by Kingston Reif Rep. Michael Turner’s (R-OH) love affair with nuclear weapons continues. His national security raison d’être appears to be to protect at all costs spending on an excessively large nuclear arsenal ill-suited to the current threat environment and oppose common sense, bipartisan steps such as the New START treaty that begin to put […]
The Case Against Increasing Plutonium Pit Production Capacity
By Nickolas Roth Click here for a PDF version of this report. Executive Summary Though we won’t know for sure until the fiscal year 2013 budget is released on February 13, reports suggest that the Obama administration has decided to delay construction of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s multi-billion dollar facility, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research […]
New START: One year later
by Kingston Reif Published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Online on February 2, 2012 Article summary below; read the full text online February 5 marks the one-year anniversary of the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty’s (New START) entry into force. Signed by the United States and Russia in April 2010, New START caps each […]
Are ambitious Life Extension Programs on Hold?
26 By the end of 2011, it became increasingly apparent that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was rethinking its plans to refurbish the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, the most elaborate, ambitious and expensive Life Extension Program (LEP) for a nuclear weapon to date. In December Congress provided its final ruling for fiscal year (FY) […]
Some Additional Thoughts on the Pentagon Strategy Review and Nuclear Weapons
by Kingston Reif On January 5 President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, and other high-ranking defense officials previewed the results of the recently completed strategic defense review at a press briefing at the Pentagon. Though short on specific details about which programs and systems will […]
