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1. Summary
2. New Nuclear Weapons and Cold War Complex
3. Senate Bill Demands Nuclear Weapons Policy Review
4. Global Nuclear Energy Partnership: Skepticism Grows/Budget Cuts
Summary
In June, with the help of thousands of UCS activists, we achieved a significant victory when the U.S. House eliminated all funding for the administration's plan to build a new generation of nuclear bombs. The Senate is on a path to reduce the funding level for the program while prohibiting work beyond a basic design and cost study. Also, both the House and Senate took steps to significantly cut funds for the administration's ill-conceived and dangerous scheme to reprocess nuclear waste—which would seriously undermine efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
In June, months of hard work and grassroots advocacy efforts paid off when the U.S. House eliminated the administration's entire $118.8 million funding request for the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, a dangerous proposal to build a whole new generation of nuclear weapons and ultimately replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal. At the committee level, the Senate slightly reduced funding for this dangerous program, but limited funding to design and cost studies, thus prohibiting any funds from being used next year for actual development or production.
In the same bill, both the House and the relevant Senate committee denied the administration's $25 million request for a new facility to produce new plutonium "pits," the core of a nuclear weapon. This facility is one of the major elements of the administration's "Complex 2030" proposal to recreate a cold war-like ability to design, develop, and produce new nuclear weapons.
This fall, the Senate must complete their versions of these Fiscal Year 2008 security spending and policy bills, and then reconcile them with the House. UCS will be advocating for the House position and a stop to the dangerous RRW and Complex 2030 plans.
On a related note, the Department of Energy (DOE) is expected to release its draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) on the Complex 2030 proposal at which time UCS activists will have an opportunity to submit comments. This is a chance to tell the administration about your opposition to the idea of a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Senate Bill Demands Nuclear Weapons Policy Review
UCS is urging all of its members and activists to write to their senators urging them to co-sponsor S 1914, the Nuclear Policy and Posture Review Act of 2007. Introduced in August by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Susan Collins (R-ME), and four others, the bill calls for the president to conduct a comprehensive nuclear weapons policy and "posture" review and would prohibit funding for the administration's proposed new nuclear weapons program until the policy review and posture review reports have been submitted to Congress.
Throughout the fall, UCS and other organizations will be working to build bipartisan support and co-sponsorship of S 1914. The bill offers an ideal chance to reinforce the growing demand and political consensus that a comprehensive review of U.S. nuclear weapons policy is needed.
The House approved a bill that would cut $285 million from the Bush administration's $405 million request for its dangerous, ill-conceived Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) program. At the committee level, the Senate cut $153 million and directed to program to focus on basic technology rather than large facilities as the administration had planned. The final budget will be decided this fall. This dangerous program would resume U.S. commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing—the extraction of weapons-usable plutonium from spent fuel from nuclear power reactors—for the first time in more than 30 years.
By June, thousands of UCS activists submitted comments to the DOE as part of the mandated PEIS process on the GNEP scheme. Under this process, the public is invited first to recommend what this required environmental review will include, i.e. its "scope." This fall, the DOE is expected to publish a draft PEIS incorporating those comments, and have another public comment period. UCS will be asking activists to provide their input later this fall.
The commercial reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel—which the United States has not done for 30 years—presents significant risks without offering a real solution to the problems associated with the storage and disposal of nuclear or radioactive waste. Reprocessing makes it easier for terrorists to obtain the materials needed for a nuclear bomb and undermines the U.S. goal of halting the spread of fuel cycle technologies and materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons. | 
