The House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee yesterday zeroed out the budget for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), the new nuclear warhead. They also killed the new plutonium bomb plant, proposed as part of Complex 2030.

This is welcome news, and indicates that the 110th Congress is willing to stand up to the administration's rush to spark a new arms race. Thank you for taking action and keeping our voices strong!

NEXT -- We can expect that others will try to put money back into the budget for both the new nuclear warhead and the new plutonium "pit" factory. Also, the Senate budget numbers are not determined yet.

To be clear -- this is the beginning of the annual budget process, not the final outcome.

Tell your Senator:
Please OPPOSE funding RRW in the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill. Email a message here. Or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Background:
RRW is unnecessary. All the evidence indicates that the existing U.S. stockpile of nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads is highly reliable and that it will remain so for many decades. Based on an extensive testing and monitoring program at the three nuclear weapons laboratories, the Secretaries of Energy and Defense have certified to the President, each year since 1997, that all warhead types in the U.S. nuclear stockpile are safe, secure and reliable.

In late 2006 the JASONs (an independent panel of scientists and engineers that has long advised the U.S. government on nuclear weapons issues) assessed data from plutonium "accelerated aging" experiments conducted at the nuclear weapons laboratories. The report concluded that the plutonium components in U.S. nuclear warheads have lifetimes of at least 85 years, and possibly much longer. Since the oldest warheads were built in the 1970s, the core nuclear components of current warheads will remain vital for at least another fifty years.

Union of Concerned Scientist Senior Scientist Dr. Robert W. Nelson has written a new article criticizing the federal government's proposal to develop a new family of nuclear warheads--the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). In the article published in the April 2006 edition of Arms Control Today, Dr. Nelson argues that the program threatens to reorient the primary post-Cold War mission of U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories from stockpile maintenance to the development of new replacement warhead designs. Calling the program "premature and inherently risky," Dr. Nelson says that the program will unnecessarily lead to the development of new nuclear warhead designs and therefore renewed demands that the United States resume underground nuclear explosive testing.