A top nuclear security official yesterday defended the president's 2013 budget request before a Senate panel, saying current budget limitations have led to greater efficiency.

"We have continuously improved the way we operate and are committed to do our part in this constrained budget environment," Thomas D'Agostino, National Nuclear Security Administration administrator and Department of Energy undersecretary for nuclear security, told the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

In his budget request, President Obama recommended boosting NNSA's fiscal 2013 spending levels by about 5 percent to $11.5 billion. NNSA is a semiautonomous agency within DOE that oversees the national nuclear stockpile and weapons program (E&E Daily, March 5).

Lawmakers pressed D'Agostino on whether his units could perform their tasks with the proposed budget request.

Subcommittee Chairman Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) asked specifically about plans to defer the construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for five years. Plans for the $6 billion plutonium research lab have been controversial both for its high anticipated costs and for its potential to construct nuclear weapons (Greenwire, Feb. 22).

D'Agostino said the agency is instead focusing on how to meet plutonium needs by using existing facilities, though he said the project is not being eliminated.

Nelson also questioned David Huizenga, senior adviser for environmental management at DOE, about the status of the Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington state. Huizenga said the agency is making progress in four out of five of the site's facilities. He also said the $5.65 billion budget request would allow the agency to make progress and fund additional testing on the remaining facility.