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U.S. Announces Plan for Major Nuclear Stockpile Reductions
The United States plans to reduce its nuclear weapons arsenal by nearly half over the next eight years, the Bush administration said in a classified report submitted this week to Congress (see GSN, March 30). The stockpile reduction plan, which was adopted last month, when fully implemented would leave the United States with “the smallest nuclear weapons stockpile we’ve had in several decades,” National Nuclear Security Administration head Linton Brooks said yesterday. Brooks said he could not disclose specific reduction numbers. “The numbers I’m prepared to use are ‘almost in half’ and ‘smallest in several decades,’” he said. President George W. Bush announced in November 2001 that the United States would reduce the number of “operationally deployed” strategic warheads by about two-thirds by 2012, leaving no more than 2,200 warheads. However, that decision pertained only to the number of strategic weapons that are deployed and ready for immediate use, not to the total U.S. nuclear weapons inventory, the Times reported. The plan announced yesterday covers additional armaments, including short-range weapons that are not considered strategic, reserve weapons and “logistical spares,” which would be used to replace weapons recalled for overhaul. The United States currently has 10,000 nuclear weapons if all categories are included, and the new plan would cut that number to 6,100, said Tom Cochran, an expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Cochran added that some of the weapons to be removed from the active category would be dismantled, while others would be put into reserve, meaning that they could be redeployed quickly. The rest of the weapons would be decommissioned and would be retired with others of their kind at the Pantex plant in Texas, which Brooks said is now engaged in “life extension” of existing weapons. He added that President George H.W. Bush decided to retire the U.S. stock of nuclear artillery shells before leaving office in 1993 “and we just finished dismantling the last one last year” (see GSN, Dec. 12, 2003). Brooks noted the stockpile reduction would be the largest in history in percentage terms. Cochran agreed that the reduction was significant. However, he added that the process would be slow. “These cuts are over eight years,” Cochran said. “That’s two presidential administrations. This is not a fast-paced reduction,” he added. Brooks wrote to members of Congress to explain that reducing the stockpile would require more work on the remaining weapons. “We must continue the administration’s efforts to restore the nuclear weapons infrastructure,” the letter says. Brooks said the reduction means that the Modern Pit Facility, a new bomb plant planned by the administration, could be smaller than it might have otherwise been. He added that one reason for the memo issued Tuesday was to convince members of Congress that a new plant is still needed to build the plutonium triggers of nuclear weapons (see related GSN story, today). “We’ve not yet been able to convince some of our congressional colleagues that the Modern Pit Facility is unrelated to any notion of future weapons development or future weapons growth,” he said (Matthew Wald, New York Times, June 4).
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