For Immediate Release: April 6, 2006
Contact: David Culp (Bio)
The Bush administration unveiled plans Wednesday, April 5 to produce 125 new nuclear weapons a year. The plans include building a new nuclear bomb plant at an existing weapons site. The multi-billion dollar proposal was presented at a Capitol Hill hearing by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous federal agency in charge of nuclear weapons.
NNSA plans to consolidate its plutonium operations into one new bomb factory with the capacity to produce 125 nuclear weapons per year. Potential sites for the so-called Consolidated Plutonium Center include the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Pantex Plant in Texas, Nevada Test Site, and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The agency also announced that it was canceling construction of the multi-billion dollar Modern Pit Facility at the Savannah River Site, but would instead include plutonium "pit" production in the larger new bomb plant. The new bomb factory would also house plutonium R&D activities now occurring at the Livermore National Laboratory in California and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The new facility, slated for completion in 2022, would also be the national storage site for plutonium. The Oak Ridge Y-12 plant in Tennessee would be designated as the national storage site for weapons uranium. Research activities at the two weapons labs not involving large quantities of weapons material would continue. The government's program for consolidating nuclear weapons materials is being driven primarily by security concerns since 9/11.
NNSA deputy administrator Tom D'Agostino told a panel of the House Armed Services Committee yesterday that the plan "would restore us to a level of capability comparable to what we had during the Cold War."
D'Agostino praised the new nuclear weapon called the "Reliable Replacement Warhead" (RRW) as the "enabler" for the revived nuclear weapons complex. "RRW, we believe, will provide enormous leverage for a more efficient and responsive infrastructure..."
"For all the talk about eliminating weapons of mass destruction, the administration is proposing that the U.S. return to Cold War era levels of nuclear weapons production capability," said David Culp, senior lobbyist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. "This is a dangerous step in the wrong direction and will spur a new nuclear arms race. The U.S. cannot increase nuclear weapons production and tell the rest of the world to not build these weapons."
[The NNSA press release and testimony on the proposed plan is on their website.]
