Plutonium Pork Politics

On the radar: South Carolina’s jobs program; Scaling back the B61; Senate to boost nonpro; Ross seeks diplomatic endgame; Internship opportunity; North Korea tunneling; and Sweeping nuclear blast contamination under a concrete rug.

June 26, 2013| Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Alyssa Demus

Palmetto pork - How is it that congressional deficit hawks, anti-earmarkers and stimulus opponents became ardent supporters of a failing federal plutonium fuel project that is billions of dollars over budget and may never succeed at its mission? The lure of federally funded jobs.

--A powerful coalition of South Carolina politicians have banded together to ensure that federal funds for the $20 billion MOX program keep flowing into Aiken, SC - regardless of the project’s e mismanagement and dim prospects. Douglas Birch and Jeffrey Smith detail how South Carolina politicians have icians the MOX project project program, while outside groups gave millions in campaign donations and spent $6 million in lobbying efforts to keep the project alive.

--“While the Obama administration wants to slash planned spending on the plant by half next year and maybe eliminate it in 2015, citing a history of mismanagement and budget troubles, the Palmetto State's politicians in the past have proven adept at keeping MOX alive by making the prospect of cancellation as painful as possible,” write Birch and Smith for the Center for Public Integrity in part III of their series on the MOX plant.

--Candid quote: “We went forward and did this deal…[because of] some deal that the Secretary [of Energy] made and the president made to give jobs to South Carolina,” said now retired Congressman David Hobson (R-OH), an opponent to MOX, in a 2008 hearing. http://bit.ly/12k5hV0

The writings on the wall - “The Energy Department is moving toward abandoning a half-built factory that has cost $3.7 billion so far and was intended to make reactor fuel out of plutonium from retired nuclear bombs,” reports Matthew Wald for The New York Times. http://nyti.ms/12kdoRm

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Scaling back spending - “This week, House and Senate appropriators will vote on how much money to spend on the B61 gravity bomb, a $10 billion program to upgrade a weapon that President Obama said last week he wants to reduce.” The current upgrade is prohibitively expensive, cheaper options exist and the bomb has little military utility. At a time of tightening budgets “such spending plans are not realistic...Congress should [therefore] scale back this program dramatically.” Full editorial l the Arms Control Association Asso. http://goo.gl/2vlRV

Senate to boost nonproliferation funds - Yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee approved a draft spending bill that would increase funding for programs that secure and eliminate nuclear and radiological materials and counter nuclear smuggling.

--While the bill “matches the administration’s request for $7.87 billion for nuclear weapons activities, it requires NNSA officials to ‘reassess options,’” for cheaper alternatives to the B61 replacement plans. The legislation also mandates that NNSA “report to Congress every six months on the status of projects with a minimum cost of $750 million,” reports Douglass Guarino at Global Security Newswire. http://goo.gl/m0WvZ

Diplomatic endgame - Iran’s new president created a sense of opportunity for diplomacy with Iran. “We need to respond, but warily,” writes Dennis Ross in The New York Times, noting that it is yet unclear if Iran’s new president and the supreme leader can agree to a deal.

--Ross suggests that the U.S. present an endgame proposal to Iran - perhaps independent of multilateral negotiating partners - that would “accept Iran’s having civil nuclear power but with restrictions that would make the steps to producing nuclear weapons difficult, as well as quickly detectable.” Full article here. http://nyti.ms/10lbmj3

Rouhani reset - The election of moderate president Hassan Rouhani presents the Obama administration with an opportunity for a reset in its approach with Iran. President Obama should send a congratulatory letter to Rouhani; the U.S. should reverse its objection to Iran attending the Geneva 2 conference” on Syria; the U.S. should also avoid increasing sanctions, writes Ali Vaez at CNN World. Full story here. http://goo.gl/AqXox

Intern with us - Are you creative, web-savvy and interested in international policy? Ploughshares Fund is seeking a social media and design intern, based in our San Francisco headquarters. Job description and application details here. (pdf) http://bit.ly/18g4NmN

Tunneling - Recent satellite imagery of North Korea’s nuclear test site shows new tunneling activity, according to a report from 38 North. It’s too early for analysts to tell the purpose of this activity, but it’s possible that North Korea is building a new tunnel, repairing an existing one or clearing debris from a used tunnel. “These activities do not appear to be part of preparations for a nuclear test in the near-term,” write Nick Hansen and Jack Lui. http://bit.ly/11Nu2FU

Spent fuel - “New NRC Study Shows Benefits of Transferring Spent Fuel to Dry Casks” by David Wright at All Things Nuclear. http://bit.ly/11IaIx8

--NRC Report: “Consequence Study of a Beyond-Design-Basis Earthquake Affecting the Spent Fuel Pool for a U.S. Mark I Boiling Water Reactor” (pdf) http://1.usa.gov/10l9LK7

Speed Reads -

--“The Vision Thing” by Michael Krepon in The Hill. http://bit.ly/15FvDyD

--“Congress Pushes Back Against White House on Nukes, Syria” by Paul McLeary in Defense News. http://bit.ly/15Fw9g0

--“Toward 21st Century Security and Harmony” by Kathy Crandall Robinson in The Hill. http://bit.ly/10kZttA

--“Kroenig's ‘Case for Overkill’ Misses the Mark” by Kingston Reif at Nukes of Hazard. http://bit.ly/19C0hNq

Events:

--”Give Peace a Chance: Preventing Mass Violence.” Sen. Richard Lugar and David Hamburg. June 27, 11:30 AM @ American Association for the Advancement of Science, second floor auditorium, 1200 New York Ave. Details here. http://ow.ly/mkSzW

--Senate Appropriations Committee, markup of the energy and water appropriations bill, which includes NNSA’s nuclear weapons and nuclear nonproliferation programs. June 27 @ 10:00 AM. Webcast here. http://goo.gl/7nJhE

Dessert:

The cactus dome - Between 1948 and 1958 the U.S. detonated 43 nuclear weapons over the Enewetak coral atoll in the South Pacific. When residents began returning to the island islands in the 1970’s the U.S. military went to work on decontaminating the area.

--One method involved “gathering up the contaminated soil and debris, mixing it with cement, piling the sludge into a 350-foot-wide blast crater,” which it then covered with a concrete cap which rises out of the surrounding sea. Full story and photos at Slate’s Atlas Obscura. http://goo.gl/SgTYu