Kevin Bryant reports that the mew administration proposed budget contains a provision that threatens thousands of U.S. workers and a very successful nuclear anti-proliferation treaty. Last month, the new administration proposed the termination of a program designed to keep nuclear weapons out of terrorists hands. The effort to close the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, which converts plutonium from nuclear weapons into fuel for power generation, began under the Obama administration as a concession to nuclear-power opponents with the claim that closing the facility would save money. This claim ignored the fact that the facility is 70% complete and the fact that the Obama administration had no credible alternative means to dispose of aging nuclear warheads.
A Republican Congress stopped Obama from closing the fuel facility, but a new Republican Congress must continue the fight. For over a decade, the U.S. has worked to convince Russia to safely dispose of its vast supply of aging plutonium warheads. The fruit of that labor was the U.S.-Russia Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, signed in 2000. This bilateral agreement committed both countries to disposing of a total of 68 metric tons of plutonium, enough for about 17,000 warheads, or about 10 times the number of warheads each side has deployed today. Thus, the U.S. agreed to build the fuel facility to convert the weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for use in commercial nuclear power plants. The Russians agreed to dispose of their plutonium in a similar manner. The deal also makes it far less likely that a terrorist or rogue nation can obtain a nuclear warhead. Rightly hailed as a major success, the U.S. and Russia both agreed to update and recommit to the agreement in 2011 as construction proceeded apace at the facility in South Carolina.
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