WASHINGTON - September 30 - Funding for at least 10 nuclear programs proposed in the FY2005 budget now pending before the Senate appropriations committee will waste over $2 billion this fiscal year and at least $8.7 billion in the next five years, according to a study released today by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. The network of 33 non-profit organizations says the budget proposal includes billions of dollars in "nuclear pork" while undercutting US security, public and environmental health, and non-proliferation goals.

The report, entitled "Top Ten Department of Energy Radioactive Pork Projects in the 2005 Budget," was delivered to members of Congress today as a reference guide and a set of proposals for cutting funding for these specific programs while enhancing US national and energy security.

The full report can be viewed on-line at www.ananuclear.org/topten.html

"The administration's FY05 budget would ramp up nuclear weapons programs including research into new weapons designs, designs for a new nuclear bomb plant, and preparations for a potential return to nuclear testing," says ANA director Susan Gordon. "These programs are more than simply wasteful. They undermine U.S. commitments to nuclear arms control and disarmament, compromising our international credibility at a time of heightened proliferation concerns."

"With work on spending bills unfinished as Congress prepares for elections, we have more time to inform lawmakers of our concerns," says ANA program director Jim Bridgman "Congress should prioritize addressing the environmental and health legacy of nuclear weapons production and abandon wasteful and dangerous nuclear weapons and energy programs."

The US has negotiated deep cuts in its Cold War nuclear arsenals with Russia and has ongoing treaty commitments which building new nuclear weapons would contradict. Yet despite this, proposed nuclear weapons funding for FY05, adjusted for inflation, is nearly equivalent to the previous all-time high in 1983, at the height of the Cold War. The pending FY05 programs the report finds most wasteful and destabilizing include:

o The Advanced Concepts Initiative (ACI) research and development program that includes provocative new concepts, such as "mini-nukes," or low-yield nuclear weapons. Such programs will make nuclear weapons more "useable politically" while making a return to weapons testing more likely.

o The Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) program to modify existing nuclear warheads into nuclear bunker busters, yet conventional bunker busters already exist which do not cause the enormous radioactive fallout and collateral damage threatened by RNEP.

o Stockpile Life Extension Programs (LEPs) which refurbish and in some cases make improvements in existing weapons in the stockpile. Stockpile reductions agreed to with Russia should slate many weapons for dismantlement rather than indefinite preservation or improvement. Yet since they both use the same facility, LEP crowds out dismantlement work. LEP is also redundant with proposed maintenance activities under the Department of Energy's "Stockpile Systems" programs.

o The $30 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF), the most expensive US nuclear project in history, which may never actually achieve ignition. NIF is not essential to maintain the safety of existing fission weapons. The facility will allow the United States to go further in designing new and destabilizing nuclear weapons.

o Funding for production and extraction of tritium, the radioactive hydrogen isotope used to boost a nuclear bomb's yield. The US has a reserve tritium supply, and future production needs are obviated by commitments to reduce the nuclear arsenal. Tritium is being produced using commercial reactors, violating the longstanding non-proliferation norm separating nuclear weapons programs from commercial power production.

o A program to shorten the time required to resume nuclear testing to 18 months, threatening the United States' 12-year moratorium on nuclear testing and creating an incentive for other countries such as China, India and Pakistan to test new weapons in a renewed arms race.

o The Modern Pit Facility (MPF), which would build new plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons at the rate of 125-450 a year, approaching Cold War levels, while enabling the production of new-design weapons.

o A plutonium fuel program for converting surplus weapons grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors, intended to keep parity with a Russian program which remains underfunded and behind schedule. Compared to immobilization (sealing plutonium into glass or ceramic logs for storage) conversion to plutonium fuel is a more dangerous, expensive, proliferation-prone, waste-producing and slower form of plutonium disposition. A significant amount of US surplus plutonium cannot even be converted to fuel.

o The Yucca Mountain project to build a repository for commercial reactor and nuclear weapons waste in Nevada would require transporting 70,000 metric tons of highly radioactive material across 43 states, in the course of which, the Department of Energy admits, accidents will happen. The site is seismically active, sits on an aquifer used for drinking and irrigation, and is vulnerable to water penetration. The DC Court of Appeals has invalidated the project's proposed standards for protecting the public.

o FY05 federally funded programs for reviving the nuclear power industry including development of new power plants and new plant designs, fuel cycle research and an initiative to use nuclear power to generate hydrogen for fuel cells. These allocations would add to the already staggering $150 billion in public subsidies since 1947 to the nuclear power industry, which has severe unresolved environmental risks and waste issues, and absent massive subsidies is not cost competitive with other forms of generation.

The report includes specific proposals for measures Congress could take in the current budget process to eliminate nuclear pork.

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