The estimated cost for US nuclear weapons nears $1 trillion in new report

Yahoo

12-05-2025

May 11—Rising prices aren't just coming for eggs and avocados. The estimated price tag for the country's nuclear forces is 25% more than it was in 2023, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates nuclear forces will cost $946 billion from 2025 through 2034, about $95 billion every year. In 2023, the 10-year estimate was $756 billion for 2023-2032. Some of those increases are coming from the cost for modernizing production facilities for nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Projected costs for command, control, communications and early-warning systems have also seen a substantial increase.
The co-founder of an anti-nuclear nonprofit called the increase staggering. A higher bar for laboratory safety standards contributes to the high price for producing new nuclear warheads, according to a professor on nuclear engineering.
Many of the country's nuclear forces, including submarines that launch ballistic missiles, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range bomber aircraft and shorter-range tactical aircraft carrying bombs and nuclear warheads, will need to be refurbished or replaced over the next 20 years, according to the report.
"Over the coming years, lawmakers will need to decide what nuclear forces the United States should field in the future and therefore the extent to which the nation will continue to modernize, and perhaps expand, those forces," the report states.
Some of the cost increase, at least $65 billion, does not reflect actual rising costs. Instead, it's simply because the new estimate focuses on a slightly later time period when nuclear arsenal modernization will be further along. Later development and production phases tend to be more expensive, according to the report.
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration, is one of two sites that will produce new plutonium pits to replace old warheads. Last year, the lab made its first new production unit plutonium pit. Spherical plutonium pits cause nuclear fission when compressed and are at the core of every nuclear explosive.
The majority of the projected cost increases are associated with Department of Defense programs. But the "laboratories, plants, and sites across the nation are an integral part of our nuclear security program," an NNSA spokesperson said in a statement. President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are committed to "modernizing our nuclear deterrent," the spokesperson said.
"NNSA is currently executing seven different warhead modernization programs which require the national security laboratories' expertise in weapons programs, design and engineering, and production," the spokesperson said.
The first-ever plutonium pits were made during the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, but many subsequent pits were produced in Colorado until the 1980s. The way pits are manufactured now has changed significantly from how it was done decades ago, said Carl Willis, a professor in the University of New Mexico's Department of Nuclear Engineering.
What is considered acceptable in terms of safety for human health and the environment has changed since the country previously made plutonium pits, contributing to a higher production cost, Willis said.
"We're building these new facilities from scratch, and the understanding of industrial hygiene, and particularly the hygiene of handling plutonium, has changed, and our ability to detect plutonium in the environment has gotten a lot better," Willis said.
Greg Mello, with the anti-nuclear nonprofit Los Alamos Study Group, called for Congress to kill the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program based on the CBO report. The Sentinel program is replacing Minuteman III missiles with Sentinel missiles, as well as upgrading missile silos and launch control centers. Los Alamos is building plutonium pits to be used in Sentinel missiles.
The CBO report does not include all the cost growth that the Sentinel program is likely to experience, because the Department of Defense is restructuring the program after its cost increases triggered a review.
"As CBO notes, there will be increased competition for defense dollars as nuclear weapons programs grow. The huge expenses tallied in this report were not anticipated at the outset of the nuclear modernization program," Mello said in a statement. "Since 2015, and with every report, estimated nuclear weapons costs have increased beyond prior predictions, from $348 billion in 2015 to $946 billion today. The opportunity costs are staggering."
The cost for nuclear weapons could be even higher in the next CBO estimate, Willis said, because the latest report does not consider Trump administration priorities.