New Nuclear Warhead Design Selected: Making the Worst of a Bad Situation

US to Develop New Hydrogen Bomb - Friday, March 2, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times

Press release by Alliance for Nuclear Accountability - A national network of organizations working to address issues of nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup

Friday, March 2, 2007

The Bush Administration's selection of a "mix-and-match" design for a controversial, new generation of U.S. nuclear warheads reflects a choice of politics over responsibility -- according to a network of watchdog organizations. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) said that the attempt to merge elements of competing proposals from the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) will result in a more complicated design that violates Congress' intent for the program, as well as international law.

Separate teams at Los Alamos and Livermore submitted designs for the RRW, the first U.S. nuclear warhead to be produced after the Cold War. Even before being combined, both labs' designs overstepped the basic principles of the RRW program by incorporating concepts and technology which increase the likelihood of nuclear testing, according to ANA.

"This mix-and-match design is in conflict with Congress' original intent for the RRW program as a less expensive, simple replacement warhead that could be deployed without explosive testing and that would facilitate reductions in the current nuclear stockpile," said ANA director Susan Gordon. "Instead of continuing to pollute the environment with dangerous radioactive research projects, waste taxpayer money on unnecessary weapons, and threaten other nations with nuclear attack, let's take a step back and have a debate about what America gets from its nuclear arsenal and what we want to do with it in the future."

Choosing even one design is an awful idea. We simply don't need new warheads. But to combine both designs makes a bad situation even worse." said Marylia Kelley, Executive Director of Tri-Valley CAREs.

"Combining these two misguided RRW designs points to a political decision designed to bring yet more funding to both Los Alamos and Livermore. This is a new low in radioactive pork politics," added Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico. "The Bush Administration wants to appease both labs by directing taxpayers' dollars toward a jumble of unneeded and unproven new nuclear weapons while damaging global nonproliferation efforts under the Non-Proliferation Treaty."

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within DOE, has spent over $10 billion in the last decade to certify the reliability of the stockpile, yet it claims a lack of "reliability" as the justification for more spending on new nuclear weapons and facilities. The RRW has become the centerpiece of the Energy Department's Complex 2030, a $150 billion overhaul of the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability is a network of 35 grassroots and national organizations, representing the concerns of communities downwind and downstream from U.S. nuclear weapons complex sites. These groups have been working together for two decades to clean up the environmental legacy of nuclear weapons production and stop new nuclear weapons programs.

For more information: "The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: A Slippery Slope to New Nuclear Weapons," by Dr. Robert Civiak, former examiner from the Office of Management and Budget, specializing in DOE Stockpile Stewardship programs.