Bury the Bomb Before It Buries Us

By Ralph Vartabedian

After those earlier plans were criticized, the Nuclear Weapons Council, a high-level board of officials from the Energy and Defense departments, proposed a 25-year plan to mix old and newly manufactured parts from the seven existing weapons designs into five new packages at a cost of $60 billion.

The new report from the scientists group faulted that plan, because it would combine plutonium triggers from one type of weapon with thermonuclear components from other types. That kind of combination was never tested by detonation before the end of full-scale underground tests in the early 1990s.

Among the authors of the report was Philip Coyle, who at one time ran the nation’s nuclear testing program in Nevada, later was deputy director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and until 2011 served as associate director for national security and international affairs in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Coyle said the current plan essentially violates the Obama administration’s pledge against developing new nuclear weapons.

“It sends the wrong message to the rest of the world,” he said.”

Read the entire article in the LA Times.