Bush Admin. Wants To Turn Out 125 Nukes Per Year

[kpete]

Bush Admin. Wants To Turn Out 125 Nukes Per Year

U.S. Rolls Out Nuclear Plan
The administration's proposal would modernize the nation's complex of laboratories and factories as well as produce new bombs.
By Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff Writer
April 6, 2006


The Bush administration Wednesday unveiled a blueprint for rebuilding the nation's decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity.

The plan calls for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation's massive system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War.

Until now, the nation has depended on carefully maintaining aging bombs produced during the Cold War arms race, some several decades old. The administration, however, wants the capability to turn out 125 new nuclear bombs per year by 2022, as the Pentagon retires older bombs that it says will no longer be reliable or safe.

Under the plan, all of the nation's plutonium would be consolidated into a single facility that could be more effectively and cheaply defended against possible terrorist attacks. The plan would remove the plutonium kept at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by 2014, though transfers of the material could start sooner. In recent years, concern has grown that Livermore, surrounded by residential neighborhoods in the Bay Area, could not repel a terrorist attack.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nuke6apr06,0,5989419.story?coll=la-home-headlines
via:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/04/06/bush-admin-wants-to-turn_n_18587.html

[Missy M]

1. Are they planning on blowing up other planets besides ours.

[dr.strangelove]

2. Lets store plutonium in a densely populated earthquake zone

This is a populated area. There are over 7 million people within a 50 mile radius of the lab. Couple that with the fact that there are earthquake faults less than 200 feet from the site boundary, and two faults that have had significant activity int he past two decades within 25 miles from the facility. This does not sound like the best place to store this material. I never understood why it was there to begin with and moving it is a good idea. But, why are we even talking about making new weapons when we still have no effective way to store the radioactive products from the weapons they will dismantle. This does not make a great deal of sense to me.