Stopgap Budget Measure Contains No Money for LANL Plutonium Project

WASHINGTON– A budget bill approved by the Senate Saturday and headed to President Barack Obama’s desk contained no money for a multi-billion plutonium project at Los Alamos National Laboratory, prompting cheers from nuclear weapons activists.

But the yearlong congressional debate over the future of the Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility isn’t over. Defense authorization bills pending in the House and Senate would continue development of the CMRR facility at LANL over the objections of the White House. The project has a price tag of about $6 billion, which is a key reason why the Obama administration and some in Congress want to kill it.

The Senate on Saturday passed a so-called “continuing resolution” to keep the federal government operational for the next six months, giving the deeply-divided Congress more time to negotiate a longer-term federal budget deal.

The stopgap measure contained no line item for the CMRR facility -in fact, it didn’t mention the project at all. However, the continuing resolution did contain dollar figures identical to those in the president’s 2013 budget request for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which holds the purse strings for LANL and other national weapons labs. The president’s 2013 budget zeroed out funding for CMRR.  The continuing resolution, once Obama signs it, will keep the government running until March.  Final decisions about CMRR spending in 2013 will be made when Congress enacts full-year spending and defense authorizing legislation.

“The defeat of the $4 to $6 billion bomb plant was due to the hard work of many local and national organizations inNew Mexico and Washington, D.C.,” said David Culp, a legislative representative for the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said the CMRR is not yet resolved.

“It’s still unclear if CMRR will be funded in FY 2013,” said Jude McCartin.

The CMRR funding fight exploded into public view in February, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that the Obama administration was delaying the LANL project for at least five years and moving forward with a major nuclear project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory instead.

DOE’s decision to delay the CMRR – coupled with President Obama’s stated intention of reducing the nuclear stockpile – has triggered fierce congressional debate about the need for multi-billion dollar nuclear programs in a post-Cold War era.New Mexico’s congressional delegation has voiced its unanimous support for construction of the facility.