Sandia nuclear weapons cost-per-fatality rationale

Anecdote from a Sandia National Lab contact — nuclear weapons are funded at $40–50B/year (DOE) because they are the lowest dollar-cost-per-fatality weapon system. Used to close the "submarines are part of the nuclear triad, so budgets are large" thread.

One of the people at Sandia National Lab, which is the custodian of the safety of all our nuclear arsenal, asked me once, he said, you know why we spend so much money on nuclear weapons? I said no. He said it used to be about 40 or 50 billion dollars a year to run the nuclear labs, which is actually mostly DOE money, it's not actually Defense Department money, but it really is defense spending.