Three U.S. senators — two Democratic presidential candidates and one of the party’s premier nuclear doves — urged House and Senate lawmakers negotiating the final version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to tightly limit future U.S. production of plutonium nuclear-weapon cores.
That is according to a letter dated Sept. 13 and delivered to the leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees from Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
“We call on you to support the House language, which sensibly reduces the 80-pit requirement to 30 pits per year by 2026,” the lawmakers wrote in a three-page letter. “It also cuts funding for pit production by $241 million, to $471 million” in fiscal 2020.
The local Aiken, S.C., Standard newspaper first reported on the letter last week.
House and Senate Armed Services leaders, and members of their committees, are now negotiating a compromise version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act: a must-pass bill that sets budget limits and policy for U.S. defense programs, including the nuclear weapons programs managed by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
House and Senate Armed Services members last week started bicameral conference negotiations on the final version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, but had not produced a compromise bill at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has authorized the requested $712 million for pits and pit infrastructure in 2020, while the House committee authorized only about $470 million. Those levels are funding are mirrored in the chambers’ separate 2020 appropriations bills. The full House passed its DOE spending bill in June, but the full Senate has yet to vote on its corresponding measure, following partisan fighting over President Donald Trump’s proposed southern-border wall.
Queried on the matter, Markey and Sanders’ offices provided copies of the letter. Warren’s office directed a request for comment to Markey’s office. Sanders and Warren are seeking the Democratic nomination to run for president in the 2020 General Election.
The NNSA plans a plutonium-pit production complex at DOE facilities in New Mexico and South Carolina, which by 2030 would annually manufacture 80 of the softball-sized nuclear-weapon cores. Initially, these pits would be for W87-1-style warheads, suitable for use on future Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Internal NNSA studies show the agency is unlikely to hit the 80-pit throughput by that date. Charles Verdon, NNSA deputy administrator for defense programs, in April told Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor the agency has identified a solution to the issues raised in those studies. However, neither he nor other NNSA officials have publicly disclosed the details of this workaround.
Under the NNSA’s current plan, pit production would in 2024 begin at upgraded facilities at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The lab would produce 30 pits a year by 2030, while a new plant to be built at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., would come online in 2030, cranking out the additional 50 pits annually the NNSA needs by that year.
The Pentagon wants to start deploying GBSD missiles to replace aging Minuteman III ICBM by 2030.
Nuclear weapons have become a major defense issue for the Democratic Party, which now controls the House of Representatives and seeks to oust President Donald Trump (R) from the White House next year. Democratic policy has crystallized around slowing deployment of new intercontinental ballistic missiles and prohibiting deployment of a new low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead: the W76-2.
The letter Warren and Sanders signed, however, did not even mention the the W76-2. The House’s 2020 National Defense Authorization Act would bar the Navy from deploying the weapon. The Senate’s version of the bill would fully fund deployment.
