Letter to Congress to support nuclear security funding in the budget request
February 3, 2011
Dear Colleague,
There is a broad and growing bipartisan consensus that we must prevent nuclear terrorism at home by securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the globe as quickly as possible. The Fissile Material Working Group (FMWG) supports this view and applauds the President’s fiscal year 2011 (FY11) budget for including an additional $320 million over the FY10 budget to support the four-year international effort to secure allvulnerable nuclear materials worldwide. We must close the fissile material security gap.
In mid-2009, the global stockpile of nuclear materials was large enough to build more than 120,000 nuclear bombs. This material continues to accumulate in unstable regions of the world.
This is an area in which the United States is leading but must work more urgently. President Obama has called for securing all vulnerable materials in four years and is convening an unprecedented heads-of-state summit in April to shore up international commitments to work together on this goal.
It is vital that Congress aggressively fund the U.S. programs that are implementing our fissile material security policy. In particular, the FY11 budget request includes:
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$75 million for a new Global Nuclear Lockdown program spearheaded by the Department of Defense (DoD). This includes new funding for regionally located Centers of Excellence for Nuclear Security that will be implemented jointly by DoD and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
An $18 million increase over the FY10 level for NNSA’s International Nuclear Materials Protection and Cooperation program to improve the security of nuclear materials globally including an additional $34 million for the security of nuclear materials in Russia.
A major increase of $211 million to accelerate the removal of highpriority, vulnerable nuclear materials under the NNSA Global Threat Reduction Initiative program
We must ensure that these programs are provided adequate resources to execute this urgent agenda.
As you know, the 9/11 Commission and subsequent studies have confirmed that al Qaeda is actively seeking nuclear materials to use against the United States. As a result, bipartisan experts have uniformly recommended strengthening our efforts to limit the availability of nuclear material to terrorists by eliminating this material from the black market, locking down existing stockpiles, and reducing the number of nuclear weapons around the world that can fall into the hands of our enemies.
The FMWG – a group of over 40 leading U.S. experts in this field – has formed to support and help implement the goal of securing all vulnerable fissile materials as quickly as possible. It is in the process of expanding its membership to include international partners. The FMWG will host its own nuclear security summit on April 12, 2010 in Washington D.C. to highlight the need for all nations to support and provide sufficient funding to accomplish the nuclear material security mission.
The U.S. has been funding threat reduction work for 17 years and yet fissile materials around the world remain vulnerable to theft. Steady as you go program budgets are not capable of meeting this global challenge.
If nuclear terrorism truly is the gravest threat facing our nation, we must act without delay to provide the funding necessary to reduce that threat and keep our nation secure.
Sincerely,
Pauline Baker
President
The Fund for Peace
Matthew Bunn
Associate Professor of Public Policy
John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University
Thomas B. Cochran
Senior Scientist
Natural Resources Defense Council
David Culp
Legislative Representative
Friends Committee on National Legislation
(Quakers)
Charles Ferguson
President
Federation of American Scientist
Melanie Greenburg
President
Cypress Fund for Peace & Security
Lisbeth Gronlund
Senior Scientist and Co-Director
Global Security Program, Union of Concerned Scientists
John Isaacs
Executive Director
Council for a Livable World
Jim Walsh
Research Associate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Igor Khripunov
Interim Director
Center for International Trade and Security, University of Georgia
Daryl G. Kimball
Executive Director
Arms Control Association
Kenneth Luongo
President
Partnership for Global Security
Paul Kawika Martin
Organizing, Political and PAC Director
Peace Action & Peace Action Education Fund
Vladimir P. Sambaiew
President
The Stanley Foundation
Leonard Spector *
Director, Washington DC Office
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Elizabeth Turpen
Associate
Science Applications International Corporation
Paul F. Walker
Director, Security and Sustainability
Global Green USA
Peter Wilk
Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility
*Institutional affiliation for identification purposes only