2235,116],"class_list":["post-130751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-military","tag-national-labs","tag-national-security","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}