“Non-Proliferation Treaty turns 50 as US funds new nukes” — by Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a sister organization of SRS Watch in the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), aligned to oppose the unjustified expansion of plutonium “pit” production at SRS and the Los Alamos National Lab
– opinion piece in Albuquerque (New Mexico) Journal, March 8, 2020
“The FY 2021 Request for Savannah River Plutonium Modernization and Pit Production is $441,896,000, of which $351,896,000 is for line item construction and $90,000,000 is for Plutonium Modernization work to support the production of 50 pits per year at Savannah River … .” Out-year funding amounts “will be developed and refined in future budget requests.”
“In other words, NNSA is still not disclosing the full scope and costs of expanded plutonium pit production at the Los Alamos lab and the Savannah River Site, even as it asks Congress for a near tripling of funding for “Plutonium Modernization” to $1.4 billion in FY 2021. NNSA expects to spend $7.9 billion on Plutonium Modernization over the next four fiscal years after FY 2021.”
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Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, whose central bargain was that non-nuclear weapons states forswore acquiring them in exchange for which nuclear weapons states promised to enter into serious negotiations leading to their elimination. Those negotiations have never happened.
The Trump Administration has marked the occasion by finally releasing the detailed fiscal year 2021 Congressional Budget Request for the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration. The NNSA’s program for new and upgraded nuclear weapons gets a $3 billion-plus mark-up to $15.6 billion, slated to jump to $17 billion annually by 2025.
full op-ed posted here: https://www.abqjournal.com/1428604/nonproliferation-treaty-turns-50-as-us-funds-new-nukes-ex-trumps-nuclear-weapons-budget-is-a-big-step-backwards-from-reducing-global-nuclear-threat.html
Nuclear Watch New Mexico website: https://nukewatch.org/