Below is an alert we sent to some of our supporters on the nuclear pork in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Click on the following committee links to check if your representative is a member of a key committee that decides how much funding nuclear weapons will actually get. If your representative is on either the House Armed Services Committee or the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, please take action and email your representative.

Next year’s budget has just been released and while it has a spending freeze for most domestic programs, there’s plenty of nuclear weapons pork. The nukes budget comes in at roughly $7 billion, getting a ten percent increase.

It’s outrageous, unnecessary, and expensive.

Worst of all, the budget has hundreds of millions in nuclear pork for several new facilities that would enable the U.S. to increase its capacity to create new nuclear weapons in the future. A new plutonium pit facility in New Mexico would allow for a huge increase in the production of plutonium pits – the bomb cores of nuclear weapons. These facilities could cost taxpayers $3 billion each in the long run. Meanwhile, funds to dismantle nuclear weapons we no longer need have been slashed.

The budget has millions for new nuclear weapons facilities we don’t need. Ask your representative to cut nuclear pork today!

The international community is coming together in May to evaluate progress on the cornerstone treaty of nuclear disarmament. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligates nuclear weapons states – like the U.S. – to work toward nuclear disarmament in exchange for non-nuclear weapons states not acquiring them. Other countries are looking to the U.S. for signs that we are serious about living up to our nuclear disarmament obligations, and this budget undermines our credibility.

Last year, your emails and calls created the grassroots pressure that successfully eliminated pork for the nuclear weapons complex from the economic stimulus. Please email now and ask your representative to cut funding for these new facilities.

Analysis of the Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Request

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

“Proposed DoE funding also includes large increases for a facility that will expand plutonium production in Los Alamos, New Mexico and for a new highly enriched uranium production facility near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, each estimated to cost about $3 billion. The Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project (CMRR) plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory increased from $97 million in FY 2010 to $225 million in FY 2011. Y-12’s Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) also increased to $115 million from $94 million in FY 2010.”

Click here to download a PDF of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s budget briefing book.

Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

Click here for ANA’s press release.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico

Click here for their blog post on the budget.

Project on Government Oversight

Click here for their blog post on the budget.

Tri-Valley CAREs

Click here for their press release.

Upcoming activities on nuclear weapons

1. For Peace and Human Needs: Nuclear Disarmament Now! is a new website with resources on activities and demonstrations being planned for the May NPT Review Conference. Hundreds of organizations from the U.S. and around the globe are taking new steps to renew the commitment to a nuclear free world. The website includes an online petition on nuclear disarmament.

2. Groundbreaking is expected in April for a major new production facility, the Kansas City Plant, that will be responsible for 85% of all components for possible new designs and/or half-century life extensions of existing U.S. nuclear weapons. Protests and demonstrations in Kansas City are currently being planned, just before the NPT Review Conference that begins May 3. Contact Nuclear Watch New Mexico for more information.

Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cjbrenchley/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Titan II nuclear missile in its Cold War silo.

This year is one of the biggest opportunities we’ve had since the end of the Cold War to make significant progress toward a nuclear weapons free world. Maintaining the status quo of more than 23,000 nuclear weapons worldwide is just too dangerous; so many weapons around the world increase the risk of an accidental launch with deadly consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. A quick look at the calendar confirms that 2010 will be a pivotal year:

• New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) announced and Senate debate over US ratification (January estimate)

• Fiscal Year 2011 Budget released (February)

• Nuclear Posture Review released (March 1 estimate)

• Global Nuclear Security Summit (April 12-13)

• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference (May)

• Possible senate debate on ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (late in 2010 if at all)

Major nuclear weapons treaties up for ratification by the Senate. Major international conferences on nuclear weapons. Key policy and budget documents from the administration. It’s a packed agenda for the first six months of the year. As activists, you and I need to hit the ground running to ensure we’re making the most of each of these opportunities. If ever there was a time to be active and organize on nuclear weapons issues, this year is it.

New START

The US and Russia will return to the negotiating table on Monday to finish hammering out a follow on agreement to START. The treaty will reduce both US and Russian deployed nuclear weapons to between 1,500 and 1,675 and limit the number of delivery vehicles. Reports vary on what issues remain as sticking points, with some citing sharing telemetry data and others citing missile defense. According to the Washington Post:

The United States now wants the treaty signed by May to set an example for a conference it hopes will bolster the global Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

“If you and the Russians control 95 percent of the nuclear weapons and you’re not reducing, you’re going to weaken your hand if you’re pressing for tighter measures” to rein in other nations’ nuclear programs, said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Once an agreement is announced, the treaty will go to the Senate for a ratification debate. Expect that to take a while – the Senate still isn’t done dealing with healthcare legislation. The healthcare debate showed just how hard it is to move anything through the Senate, and a supermajority of 67 votes will be needed for New START’s ratification. While there is broad bipartisan support for reducing our nuclear arsenal, it will be important for our supporters to repeatedly show their senators that they favor making the world a safer place by reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world.

Meanwhile, 41 senators (all Republicans and Independent Joe Lieberman) are making hay with a letter to Obama stating that “modernization” of our nuclear arsenal (read new nuclear weapons) are needed. The Wall Street Journal jumped on the bandwagon, publishing an atrocious editorial against reducing our arsenal with a lot of false claims about the need for new nuclear weapons. While the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is unlikely to be dealt with until late in 2010, if at all, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) is raising objections to any type of arms control in the context of the START debate and has already promised that he “will lead the charge against [the CTBT] and I will do everything in my power to see that it is defeated.”

Ploughshares Fund President Joe Cirincione deftly picks apart the Wall Street Journal’s argument:

By claiming that U.S. nuclear weapons are in serious disrepair and that removing any of the 9,400 nuclear weapons in the arsenal would threaten national security, the Journal’s editors help create public fear of changing obsolete Cold War nuclear policies.…

First, the Journal claims: “The deteriorating U.S. nuclear arsenal is emerging as a big security problem.” Not true. U.S. weapons are safe, secure, and effective. No science-based study has found otherwise. The most recent report from JASON — a premier U.S. defense advisory panel of scientists — found no evidence that aging posed any threat to the usability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The JASON report said, “Lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence.” In an earlier study, JASON scientists found that the plutonium cores of these weapons are reliable for at least 100 years. In other words: The nukes are alright.

The U.S. government spends almost $6 billion a year on stockpile stewardship programs that maintain the massive nuclear arsenal. Some, like the Journal, want new facilities and new bomb production plants, but the Government Accountability Office has found that such plans would cost $150 billion. This is overkill.

The Budget

In February, we’ll see if key nuclear weapons facilities that support increased nuclear weapons productions receive a boost in funding or not. Keep an eye out for funding levels for nuclear non-proliferation programs that secure loose nuclear material around the globe. Obama has stated he’d like to secure all loose nuclear material in his first four years and he’ll need to put a big chunk of money into these programs to achieve that laudable goal.

We’ll also see if the new nuclear weapon known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which we defeated with your help 2 years running, is resurrected under a new name or not. One program to keep a close eye on was mentioned by Undersecretary of state for arms control and international security Ellen Tauscher:

A reliable replacement for the now-dead Reliable Replacement Warhead program will be funded in U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed 2011 budget, said the woman most responsible for killing the RRW in 2008….

The Stockpile Management program would permit the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to “refurbish” aging nuclear warheads to ensure that they still work and are safe, Tauscher said. During refurbishment, features could be added to the warheads to make them theft-proof and more environmentally friendly, she said.

But the warheads cannot be “improved” in the sense that they are made into more effective weapons, and they cannot be tested by exploding sample warheads.

Nuclear Posture Review

Throughout 2009, Peace Action West and other groups worked to highlight to the Obama administration the need for a transformative Nuclear Posture Review – the official document that will set US nuclear weapons policy for the next 5-10 years. The review will answer important questions like what purpose nuclear weapons have in defending the US, when we would use them, and how many nuclear weapons we need to have. Reports over the summer indicated a tug of war within the administration over the direction of the review. Now, the Nuclear Posture Review has been delayed. Originally due February 1st, it’s been pushed back to March 1st. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere have pushed back against Obama administration proposals to cut the number of weapons and narrow their mission, according to U.S. officials and outsiders who have been briefed on the process.

In turn, White House officials, unhappy with early Pentagon-led drafts of the blueprint known as the Nuclear Posture Review, have stepped up their involvement in the deliberations and ordered that the document reflect Obama’s preference for sweeping change, according to the U.S. officials and others, who described discussions on condition of anonymity because of their sensitivity and secrecy.

International Conferences

Finally, we’ve got two big international conferences this year. The first, a Global Nuclear Security Summit in April, will address securing loose nuclear material and preventing nuclear terrorism. Next, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference will be held in New York in May. There’s more momentum headed into the conference this year due to President Obama’s stated goal of pursuing a safer world free of nuclear weapons. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Deputy Director of Nonproliferation Deepti Choubey:

American leadership will be crucial for a successful NPT Review Conference, and the rest of the world will be looking for concrete action to back up President Obama’s call for nuclear disarmament. Although ratification of the START follow on will be an important step, most countries will view the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) as the key piece of evidence that the U.S. brings to the Review Conference. Choubey says the best outcome would be an NPR that narrows the purpose and role of nuclear weapons, acknowledges the U.S.’s NPT commitments, and reconciles currently conflicting messages and nuclear policies.

Photo credit:

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The findings in a new report out today by the JASONs, a group of independent, expert scientists, call into question the need for new nuclear weapons. Tasked by the former chair and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee to study the Life Extension Programs (LEPs), a program to extend the lifetime of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, the unclassified version of the report (JSR-09-334E) stated:

JASON finds no evidence that accumulation of changes incurred from aging and LEPs have increased risk to certification of today’s deployed nuclear warheads….

Lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in LEPs to date.

People as high up in the Obama administration as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have continued pushing for new nuclear weapons like the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which Peace Action West and other organizations succeeded in blocking funding for under the Bush administration. Global Security Newsire reported on a high level meeting this summer where Gates again pushed for the RRW:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates raised the idea of reinstating the controversial Reliable Replacement Warhead effort during a secret “Principals’ Committee” meeting convened by the National Security Council, Global Security Newswire has learned.

Under the RRW project, government officials said they intended to design new warheads that could make the aging nuclear arsenal more safe, secure and reliable — without adding new military capabilities or resuming explosive testing. However, Congress eliminated funding for the Bush administration initiative for the past two fiscal years and, this year, President Barack Obama omitted the program from his fiscal 2010 budget request.

As the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability points out in their press release:

Since 2005, both Air Force and Department of Energy officials have claimed that new design nuclear warheads were necessary because of diminishing confidence in the nuclear stockpile. At the centerpiece of plans for building new warheads are new weapons production facilities proposed for Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico….

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has proposed construction of the Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement Nuclear Facility at Los Alamos for increased plutonium pit manufacturing. At Oak Ridge, public hearings are taking place right now to evaluate a proposal for the Uranium Processing Facility, which would produce new uranium components for new warheads.

All in all, it looks like it will be much harder for supporters of new nuclear weapons to continue to use these kinds of justifications now that the report by the JASONs has been released.

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Secretary of Defense Gates is still pushing for new nuclear weapons. At an Air Force Association conference this Wednesday, Gates:

previewed findings of the ongoing Nuclear Posture Review by endorsing the need to sustain and modernize the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, including a new warhead design.

That appears to mean support for the reliable replacement warhead program proposed by former President George W. Bush but strongly opposed by arms control advocates and congressional Democrats.

The article continues with more from Gates:

Responding to a question from the audience, Gates said the preliminary nuclear review results showed the need for “large investments” in modernizing nuclear weapons production facilities and retaining weapons development expertise and, “in one or two cases, probably new designs that would be safer and more reliable.”

Bush’s own effort to develop new nuclear weapons was repeatedly blocked by Congress and a new warhead appeared to conflict with President Obama’s support for reducing the nuclear stockpile.

If Gates’ views win out in the development of the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, progress toward a nuclear weapons free world will become that much more difficult. Next week, the US will submit a resolution at a special U.N. Security Council meeting on disarmament and nonproliferation calling for nations that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to begin negotiations to reduce their nuclear stockpiles and to negotiate “a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, and calls on all other states to join in this endeavor.” I would love to hear Gates explain how countries will be motivated to work together on this if the US is modernizing its arsenal by building new nuclear weapons.

In an excellent OpEd in the San Jose Mercury News today called “Opinion: Obama can reach for transformative nuclear policy,” Steve Andreasen argues that now is the time for a transformative nuclear posture review and lays out some key changes to look for in the review due early next year.

But the Nuclear Posture Review will say much more, in particular with respect to these issues:

Declaratory policy. America has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” refusing to rule out a nuclear first strike. Today, advancing the idea that nuclear weapons are legitimate in only one role — preventing their use — may better serve U.S. interests.

“New” nuclear weapons. There is a broad consensus that as long as nuclear weapons exist, they should be safe, secure and reliable. But if we are on a path to a world free of nuclear weapons, production of new weapons would be a hard sell.

Nuclear force posture. The Cold War has been over for almost 20 years, but the U.S. and Russia still maintain hundreds of nuclear ballistic missiles on quick launch status. A policy to establish a global norm against launch-ready force postures would be a safer weigh station on the path to eliminating nuclear weapons.

Reductions beyond START follow-on. The outlines of a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty follow-on reached by Presidents Obama and Medvedev in Moscow are not transformative. Look for a commitment to seek further reductions.

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