Proposals for nuclear weapons abolition and proposals for new nuclear weapons are simultaneously in the news. While the thought of a world free of nuclear weapons is encouraging, none of us can afford to relinquish our diligent oversight of those in our government who wish to continue and expand the current nuclear weapons programs.
The most recent proposal coming from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an agency within the Department of Energy (DOE), is called Complex Transformation. This proposal comes after the U.S. Congress handed down defeats for requests for the Bunker Buster (the critical vote to defeat this proposal was cast by Senator Susan Collins) and the Reliable Replacement Warhead.
In an attempt to sidestep the Congressional defeat of the Reliable Replacement Warhead, the NNSA and the DOE are proposing to rebuild the US nuclear weapons complex to “transform the nuclear stockpile through development of Reliable Replacement Warheads.” The government projects the cost for the Complex Transformation will be $150 billion by 2012, but the General Accounting Office states the cost will exceed this amount.
This renovated complex would include a major new facility—the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) at Los Alamos National Lab—to build 50-80 plutonium “pits” per year, (the triggers for nuclear weapons). The future nuclear arsenal would include new Reliable Replacement Warheads (RRWs).
Another major component of Complex Transformation is construction of a new facility to produce uranium “secondaries,” another major component of warheads, now produced at the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, TN. This proposed new facility would have the capacity to build 125 new units per year. This request comes at the same moment in history when we have an opportunity to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. Joseph Cirincione of Ploughshares Foundation calls our attention to three dramatic political transitions that could lead us down this new path: 1) The U.S. presidential campaign offers unique opportunities. For example, Senator Barack Obama embraces “a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years,” and a vision of a nuclear free world. 2) By 2009, five permanent member countries of the U.N. Security Council will have new leaders who may be willing to help plan a world without nuclear weapons. 3) The emergence of new policies that come from veteran cold warriors who helped build the vast U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and prominent past political leaders. This group, representing political parties across the aisle, has published two op-eds in the Wall Street Journal in the past few months calling for a “world free of nuclear weapons.”
Their efforts have started a policy movement including seminars, in-depth studies and a recent international conference in Oslo, Norway. Mikhail Gorbachev, long a proponent of nuclear abolition, joined other prominent world leaders at this conference to begin to map out a new world view that transcends the current policy of mutually assured destruction— the exchange of nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, California Senator Diane Feinstein proposed Senate Bill 1914, cosponsored by Maine Senator Susan Collins, known as the Nuclear Posture Policy and Posture Review Act of 2007. This bill calls for a comprehensive review to address the role and value of nuclear weapons in the current global security environment. Most specifically, the bill states, “Restriction of Funding Reliable Replacement Warhead Program for fiscal years 2008, 2009 or 2010.” It further calls for the President to submit to congress a report on the results of the review no later than March 1, 2010. In the words of Senator Susan Collins, “Not one more dollar for nuclear weapons until this review is complete.”
These winds of change offer us two stark choices. We can either continue our apathy regarding the current stockpile of 28,000 nuclear weapons and the possibility of an accidental or deliberate nuclear holocaust, or we can become involved and engaged and encourage the vision for a safer world, a world free of nuclear weapons.
Sally Breen
Windham, ME
