The report, summary, and map are all embargoed until after their public release on Wednesday, April 8, at 11 AM EST.

Washington, DC – - The Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network, a collaboration of six national and regional groups, today released a major study advocating a total stockpile of 500 nuclear warheads and a weapons complex downsized from eight sites to three. The network consists of the national organizations the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Project On Government Oversight (POGO); Nuclear Watch New Mexico, near the Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs; Tri-Valley CAREs, near the Lawrence Livermore National Lab; the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, near the Kansas City Plant (KCP); and JustPeace of Texas, near the Pantex Plant.

President Barack Obama has declared that a nuclear weapons-free world is a long-term national goal. Our report outlines how that vision can begin to be concretely carried out in the near-term, including numerous recommendations for the Administration’s pending Nuclear Posture Review. The study integrates nuclear weapons doctrine, strategic force structure and the supporting complex, and forges a path forward. Our resulting plan would truly transform and downsize the nuclear weapons complex, in marked contrast to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan for so-called Complex Transformation under the Bush Administration.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Robert Civiak, a physicist and former OMB budget examiner for DOE nuclear weapons programs, commented, "As a matter of overriding policy, the United States should view its strategic force for one purpose and one purpose only" to deter the use of nuclear weapons by others until the world is free of nuclear weapons. The Department of Defense and NNSA should structure U.S. nuclear forces and the weapons complex accordingly."

Christopher Paine, Director of NRDC’s Nuclear Program added, "The U.S. government has wasted hundreds of billions in the 20 years since the Cold War ended maintaining nuclear forces and a make-work weapons laboratory complex far larger than needed just for deterrence. The United States should move swiftly to reduce its current stockpile by a factor of ten, to 500 warheads, as an interim step toward the goal of global, verifiable nuclear disarmament. It follows that a much smaller weapons complex can adequately maintain this minimal deterrent stockpile. We specifically recommend that NNSA adopt a "curatorship" approach that emphasizes changing existing weapons as little as possible, and refrains from introducing new military capabilities through mislabeled ‘Life Extension Programs’ for warheads."

Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley CAREs observed, "This is the plan that the Bush NNSA should have proposed for "Complex Transformation" – but did not. The agency’s plan is dead on arrival in the Obama Administration, while our plan sets a reasonable path for 21st Century security on which the U.S. can and should embark. Our plan takes the Lawrence Livermore Lab out of NNSA nuclear weapons programs and directs it toward the energy, environmental and global climate change research that our country so desperately needs. It also ends NNSA control of the Sandia Lab in California and the Nevada Test Site by 2012, and ends weapons work at the Kansas City Plant by 2015. As the arsenal is reduced toward 500 warheads, the Savannah River Site and then Y-12 would also cease to be part of the weapons complex."

Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch NM declared, "We believe that already existing capabilities at three sites can more than adequately maintain a 500-warhead stockpile as an interim step toward a nuclear weapons-free world. These remaining sites would be: The Los Alamos Lab for nuclear components curatorship, Sandia-New Mexico for non-nuclear components curatorship, and the Pantex Plant for accelerated dismantlements and storage of plutonium pit "triggers" while they await final disposal. Given a 500-warhead stockpile maintained through curatorship, residual activities should result in no net increase in nuclear weapons work or funding at any of the three remaining sites other than dismantlements."

Anne Suellentrop of PSR-Kansas City noted, "Historically the Kansas City Plant has been responsible for producing or procuring 85% of all nuclear weapons components. Currently the NNSA is scheming to have private developers build and operate a new plant on its behalf. Our plan would cancel this new plant, transfer any needed residual operations elsewhere, and clean up the heavily contaminated old plant so that it can be reused for local economic development. The nuclear weapons complex should be cleaned-up, not built-up!"

Mavis Belisle of JustPeace of Texas noted, "The Pantex Plant has long been the site for final assembly of nuclear weapons, with dismantlements as a secondary mission, often used to just fill in time between production. President Bush’s obsolete plans to process a few thousand warheads through Life Extension Programs should be halted pending the required new Nuclear Posture Review. It’s time to change priorities and make irreversible dismantlements number one, instead of tying up Pantex facilities in endless improvements of nuclear weapons."

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) focused on the study’s security recommendations for the nuclear weapons complex. POGO’s Ingrid Drake commented, "The potential impacts of a terrorist attack using nuclear weapons on U.S. soil are too horrific to permit the documented ineffective security at NNSA facilities that has persisted for many years. We specifically recommend that the agency more rapidly reduce the number of places where weapons-grade and weapons-quantities of special nuclear materials (SNM) are stored, especially highly enriched uranium, which is inherently easier to use in an improvised nuclear device. We further recommend that NNSA federalize its protective forces, ending the current hodgepodge of contractors managing security, which is clearly an urgent governmental function."

The Network’s report’s recommendations would cut NNSA spending on nuclear weapons by $2.3 billion in fiscal year 2010, compared to the recently released budget request of $6.3 billion. By 2020, our recommendations would further reduce NNSA nuclear weapons spending to around 2 billion dollars in FY09 dollars, one-third of what it is today.

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The Network report’s summary, full report and map of the current and proposed nuclear weapons complex will be available on the web at www.nukewatch.org and www.trivalleycares.org, and at the 9 AM – 11 AM EST briefing on Wednesday, April 8, 2009, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC. Teleconference dial-in for the release briefing is available at 641.715.3635, Access Code: 539953#. To accommodate other time zones, an additional teleconference for journalists only will be held at 1:00 P.M. EST, April 8, 2009 at NRDC. Call 1-866.901.2585 (please ask for "nuclear report").

To obtain an advance, embargoed until released PDF of the Network’s report, please contact Tri-Valley CAREs, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, NRDC or POGO at the above-listed numbers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Tri-Valley Cares. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.