“The bow wave has arrived” for the civilian nuclear-weapons budget, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned Wednesday in a report that, amid recommendations for streamlining budget and project organization, made room for a we-told-you-so about the effects of deferring upgrades for nuclear weapons and their production infrastructure. The Department of Energy’s “appropriation for fiscal year 2021 includes a 23 percent increase over the prior fiscal year for NNSA’s [National Nuclear Security Administration] modernization activities,” the GAO said. “We found in July 2020 that an increase such as this suggests that the bow wave has arrived, because this increase largely supported existing programs rather than new ones.”
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