Green Times

Bush Record-Splitting Budget Cuts Environment, Funds Nuclear Weapons

The White House budget request released Monday for Fiscal Year 2009 is historic as it is the first budget in U.S. history to crack the $3 trillion mark. It takes the United States deep into deficit spending - the deficit is predicted to be $407 billion in FY09. Even so, President George W. Bush requests less money for environmental measures and more for nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.

Bush asked Congress to fund the first new U.S. nuclear weapons in two decades and requested additional funding to build a new nuclear bomb making plant.

The budget requests $10 million for the Reliable Replacement Warhead, RRW, program and $100 million to begin construction on a new plutonium pit facility. Plutonium pits are the cores of atomic weapons.

“This administration just doesn’t seem to get the message. Congress and the people of this country do not want these new weapons,” said Devin Helfrich, a lobbyist on nuclear disarmament for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quaker peace lobby that helped lead lobbying efforts to defeat the RRW program in Congress.

Last year, Congress zeroed out funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program and did not fund a previously proposed nuclear bomb plant. “Yet,” Helfrich said, “the administration is again requesting funding for RRW and a new bomb plant.”

“The arms control community has consistently opposed these nuclear weapons as immoral, unnecessary, and inconsistent with U.S. international commitments to work toward universal disarmament,” Helfrich said.

National Nuclear Security Agency officials believe the RRW program is needed. They see the ability to adapt to changing military needs rather than maintain additional forces for unexpected contingencies as a key program driver.

The Department of Energy’s budget request seeks a 79 percent increase in funding for the Nuclear Power 2010 program and that extends the period during which companies that build new nuclear power plants can apply for federal loan guarantees to lower the debt-financing costs associated with the projects.

The Nuclear Power 2010 program - a cost-sharing, industry-government partnership designed to reduce the technical, regulatory and institutional uncertainties associated with construction of new nuclear power plants - would receive $241.6 million in the fiscal year that begins October 1 - an increase of $106.6 million over the current fiscal year.

Industry also would fund the program with $241.6 million, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry association.

The budget request also seeks a 27 percent increase in funding for the Energy Department’s used nuclear fuel management program. The program receives $390 million this year and would receive $494.7 million in FY09.

Of DOE’s request, $247.3 million would come from the Nuclear Waste Fund that is financed by electricity customers who use nuclear power. The remainder would come from Defense Department accounts to support disposal of high-level radioactive waste from U.S. defense programs.

The budget request extends by two years, through fiscal 2011, the period during which companies could seek a limited federal financial backstop for new clean generating plants, including new nuclear plants, under the loan guarantee program authorized in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The legislation empowers the Secretary of Energy to provide loan guarantees for up to 80 percent of the cost of “innovative technologies” that “avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.”

The budget request would increase funding for the administration’s Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative by $120.5 million, a 66 percent increase, to $301.5 million.

The program is researching methods to “provide for proliferation-resistant technologies to recover the energy content” in used nuclear fuel and reduce the volume and toxicity of byproducts from reactor fuel.

Nuclear Energy Institute chief executive Frank “Skip” Bowman said, “Nuclear energy enhances our energy independence, and new nuclear power plants are essential if the United States hopes to meet its energy and environmental challenges. The promise of nuclear energy technology extends beyond electricity production to include production of hydrogen and process heat for other applications.”

President Bush again has cut the budget of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, this time by $330 million to a total of $7.14 billion.

The cuts include over $270 million dollars from EPA programs that would clean up and restore lakes, rivers and streams. Global climate change research comes in at $16 million.

The budget request hurts California, says U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who chairs the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

[Read full story here] - [Source: Environmental News Service]