When he took office in 2009, US President Barack Obama bolstered efforts to secure nuclear materials around the globe. That spring, speaking in Prague, he said that he would push Congress to ratify a long-pending treaty to ban nuclear testing. By 2010, he had reached an agreement with Russia to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in both countries' arsenals to historic lows. Yet the weapons laboratories of the USDepartment of Energy continue to be lavished with money. The administrations 2014 budget proposal would boost funding for the weapons programme to US$7.9 billion, nearly 30% more than when Obama took office. This rising flow of cash contrasts strikingly with a shrinking stockpile (see 'Small stockpile, big expense'). Life-extension programmes tor weapons would receive more than $1 billion of this 'stockpile-stewardship' budget, including $537 million for a showcase initiative to modify and modernize the B61 line of nuclear gravity bombs.
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