NOW IS THE TIME to send a message to the Budget Supercommittee to tell them to cut funding for the new bomb plant in Oak Ridge. Here is the info you need—including a quick link to the Supercommittee’s contact page.
United States Congress Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction
(aka The Budget Supercommittee)
The committee is charged with issuing a recommendation by November 23, 2011 for at least $1.5 trillion in additional deficit reduction steps to be undertaken over a ten‐year period.
Members of the committee are:
Senators
Patty Murray, D-Washington (Co-chair) John Kyl, R-Arizona
Max Baucus, D-Montana Rob Portman, R-Ohio
John Kerry, D-Massachusetts Pat Toomey, R-Pennsylvania
Representatives
Xavier Becerra, D-California Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas (Co-chair)
Jim Clyburn, D-South Carolina Fred Upton, R-Michigan
Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland Dave Camp, R-Michigan
Contacting the Budget Supercommittee is easiest by email. Click here to send a message to the committee:
http://www.deficitreduction.gov/public/index.cfm/contact
The web site for the committee does not list a regular mailing address, but you could probably send a letter to either of the co-chairs:
Senator Patty Murray Rep. Jeb Hensarling
448 Russell Senate Office Building 129 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20510 Washington, DC 20515
Note: because of the security precautions, your letter will be delayed up to two weeks—so it’s best to e-mail if you can.
Multiply the Impact of your letter
One letter can make a difference. You can multiply the impact of your letter by doing several things.
• send it directly to the Supercommittee and send a copy to your Senators and Representative, or send it directly to your Senators and Representative with a copy to the Supercommittee.
• submit it to your local and regional newspapers as a Letter to the Editor (may take a little adapting) or an “Open Letter to __________” your Senator, your Rep, or the Budget Supercommittee.
• email your letter to friends and family and ask them to send their own letter. You can point them to OREPA’s web site where they will find all of this posted.
• ask a group or organization you are a member of to circulate your letter on their listserv encouraging other to write their own letters.
Concerns about the new bomb plant in Oak Ridge
Feel free to use excerpts from our letter to Tennessee Representative Jimmy Duncan as talking points in your letter:
“…The National Nuclear Security Administration has laid out a plan to “modernize” the US nuclear stockpile and to rebuild the nuclear weapons production infrastructure, including a new facility at Y12 in Oak Ridge, the Uranium Processing Facility. Since it was first proposed six years ago, the pricetag for the UPF has skyrocketed at a rate that defies credulity—increasing more than 1000%! The price increase is routinely laid off to “inflation” and “increased cost of building materials.” Neither of these has risen by 1000% since 2005.
The argument of the weapons establishment is straightforward: if we are reducing our stockpile, it is imperative that our remaining warheads be reliable in order to maintain a credible deterrent posture as we move toward zero. The NNSA pursues this end through the Stockpile Stewardship Program, and it uses this argument as justification for three new multi-billion dollar bomb plants, one in Los Alamos, one in Oak Ridge, and the third in Kansas City.
But when the NNSA briefs you and your staff, they leave out some information that is crucial if you are to have a fully informed perspective as you address these funding requests. Here’s some of what you aren’t being told:
• Stockpile stewardship is not just—or even primarily—about maintaining our stockpile or improving security and surety; it is about upgrading the stockpile and, in the case of the W76—undergoing Stockpile Life Extension at Y12 at the moment—introducing new military capabilities to existing warheads.
• Stockpile Life Extension is not necessary to assure the reliability of our nuclear arsenal. A study by the JASON found that current warheads can be relied upon to function as designed for at least 85 years. The JASON examined plutonium pits, the components most susceptible to the effects of aging in making their determination.
• It is not necessary to spend tens of billions of dollars on massive new bomb plants in order to continue stockpile stewardship activities. At Los Alamos, existing facilities can produce as many as twenty plutonium pits per year. In Oak Ridge, existing facilities can produce dozens of secondaries per year. According to the NNSA, the mission requirement for stockpile maintenance can be met with a throughput capacity of less than 15 warheads/year.
• The new facilities proposed for Oak Ridge and Los Alamos are grossly oversized—with the bloated pricetag to match. Rather than design to meet their stated mission requirements, NNSA has chosen to build a giant UPF in Oak Ridge with a production throughput capacity of 85 secondaries/year—an overdesign of nearly 500%, much of which will sit idle year after year if the US maintains its current program. If the US achieves further arms control agreements with Russia, and further downsizes the arsenal—almost universally predicted—the disparity between what we need and what we are paying for will grow greater.
• The schedules for modernizing the stockpile and modernizing the infrastructure do not line up. According to the current schedule, stockpile life extension operations will have been completed for all but one of the warheads currently in our stockpile, and that one will be in process before the new UPF comes on line in 2024. This assumes construction schedules stay on track until then, which is unlikely. In other words, as difficult as it may be to believe, the work to be done in the proposed new facility ($7.5 billion and rising) will already have been done in existing facilities.
• By NNSA’s own admission, a smaller UPF, still sized to meet mission requirements, would have less environmental impact.
• According to DOE/NNSA’s Ten Year Plan for Y12, upgrades to existing facilities at Y12 to meet current environmental, safety and health standards can be completed for a fraction of the cost of a new UPF—and will be done so that Y12 can continue to operate between now and 2024. In other words, we are paying twice for the same job—stockpile life extension of the US arsenal.
• Tennessee’s Senators and Representatives were not told the new UPF would cost jobs in Oak Ridge. Initial projections by the NNSA were startling—the new, computerized, high tech UPF would require 2,400 fewer workers—a workforce reduction of 40% of the production staff.
We are providing this information so that you can be fully informed as you make decisions that are in the best interest of our country. We am not asking you to consider doing anything that would compromise the security of the United States. It is, in fact, the pursuit of expanded nuclear weapons production capacity and the modernization of our stockpile—seen as provocative acts—that increases the risk of a new global arms race and the security risks therein. At briefings on the Hill with Ambassador Robert Grey in late 2009, he spoke forcefully when he said the United States would have “zero credibility” in international arms control discussions if it proceeds with massive investments in a new production infrastructure.”
Click here to get to a pdf version of this info that you can distribute to friends:
