Nuclear mattersObama administration to unveil nuclear weapons policy

Published 4 March 2010

The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review was initially scheduled for release late last year, and then again for 1 March, but it is coming; it will lay out the administration’s justifications and strategy for maintaining a nuclear arsenal, and will be important in guiding work throughout the energy department, including at the primary weapons laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California

The Obama administration is nearing the completion of a much-anticipated policy that could restrict the role of the U.S. nuclear arsenal while strengthening the weapons-research infrastructure at the Department of Energy laboratories.

Jeff Tollefson writes that the Nuclear Posture Review, initially scheduled for release late last year, and then again for 1 March, will lay out the administration’s justifications and strategy for maintaining a nuclear arsenal. It will also be the president’s first opportunity to make good on his promise, made in a speech in Prague last April, to take “concrete steps” toward nuclear disarmament and to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the U.S. security strategy. The policy is likely to affirm the Obama administration’s decision not to pursue new nuclear weapon designs, although it is expected that there will be wiggle room for scientists at the weapons labs to modify existing systems in the name of safety and security.

Some politicians and non-proliferation advocates have urged the president to promise that nuclear weapons will be used only to deter a nuclear attack, whereas others advocate a less restrictive phrasing. “I personally expect to be disappointed,” says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard University. “I think it will have some positive-sounding language, but I think the overall changes will be modest.”

 

Tollefson notes that the document will be important in guiding work throughout the energy department, including at the primary weapons laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, as the administration works on a new treaty with Russia that could see the weapons stockpile reduced.

An expanded role for the labs was already clear from the administration’s proposed fiscal budget for 2011, released last month,” Tollefson writes. In the budget, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which manages the U.S. nuclear weapons program and non-proliferation activities within the Department of Energy, would receive a 13.4 percent increase to $11.2 billion, including more than $7 billion to manage the nuclear stockpile. Of that, $1.6 billion would go toward science, technology, and engineering programs, which include advanced computer simulations, research into the ageing of nuclear materials, and fusion experiments at the Livermore lab’s National Ignition Facility. The goal is to ensure that ageing, untested weapons would work as designed.