Cut the Nuclear Pork from the Stimulus Bill

Some Senators have stealthily stuffed $1 billion for nuclear weapons into the recovery bill. The only thing this will stimulate is an arms race. It must go.

The Senate bill now contains language authorizing $1 billion “for weapons activities” at the sprawling nuclear weapons complex of laboratories and factories run by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), including new construction, new projects and new computers. The House bill does not contain this funding, for good reason.

Military spending is notoriously poor at stimulating the economy. Studies show that investing in mass transit, education or state and local government projects generate far more economic activity than money spent on weapons. There are, in addition, three other major problems with using this emergency legislation for non-urgent and unnecessary nuclear weapons purposes.

Moscow denies Pentagon claims of ‘stolen’ Russian nuclear weapons

Russia’s Foreign Ministry denied on Friday claims by the U.S. defense secretary that large amounts of Russian nuclear weapons had been stolen or misplaced.

Speaking in Washington on Tuesday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Robert Gates expressed concern that some Russian nuclear weapons from the former Soviet arsenal may not be fully accounted for.

“I have fairly high confidence that no strategic or modern tactical nuclear weapons have leaked beyond Russian borders,” Gates said.

“What worries me are the tens of thousands of old nuclear mines, nuclear artillery shells and so on, because the reality is the Russians themselves probably don’t have any idea how many of those they have or, potentially, where they are,” he added.

“Such allegations are entirely groundless,” the ministry’s press and information department said in a statement.

“Despite all the difficulties that our country faced in the early 1990s, Russia maintained very high standards of ensuring the safety and physical protection of its nuclear arsenals,” the statement said.

Nuclear weapons

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is airing his concerns about the nation’s nuclear arsenal, joining what has been a growing debate over nuclear weapons.

He is planning to address the issue in a speech today, making a last-minute push to build support for a plan to revitalize the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

The question of whether the nation needs to put more money into this program has been debated in Congress, and the Bush administration has pushed for a revitalized “nuclear weapons complex.”

Gates has been speaking about the issue for some time and today is expected to build on comments by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military leaders who have called for a stronger “model of deterrence.”

As part of that effort, the administration has, for the past several years, advanced a plan to consolidate and overhaul its facilities used to make and store nuclear weapons and material. Those plans also include building new warheads to replace the current stock. In a speech last month, Gates mentioned nations developing nuclear weapons and argued that the United States needs to “maintain a credible strategic deterrent.”

Defense and Energy department officials argue that the nation’s nuclear infrastructure has been neglected and point to aging buildings and a brain drain as experienced scientists have retired or gone on to other work.

A World Free of Nuclear Weapons

A big decision about nuclear weapons facing the next president will be “to build or not to build,” but there’s more to this story.

The new president will need to decide whether to keep thousands of American nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired at a moment’s notice, or to eliminate this potentially catastrophic cold war posture.

He must decide whether to retain the option of environmentally devastating nuclear testing, or to encourage the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He must decide whether to perpetuate the system of nuclear haves and have-nots, or to commence good-faith negotiations to achieve the phased, verifiable and irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.

The next president must, for the sake of humanity’s future, make a world free of nuclear weapons an urgent priority and assure the United States’ leadership to realize this goal.

Issues: Nuclear Weapons, Waste & Energy

The months-long military standoff between India and Pakistan intensified several weeks ago when suspected Islamic militants killed more than 30 people at an Indian base in the disputed territory of Kashmir. As U.S. diplomatic pressure to avert war intensifies, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is going to India and Pakistan this week to discuss with his South Asian counterparts the results of a classified Pentagon study that concludes that a nuclear war between these countries could result in 12 million deaths.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) has conducted its own analysis of the consequences of nuclear war in South Asia. Prior to this most recent crisis we calculated two nuclear scenarios. The first assumes 10 Hiroshima-sized explosions with no fallout; the second assumes 24 nuclear explosions with significant radioactive fallout. Below is a discussion of the two scenarios in detail and an exploration of several additional issues regarding nuclear war in South Asia.

Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Forces

It is difficult to determine the actual size and composition of India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals, but NRDC estimates that both countries have a total of 50 to 75 weapons. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we believe India has about 30 to 35 nuclear warheads, slightly fewer than Pakistan, which may have as many as 48.

Both countries have fission weapons, similar to the early designs developed by the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. NRDC estimates their explosive yields are 5 to 25 kilotons (1 kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT). By comparison, the yield of the weapon the United States exploded over Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, while the bomb exploded over Nagasaki was 21 kilotons. According to a recent NRDC discussion with a senior Pakistani military official, Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons are mounted on missiles. India’s nuclear weapons are reportedly gravity bombs deployed on fighter aircraft.

NRDC’s Nuclear Program initially developed the software used to calculate the consequences of a South Asian nuclear war to examine and analyze the U.S. nuclear war planning process. We combined Department of Energy and Department of Defense computer codes with meteorological and demographic data to model what would happen in various kinds of attacks using different types of weapons. Our June 2001 report, “The U.S. Nuclear War Plan: A Time for Change,” is available at http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/warplan/index.asp.

Exclusive: Defence secretary warns Scotland needs nuclear weapons

DEFENCE secretary John Hutton has warned that Scotland would be at greater risk of a military attack if it became independent.

Hutton also claims thousands of Scots jobs would be lost.

He hit out on a visit to the Faslane naval base, home to the Trident nuclear submarines, on the Clyde.

The SNP have vowed to remove Trident if they win independence.

But Hutton – who was on one of his first engagements since taking over from Des Browne in the Cabinet reshuffle – said: “The nuclear deterrent is crucial to the defence of our country. It has been for many generations and will be for many more.

“Terrorism is still a major threat to us and the nuclear deterrent plays a major part in dealing with that threat, as do the brilliant people here at Faslane and I am very proud of the service they provide.”

Hutton said 6500 jobs are dependent on the Faslane base, while 10,000 posts have been secured at Govan and Rosyth with a new aircraft super-carriers contract.

Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivor Calls for Complete Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

Antinuclear protesters gathered at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the 63rd anniversary of the U.S. dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. They were joined by Reverend Nobuaki Hanaoka, who survived that devastating attack and called for the “complete elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.”

Scott Ritter predicts mushroom clouds over America if McCain becomes President

The Bush administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call ‘usable’ nukes, and they have a nuclear ‘posture’ now, which permits the use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment if the Commander in Chief deems U.S forces to be at significant risk. If we start bombing Iran (I tell you now it’s not going to work). My concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance and it may not work, but what it will do is this. It will unleash the nuclear genie. So to all those Americans out there tonight who are saying, you know what, taking on Iran is a good thing… . And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain’t going back in the bottle until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So tell me, you want to go to war against Iran, pick your city. Pick your city. Tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? L.A.? Boston? New York? Miami? Pick one! Because at least one’s going. And that’s something we should all think about before marching down this path of insanity.

Hiroshima mayor hopes next U.S. president will back ban on nuclear weapons

Hiroshima’s mayor urged the next U.S. president to support a proposed ban on nuclear weapons Wednesday, as Japan marked the 63rd anniversary of the atomic blast that obliterated this city and killed 140,000 people.

At the ceremony, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba also announced the launch of a two-year study to gauge the psychological toll of the Aug. 6, 1945, attack in the closing days of World War II.

Japan submitted a resolution in the U.N. last year calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Akiba said that 170 nations supported it, with the U.S. as one of only three countries opposed.

American in Hiroshima warns the world about nuclear weapons

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AFP) — For years, Steven Leeper took the view of many fellow Americans about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima — that it was an inevitable part of war.

But after a lifetime of reflection, he is now the first foreigner to head an anti-nuclear foundation in the western Japanese city — and has set his sights on persuading his country to agree with him.