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United States I: Congress Compromises on Bunker-Busting Nuclear Weapon U.S. Congressional leaders agreed this week to fund feasibility studies on earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, but the money will not be available until the Pentagon provides more information about targets, how it intends to use the weapons and the potential for conventional arms to complete the same missions (see GSN, Aug. 7). A conference committee of House and Senate lawmakers agreed to conditionally provide $15 million for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a nuclear bomb designed to strike deeply buried targets, the San Jose Mercury News reported today. The measure had passed in the House defense appropriations bill but was rejected in the Senate. The compromise proposal could allow researchers at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories in New Mexico and California to design competing nuclear penetrating missiles. The Defense Department and Republican legislators have said that younger nuclear scientists need to work on actual nuclear devices to gain critical experience (see related GSN story, today). Critics questioned the continued development of nuclear weapons. “We cannot persuade other people to give up their weapons of mass destruction if we cannot live without our own,” Greg Mello, head of the anti-nuclear Los Alamos Study Group said (Dan Stober, San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 10).
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