National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks (shown in 2004) said yesterday that the United States would continue to pursue a new nuclear warhead design despite a study finding that the plutonium cores in the existing U.S stockpile could last for decades longer than previously thought (Alex Wong/Getty Images). Plutonium Study Could Undermine U.S. Plans for New Warheads By Jon Fox Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A new U.S. study has determined that plutonium, one of the key elements in the core of a nuclear bomb, degrades at a much slower rate than previously thought (see GSN, April 27). The findings could undercut Bush administration justifications for developing a new generation of nuclear warheads as well as a multibillion-dollar revamping of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, experts said. The lifespan of plutonium cores was thought to be between 45 and 60 years.  However, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories found that plutonium pits at the heart of U.S. nuclear warheads should last for at least 85 years...Full Story

Democrats to Avoid Key 9/11 Commission Recommendation on Intelligence Oversight Democratic congressional leaders will not implement a major recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission, backtracking on a common campaign pledge of last month’s elections, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Nov. 13)...Full Story

U.S. Offers Nuclear Disarmament Ideas to North Korea U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he offered suggestions on nuclear disarmament to his North Korean counterpart during two days of talks this week, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 29)...Full Story

	Thursday, November 30, 2006

Democrats to Avoid Key 9/11 Commission Recommendation on Intelligence Oversight Democratic congressional leaders will not implement a major recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission, backtracking on a common campaign pledge of last month’s elections, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Nov. 13). The bipartisan commission, formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, urged Congress to reorganize the intelligence oversight and funding roles of its committees.  As only intelligence committees are granted access to classified information, they should also have the authority to control the budgets of U.S. intelligence agencies, the commission argued. “Of all our recommendations, strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most difficult and important,” the commission wrote in its report.  “So long as oversight is governed by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need.” Many Democratic leaders vowed to implement the commission’s recommendations in full if they were to win control of the U.S. House and Senate.  However, now that they are about to assume the leadership, traditional turf politics has intervened, the Post reported.  Incoming heads of the Armed Services and Appropriations panels do not want to surrender control of such key budget areas. “I don’t think that suggestion is going anywhere,” said Representative Bill Young (R-Fla.), currently chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.  “That is not going to be their party position,” added Young, an ally of incoming chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.). The reluctance to make the change drew fire from some commission members. “The Democrats pledged to implement all the remaining 9/11 reforms, not some of them,” said former representative Timothy Roemer (D-Ind.). There are “a lot of old bulls in both parties who just don’t want to do it,” said commission Chairman Thomas Kean (Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, Nov. 30). Back to top

Plutonium Study Could Undermine U.S. Plans for New Warheads By Jon Fox Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A new U.S. study has determined that plutonium, one of the key elements in the core of a nuclear bomb, degrades at a much slower rate than previously thought (see GSN, April 27). The findings could undercut Bush administration justifications for developing a new generation of nuclear warheads as well as a multibillion-dollar revamping of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, experts said. The lifespan of plutonium cores was thought to be between 45 and 60 years.  However, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories found that plutonium pits at the heart of U.S. nuclear warheads should last for at least 85 years. Some pit types used by the United States could last for more than a century, and there are steps weapons technicians could take to bring projected stability up to 100 years for others, according to the report produced by a group of academics and nuclear scientists known as the JASONs. Many of the more than 5,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile are decades old, designed and tested during the Cold War.  The Bush administration has drafted plans to create new nuclear weapons and components as part of what it calls the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. The plan is to design new thermonuclear warheads that are more reliable and safer than weapons in the current stockpile, which are constantly being refurbished and certified by the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.  There are also plans to modernize the nuclear weapons production complex by the year 2030 to support this effort. NNSA officials said today that the plutonium study would affect neither the RRW program nor the transformation of the nuclear complex.  The administration is forging ahead with its plans. Teams from both Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore have presented competing Reliable Replacement Warhead designs, and the Nuclear Weapons Council is scheduled to select one soon (see GSN, Sept. 26).  In addition, the Senate version of a fiscal 2007 appropriations bill that sets funding for the nuclear laboratories provides for a second design competition in the coming year. This new study, however, could erode the administration’s argument for an expensive program that some experts say is unneeded. “I think it could very well be huge in terms of the transformation of the nuclear complex,” said Charles Ferguson, a nuclear policy expert with the Council on Foreign Relations.  Those plans will have to be re-evaluated in light of this new scientific insight, he said.  “If it turns out that the plutonium’s going to stay pretty well intact for a long time, what’s the rush?” NNSA chief Linton Brooks told the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee in March that additional funding was needed for a planned plutonium pit production facility capable of producing 125 triggers a year.  He cited uncertainties in the then-current life expectancy of plutonium — no more than 60 years. The recent findings would seem to ease those concerns.  A senior agency official, though, told the San Francisco Chronicle that there is an urgent need to modernize nuclear production facilities and design new weapons. “The infrastructure is falling apart,” said Thomas D’Agostino, NNSA deputy administrator for defense programs.  “The choice I have to make is right now.” Brooks suggested that despite the newfound longevity of the plutonium components, unreliable elements in the current stockpile and other reasons are cause to press ahead with a weapons redesign.  D’Agostino has called the RRW program the “enabler” for the transformation of the weapons production facilities. “It is now clear that although plutonium aging contributes, other factors control the overall life expectancy of nuclear weapons systems,” Brooks said in a prepared statement.  Thousands of other, non-nuclear components also age and contribute to the reliability of the weapons, NNSA officials said “We’ve never said we’re doing RRW only for plutonium aging,” said NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes. A weapons redesign reduces the possibility that an underground nuclear test would be needed to ensure the safety of the arsenal and the continued viability of the weapons, Wilkes said.  The current weapons, he said, were not built with constant refurbishments in mind nor were they designed for security concerns in an age dominated by fears of terrorism. While the current arsenal is secure, any new designs would have more comprehensive safeguards to prevent their use if they were ever obtained by terrorists or a rogue nation, he added. Robert Nelson, a scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he expects arguments favoring the program to change in light of the study but not to go away. “The NNSA has obviously been preparing for this,” he said. The study findings undercut justifications for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, and without the new warheads the need to invest billions into the weapons production complex goes away, Nelson argued.  “If the pits in the original weapons aren’t aging, then we don’t need to replace them. … This report forces them to come up with a different reason,” he said. It becomes hard to justify the Reliable Replacement Warhead program and nuclear weapon complex reconfiguration, which the Energy Department estimates will cost more than $150 billion combined, Nelson said. “This confirms that our existing stockpile does not require new pit manufacturing,” Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who had requested the plutonium study, said in a statement.  “I hope the Senate Armed Services Committee holds a hearing on the findings of this report early next year so that we can determine whether we need the new Reliable Replacement Warhead.” Representative David Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that controls nuclear weapons spending, has been a backer of new warhead designs.  Still, he said the study could affect the RRW program, which was funded at about $25 million in both fiscal 2006 and 2007. “We don’t need to charge off here and waste a lot of money,” he told National Public Radio. Back to top       U.S. Offers Nuclear Disarmament Ideas to North Korea U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he offered suggestions on nuclear disarmament to his North Korean counterpart during two days of talks this week, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 29). “These are ideas designed to make rapid progress,” Hill said today.  “We discussed them and they’re taking them back to Pyongyang and we hope to hear from them soon.” Pyongyang pledged in a prepared statement to study the ideas. “Our denuclearization is the great leader’s [Kim Il Sung] ‘dying instruction’ and we are ready to implement our commitment to the Sept. 19 joint statement” in which North Korea agreed in principle to give up its nuclear arsenal, said Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan. He said, though, that Pyongyang presently “cannot unilaterally abandon” its nuclear weapons program, AP reported. Meetings in Beijing between Hill and Kim ended without agreement on when to resume the six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program.  Officials from the participating nations have expressed hope that the negotiations could begin again in December. South Korean lawmaker Chung Hyung-keun said North Korea could conduct another nuclear test in December or early 2007 if the United States does not offer economic concessions such as the elimination of financial sanctions. “I believe there are specific movements in North Korea to prepare for a second nuclear test,” he said, citing retrieved intelligence (Charles Hutzler, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Nov. 30). Hill indicated that U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang, implemented following the Oct. 9 nuclear test, would be lifted only when North Korea disarms, Agence France-Presse reported. “I made pretty clear that all these issues, the sanctions, are all related to their nuclear programs and that the best way to get out of sanctions is to get out of nuclear programs,” he said. There remains “a lot of work to do” in implementing the September 2005 agreement, Hill said.  North Korea in the deal would receive significant aid in exchange for disarmament.  “We realized there are many, many elements (in the September deal),” Hill said.  “We need to get going on implementing them” (Dan Martin, Agence France-Presse I/TodayOnline, Nov. 30). The commander of U.S. Forces Korea yesterday said that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is aimed at created a divide between South Korea and the United States, the Associated Press reported. “The North has built nuclear weapons as an instrument of political policy in order to blackmail nations in the area and in an effort to split the (South Korean-U.S.) alliance by forcing our two nations to make different decisions politically about how to deal with the North,” said Gen. B.B. Bell. “I see this as a political instrument much more so than I see it as a military instrument,” he said. In the wake of the nuclear test, Seoul has been reluctant to carry out additional actions against Pyongyang backed by Washington, AP reported. The Stalinist regime does not appear close to collapsing, Bell said. “As long as it has adequate internal and external resources coming to it, I would not predict an immediate collapse of the government,” he said (Associated Press II, Nov. 29). Meanwhile, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said today that his inspectors are ready to go back to work in North Korea, AFP reported. Pyongyang expelled agency officials in 2002. “I am pleases to note the recent agreement to resume the six-party talks,” ElBaradei said during a speech in Tokyo. “The IAEA stands ready to work with the D.P.R.K. and with all others towards a solution for this issue that would make use of the agency’s verification capability,” he added (Daniel Rook, Agence France-Presse II/Sunday Times, Nov. 30). Back to top       U.S. to Consider 11 Sites for Reprocessing Plant The U.S. Energy Department has selected 11 sites as candidates to house a future spent-fuel reprocessing facility and a prototype nuclear reactor to use the reprocessed fuel, the agency announced yesterday (see GSN, May 3). The program is part of the Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative, which in part seeks to expand the uses of nuclear power. “As our economy grows so will the need for reliable, emissions-free energy generation.  Nuclear energy can help meet that need and GNEP can do it in a way that maximizes the benefit of nuclear fuel while minimizing the risk of nuclear proliferation,” said Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis Spurgeon in a press release.  “These selections are an important initial step in proceeding to evaluate and select locations to host GNEP facilities.” Yesterday’s announcement said that operators of the 11 sites would receive up to $16 million to conduct studies assessing the feasibility of their locations for the program. The sites are Atomic City, Idaho; Barnwell, S.C.; Hanford, Wash.; Hobbs, N.M.; Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho; Morris, Ill.; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tenn.; Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ky.; Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Ohio; Roswell, N.M.; and Savannah River National Laboratory, S.C. (U.S. Energy Department release, Nov. 29). The reprocessing initiative has faced criticism from both nuclear nonproliferation advocates (see GSN, March 16) and communities near the potential sites. In Washington state, for example, local groups yesterday urged the administration to complete the cleanup of the Cold War-era Hanford site before embarking on new activities. “They are wasting taxpayer money pursuing this,” said Gerry Pollet, executive director of the Hanford watchdog group Heart of America Northwest.  “The public insists that you clean up before you create more, and the state of Washington has the legal authority to say you can’t add more waste to Hanford’s problems” (Shannon Dininny, Associated Press/Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, Nov. 30). Back to top       Japan Could Make Nuclear Weapon, FM Says Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso today asserted his country’s technological capability to create a nuclear weapon, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 8). “Japan is capable of producing nuclear weapons,” he told lawmakers.  “But we are not saying we have plans to possess nuclear weapons.” Aso has controversially called for public debate on Japan’s policy against development or possession of nuclear weapons. He argued before a parliamentary committee that the country’s pacifist constitution does not bar possession of nuclear weapons for the purpose of defense. “Possession of minimum levels of arms for defense is not prohibited under Article 9 of the constitution,” which prohibits use of force to resolve international conflicts.  “Even nuclear weapons, if there are any that fall within that limit, they are not prohibited” (Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Nov. 30). Back to top       U.S. Fines Nuclear Weapons Contractor The U.S. Energy Department has fined the contractor of the Pantex nuclear weapons facility in Amarillo, Texas, for failing to adhere to safety procedures during three 2005 incidents, the agency release announced yesterday (see GSN, May 19, 2005). The department’s National Nuclear Security Administration levied a $110,000 fine against BWXT Pantex, which operates the only U.S. facility for assembling and dismantling nuclear warheads. The three incidents occurred between March 30, 2005 and April 26, 2005, when workers had trouble separating warhead components and used excessive force in attempting to proceed. Their actions “demonstrated a nonconservative approach in decision-making during a process in which strict adherence to established procedure was vital,” according to an Energy Department release.  BWXT Pantex is working to correct “the underlying deficiencies,” the release adds (National Nuclear Security Administration release, Nov. 29). Back to top       Nepal to Join IAEA Nepal has moved to join the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure its access to medical treatments that use radiation, the Xinhua News Agency reported today (see GSN, May 17, 2004). “The cabinet (Council of Ministers) has asked the Ministry of Science and Technology to work on the issue following the decision,” said Purusottam Ghimire, the ministry’s deputy secretary (Xinhua, Nov. 30). Back to top

Study Criticizes Federal Smallpox Vaccination Plan Temple University researchers in a recent study questioned the effectiveness of a U.S. effort to provide smallpox vaccinations to health care workers, United Press International reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 3, 2005). The Centers in Disease Control and Prevention in 2003 urged states to vaccinate no less than 50 to 100 medical personnel at each hospital.  That would help ensure an adequate number of health care workers were available to manage a smallpox outbreak, according to the government. “Some states requested thousands of vaccines, while others only a few hundred,” said lead researcher Sarah Bass. “Some felt the CDC or state health departments sent ambivalent messages about the importance of the program, and many states did not fully support the effort,” she said.  “The result was a very inconsistent uptake of the vaccination program” (United Press International, Nov. 29). Back to top

Czech Republic Gives Money for Russian CW Disposal The Czech Republic for the fourth straight year has provided funding to support chemical weapons disposal in Russia, the Czech News Agency reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 14, 2005). The 2 million crowns — roughly $94,000 — delivered to Moscow is the same amount as provided in 2003, 2004 and 2005.  Funding will be used for building the Shchuchye weapons disposal facility, one of seven to be built in Russia for elimination of agents such as VX, sarin and soman. Russia to date is estimated to have destroyed about 3 percent of its chemical agent stockpile, the world’s largest at 40,000 metric tons (Czech News Agency/Prague Daily Monitor, Nov. 29). Back to top       Pine Bluff Chemical ID Sets Eliminated The U.S. Army has completed elimination of more than 5,300 Chemical Agent Identification Sets stored at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Dec. 2, 2005). The work was finished a year ahead of schedule and under budget, the Army said in a press release. Between 1928 and 1969, the Army produced and distributed more than 170,000 kits, each with glass containers holding small amounts of mustard agent and lewisite.  They were used to train the public and military on how to identify and handle chemical agents (Associated Press/KATV.com, Nov. 30).   Back to top

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