Obama seeks money for nuclear weapons work!!

[ou1980]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100202/ap_on_re_us/us_nuclear_lab_budgets_1


"President Barack Obama is seeking increased funding for nuclear weapons research and security programs next year, even as his administration promotes nonproliferation and has pledged to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear arms."

Well, how about that....???

Interesting stuff. Wonder how this will play out?

[ptown_trojans_1]

As I posted on the other thread.

Well the NNSA part of the DoE, who oversees our nuclear weapons infrastructure, had their budget raised from 9 to 11 billion. Also the Pentagon raised their about a 100 billion. So, yea mostly defense. The administration also raised the nuclear weapons Stockpile Stewardship Program (which ensures our weapons are reliable without testing) by 25%.
http://nnsa.energy.gov/management/documents/3-Page_Fact_Sheet.pdf


Joe Biden had an op-ed in the WSJ explaining the rational over the weekend. Also, anyone that has followed the issue closely, ie me, sees this as not a surprise as is actually one of the main reasons why I voted for him.

The logic for the increase is actually the same that Obama made in his Prague speech in back in April 09. While the dream of a nuclear free world is the goal, it will take time and so long as the U.S. has nukes, it will ensure they are safe, secure and effective without testing. Also, as we go lower in number due to the new START Treaty, we have to make sure our smaller stockpile is going to be fully effective. So, the money goes from the bombs itself to the infrastructure to ensure that they are reliable (The focus of my Master Thesis).

We currently have the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which is pretty awesome, as it uses the latest technologies, computer models, high temperature physics tests, heavy medal, x rays tests at the weapons labs (Los Alamos, Lawerence Livermore and Sanida) to ensure the weapons can work. Just last week the National Ignition Facility took 192 lasers and threw them into a small chamber of protons and created over 1 megajoule of energy (pretty much a star) for a billionth of a second. The result can test to see what happens once our weapons goes off and how the xrays ignite the primary and secondary explosive packages.
https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2010/nnsa/NR-NNSA-10-01-02.html

The point is the movement is to beefing up the infrastructure, which Obama has been for since the start. He has acknowledged that a nuke free world is a long way off and that so long as we have nukes, we must ensure ours are safe, reliable and effective.

Finally, some R's mainly Senator Kyl will say that we need new warheads and that the infrastructure is out of date. That is simply wrong and does not reflect the reality of the work being done.

How will it play out? Obama will get the money, as it plays into the grand scheme of a smaller stockpile.
BTW, the article is crap because the two are connected and not at odds.

[cbus4life]

Great post, Ptown, love reading your stuff on this board.

[I Wear Pants]

^^^ This