Ask Libertarians which Federal Departments they propose to eliminate, and Energy ranks high on the list. I have regularly said that Federal Departments do many things that have little to do with their apparent title, and Energy provides a good example.

I am here analyzing
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/appendix.html
the energy Department budget.

So what does Energy do with its $26 billion future year budget, and where can we make or not make cuts? For starters, a fair part of its work is actually military.

#1 Remediation. Energy spends 6 billion dollars a year for remediation, for example cleaning up the nuclear weapons waste left over from the cold war. That expense is substantially unavoidable, given that several of the major sites are toward the upstream ends of the Columbia and Snake rivers. Areas here include Defense Environmental Cleanup, Non-defense cleanup, and Nuclear Waste Disposal.

#2 Military applications of nuclear energy, mostly weapons and ship propulsion.
Weapons: 6.6 billion dollars. Nuclear weapons are the central part of our national defense. They ensure that other nuclear powers are deterred from starting a war with the United States. However, the Cold War is over. The Russians may flex their nationalist muscles, but show no interest in attacking anyone. Most other nuclear powers are friendly to the United States. Under these conditions, a substantial reduction in the investment in our weapons stockpile and thus the spending here is entirely appropriate. This item can be very substantially reduced, though there is a technical complication raised by the short half-life of tritium.

#3 Naval ship propulsion, $0.8 billion. On one hand, I will be proposing major reductions in the size of all branches of the military. However, the submarine and carrier fleets are nuclear powered and need replacement parts. Given the lack of military competition, substantial research on new reactor types is difficult to justify. This item can be reduced but not eliminated.

#4 Nonproliferation. 1.2 billion A defense program whose main focus is reducing the supply of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. On the other hand, buried in here are various efforts to manipulate the domestic policy of foreign nations that are inappropriate in a Libertarian foreign policy. Some reduction is possible.

#5 Pure Science 4.7 billion dollars. Before World War II, the Federal government substantially did not involve itself in pure scientific research. At the end of World War II, it was extremely visible that between Fermi's first observation of fission (1934) to deployable weapons that turn cities into pillars of fire that barely more than a decade had elapsed. The Strategic Bombing Survey made clear that the front end of weapons procurement was now the procurement of new laws of nature. After 50 years, it is reasonably clear that the high energy well has been pumped dry. High Energy and Nuclear Physics may be interesting, but seem extremely unlikely to lead to defense applications. Buried in here are a variety of materials programs, for example studies of neutron irradiation, that are significant for their remediation, propulsion, and weapons applications. Also buried in here are a wide variety of energy studies, for example biological energy production, that appear appropriate for private universities. Here is an area that could be substantially eliminated.

#6 "Energy" Nuclear, delivery, efficiency, renewables, clean coal 2.1 billion. The primary investment here is in areas that should return to private enterprise. Substantially eliminate.

#7 Strategic Petroleum Reserve: 0.3 billion. The reserve is a response to a near-war situation in the 1970s. Maintaining military stocks makes sense, but the real future is to replace the Strategic Petroleum reserve with a country not dependent on non-renewable foreign fuels that will in any event soon cease to be readily available. Reduce.

#8 Energy Information Agency. 0.1 billion. Here we have one of the many Federal information ("spy") agencies, responsible for collecting information and making it generally available. There are an awful lot of these, and the EIAs work mirrors the work of an international agency that gives very similar answers.

There are also a complex range of loan guarantees and hydroelectric programs, some of which are self-financing.