India
India claims successful test launch of long-range nuclear missile that could hit Beijing, Africa or even Eastern Europe
Daily Mail 19th April 2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2131628/New-nuclear-missile-built-India-intimidate-rival-China-hit-Beijing-completes-test-launch.html
Guardian 19th April 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/19/india-test-fires-long-range-missile
Defense spending is a critical part of the New Mexico economy. The Los Alamos National Laboratory alone has a $21 billion impact on New Mexico’s economy and accounts for about 24,000 jobs.
Nuclear Watch New Mexico
Defense Dept. Memo Criticizes Cost of Nuclear Weapons Labs
While Los Alamos Director’s Salary Nearly Triples
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 18, 2012
Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.920.7118, jay@nukewatch.org
Santa Fe, NM – Our colleagues and friends at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) have released an explosive report based on a leaked Department of Defense memo concluding that “The Department of Energy’s network of privately-operated nuclear weapons laboratories are riddled with waste, redundancies and lackluster scientific standards.” POGO also found that “that seven of the top 15 officials at the three DOE nuclear labs make more than $700,000 per year, with one earning $1.7 million—more than the president of the United States and many government executives.”
Coincidentally, Nuclear Watch New Mexico had been independently compiling data on the salaries of the three laboratory directors, as presented in the table below. It shows that the salary of the Los Alamos Director has nearly tripled since for-profit management began in June 2006, even as the Lab is cutting some 600 jobs. As seen below, privatization of the nuclear weapons labs’ management contracts has resulted in directors’ salaries far above average in both the federal government and the private sector.
LANL Lab Director 2011
$1,081,059
Nearly triple 2005
LANL Lab Director 2009
after privatization
$800,348
In June of 2006, management of the Lab was awarded to Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a for-profit corporation including the University of California, Bechtel Corporation, URS, and B&W
LANL Lab Director 2005 before privatization
$348,000
Lab managed as a non-profit entity by the University of California until June 2006
Sandia Director 2011
Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, NM
$1,726,000
Operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lockheed Martin Corporation
LLNL Director 2011
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA
$500,522
Since 2007 has been operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, consisting of Bechtel National, University of California, B&W, Wilcox, URS, and Battelle
NNSA Administrator
Directly in charge of the Labs
$179,700
The National Nuclear Security Administration spends more than $7 billion annually on its nuclear weapons complex
DOE Secretary Nominally in charge of NNSA
$199,700
Department of Energy spends around $26 billion annually, of which 90% goes to private contractors.
President of the United States
$400,000
Governor of New Mexico
$110,000
Average CEO in Albuquerque, NM
$204,890
New Mexico Business Weekly, May 16, 2011
CEO Public Service Co. (NM’s largest utility)
$575,000
The Associated Press, April 06, 2012
The DoD memo leaked by POGO contains the following admirable passage on good governance:
Diminishing Public Accountability. Without a strong yardstick, our government cannot govern well — not even if it retains the best and brightest on contract. The government’s own assets must capably bear the responsibility for decisions that affect national interests, and they must maintain public confidence by the manner in which those decisions are made.
In contrast, the directors of the three nuclear weapons labs (the Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories) wear two hats, first as lab directors, but secondly as the presidents of the board of directors of the for-profit limited liability corporations (LLCs) that run the labs. That may be a questionable conflict of interests, in which the LLCs are enjoying record profits from issues that deeply “affect national interests” (i.e., nuclear weapons) while the salaries of their “CEOs” (the lab directors) are exploding.
Arguably the lab directors have not maintained public confidence in the decisions they make because of the general trend of increasingly withholding crucial public information. One example is the Performance Evaluation Reports that rate contractors’ performance and determines the amount of taxpayers’ money awarded to them. Those reports were publicly available until 2009 when the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) began to withhold them, and became recently available again only after NukeWatch NM sued for them under the Freedom of Information Act.
NNSA awarded the limited liability corporation that runs Los Alamos Lab $74.2 million for FY 2010, followed by $83.7 million in profit for FY 2011, a 13% increase in one year, and 10 times more than what the University of California (UC) use to be awarded when it was LANL’s sole nonprofit manager. Jay Coghlan, NukeWatch Director, commented, “In today’s political and economic climate citizens need to remain vigilant that for-profit corporate interests don’t corrupt serious national issues. This very much applies to how our nuclear weapons labs are run as well. We specifically call upon Los Alamos Lab to fully explain to northern New Mexicans why it needs to cut some 600 jobs while at the same time the for-profit management corporation is enjoying record profits and the Director’s salary has nearly tripled in six years.”
# # #
All data on nuclear weapons labs directors’ salaries are from:
http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/pages/RecipientProjectSummary508.aspx?AwardIdSur=74953
http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/pages/RecipientProjectSummary508.aspx?AwardIDSUR=115066&qtr=2011Q1
http://www.upte.org/LosAlamos/salaries/salaries.html
POGO’s press release “Leaked Defense Memo Criticizes the Department of Energy’s Push to Expand Nuclear Weapons Laboratories” is at http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/alerts/nuclear-security-safety/nss-nwc-20110418-nuclear-waste-dept-of-energy.html
POGO’s detailed letter to congressional committees on these issues is at http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/letters/nuclear-security-safety/nss-nwc-20120418-nuclear-weapons-labs.html
To read the leaked DoD memo, click here http://pogoarchives.org/m/nss/new-missions-for-the-nuclear-weapons-labs-11-16-2011.
Peace Train for March 2, 2012
By JUDITH MOHLING
On Valentine’s Day our star, the sun of our lives, burst forth with solar flares that disrupted radio communication and GPS signals for airplanes on long distance flights. By comparison to other solar eruptions throughout history, these flares were modest.
It is solar flares that trigger geomagnetic storms on earth. Every eleven years there is accelerated solar activity and this round is expected to peak at the end of 2012.
Experts say that if the largest known solar eruption which occurred in 1859, happened today, the modern world would be devastated. Why? Because we depend so thoroughly on electricity and solar flares can cause geomagnetic storms on earth which create damaging surges of current in electrical, telecommunications and other networks across entire continents.
According to John Kappenman, solar expert, a geomagnetic storm in 1989 affected the North American grid and shut down electricity around Quebec, Canada—it went entirely dark. Mr. Kappenman points out that the earth has been “lashed by superstorms up to 10 times more powerful than that one and that it is likely that such a storm will happen again. When it does, it will be one of the worst disasters in recorded history.”
The world approaches one year since the 3/11 Fukushima tragedy began. The thought of a massive solar storm shutting down power grids world wide, including even a few of the world’s 700 nuclear power plants and reactors, is agonizing. As Dr. LeRoy Moore has said so aptly, “Plutonium is Forever.
The Fukushima catastrophe is happening because an earth quake followed by a devastating tsunami completely disrupted power to the Fukushima reactors, and electricity is required to constantly cool the fuel rods in reactors. Without adequate cooling, the fuel rods will melt down completely.
Tom Brognan, director of Boulder’s Space Weather Prediction Center, says, “What’s at stake are the advanced technologies that underlie virtually every aspect of our lives.”
What to do? Improve solar storm predicting, prepare power grids far better and end nuclear power—all of the world’s reactors are an absolutely horrific accident waiting to happen.
Attend an event hosted by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center’s Nuclear Guardianship project at Naropa University, 2130 Arapaho, Sunday afternoon, March 11, from 3 to 5:00 PM. Explore what happened, is now happening and the current state of nuclear power in the US.
Why won’t the US Senate ratify the comprehensive Test Ban Treaty? Because the Republicans, indefensibly- want to make the Obama Administration look weak on National Defense.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/evans15/English
Recently I re-watched a film I first saw when I was 7 years old (1944) called “30 Seconds over Tokyo” which was made as a propaganda film in WWII to pump patriotic support for the war on Japan. In it, the leader of the Doolittle Raid, on board the carrier Enterprise asks the crews of the B-24′s if they had any moral compuctions about the possible bombing of Civilians and that any crews which did could opt out of this raid–without prejudice–because he realized that this was a valid concern even though military targets were “primary”. Generals and Admirals following the bombing of Hiroshima said they were appalled, that there was no need and it was against all they were taught about making war. The below review of a current film looks at how we have changed since then. Perhaps even to the point of losing our very Souls.
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/renouncing-the-nuclear-idol
From the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
A Nuclear Nightmare in the Making: NATO, Missile Defense and Russian Insecurity, by David Krieger and Steven Starr, January 03, 2012
For the past several years, the US and NATO have been pursuing the deployment of an integrated missile defense system in Western, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, as well as in surrounding waters. The Russians have protested vigorously that the planned system will undermine its nuclear retaliatory potential and thereby its security. The United States, the driving force behind NATO missile defense plans, has repeatedly told the Russian leaders that there is no need to be worried about these deployments since they are designed to counter Iranian missiles rather than Russian ICBMs.
and …
Continued US indifference to Russian security concerns could have dire consequences: a breakdown in US-Russian relations; regression to a new nuclear-armed standoff in Europe; Russian withdrawal from New START; a new nuclear arms race between the two countries; a breakdown of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty leading to new nuclear weapon states; and a higher probability of nuclear weapons use by accident or design. This is a scenario for nuclear disaster, and it is being provoked by US hubris in pursuing missile defenses, a technology that is unlikely ever to be effective, but which Russian leaders must view in terms of a worst-case scenario.
In the event of increased US-Russian tensions, the worst-case scenario from the Russian perspective would be a US first-strike nuclear attack on Russia, taking out most of the Russian nuclear retaliatory capability. The Russians believe the US would be emboldened to make a first-strike attack by having the US-NATO missile defense installations located near the Russian border, which the US could believe capable of shooting down any Russian missiles that survived its first-strike attack.
The path to a US-Russian nuclear war could also begin with a conventional military confrontation via NATO. The expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia has created the potential for a local military conflict with Russia to quickly escalate into a nuclear war. It is now Russian policy to respond with tactical nuclear weapons if faced with overwhelmingly superior conventional forces, such as those of NATO. In the event of war, the “nuclear umbrella” of NATO guarantees that NATO members will be protected by US nuclear weapons that are already forward-based in Europe.
Follow the link to the read all of this excellent article
There are also conservative voices who see the folly of spending billions of dollars on nuclear weapons in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Nuclear Money Pit
America’s atomic arsenal is stuck in the Cold War era.
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | November 29, 2011These days superpower nuclear-weapons controversies hardly elicit the excitement that once inspired such bumper-sticker slogans as, “you can’t hug children with nuclear arms.” The “no nukes!” movement has gone the way of the Cold War and MTV playing music videos, right?
In the 21st century, the 2002 Treaty of Moscow and 2010’s New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) were supposed set the clock on bilateral warhead reduction, and there are no plans for the production of more nuclear weapons. Pretty cut and dried, one would think. But like everything radiating out of Washington, the atomic drawdown is not what it seems.
Despite a deficit reduction plan to cut $1.2 trillion in federal spending over 10 years and ongoing negotiations by the so-called supercommittee to identify cuts of $1.5 trillion more, members of Congress are pushing an expanded plutonium storage and production assistance facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Critics say the facility is unnecessary, poorly designed, and dangerous—there are fault lines throughout the Los Alamos property—and its cost has ballooned from $375 million in 2001 to an estimated $5.5 billion today.
It hasn’t been built yet—in fact, the designs aren’t even finished after 10 years. But the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) has been soaking up taxpayer money all the same as the scope of the project has metastasized.
“The country doesn’t have money to pour into an unnecessary, giant boondoggle that has grown beyond all original expectations,” charges Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, probably the toughest grassroots opposition the CMRR-NF project faces right now. “When the cost of a facility increases by more than a factor of ten, even as the fundamental purposes are evaporating, it’s important to stop, to pause and to question whether this is the right thing to do.”
There is no doubt that the budget-cutting imperative is clashing with the old way of doing business on Capitol Hill, as pet projects and earmarks come under more scrutiny than ever. Bureaucratic institutions used to getting their way by easing expensive, potentially controversial programs under the radar are finding themselves squarely in critics’ sights.
That includes CMRR-NF, which has never been the subject of a public congressional hearing or passionate floor speech—much less a heated debate on cable TV or talk radio—but has been controversial nonetheless.
“I think the key is, it appears to be a huge waste of money and particularly in our current fiscal situation there is no need to hurry this thing at all,” says Peter Stockton, senior investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, which is currently working on its own CMRR-NF report.• • •
The mission of National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is a semi-autonomous agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, is to “improve national security through the military application of nuclear energy.” It oversees Los Alamos and is in charge of the CMRR project.
Initially, the NNSA was merely focused on renovating the parts of Los Alamos’s old Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) building that were outmoded and deteriorating by the late 1990s. Tests had found faults running under the property that could cause dangerous earthquakes.
After President George W. Bush was elected, plans to improve and upgrade salvageable portions of the nearly 60-year-old CMR were scrapped, and NNSA set about designing a “simple” replacement facility with two buildings about a mile away. One, the Radiological Laboratory Utility Office Building, is not controversial and almost complete. The other—the NF in CMRR-NF—is a new nuclear facility that would support Los Alamos’s nuclear-weapons mission, including plutonium storage, and assist in the production of plutonium-based “pits,” the fissile cores of nuclear weapons. This currently takes place at the existing TA-55/PF-4 nuclear facility next to the proposed site.
The nuclear facility, according to its critics, has become a monster. Aside from the runaway cost estimates, according to Mello the envisioned facility would give TA-55/PF-4 the capacity to double the number of pits Los Alamos produces each year and could store up to six metric tons of plutonium, “enough to rebuild the entire U.S. strategic arsenal.” This when there are thousands of pits already in storage and a treaty with the Russians sharply limits the nuclear arsenal.
Even if the increase in pit production were necessary—and as Mello and others point out, with much of the information classified or otherwise unavailable to the public, it is hard to know—the existing lab could be upgraded to carry out Los Alamos’s publicly stated mission to refurbish the current stockpile. NNSA, critics complain, has so far refused to seriously consider any alternative.
“We think there are simpler, cheaper, faster alternatives to accomplishing their stated mission, though their stated missions are aggrandized to begin with,” says Los Alamos Study Group President Peter Neils, who was on Capitol Hill in late October to get the word out about CMRR-NF. He blames the out-of-control designs and spiraling cost on a mix of Cold War ideology, over-reliance on contractors, and the self-sustaining mentality of all bureaucracies.
Simply put, says Mello, “the warhead establishment and the Cold War hawks cannot let go of designing and building new kinds of warheads, to create what they call ‘end-to-end’ work for the weapons complex.”
• • •
As of June, the Federation of American Scientists reports, the U.S. had 1,950 operational strategic nuclear warheads, plus approximately 200 deployed on behalf of allied countries—Belgium, Turkey, Netherlands, Italy and Germany—and 2,850 in reserve. In addition, some 3,500 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement. This all jibes with numbers issued by the State Department in 2010. START demands that the U.S. bring those deployed numbers down closer to 1,550 by 2018.
At its peak in 1967 during the Cold War, the nuclear stockpile was at 31,225 warheads. America had 22,217 when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. If the Cold War were still on, say critics, we might need additional capacity to build pits. But as it is there are thousands of usable pits already in reserve, and the scientific consensus says the plutonium parts of the pits have a lifespan of at least 100 years. The U.S. arsenal is well stocked in this regard.
The new CMRR-NF would help Los Alamos’s TA-55/PF4 site boost production to a conservative estimate of 125 pits a year on a double shift, according to observers.
This is as outrageous as it is unnecessary, claims Frank von Hippel, a professor and principal investigator at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, in an affidavit for the Los Alamos Study Group, which is trying to force NNSA’s hand in court.“There is no anticipated need to produce new pits for U.S. nuclear weapons for several decades,” he writes. The oldest pit produced in the U.S. is 32 years old, he added, noting the current TA-55/PF-4’s production rate of 10 pits per year would be adequate for any replacements necessary during the modernization and maintenance that is already going on under the auspices of NNSA.
Critics say the entire landscape of nuclear-weapons production has changed since CMRR-NF was conceived—all in the direction of reducing the nuclear stockpile—yet every adjustment in the facility’s blueprints has resulted in more capacity to store plutonium and build additional pits.
Most notably, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a new family of warheads conceived in 2004 and used as a chief justification for modernizing Los Alamos’s nuclear-weapons complex, was defunded by Congress and cancelled by the Obama Administration in 2009.
CMRR-NF “is being built to increase capacity for pit production, even though pit production is not what we need,” the Project on Government Oversight’s Stockton charges. NNSA did not respond to several phone calls for comment on these and other charges lobbed by the opposition.
A three-page “Questions and Answers Regarding the CMRR Project” issued by NNSA before the Reliable Replacement Warhead was canceled maintains that the “primary mission of CMRR will be to support the current nuclear weapons stockpile through surveillance and life-extension programs necessary for the nuclear weapons complex” and “the size of CMRR remains the same.” It blames the soaring expense on poor initial estimates, cost increases in “the construction industry worldwide,” and requirements relating to the seismic risks, nuclear quality assurance, and security. The words “fissile core” or “pit” are never mentioned.
NNSA also contends it has put alternatives up for public comment, most recently when it amended the plans under its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, which the agency says has incorporated “updated seismic safety design information.” (The Los Alamos Study Group disagrees and has filed a second lawsuit against NNSA, contending that it’s relying on outdated feasibility and impact studies, among other charges.)
Critics say that if the new facility’s mission is merely to help maintain the stockpile, the job could be handled at an improved and upgraded TF-22/P4 facility or elsewhere at a fraction of the cost. As for size, Mello says NNSA can longer say the facility is “the same”—the square footage might be, but the installation’s scope has certainly grown since 2001.
• • •
CMRR-NF is not without detractors on Capitol Hill. Over the years, its budget and plans have been questioned for all of the reasons already cited and more. Indeed, today’s fiscal environment has bolstered the criticism, with results that can be seen in competing House and Senate appropriations bills. (Some $450 million has been appropriated to CMRR since 2002.)
Calling it a “cost reduction strategy,” the House in July cut $100 million from NNSA’s $300 million request for CMRR-NF as part of the overall $30.6 billion Fiscal Year 2012 Water and Energy Appropriations package. “The [House and Water and Energy Subcommittee] fully supports the Administration’s plans to modernize the infrastructure, but intends to closely review the funding request for new investment to ensure those plans adhere to good project management practices,” the final bill reads.
By trimming the agency’s request by a third, the House is refusing to provide “the additional funding to support early construction” and would not do so until NNSA resolves “major seismic issues with design” and tames CMRR’s cost.
The Senate subcommittee, too, has expressed concerns. Pointing to the growing expense, its FY 2012 appropriations bill demands NNSA submit a contingency plan that would identify the cost and consequences of delaying the implementation of CMRR, as well as a planned Uranium Processing Facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee—another project that has gone from an estimated $1.5 billion to upwards of $6.5 billion in the last five years. The committee also proposes to cut $60 million from the NNSA’s $300 million request for CMRR, but allows for preliminary “site preparation”—in other words, construction may begin on a project whose designs are not yet finished.
Mello and Neils have tried to convince lawmakers to put a permanent stop to CMRR-NF. It’s a difficult task, they say. Many legislators are hearing about the issue for the first time and might not be willing to plough through intimidating scientific and technical jargon to get at why this project is bad news.
And CMRR-NF already has momentum. Mike Lofgren, who spent 28 years on Capitol Hill as an aide on defense issues for the House and Senate Budget Committees, says this is bureaucracy in action, and anything relating to weapons systems is going to be expensive.“It doesn’t surprise me that after a requirement has gone away, or the need has been severely curtailed, they would just continue on with this thing,” Lofgren tells TAC. “These projects get front-loaded by optimistic projections of their cost and overstatements of, ‘hey, we really need this thing,’ so you front-load them and politically engineer them by getting the local congressmen all hyped up by saying it’s going to create new jobs.”
When lawmakers start asking whether a particular project is really worth it, the response, Lofgren says, is always, “it’s too early to tell or too late to stop” and the effort will go on until the money is gone, mission accomplished or not. One need look no further than the $65 billion fleet of F-22 Raptors, which was grounded from May to August because of operational problems and has never seen a day of combat.
It’s hard to get a firm handle on how CMRR-NF has come to be apparently unstoppable because no wants to talk—neither the detractors on the Energy and Water Development Subcommittees, nor the project’s proponents, who have long been led by figures like Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.). In fact, reports at the time of Senate negotiations over New START indicate that as Republican Senate whip, Kyl was successful in obtaining additional funds for CMRR-NF in exchange for Senate GOP support for Obama’s treaty with the Russians. Kyl’s office did not return calls for comment.A spokeswoman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), known as a longtime supporter of the CMRR project, responded with a statement from the senator that hardly sounded like a ringing endorsement.
“The CMRR is an important project for [Los Alamos National Laboratory] and for New Mexico, but it is also important to be sure environmental and cost issues are fully addressed,” Bingaman said. “My top concern as the project has been developed continues to be safety and security of the proposed facility.”
Contractors, post-Cold War ideologues, and bureaucracy may keep the CMRR-NF project going, but those interests appear to be clashing directly with the forces of fiscal restraint and new environmental concerns. After the earthquake-spawned Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in Japan last spring, fears over seismic hazards at Los Alamos have only grown.Meanwhile, the Los Alamos Study Group insists its goal is not to stop the U.S. nuclear program, but to make it safer, more efficient and less expensive.
The nuclear-weapons establishment “could do their job more efficiently and more cheaply if they didn’t infuse their work with so much ideology and were just more practical and straightforward,” says Mello. And CMRR-NF is not the only program that might demand additional scrutiny. According to the New York Times, the facility is just one of a host of modernization projects that could cost taxpayers over $600 billion in the next decade.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter and a columnist for Antiwar.com.
Peace Train for November 25, 2011
By JUDITH MOHLING
“LOOK AROUND / YOU ARE A PART / OF A GLOBAL UPRISING / WE ARE A CRY / FROM THE HEART / OF THE WORLD / WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE / ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE … OCCUPY EARTH / WE ARE WINNING / IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING / DO NOT BE AFRAID / LOVE.”
These words were projected on the Verizon building in Manhattan last Thursday night as thousands of protesters crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. It was created by Mark Read, Max Nova and others, using “bat signal” technology: a large light that projects a silhouette of a bat on a cloud, as in Batman movies or in this case, words, on the smooth surface of part of the Verizon building. The letters were projected a phrase at a time from the apartment across the way of a single mom who agreed to be the source site of the magnificent light show. Max Nova is the son of Boulderites Kenneth
Nova and Wendy Rochman.
The protesters were electrified by it, and now people around the world who are watching it are electrified too.(.http://climate-connections.org/2011/11/21/the-boundless-creativity-of-occupy-wall-street-occupy-earth/)
It is this energetic, creative, determined quality of the Occupy Movement that I give thanks for on this Thanksgiving weekend. The Movement is a fresh wind blowing across this continent and over the planet, joining the Arab Spring and other movements of liberation. It is people realizing that they, we, are capable of changing the money driven power structure that we have into a system that works for people and the earth—not for profit for the few.
The Occupy Movement has been born of the simple belief that humanity could meet our common needs if we didn’t have the choking tentacles of the one percent squeezing profits from the 99% and from the earth.
In a letter to the editor of the Boulder Camera on November 23, Brian Underhill introduced a website (budget-sense.org) that he has created which gives ordinary people the ability to understand and create a US budget themselves, another example of people realizing that we are capable of taking on the task of self- government.
“This is choosing hope over despair,” Mark Read, one of the creators of the NYC light show says. “This is actively and resolutely making that choice. … I know we’re heading into winter in New York, but this feels like springtime.”
The Bloated Nuclear Weapons Budget a NYT Editorial
Twenty years after the end of the cold war, the United States still has about 2,500 nuclear weapons deployed and 2,600 more as backup. The Obama administration, in an attempt to mollify Congressional Republicans, has also committed to modernizing an already hugely expensive complex of nuclear labs and production facilities. Altogether, these and other nuclear-related programs could cost $600 billion or more over the next decade. The country does not need to maintain this large an arsenal. It should not be spending so much to do it, especially when Congress is considering deep cuts in vital domestic programs.
A war with Russia is now unthinkable, conventional weapons are increasingly capable, and the main nuclear threat comes from Iran and North Korea. To have the credibility to try to contain their ambitions, the United States needs to be weaning itself from its reliance on nuclear weapons. Reducing the number of weapons, scaling back unnecessary modernization programs, and delaying or scrapping plans to replace some delivery systems will save billions and help make the world safer.
•
President Obama can start by speeding up already negotiated reductions in deployed weapons and committing to further cuts, unilaterally if necessary.
Washington and Moscow pledged in the 2010 New Start treaty to reduce their number of deployed long-range nuclear weapons to 1,550 from 2,200 by 2017. But unless something changes, both countries will increase nuclear spending in coming years, as they replace or upgrade aging nuclear production facilities and delivery vehicles — submarines, missiles and bombers. That makes no sense.
The Global Zero campaign believes that as an interim step, the country can go down to 1,000 warheads, deployed and stored, without jeopardizing security. We agree.
President Obama endorses the goal of a nuclear-free world. But he has not gotten very far with his promise to negotiate even deeper reductions with Moscow.
In his push to win votes for the New Start treaty, Mr. Obama gave away far too much to balking Republican senators. He promised to invest an extra $85 billion over 10 years for the nuclear labs to maintain and modernize the arsenal, including overhauling thousands of older bombs that should be retired. He proposed spending $125 billion over the next decade for a new fleet of nuclear-armed submarines, 100 new bombers, a new land-based intercontinental ballistic missile and two other missiles.
Senior military officials acknowledge that hard decisions must be made — including possibly eliminating one leg of the nuclear triad. In July, Gen. James Cartwright, then vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for a reassessment of where nuclear weapons fit in today’s world.
All Americans need to be part of that discussion, as does the Congressional “supercommittee,” charged with coming up with a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Here are sound cuts for the nuclear budget:
¶Senator Tom Coburn, one of the few Republicans to support nuclear reductions, has called for cutting the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,220, the ballistic missile submarine fleet to 11 from 14, and intercontinental ballistic missiles to 300 from 500. He also favors delaying the purchase of new bombers until the mid 2020s. Total savings, according to Mr. Coburn, would be at least $79 billion over the next decade. It is a smart beginning.
¶Don’t modernize the B61 tactical nuclear bombs in Europe. No one can imagine that the United States would ever use a nuclear weapon on a European battlefield, and Washington is in discussions with NATO to bring them home to be dismantled. If the Europeans want to keep them for political reasons, let them pick up the tab. Savings: $1.6 billion.
¶Halt construction of the new plutonium storage facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Costs have increased tenfold, and there are serious safety questions about the location — along a fault line and near an active volcano. Savings: $2.9 billion.
¶Halt construction of the Energy Department’s Savannah River facility that is supposed to recycle plutonium from dismantled weapons into mox, a fuel for nuclear power plants. The sole customer for the fuel dropped the contract. Savings: $4 billion.
¶Cancel the uranium processing facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight says that with $100 million in upgrades, another facility there can do the work. Savings: $6 billion.
¶Down-blend more of the 400 metric tons of highly enriched uranium in United States weapons stocks for sale to nuclear power plants. The administration has neglected this, while investing in programs that increase the life of nuclear warheads. Revenue: $23 billion.
The country will need some number of nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. And it must ensure that they are safe and reliable. But spending on the arsenal must be rational and consistent with national security goals — not driven by inertia or politics.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 30, 2011
An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly described the positions of the former secretaries of state George Shultz, James Baker and Henry Kissinger. All three have endorsed the eventual goal of a world without nuclear weapons. Mr. Kissinger is not a supporter of the Global Zero campaign. Mr. Shultz and Mr. Baker have participated in Global Zero events, but have not endorsed Global Zero’s call for moving quickly to an interim reduction to 1,000 nuclear warheads.
Nuclear powers plan weapons spending spree, report finds
The world’s nuclear powers are planning to spend hundreds of billions of pounds modernising and upgrading weapons warheads and delivery systems over the next decade, according to an authoritative report published on Monday.
Despite government budget pressures and international rhetoric about disarmament, evidence points to a new and dangerous “era of nuclear weapons”, the report for the British American Security Information Council (Basic) warns. It says the US will spend $700bn (£434bn) on the nuclear weapons industry over the next decade, while Russia will spend at least $70bn on delivery systems alone. Other countries including China, India, Israel, France and Pakistan are expected to devote formidable sums on tactical and strategic missile systems.
For several countries, including Russia, Pakistan, Israel and France, nuclear weapons are being assigned roles that go well beyond deterrence, says the report. In Russia and Pakistan, it warns, nuclear weapons are assigned “war-fighting roles in military planning”
The whole article is worth reading at the link at the top of this post. Here’s the country by country summary
In a country-by-country analysis, the report says:
• The US is planning to spend $700bn on nuclear weapons over the next decade. A further $92bn will be spent on new nuclear warheads and the US also plans to build 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines, air-launched nuclear cruise missiles and bombs.
• Russia plans to spend $70bn on improving its strategic nuclear triad (land, sea and air delivery systems) by 2020. It is introducing mobile ICBMs with multiple warheads, and a new generation of nuclear weapons submarines to carry cruise as well as ballistic missiles. There are reports that Russia is also planning a nuclear-capable short-range missile for 10 army brigades over the next decade.
• China is rapidly building up its medium and long-range “road mobile” missile arsenal equipped with multiple warheads. Up to five submarines are under construction capable of launching 36-60 sea-launched ballistic missiles, which could provide a continuous at-sea capability.
• France has just completed deployment of four new submarines equipped with longer-range missiles with a “more robust warhead”. It is also modernising its nuclear bomber fleet.
• Pakistan is extending the range of its Shaheen II missiles, developing nuclear cruise missiles, improving its nuclear weapons design as well as smaller, lighter, warheads. It is also building new plutonium production reactors.
• India is developing new versions of its Agni land-based missiles sufficient to target the whole of Pakistan and large parts of China, including Beijing. It has developed a nuclear ship-launched cruise missile and plans to build five submarines carrying ballistic nuclear missiles.
• Israel is extending its Jericho III missile’s range, and is developing an ICBM capability, expanding its nuclear-tipped cruise missile enabled submarine fleet.
• North Korea unveiled a new Musudan missile in 2010 with a range of up to 2,500 miles and capable of reaching targets in Japan. It successfully tested the Taepodong-2 with a possible range of more than 6,000 miles sufficient to hit half the US mainland. However, the report, says, “it is unclear whether North Korea has yet developed the capability to manufacture nuclear warheads small enough to sit on top of these missiles”.
