Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, 2004-Continued

ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004—CONTINUED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am disappointed the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment did not pass because I believe that amendment really responded to the issues of the moment. We are in a dangerous time because we see around the globe where there are nations aspiring to become nuclear powers, where proliferation is one of the most dangerous threats this Nation faces, particularly proliferation that would provide fissile material to terrorists, which is the great fear of all of us.

In order to resist the growth of nuclear powers around the globe, we have to be faithful to our commitment to arms control and our sense that further development of nuclear weapons—and, I would argue, weapons without military requirements—is really not so much an exercise in protecting the United States but it is an exercise that will lead us down a path that could see our country exposed to even more dangers. So I am very much concerned that the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment failed.

Therefore, I am proposing an amendment that I hope will essentially put restraints upon the use of these dollars in the development of nuclear weapons, and I will explain it in more detail later. It would constrain the expenditure of funds to the the research phase. It would preclude monies to be used to engineer a weapon, to test a weapon, and to deploy a weapon. It is language that is consistent with the language included in the Defense Authorization Act which we passed several months ago.

We are at a difficult moment in our history, as I mentioned.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. REED. I would be happy to yield for a question to my cosponsor, Senator Nelson.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I appreciate the Senator offering this amendment and I just want to underscore with a question that the Senator's amendment will allow the research to go on as we intended in the Defense authorization bill but would not allow the development and the engineering where these weapons would be actually designed until such time as the executive branch would come back to the Congress to get approval to do that. Is that correct?

Mr. REED. That is absolutely correct. It reflects the value of the contribution the Senator from Florida made in the Defense authorization debate.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I thank the Senator.

Mr. REED. There are some who have criticized any attempts at arms control as futile, as failures. That, I think, is a dangerous idea. I hope arms controls work because history seems to show that, without controlling arms, eventually they wind up being used, and when it comes to the issue of nuclear weapons, that is a great nightmare that has haunted all mankind since 1945.

Since that date, we have been successful in containing the use of nuclear weapons. It is because we took prudent steps to try to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the development of nuclear weapons. And at this juncture in history, to stand up and say arms control does not work not only misreads history but misses the point entirely. We have to make it work. Indeed, arms control has provided us at least some respite, some bit of breathing space, from the horrors of Hiroshima. That in itself is a success.

Today, particularly when we look at North Korea, I think we had all better hope fervently that arms control can work because without some type of arms control there, we will be in an extraordinarily precarious situation.

If we look at the situation in Iran, where the international arms control agency is trying to work with the Iranians, trying to get them to cooperate with the world community, that is an example of arms control in action. I hope—and I am sure I speak for everyone else—that that effort succeeds.

Time and again, when we have had serious situations, we have been able to use the norms established by international arms control agreements as leverage in a particular crisis. Arms control is not perfect, but without it we would be in a much more dangerous and much more devastating world environment.

This administration, however, has effectively turned its back on so many different initiatives: The repeal of the ABM
Treaty, the failure to follow up the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty by sending it again to the Senate for a vote. This and so many other examples suggest that the administration has not effectively read the lessons of history. I believe they have the mistaken view that arms control will never work rather than trying to make it work, understanding it is not perfect but it is essential to our national security strategy.

My colleague and friend John Spratt stated it very well in an article in the March 2003 edition of Arms Control Today. In his words:

My greatest concern is that some in the administration and in the Congress seem to think that the United States can move the world in one direction while Washington moves in another, that we can continue to prevail on other countries not to develop nuclear weapons while we develop new tactical applications for such weapons and possibly resume nuclear testing.

Congressman Spratt was very clear. In life, one really cannot have it both ways. I think this is an example of that. At one time, you cannot be trying to persuade, convince, and cajole other nations to abandon the development of nuclear weapons while you are blatantly going ahead and developing them yourself. The approach of the administration has been to attempt to get it both ways. It will be doomed to failure.

I would argue that rather than declaring the arms control movement dead, we have to give it renewed life. Indeed, we can point to successes in the past that should give us some comfort to know that if we work hard, if we work in a disciplined and dedicated way, we can use arms control to enhance our security—not exclusively depend, certainly, on arms control, but it has to be an important part of our repertoire.

In the early 1960s, when there were a few nuclear powers—the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China—there was a fear that within a decade or more, as President Kennedy expressed it, there would be at least 25 countries that developed nuclear weapons. What was feared did not come to pass because of effective, meaningful arms control exemplified in many respects by the nonproliferation treaty and other initiatives.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has cited this record, indicating his support for continued efforts at arms control. In his words:

[I]nstead of the 25 or so countries that President Kennedy once predicted, only a handful of nations possess nuclear weapons. Of course we suspect many more countries have chemical or biological weapons, but still short of the scores that had been predicted in the past. We have reached this state of affairs in no small part through the concerted effort of many nations. Agreements, such as the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention, organizations such as the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group—these constitute a global security architecture that has served us satisfactorily and kept us safe.

But critics of arms control fail to acknowledge that Argentina and Brazil and South Korea and Taiwan ceased their suspected nuclear programs in part because of the international norms represented by the nonproliferation treaty. Without these norms and without the United States exemplifying these norms, I don't think we would have the success we have had in these cases that I have cited.

Similarly, when the Soviet Union dissolved and the Newly Independent States of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine found themselves with nuclear weapons, they voluntarily turned them in as a result of the norms established by the international arms control regimes. South Africa has also given up their nuclear weapons.

This is an example, not of perfect success but of success. If we begin to abide by our commitment to the nonproliferation treaty, to our commitments to reducing nuclear weapons rather than building new ones, we might be able to provide more leverage on countries such as India and Pakistan so that they would join the nonproliferation treaty and the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty. That is the kind of leadership we need at the moment. I hope we can get it.

As I mentioned before, we also are facing very serious problems with North Korea and Iran. I hope they can be resolved peacefully. But that peaceful resolution implies extending arms control agreements to these countries. So disparaging arms control is doing a great disservice to our national security and to our strategy.

The Bush administration has seemed bound since their first days in office to reverse 50 years of arms control activities, both by Republican and Democratic administrations. In December 2001, they published their Nuclear Posture Review.

This review was troubling in many respects. For the first time in history, this review suggested that we would use weapons, nuclear weapons, not simply to deter another nuclear power but to engage a nonnuclear power. The report essentially said that we would consider for the first time and be prepared to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations that were nonaligned with a nuclear power—a tremendous reversal in our strategic outlook, blurring the distinction between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons, a distinction that since Hiroshima we on both sides of the aisle have endeavored mightily to maintain crystal clear. This blurring, this suggestion that we would use nuclear weapons in a first strike against nonnuclear powers, set the tone for other administration pronouncements.

Last November, a memo from then-Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Pete Aldridge, became public. The memo directed nuclear weapons laboratories to:

.    .    . assess the technical risks associated with maintaining the U.S. arsenal without nuclear testing .    .    . [and suggested the] U.S. take another look at conducting small nuclear tests.

Following up to this memo, the President's budget for fiscal year 2004 included $24 million to reduce the time needed to prepare to conduct a nuclear weapons test from 2-3 years at present to 18 months—once again, a very sobering and ominous suggestion that we would begin to test nuclear weapons again; that we would abandon our efforts to assure the quality of our stockpile through nontesting means and that we would conduct tests.

If the United States of America begins again to conduct nuclear tests, I think that would be an open invitation to other countries, such as India and Pakistan, and perhaps powers undeclared as yet, to begin a nuclear testing program. It certainly would be good cover internationally.

The President's budget in 2004 also went on to request $22.8 million to accelerate the design and select a site for a new modern pit facility.

Plutonium pits are necessary components of nuclear weapons. We have not had the ability to build such pits since 1988.
We do need a pit facility. But the proposal of the administration goes far beyond any conceivable needs, given the current situation. They want to create a facility that is capable of producing up to 500 pits per year. That would be 500 nuclear weapons per year. That is a rate that rivals anything in the cold war, and according to the administration, the cold war is over—except, I guess, when it comes to nuclear policy or at least nuclear design and production policy.

Then in addition to this development, the administration has been vigorously pressing for the design of a robust nuclear earth-penetrator to be used against hard and deeply buried targets. The RNEP would be a modification of an existing nuclear device, necessarily a very large nuclear device. It has been deemed a bunker buster. But, frankly, the kilotonnage or the tonnage of this RNEP is so large it would be a city buster, not a bunker buster. The kilotons of the weapons dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 14 and 21 kilotons, respectively, and this RNEP could be 71 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That is not a bunker buster. That is not a discrete weapon that could take the place of precision conventional weapons. Yet the administration is pressing forward.

Then this year the administration requested the repeal of the 1993 statutory ban on the research, development, and production of low-yield nuclear weapons and $6 million for funding for advanced nuclear weapons concepts.
Current law prohibits work, design, research with respect to weapons below 5 kilotons. The administration seeks to repeal this ban—strike it out—even though there is no military requirement for these small sized nuclear weapons.

When asked about this proposal, Ambassador Linton Brooks, the Acting Director of the National Nuclear Security
Administration, stated before the Armed Services Committee:

I have a bias in favor of something that is the minimum destruction. .    .    .that means I have a bias in favor of things that might be usable.

Here we have it. A history of 5 decades of trying to create a nuclear policy that dissuades the world from using nuclear weapons and we are trying to develop small nuclear weapons, which the scientists at this time say—the lab leaders say—are designed to be used. We have crossed a huge space between our policy of 5 decades and this newly emerging policy. We have moved from being the leader in arms control to being someone who treats arms control casually, if not flippantly. The irony, of course, is we stand to suffer the most. I hope we could reverse this trend.

I had hoped very much that the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment would be agreed to because I think that would have sent a strong signal and be a practical and pragmatic step. But now we have the opportunity to constrain the funds that are being expended for those preliminary research aspects of nuclear weapons development. As my colleague, Senator Nelson, said, it will give Congress a chance to decide, after more information, more debate, and more justification, whether it is in our national interest to proceed with the development, engineering, and deployment of a new class of nuclear weapons.

The amendment I offer today will allow the Department of Energy to use $22 million in funding that the President requested for advanced nuclear weapons concepts for research alone. The amendment would not allow money to be used for developing, testing, or deploying new nuclear weapons, or RNEP, which is a modification of an existing weapon.

This amendment would assure that the appropriations bill is consistent with the language that is included in the fiscal year 2004 Defense authorization bill. During that debate, an amendment that would require the Department of Energy to seek specific authorization and appropriations before proceeding with phases beyond research passed this body by a vote of 96 to 0. The Senate has clearly spoken on this issue. The amendment I offer today will ensure that the Department of Energy will comply with the wishes of Congress by returning to the Congress before beginning development, testing, production, and deployment of a new nuclear weapon or the RNEP.

I believe we should retain the prohibition on any research or development of low-yield nuclear weapons. But if that must change—if we must eliminate the threat-first amendment—I believe the research is all that is necessary at this time and that there should be a full and complete debate on any development funding for a system of nuclear weapons or the RNEP based upon research first.

The primary reason that the administration says it needs this money for advanced nuclear concepts is to, in their terms,
"train the next generation of nuclear weapons scientists and engineers."

Ambassador Brooks, Director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, stated that research must be funded to
"remove the chilling effect on scientific inquiry that could hamper our ability to maintain and exercise our intellectual capabilities to respond to needs that one day might be articulated by the President."

In July, Energy Secretary Abraham said: "We are not planning any nuclear weapons at all." If research is the reason, if research is the justification, if we are planning no nuclear weapons, then this amendment provides the funding and the authority for the research.

This amendment is very clear about what is allowed. There are very distinct phases in the development of nuclear weapons. Since 1953, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy have worked in a very formalized weapons development process. Indeed, the Atomic Energy Commission was one of the predecessors of the effort. And the Atomic Energy Commission was also involved in the formulation of the process.

My amendment would prohibit "development engineering," which is the third phase. This is for new weapons development.

All of these phases would be authorized, and the funds could be expended for concept definition, feasibility study, design definition, and cost study. But you could not go into phase 3, development definition. It is clear and precise—allowing the research and allowing all that is necessary, according to both the rationale to train our scientists and also the affirmation by the Secretary of Energy that we were not planning to develop new nuclear weapons.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator will yield.

Mr. REED. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DOMENICI. Did the Senator conclude amendment No. 1659 regarding the Energy Department's research on nuclear weapons?

Mr. REED. I did not. In the next few minutes I will complete my comments on the amendment.

Mr. DOMENICI. I wonder if the Senator might offer that amendment so I could give him my concurrence.

Mr. REED. The amendment has been offered. I think Senator Levin wants to speak. But the Senator's concurrence will be invited as soon as I conclude.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, on this side of the aisle, we accept the Reed-Levin-Kennedy-Feinstein amendment because it is current policy. It just repeats current policy unequivocably. This is what the policy of the country is. We did not change that in our bill. The Senator is most welcome to try to make it eminently clear what that current policy is. For that reason, we will accept it whenever it is ready to be accepted by the Senate.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, reclaiming my time, I thank the chairman for his kindness in accepting the amendment. The policy is included in the Defense authorization bill. But there is a debate ongoing about what the precise policy is. We want to at least set this limit with respect to the policy.

The chairman suggesting that it will be accepted will prompt me to quickly conclude my comments.

I note that my colleague from Michigan is here also seeking recognition.

We brought this measure to the Defense authorization debate. As was indicated in my discussion with Chairman Domenici, the Senate passed this provision overwhelmingly. This is now included in this appropriations bill. It is going to be an interesting conference because our colleagues in the House have stricken the money; that is the preference that I would suggest is the best approach. But short of that, this at least constrains the spending of the funds to the first three phases of research, which apparently, at least in my view, directly responds to the professed need for the funds, and it will also again support the statement of the Secretary of Energy that there is no plan to develop nuclear weapons.

In a letter to the Armed Services Committee, Admiral Ellis, the Commander of the Strategic Command, which command is responsible for all nuclear weapons, stated that:

U.S. Strategic Command is interested in conducting rigorous studies of all new technologies examining the merits of precision, increased penetration, and reduced yields for our nuclear weapons.

Once again, this proposal corresponds to the request from our military leaders in what they are looking for today.

I hope that not only this amendment will be incorporated into this pending appropriations bill but that in conference we at least maintain this.

I again urge my colleagues to think hard again about the Kennedy-Feinstein proposal and the proposal that is already included in the House provisions. But today is an opportunity at least to slow down a rush to develop nuclear weapons which have no, or very limited, military requirements, and it would give us an opportunity as a Congress to debate the wisdom of our course of action.

Let me conclude by saying we have changed course dramatically. After 50 years of being the leading nation in the world arguing for arms control, arguing for sensible constraints in the development of nuclear weapons and limits on nuclear weapons, we have become a nation that is casual about our commitment to arms control, that denigrates it too often, and that course has left us with the only other option which is I think less appropriate. As I said initially, if there are no arms control, then there is a higher probability of arms usage. With nuclear weapons, that is a thought that no one wants to contemplate.

I yield the floor.