It’s True: US Nuclear Rearmament Underway
I’ve been reading and looking for corroboration of the Australian report I published yesterday. As I dig deeper into the facts behind this report, I am becoming more and more horrified by what I discover. The US is indeed resuming production of nuclear weapons parts — the plutonium “pits” that are atomic bomb triggers. Moreover, they seem to have embarked on a wholesale program of nuclear rearmament with new weapons being produced, and the reactivation of the Nevada Test Site.
I must have been asleep last week. Publications all over the world are covering this story. Here are a few of the stories I found:
Wired: Embattled Lab Unveils New Nukes.
The United States’ arsenal of 10,000 nuclear weapons isn’t enough. The country needs more bombs, and the place to make them is the scandal-plagued Los Alamos National Laboratory.
the mere threat of blowing up opposing countries a thousand times over isn’t enough. America must have the option to make more nuclear weapons — and faster — than any other nation on earth.
Moscow Times: U.S. Restarts its Nuclear Machine.
John Wolfshtal, former Department of Energy Weapons Expert, and Deputy Director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: ”It is a sign that after a long period of decline, the weapons complex is back and growing. To the average U.S. citizen, it would be accurate to say we have restarted the production of nuclear weapons.”
Montana Kaimin: Adding to Nuclear Stockpile Unnecessary.
In addition to those stories, three organizations (the Arms Control Association, Nuclear Watch, and the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability) have been tracking this story as it has developed over the last 12 months.
Arms Control Today. This website is the online presence for the Arms Control Association. This US based organization describes itself as follows:
The Arms Control Association (ACA), founded in 1971, is a national nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies. Through its public education and media programs and its magazine, Arms Control Today, ACA provides policy-makers, the press and the interested public with authoritative information, analysis and commentary on arms control proposals, negotiations and agreements, and related national security issues. In addition to the regular press briefings ACA holds on major arms control developments, the Association’s staff provides commentary and analysis on a broad spectrum of issues for journalists and scholars both in the United States and abroad.
Yesterday’s report from Australia was preceded by the following piece in ACT: Nuclear Weapons Activity Surges in Energy Department Budget. According to this piece the US Energy Department was not just seeking to resume production of plutonium pits. They are also making the Nevada Test Site ready to resume nuclear testing in defiance of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and they are working on a new weapon described as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator — a weapon designed to penetrate deep underground before exploding, in order to crush underground bunkers.
In this piece titled A Strategic Choice: New Bunker Busters versus Non-Proliferation, the authors speak out against the continued development of these weapons, noting that this work jeopardizes the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also questions the utility of these bunker buster bombs.
Consider, however, the radioactive contamination from a one-kiloton warhead, detonated at a depth of 20-50 feet. This is, approximately, just 1/13 the yield that destroyed Hiroshima, yet it would eject more than 1 million cubic feet of radioactive debris from a crater about the size of ground zero at the World Trade Centerbigger than a football field. Indeed, the Hiroshima bomb was detonated at an altitude of close to 1,900 feet in order to minimize radioactive fallout by not digging any crater. A weapon intended to destroy hard, buried targets is therefore going to produce a lot of dangerous radioactive fallout. Of course, a nuclear weapon with a yield capable of destroying a target 1,000 feet undergrounda yield well over 100 kilotonswould dig a much larger crater and create a substantially larger amount of radioactive debris.
Nuclear Watch: This is a New Mexico based group. I found this press release on their site — Secret Pentagon Documents Call for “Usable” Nuclear Weapons. They also have a large library of fact sheets explaining what some of this technology is.
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability: This is an alliance of 32 organizations, that appears to primarily focus on the health and environmental effects of the nuclear industry.
The only conclusion possible is that despite years of nuclear disarmament, the US has made a strategic decision to rearm with nuclear weapons. The risk is unimaginable. The strategic value is dubious. Why would any responsible American government today embark on this course?
