Foreign Policy In Focus

To conform to the requirements of the congressional supercommittee, the House of Representatives is debating whether to cut hundreds of billions from nuclear weapons programs over the next 10 years.

At the Atlantic, Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Funds writes::

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sent a letter to the 12 members of the supercommittee …  signed by 65 lawmakers." Even though the Cold War ended, Markey wrote, "We continue to spend over $50 billion a year on the U.S. nuclear arsenal. … We are robbing the future to pay for the unneeded weapons of the past."

The House Appropriations Committee cut funding for nuclear warheads and weapons material production by almost 7 percent from the President's request, or $498 million. [Meanwhile, the] Senate subcommittee cut just a tad less -- $440 million -- from the same programs.  Members are increasingly troubled by rising costs, slipping schedules and questionable need for new weapons production plants. "The Committee is concerned about the escalating costs for two new nuclear facilities to handle plutonium and uranium," the Senate report noted.

One of these two new nuclear facilities is the proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. On the grounds that a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), instead of just a supplemental EIS, was required because of, among other things, seismic issues (such as a 3.8 earthquake nearby on October 16) the Los Alamos Study Group sought to halt the project.

In his latest press release, LASG executive director Greg Mello writes that, on October 13, "the National Nuclear Security Administration … issued an 'amended' 'Record of Decision' to build the [CMRR-NF] expected to cost $4 to $6 billion. … as much as the total constant-dollar [adjusted for inflation] cost of all the buildings and programs in Los Alamos for the first decade and a half, from 1943 to 1957." During the Manhattan Project, that is.

The Record of Decision, Mello explains, "is the formal completion of the most recent environmental review of the project under the National Environmental Policy Act."

But, just as it looked like it was green-lighted, "We do not anticipate that this project will succeed, in the end,” writes Mello. "We are now in a kind of fiscal 'Indian Summer;' the real frosts of deficit reduction have not started to hit. … Many decision makers know there isn't enough money to build CMRR simultaneously with a more important project in Tennessee unless both are slowed and made much more expensive in the process." Ironic as that sounds.

He concludes that the United States can't "afford to maintain such a huge nuclear arsenal in the first place, since the delivery systems are wearing out and very expensive to replace." As usual, Mello not only looks at the costs, but the wider implications for the real-world economy. The CMRR-NF, like nuclear weapons in general for the most part, "also makes no economically useful infrastructure, attracts no private capital, trains nobody in anything useful for our economy, and produces no goods and services for sale (we hope). … At $1,000,000 per job created, it's an economic disaster in waiting."  

Remember the movies and Broadway play Little Shop of Horrors? Our nuclear-weapons program is like Audrey II, the carnivorous plant screaming "Feed me." Time to, in the words of conservatives, starve the beast.

We're living in a time when infrastructure and WPA-type projects would be balm to an ailing economy. As welcome as they are, ideally they should hold out the promise of being both profitable and socially redeeming. Here's one that fulfills neither requirement.

On July 13 Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, reported the Atomic Heritage Foundation in its newsletter, recommended the "designation" (authorization, presumably) of a Manhattan Project National Park. It would be located in the three main sites of the massive U.S. effort to develop nuclear weapons during World War II: Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and Los Alamos, New Mexico.

In 2003 the Atomic Heritage Foundation, after years of lobbying, first recommended the park to Congress. In 2004 Congress passed legislation mandating that the Secretary of the Interior undertake an evaluation of the project. Apparently, all the requirements have been met.

Among the "Signature Facilities of the Manhattan Project" at Oak Ridge are the graphite reactor and gaseous diffusion plant. At Hanford, the first industrial-scale reactor to produce plutonium. At Los Alamos, the site where the plutonium bomb was developed had already been restored by a federal grant in 2006. Now the Foundation seeks to preserve the Gun Site, where the uranium, "gun"-model bomb was tested.

Wait, there's more. Oak Ridge may even feature the guest house where General Leslie Groves (director of the Manhattan Project), Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and J. Robert Oppenheimer (director of the Manhattan Project's secret weapons laboratory) stayed. At Los Alamos, not only the Fuller Lodge, the social center of the Manhattan Project, but the house where Oppenheimer's family lived will be restored.

Once they catch wind of this, how will you get your kids to settle for Disney World, Busch Gardens, or Sea World? "Mommy, is the Manhattan Project National Park finished yet?"

It's always a mistake to assume that much of the public favors the United States leading the way on disarmament when other states retain nuclear weapons. But you can be fairly certain that the public either lacks knowledge of the extent to which nuclear weapons still exist since the end of the Cold War or it locks said existence in a tiny room in its mind. In other words, isn't the Manhattan Project National Park a vast investment of money in an attraction for an audience that's strictly niche?

Oh, and Richard Rhodes (author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and three succeeding books composing a nuclear-weapons quartet): you're not helping matters. From the newsletter.

Richard Rhodes … reflected, "The Manhattan Project was a great work of human collaboration that has almost mythic proportions in its scale and ambition. Discovery of how to release the enormous energies latent in the nuclei of the atom has improved the quality of life and made world-scale war no longer possible-reason enough to preserve and commemorate this history." 

Perhaps aware that the subject matter is not only threatening, but dry, for the average family, the Atomic Heritage Foundation rolled out other selling points.

The Manhattan Project's multifaceted story embraces aspects of the nation's scientific, industrial, military, economic, social and cultural history. Its participants were a culturally diverse group. Recent immigrants to the United States who fled anti-Semitism in Europe were among the leading scientists. The 130,000 work force included young women from the South who had just graduated from high school … as well as numerous Hispanics, Native Americans and African-Americans.  

Here, though, is easily the most specious aspect of the project that the Foundation features.

The coming of a Manhattan Project National Historical Park should be a financial as well as a cultural benefit to the communities where the sites are located. Every dollar of taxpayer funds spent on national parks generates four dollars in additional economic benefit through tourism and private-sector spending. For some locations, the returns are even greater. An annual federal appropriation of $7.1 million to Acadia National Park in Maine generates annual visitor spending of $137 million. An annual federal appropriation of $15.8 million for Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado generates $193 million in annual visitor spending.    

To even suggest that the Manhattan Project National Historical Park annual investment would generate returns in anywhere close to Acadia National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park beggars credulity. Their desperation is apparent.

If the Atomic Heritage Foundation had any sense, it would accept the lifeline being thrown it by Representative Dennis Kucinich. On July 20, he provided it with a graceful way to bow out, especially in light of Fukushima, as you'll see. From a press release at his House website (thanks to Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group for the heads up).

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for peace and nuclear non-proliferation, today made the following statement on reports that some would like to name a new national park in honor of the Manhattan Project, the secret program to develop nuclear bombs.

"We're approaching the anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It would be much more fitting if instead of celebrating the Manhattan Project, we would see a park dedicated to Japanese-American friendship which would include an acknowledgement of not only the development of the bomb but of the graphic, devastating and enduring violence that the those bombs wrought on the Japanese people in 1945 and on the world everyday thereafter. … This is especially significant to the Japanese people who have recently suffered yet another disaster facilitated by nuclear technology."

As you can see that's no way for the Manhattan Project National Historical Park to save face. In fact raising the specter of U.S. guilt for what the Manhattan Project wrought is a slap in the face. You could say subtlety is not one of Rep. Kucinich's strong points, but it's obvious he was trying to rub the Atomic Heritage Foundation's face in it.

At best the Manhattan Project National Historical Park is one of those boring school trips that kids in the area are forced to take. Actually, once protective parents get wind of it, the trip may be aborted lest it scar youthful sensibilities. (Not for nothing, but the last thing those of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s with the specter of nuclear war want is for our children or grandchildren to be subjected to those fears.)

Meanwhile, a visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is meaningful for the young. But Manhattan Project National Historical Park commemorates the mechanism of destruction. It's as if an auxiliary museum to the National Holocaust Museum were built that was a monument to IG Farben, the German chemical conglomerate that developed the cyanide Zyklon B used to slaughter Jews in death camps. 

Republicans never met a nuclear weapon they didn’t like, right? Generally, that’s true, but neither are they immune to infatuation with another program that happens to be at odds with nuclear weapons as the national-security policy of last defense. All of a sudden Republicans’ mania for cost-cutting might override the special place they hold in their hearts for “our nuclear deterrent,” as they euphemize nuclear weapons.

On June 15, at the Washington Post, Walter Pincus provided as good an introduction as any to what transpired.

. . . lawmakers are cutting into the funds that the Obama administration had pledged for [nuclear] upgrades and modernization. The House Appropriations subcommittee that approves funding of the weapons complex, run by the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA), just whacked almost $500 million from the weapons program. A slice of $100 million came out of a $200 million pot that is supposed to finance early steps in the coming year to build a new facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

What’s strange about the $100 million is that  

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) had pushed for funding for [the above-mentioned facility, known as] the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility [CMRR-NF] — expected to cost $5 billion or more — as one of his demands of the Obama administration.

As a condition, that is, of he and the Republican members of the Senate voting to ratify New START. Pincus again:

Problem is, members of the House weren’t involved in the discussions. [The] House Republican-led subcommittee that cut the funds says NNSA is not ready to support spending for early construction [of the CMRR-NF] because seismic issues are not resolved in the design. Plus, the subcommittee says, there is a need to revalidate what capabilities are to be needed in the plutonium area.

The function of the CMRR-NF, you may recall from earlier posts of mine, is to perform scientific work for the nearby construction of nuclear pits – the living, breathing hearts of a nuclear weapon where the chain reaction occurs. As for the need for new nuclear pits, Frank von Hippel, physicist and nuclear policy authority, recently testified

The need for large-scale pit production has vanished. In 2003, the [NNSA] was arguing that the [United States] needed the capability to produce 125 to 450 pits per year by 2020 to replace the pits in the US weapon stockpile that would be 30 to 40 years old by then. . . . But, in 2006, we learned that US pits were so well made that, according to a Congressionally-mandated review of Los Alamos and Livermore studies on pit aging, "Most primary types have credible minimum lifetimes in excess of 100 years as regards aging of plutonium."

Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, which has dedicated itself to halting construction of the CMRR-NF, said in a recent newsletter that at the Los Alamos “these proposed increases were to be unprecedented since the Manhattan Project.”

Regarding the CMRR-NF, the bill’s report reads “The Committee recommends $200,000,000, $100,000,000 below the budget request.” Although it “fully supports the Administration’s plans to modernize the infrastructure,” the Committee

. . . intends to closely review the funding requests for new investments to ensure those plans adhere to good project management practices. The latest funding profile provided to the Committee indicates that over half the funding requested for the Nuclear Facility would be used to start early construction activities. [But the] NNSA is not prepared to award that project milestone since [the project must, among other things] first resolve major seismic issues with its design.

In other words 

Modernization will take several years and the considerable number of variables still at play argues against an excessively aggressive funding curve. The construction of the new major facilities must not force out available modernization funding for the rest of the nuclear security enterprise.

More on the “excessively aggressive funding curve” from Mello (emphasis added):

This $100 million . . . cut is 90% of all the Committee’s proposed cuts in NNSA construction, meaning that the House Appropriations is almost uniquely targeting  CMRR-NF, among all proposed NNSA construction, for cuts. 

Meanwhile, at Arms Control Now, the blog of the Arms Control Association, Daryl Kimball writes (emphasis added):

Early news accounts have overlooked the fact that the House Energy and Water Appropriations bill would increase—not decrease—the NNSA weapons activities budget above the previous year's level, and has allocated more than enough money to keep programs on track but not so much as to be fiscally irresponsible in this fiscally-constrained time.

The . . .  appropriations committee would increase funding for . . . weapons activities by 3% to $7.13 billion for fiscal 2012 from $6.99 for fiscal 2011. The fiscal 2010 appropriation for NNSA weapons activities was $6.36 billion.

But, according to Mello:

Overall, the Committee would slash $498 M from the Obama request for NNSA nuclear Weapons Activities, adding only 3% [over last year], a 6.6% cut from Obama’s warhead request. Considering inflation, nuclear warhead spending would not rise. 

Still, there’s no denying, as Mello says, that, “Relatively speaking, the Committee protected the nuclear weapons establishment.” In fact, aside from the CMRR, most everything else was rubber-stamped. For example (emphasis added):

Project 10–D–501, Nuclear Facilities Risk Reduction, Y–12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge, TN.—The Committee recommends $35,387,000 as requested.

Project 08–D–802, High Explosive Pressing Facility, Pantex Plant, Amarillo, TX.—The Committee recommends $66,960,000 as requested.

Project 06–D–141, Project Engineering & Design, Uranium Processing Facility, Y–12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge, TN.—The Committee recommends $160,194,000 as requested.

Meanwhile, the response to these developments of a less-than-totally-informed observer such as myself might run something like this:

Slashing CMRR-NF funding is like Republicans are saying to the Obama administration: We got you to commit outrageous amounts of money to the CMRR-NF and other nuclear-weapons project by holding passage of New START hostage. But this time we weren’t in our default more-money-for-defense posture. Nor was it about pork. This time, inducing you to commit to these extravagant sums for the CMRR-NF and other nuclear projects was a ploy to make you look like you were playing fast and loose with taxpayers' money. This year's model of Republican is less about defense or pork than cutting spending (or looking like we are).

Who knew that you can actually be too cynical about Republicans? Turns out, I was informed, that, while Senator Kyl is an old-fashioned defense-first Republican, some Republicans in the House Appropriations Committee are respectful of that particular committee’s traditional view that nuclear weapons are over-funded. As well, of course, the Tea Party strain currently infecting the Republican party seems to be emphasizing deficits over defense at the moment.

We’ll allow Kimball to put it all in perspective:

The Obama administration’s $88 billion, 10-year plan to operate the nuclear complex represents a 20 percent increase above funding levels proposed during the Bush administration.

Arms control organizations usually try to cut the Obama administration some slack on nuclear disarmament and accentuate the positive, such as the New START treaty, however minimal its disarmament measures. But the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) operates under no such constraints. Among the conclusions of its just-released SIPRI Yearbook 2011 (for purchase only): "continuing cuts in US and Russian nuclear forces are offset by long-term force modernization programmes."

SIPRI Senior Researcher Shannon Kile said:

It’s a stretch to say that the New START cuts agreed by the USA and Russia are a genuine step towards nuclear disarmament when their planning for nuclear forces is done on a time scale that encompasses decades and when nuclear modernization is a major priority of their defence policies.

An example of modernization in the United States is the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF), about which I frequently post, at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. In November 2010, the White House estimated the budget for its construction at $3.7 to $5.8 billion. The function of the CMRR-NF is to support the manufacture of nuclear pits (the core of nuclear warheads, where the actual chain reaction occurs).

Bear in mind that not only are 14,000 pits that have been recovered from decommissioned warheads stored at Amarillo's Pantex plant, where warheads are both assembled and disassembled, but Los Alamos studies on pit aging have shown they have lifetimes in excess of 100 years. That's assuming that you believe we actually need nuclear warheads for national defense. 

Commentators and arms control organization spend too much time debating the nuclear disarmament policies. But calling for rollbacks in nuclear weapons counts for little when a state such as the United States commit huge sums of money to ensure the continuation of the nuclear-industrial complex. American arms-control organizations can take a lesson from SIPRI and follow the money. Their failure to do so only raises questions about the sources of their own funding.

Even more than biological weapons such as anthrax, one drop of which may kill thousands, nothing kills more with less volume than a strategic nuclear weapon (as opposed to the smaller tactical, or battlefield, version). At only about five centimeters in radius, the nuclear pit -- the core of the weapon which contains the plutonium -- could be characterized as death in its most concentrated form ever.

At Focal Points, I frequently about the CMRR-NF, a proposed nuclear facility at Los Alamos said to be intended for the manufacture of nuclear pits. A friend of mine recently took me to task for operating under an unconfirmed presumption. This individual, who worked at Los Alamos on, among other areas, nonproliferation, asked us exactly how we knew that the CMRR-NF was intended for the manufacture of nuclear pits. Turns out, a little research reveals, that, while figuratively speaking it may be, technically it's not.

We found our first clue at the website of the Los Alamos Study Group, which, as yo may know from my posts, is spearheading the fight to halt the CMRR-NF. In a page on nuclear pits, it urges caution in speaking about the CMRR-NF and nuclear pits

. . . because no one outside [the National Nuclear Security Administration] and LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] can be sure exactly what pits LANL is making now or is preparing to make in the future, since these programs are classified. Many details can be withheld even from Congress in a variety of ways. Most workers in these programs have no access to this information.

In fact, on June 25, 2010, in a letter to the Santa Fe New Mexican, Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamost, wrote:

While [a] June 18 editorial about the construction program at Los Alamos National Laboratory, accurately describes the economic opportunity and controversy associated with the proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project, it's important to clarify the national security purpose of the replacement facility. 

Contrary to the editorial's assertion, plutonium pit manufacturing operations have been, and will continue to be, performed at an existing facility known as the Plutonium Facility. CMRR will be a world-class working laboratory for the science of actinide elements, including plutonium and uranium [to] support work in counter-terrorism, nuclear forensics, and nonproliferation. 

Shortly afterward, at Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Jay Coghlan responded (emphasis his).

While being narrowly correct, LANL PR man Kevin Roark is misleading when he claims . . . that plutonium pit production will not take place in the new Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project (CMRR). What he fails to disclose is that the Lab is not building just one facility, but instead is creating an integrated manufacturing complex for expanded production for which the CMRR is absolutely key. This complex will [also include] LANL's existing production facility "PF-4" with ~$300 million in upgrades. . . . The [CMRR] will be literally next door to PF-4 and linked to it via underground tunnel. While pits are physically manufactured [at PF-4], the [CMRR's] central missions [which include analytical chemistry] are essential operations that ensure . . . plutonium and pit production quality control. The National Nuclear Security Administration's own documents show that the [CMRR] is being specifically sized to support expanded production of up to 80 pits per year, quadruple LANL's currently approved rate. 

Nothing says "smoking gun" like an underground tunnel. Kidding aside, while the CMRR-NF is not technically a facility for the manufacture of nuclear pits, it's obviously critical to the process. Those who state that the CMRR-NF is a facility for the manufacture of nuclear pits can be forgiven for speaking in shorthand.

Coghlan adds:

Roark must think that New Mexicans are naïve enough to accept the Lab’s claims that the CMRR is all about “science” even as LANL becomes more and more a production site.

Perhaps not naïve, but like most Americans -- including the Obama administration as it brandishes the ratification of New START while simultaneously seeking to fund the CMRR-NF -- unprepared to shut the door on nuclear weapons.