The Issue

October 10 is the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, powerfully symbolic of the end of the Cold War. Yet, one would hardly know it by looking at U.S. nuclear policy. Worldwide, some 36,000 nuclear weapons still exist. Of those, some 9,000 ICBMs—the large majority of which are in the U.S. arsenal—remain on high alert. The U.S. Senate has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CBTB). The deeper cuts to which the U.S. and Russia committed themselves in START II have not been made; that treaty has been put on hold following a series of U.S. military activities that have menaced Russia. Most disheartening, Clinton and Congress have agreed to fund the design, development, and testing of new nuclear weapons at a level considerably higher than the average annual appropriation during the Cold War. Such weapons include space-based systems associated with Star Wars (see next two entries). At the nation's nuclear labs—Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia—it is "nuclear weapons forever."

Meanwhile, the Russian nuclear arsenal is being reduced in the worst way—by fiscal starvation. There are serious concerns in the arms control community about the security of those weapons. Command and control have loosened; personnel morale is extremely low.

Still another worry is the impatience of other nations to "go nuclear" in the face of clear U.S. determination to achieve a virtual monopoly on nuclear capability. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in force since 1970, requires the Superpowers to move quickly toward abolition of their weapons, but there has been no show of good faith despite the end of Superpower hostilities. The most dramatic display of impatience was India's explosion of a nuclear weapon last year, quickly followed by arch-rival Pakistan.

Finally, nuclear production also means nuclear waste production. All nuclear waste, but especially plutonium, poses the gravest and most long-lasting dangers to the biosphere. The Dept. of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) repository here Carlsbad, New Mexico, has been created to store military nuclear waste. Significantly, only 1/3 of the space is needed for current materials. The other 2/3 has been created in anticipation of waste created in the future.

Current Activities

Renewed resistance to "nuclear weapons forever" is growing outside official Washington, both internationally and at the grassroots domestically. A major moment was the Hague Appeal for Peace conference held in May 1999, which attracted activists and prominent individuals worldwide. Pressure is growing within the UN for nuclear abolition. The labs are becoming a focus of protest; the largest one in Los Alamos history occurred August 9, 1999, organized by Peace Action. Numerous think tanks are producing important reports. In February 1998, over 100 former heads of state and civilian leaders signed a statement calling for de-alerting the weapons as a first step toward abolition. In June 1998, Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa, and Sweden called for a "new agenda" to create a nuclear weapons-free world.

The U.S. public remains solidly in favor of reductions or total elimination of the arsenal. A series of bi-partisan polls conducted in August 1998 asked, "What should be the goal of U.S. nuclear weapons policy?" Only 6%-15% support current policy, and only 11%-15% want to maintain the current arsenal. 24%-33% favor reductions, while by far the largest percentages--some 45%- 49%--want total abolition.

Campaigns

Local: For several years there has been no local activity promoting nuclear disarmament. On August 6, 1998, the Houston Peace and Justice Center, with member group Peace Action-Greater Houston Chapter, organized a successful Hiroshima Day observance. Peace Action is prepared to lead renewed work. Contact Herb Rothschild, 713.743.9022, herbertrothschild@hotmail.com

National: Abolition 2000 provides the umbrella for grassroots action. Its network includes more than 1000 organizations worldwide. Many of the major U.S. arms control and peace groups, such as the Arms Control Association, Federation of American Scientists, Peace Action, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, are working in a coordinated way for Abolition 2000 through The Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers: www.clw.org/coalition. The Abolition 2000 web site is www.napf.org. For an excellent list, with links, of nuclear disarmament working groups and campaigns, go to www.fas.org/pub/gen/peace_security.

Stockpile Stewardship and Management

The Issue

Under the bland-sounding, misleading title of Stockpile Stewardship and Management (SSM), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been authorized to research, design, develop, test, and finally manufacture new nuclear weapons. While the general public has been told that the SSM program is needed to make sure that the current arsenal remains in good working order, in fact such "stewardship" is both unnecessary and a mere pretext for the real emphasis. As the DOE plainly declared in its "Green Book" on SSM, portions of which have been recently declassified, "this program will . . . provide present and future weapons scientists and engineers with the opportunity to exercise the complete set of skills required to design and develop a warhead stockpile."

The three labs where this work takes place have become potent advocates for a policy that subverts the nation's and the world's expectation that nuclear disarmament would follow the end of the Cold War that supposedly justified the arms race. The labs have lobbied successfully for funding that will total some $60 billion by 2010, 20% higher than the average annual spending for all nuclear arms research, development, testing, and manufacturing during the Cold War.

Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories, once fearful of going out of business, are in high gear. Among their projects are various means of testing nuclear weapons that certainly violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. For example, at Lawrence Livermore, construction has begun on the National Ignition Facility at a currently estimated construction cost of $1.7 billion. Its unproven premise is that a small nuclear fusion explosion can be achieved by focusing 192 powerful lasers on a pellet of thermonuclearfuel.

Other planned projects at the national labs include the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility, the Contained Firing Facility, the Microsystems and Engineering Sciences Applications (MESA) facility, and pulse-powered systems like the "Ranchero" facility. Not one of these has anything to do with maintaining the current arsenal. And the fully resuscitated Ballistic Missile Defense program, which the DOE wishes we would stop calling Star Wars, provides an open field for every conceivable nuclear weapons research project, no matter how far-fetched.

Also, as if there weren't enough plutonium in the world, the DOE has plans to restart production of the plutonium elements, called "pits," of hydrogen bombs. Los Alamos is readying for 2003 a production capacity of 80 per year, even though START II calls for reduction of our current stockpile of 6,000 strategic weapons down to 3,500.

Little of the SSM money is devoted to the nation's most pressing nuclear need, which is to repair the environmental damage attributable to 50 years of nuclear production. There are now 137 contaminated sites in 34 states, and according to one DOE estimate, it would take $230 billion and 75 years to do the job. Instead of getting on with the clean-up, however, the federal government seems determined to compound the problem with decades of new nuclear production. Indeed, two-thirds of the space at the DOE's high-level radioactive waste disposal site near Carlsbad, New Mexico is reserved for storing military waste that it intends to produce in thefuture.

Current Activities

Many respected voices in the scientific community and among retired military officers have called for a real stewardship program—that is, properly maintaining the existing arsenal as it is being phased out. There are growing protests at the labs, especially at Lawrence Livermore, located in the San Francisco Bay area. The main task, however, is educating the general public about the way its expectations are being frustrated behind its back.

Campaigns

Local: Peace Action is prepared to lead the educational effort in the Houston area. Contact Herb Rothschild, 713.743.9022, herbertrothschild@hotmail.com

National: Various groups are working. A few, such as the Los Alamos Study Group in Santa Fe, are headquartered near the national laboratories. Others are Washington based and are trying to push the issue in Congress. U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) have led efforts, thus far unsuccessful, to replace SSM with a program that doesn't fund new weapons research and development. For additional information on SSM and efforts to halt it, contact the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, 1801 18th St., NW, Suite 9-2, Washington, DC 20009, 202.833.4668; fax: 202.234.9536; www.ananuclear.org.