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Nuclear
bunker buster 2005: Congress denies funding for FY06
October 27, 2005
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Thanks
to your efforts, on October 25, 2005,
Congress dropped funding for the nuclear bunker
buster. This is a major step toward
stopping the development of new nuclear weapons,
and preventing their spread across the world.
We
extend thanks to every one of our members and
friends who contacted Congress about this issue
over the past months. The thousands of messages
we generated told the story of citizens committed
to eliminating nuclear weapons, not creating
more.
From
Reuters: Click
here to read full article. "In
a number of votes, Congress has rebuffed the
administration on its plans to research a nuclear
weapon that the Pentagon argues would be effective
against targets buried deep in the earth in
fortified bunkers.
Critics
said researching such weapon would undermine
efforts to stem the spread of nuclear arms among
other countries, and said it would produce hugely
destructive fallout."
Below
is the history of our actions and information
on the nuclear bunker buster.
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WAND
op ed about why the bunker buster just stinks: click
here.
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Want
to know more? Great sources of information
Click
here to read:
Speech by Senator Feinstein, Urges
Administration Not to Open Door to New Nuclear Weapon
Development
Click
here to read: Federation of American
Scientists Report on bunker buster
Click
here to read: Paper on
Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons
(2005), by Committee on the Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator
and Other Weapons, National Research Council, from
the National Academies Press
| Oh,
the bizzy bunker buster...
 |
WAND's
good friends, the Union of Concerned Scientists
and Physicians for Social Responsibility
produced this resource. It illustrates
how the nuclear bunker buster might work;
and it illustrates why it's so problematic
Click
here! to see and hear all about it. |
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The
Federation of American Scientists has produced
a short video to illustrate how nuclear bunker
busters will, and will not, work. To find the
video: click
here. You
need QuickTime to view the video. (There's a
link on the page to download it for free.) The
video is just under two minutes. |
| This
spring's news on bunker buster...
May 13, 2005
From
John Isaacs, Council for a Livable World
Part
1: Last year, in an unexpected clear-cut
victory, Congress knocked out the entire Administration’s
request for $27.6 billion to develop a new generation
of nuclear weapons to destroy deeply buried
targets. This year, the Administration came
back with a slimmed down request for $4.0 million
in the Department of Energy budget and $4.5
million in the Air Force budget.
The
generally hawkish House Strategic Forces Subcommittee
yesterday eliminated all the Energy funding,
adding a comparable amount of funds to the Air
Force budget for work on a conventional (non-nuclear)
version of the bunker buster. House Armed Services
Committee Democrat Silvestre Reyes (TX) called
it taking the "N" out of "RNEP,"
or the "nuclear" out of nuclear bunker
buster.
This
statement recalls a remark by the late House
Armed Services Committee chairman Les Aspin
who boasted during the first Bush Administration
that his committee had taken the "Star"
out of "Star Wars," moving national
missile defense to a basic research and development
program rather than a bells and whistles program
on track to deployment.
Part
2: The House Energy and Water Appropriations
Subcommittee, led by Ohio Republican David Hobson,
also zeroed out the Department of Energy funding
of $4.0 million for the nuclear bunker buster.
Hobson is the chairman who was responsible for
killing the program last year and cutting it
back the previous year.
Part
3: The full Senate Armed Services Committee,
in its markup of the annual Defense Authorization
bill yesterday -- just to confuse things a bit
further -- declined to fund the Air Force bunker
buster, but did approve the Department of Energy’s
$4.0 million.
Needless
to say, all these decisions are subject to further
review in the coming weeks.
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| Boston
Globe Editorial
Bunker buster
bust
May 8, 2005
full
article, click
here.
...At
a time when the United States should be the
leader in ridding the world of such weapons,
Congress should once again tell the Pentagon
to give up its dream of surgically destroying
enemy bunkers. |
What
is the bunker buster?
• Also known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
(RNEP), the bunker buster is portrayed as a weapon
that could burrow into the ground before detonating,
greatly increasing its ability to destroy hardened
underground targets.
•
Supporters argue that the bunker buster is needed
to attack hard and deeply buried targets (such as
leadership bunkers or WMD production facilities) in
countries of concern, thereby deterring or defeating
such nations.
• Critics reply that:
• The bunker buster would lower the threshold
for use of nuclear weapons and prompt other nations
to develop nuclear weapons to deter U.S. attack.
• Nuclear weapons (including the bunker buster)
cannot be engineered to penetrate far enough into
the ground to prevent nuclear fallout. To prevent
fallout, a nuclear weapon with approximately the
same yield as the one dropped on Hiroshima would
need to be buried 850 feet in the ground. Currently,
the best weapons casing available can barely penetrate
100 feet.
•
The yield of the bunker buster would be much larger
than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The bunker buster
would have a yield 60-100 times that of the Hiroshima
bomb, which was 15 kilotons.
• If a weapon with a yield of one kiloton
was detonated some 35 feet underground (close to
current capability), it would put one million cubic
feet of radioactive debris into the air, and create
a crater the size of Ground Zero in New York.
Why
oppose the bunker buster?
• The U.S. should lead by example. It’s
the right and smart thing to do. Global teamwork to
reduce and eliminate nuclear threats works –
but only when the biggest player on the team does
its part. The U.S. needs to help reduce the allure
of nuclear weapons – not increase it by pursuing
new nuclear weapons. Developing new nuclear weapons
sends the wrong message to other nations, and has
the potential to spark a new nuclear arms race. It
would almost certainly jeopardize the Non-Proliferation
Treaty (in which the U.S. and other nuclear powers
pledged to disarm in return for other nations not
seeking nuclear weapons).
•
Using a nuclear weapon to try to destroy a buried
bunker or other target would produce significant civilian
casualties and radioactive fallout. In addition, U.S.
military personnel operating in the area would be
at enormous risk, not only of death and injury but
also of extreme psychological trauma.
•
The bunker buster is regarded as a “tactical”
nuclear weapon. Developing such a weapon would make
it difficult to encourage Russia to dispose of its
arsenal of over 4,000 tactical nuclear weapons.
• New nuclear weapons serve no practical role
in countering the threats from extremists who are
willing to use terrorist tactics. You can’t
nuke a network or an extremist ideology. Instead,
we should be taking more practical and appropriate
steps to safeguard the U.S. and enhance global security.
• Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction;
they are not just another weapon in the U.S. arsenal.
We never want to use nuclear weapons again or see
others do so; it’s important to preserve that
taboo, which has been in place since 1945.
The
good news is that Congress did not fund the development
of new nuclear weapons in FY05. The final spending
bill for the year zeroed out funding for the bunker
buster and for research on new nuclear weapons concepts.
“We regard this as a significant victory,”
says Susan Shaer, WAND Executive Director. “We
worked hard to rally members and friends to take action,
and we believe that our efforts helped make a difference.”
The
bad news is that funding requests for these items
have reappeared in the proposed federal budget for
FY06. The new bunker buster request is $8.5
million, and the Department of Energy plans to spend
almost half a billion dollars on it over the next
few years. WAND is joining other arms control groups
in bringing this funding request into the light, and
encouraging citizens to take action.
“Especially
at a time when dozens of worthwhile programs are on
the chopping block, it’s inappropriate and dangerous
to request funds for an initiative that could restart
the nuclear arms race,” says Shaer.
Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), member of the
House Armed Services Committee and a key leader of
efforts to stop this funding, called it “a waste
of money on a weapon commanders in the field have
not asked for, is of highly questionable utility,
and may trigger a new global nuclear arms race.”
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