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TechnoratiBuild More Nukes? Forget It.
Over the past year, a group of nuclear physicists has been studying a site on the banks of a beautiful river. Hidden from international nuclear inspectors, they are drawing up plans for a new facility, possibly along this river, designed to perform research on plutonium and build new nuclear bombs by the year 2020.Where is this river? Is it the Volga in Russia, the Karun in Iran, or Kuryong-gang in North Korea? Actually, it is none of those. These scientists are all looking at the Savannah River on the border of South Carolina and Georgia, only a few miles from where Tiger Woods played in the Masters.
Buried deep within the volumes of the Bush administration's annual budget proposal is an initial request for funds to start rebuilding its nuclear weapons infrastructure--at a price tag of over $150 billion. One possible location for this new H-bomb plant is the Savannah River site in South Carolina.
Why, in a world where the United States is legitimately worried about countries like Iran and North Korea building new nukes, is the Bush administration rebuilding its own nuclear weapons complex? While common in Washington, this type of hypocrisy is astonishing elsewhere.
In the early 1990s, the Cold War ended and with it the "need" for a massive nuclear weapons program--or so sensible people thought. After initial reductions in the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, the current administration has, since its early days in office, envisioned a revitalized role for them. As Thomas P. D'Agostino, acting under-secretary for nuclear security in the National Nuclear Security Administration, testified to the House Armed Services Subcommittee that the administration's plans "would restore us to a level of [nuclear weapon] capability comparable to what we had during the Cold War."
The administration has a grab bag full of justifications for this new bomb plant, called "Complex 2030" for the date it will be completed. If one doesn't fit, try another. At the forefront was the argument that the plutonium inside existing nuclear warheads would be susceptible to age-related failures, with the oldest rendered "unreliable" within two decades and thus needing replacement. This assertion was recently proved inaccurate when a panel of scientists using the government's own data concluded in a congressionally mandated report that plutonium within existing nuclear weapons would be "reliable" for a minimum of at least 85 years.
Adjusting, the DOE line then began to focus on the claim that Complex 2030 and the new bomb plant are needed in order to continue downsizing the current weapons stockpile. The agency's argument is that by rebuilding nuclear weapons facilities, DOE will feel confident in its ability to produce new nuclear weapons when needed, and thus be able to reduce the number of active warheads. This is a strange argument: A shiny new nuclear weapons complex that would be capable of pumping out 125 to 200 new nukes a year to help the United States reach the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.
For those who don't want new nuclear weapons, take heart. Money talks in Washington and the über-steep price tag for an obsolete weapon has many members of Congress doing a double take. Rep. Peter Visclosky, (D-Ind.), chair of the House subcommittee that funds nuclear weapons, believes that there should be a thoughtful evaluation of "why the United States needs to build new nuclear warheads at this time."
Congress should step up and confront the legacy of vested interests from this country's half-century old nuclear weapons industry. As Robert Civiak, a former White House budget official in the first Bush and Clinton administrations stated, "The weapons labs are more interested in job security than national security." Rather than let tens of billions of dollars slip out of the treasury for building the most dangerous weapon in human history, Congress should reevaluate U.S. nuclear weapons policy with an honest scrutiny.
Devin Helfrich is a legislative assistant with the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington, D.C., and works on defense and foreign policy issues.
© 2006 MinutemanMedia.org
8 Comments so far
Show AllNobody will want a nuclear bomb plant in their neighborhood. It is more than predictable that the locals will go "ballistic" over this proposal. There will be serious political "fall out."
I'm disgusted at how easy it is for proposals like this that are nothing more than corporate welfare for the military industrial complex worm their way into bills. When bills finally get printed, they are massive 1,000 plus page documents. It is humanly impossible for one person to read any bill from start to finish. That is why legislators routinely delegate this to their staff. I bet legislators will be surprised when directed to a specific page number and find a Dr. Strangelove pork project.
The pork project weasels that sneak this type of BS into bills do so after all discussion has ended, but before the president signs off on the bill. This process provides anonymity for wild ideas that have not been discussed or challenged. And too many of our current legislators on both sides of the aisle know how to play the game and don't want to be identified. This article needs to go one step further and name the legislators involved. I'll take a wild guess and say they are South Carolina legislators trying to create jobs for their state. I'm sure the locals will want to vote them out of office.
The Fusion process will solve all humanity's future power needs. It is a cold, safe, wasteless, nuclear process that will use a simple isotope of water.
Many people are reducing their fuel consumption by 15 to 25% - google search keywords: acetone + mpg + wiki
Our scientific instruments are too primitive to detect the nuclear waste that is spilled all over the planet. Alzheimer's and cancer are two of the many negative consequences of nuclear power plants.
All nuclear power plants need to be shut down asap.
Where is the outrage from the peoples of South Carolina and Georgia? Are they so hard up for jobs, what gives?
Look. It is not complicated: War pigs like war, oil pigs like oil, and they control the country to the exclusion of the rest of us. ALL THEY KNOW HOW TO DO is build weapons and use them to take the oil of other people, because these are the founts of their money and power. It's not that they do not care; corporations CANNOT, by definition, "care" about anything except what makes them money.
And destroying our democracy, and the planet along with it, makes them money. Until they are REMOVED FROM POWER, it will continue--to the VERY bitter end.
I'm sick of the sabre rattling. I'm sick of their attempts to have us all live in fear. Here's the deal. Its going to happen sooner or later so I say LAUNCH NOW. Get it over with. Fire off your war toys and get it over with. Maybe you'll finally be satisfied.
Why does Iran want nuclear weapons, assuming they do, which is not necessarily a valid assumption? Could it be because our vaunted "ally" Israel, which constantly conducts spy missions agains the United States, has between 200 and 600 nukes? How would Iran be a threat to Israel or the United States even if it had a dozen nukes? How would they deliver them? Would they use the vast Iranian Navy? How about the unstoppable Iranian Air Force, the most proficient and largest air force in the world with the best pilots the world has ever seen? Would they use those thousands of ICBMS they already have on their launch pads? Of course the U.S. would never be able to detect the building of launch pads or missles which could be destroyed with conventional weapons during their construction phase, thus making Iranian possession of warheads a moot point. Yes, I can see how the Iranians are a true threat. Perhaps they have taken a page from the North Korean play book, wherein they are confident the U.S. does not dare attack them because they already have nukes. And thats another story. Why should the U.S. after all these decades since the Korean War still be in South Korea. Isn't it time for the South Koreans to take up their own defense? That way the U.S. could move all those thousands of troops into Iraq to finish the job of totally destroying that country to make it safe for Exxon/Mobil. OOPS! I mean safe for "democracy".
P.S.
Go to http://www.kucinich.us and see his stance on nukes and the plans to disarm the planet--using diplomacy, not threats!
Can you say: HYPOCRISY?!
This article clearly shows two things: 1.) The aforementioned HYPOCRISY and 2.) How badly the citizenry of this country have been "dumbed down".
Daily in the news is a dose of how Iran MUST ne stopped from developing nuclear weapons. Is there ever a single goosebump when mention is made of developing MORE nukes for the U.S.? Please....
What's even more scary is that this is VERY RARELY called to attention even in the alleged "Progressive" websites.
Shame on the media. Shame on us all for allowing this discrepancy!