nuclear-news

Huge and expanding costs of USA’s nuclear arsenal

Nuclear Paradox: Shrinking U.S. Arsenal Requires Huge New Expenditures, Forbes, Jun. 13 2011   by Loren Thompson “…..The anti-nuclear rhetoric coming out of the White House during Obama’s early days in office was so persistent that some senior military officers worried the new president was taking America in the direction of unilateral disarmament, even though the candidate had explicitly ruled out that possibility during the campaign. But the military need not have worried, because the way things are turning out, Barack Obama is likely to spend more money on the U.S. nuclear arsenal than any U.S. president since Ronald Reagan.In fact, if all the plans authorized on Obama’s watch come to fruition, hundreds of billions of dollars will eventually be spent on new nuclear capabilities and infrastructure by a president who has repeatedly endorsed the goal of a nuclear-free world……

And then there is the nuclear complex where warhead components are manufactured, refurbished and dismantled. You wouldn’t think much spending is required to sustain a complex that hasn’t produced a single new warhead since 1991, but the system consumes a billion dollars per month and that figure is going up. In the absence of new production, old weapons must be repaired and upgraded, often using nuclear material recovered from weapons that are being retired. The retired weapons must be taken apart and their pieces re-used or rendered safe, an extremely complex procedure. The need to sustain such processes has led to major new construction projects at all of the industrial sites involved in nuclear weapons work. For example, a 350,000 square-foot uranium processing facility will be built at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and three different facilities will be built at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium.
Thus, the Obama nuclear plan will generate huge revenues for companies involved in nuclear work such as Babcock & Wilcox and General Dynamics, the probable builder of the submarine that replaces Trident. However, it isn’t likely that President Obama and his security team envisioned the full extent of budgetary outlays that would be required to sustain the nation’s nuclear forces as they drove toward the goal of a nuclear-free world. As things currently stand, the administration will be spending a good deal more money on nuclear weapons during Obama’s tenure than renewable energy, a prospect that can’t be pleasing to progressives….
Nuclear Paradox: Shrinking U.S. Arsenal Requires Huge New Expenditures – Business in The Beltway – Money & Politics – Forbes

June 14, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war