Confronting The Nuclear Threat
HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF
OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, in January 2001, a well-respected
and bipartisan task force looked at the threats facing
the United States and recommended increasing nonproliferation
funding under the Department of Energy to $3 billion
per year for the next 10 years. As they stated in their
report, the most urgent unmet national security threat
to the United States today is the danger that weapons
of mass destruction or weapons-usable materiel in Russia
could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation-states
and used against American troops abroad or citizens
at home.
This year, now, 3 years after that report, the Department
of Energy and Department of Defense nonproliferation
budgets only contained $1.8 billion combined for nuclear
nonproliferation. This is simply not enough.
I offered an amendment that would increase the amount
of funding for nonproliferation by a combined $200 million,
bringing the total for nonproliferation to $2 billion
this year. Regrettably, this amendment was not made
in order.
On the Defense Department side, our amendment would
have added $50 million for the Cooperative Threat Reduction
program, or Nunn-Lugar. The goal of Nunn-Lugar is to
lessen the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction,
to deactivate and destroy these weapons and to help
scientists, formerly engaged in the production of such
weapons, start working for peace. To date, Nunn-Lugar
has reportedly helped destroy over 6,000 warheads.
The Defense Department authorization bill contained
a $41.6 million decrease in funds for Nunn-Lugar from
last year's level. In fact, it is a $34 million decrease
below the pre-September 11 level.
Last year, Congress expanded the scope of the Cooperative
Threat Reduction program to countries outside of the
former Soviet Union. They authorized $50 million for
this purpose. The amendment would have provided this
$50 million. The elimination of Libya and Iraq as states
of concern have presented us with new opportunities
for progress on nonproliferation, as has our improved
relationship with the former Soviet Union states whose
need for assistance in securing nuclear materials has
never been greater.
In the Department of Energy, there are countless programs
sorely in need of additional funding. Our amendment
would have provided $40 million more for global cleanout,
a program to secure and dispose of highly enriched uranium
at research reactors around the globe. There are over
345 operating or shut-down research reactors in 58 countries
fueled with highly enriched uranium.
The State Department has identified 24 other facilities
for highly enriched uranium cleanout operations because
they have enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon. Many
of these facilities are guarded by little more than
a night watchman and a chain link fence.
The Department of Defense authorization bill we just
passed only contains $9.8 million for this program,
which is only enough to clean out one site.
A recent report by the Project of Managing the Atom
at Harvard University suggests Congress appropriate
$40 million annually to fund global cleanout efforts.
Our amendment would have met or exceeded this goal.
And I have also introduced stand-alone legislation to
establish a structure to prioritize the effort to clean
out highly enriched uranium around the world. It would
have provided funding to downblend highly enriched uranium
to low enriched uranium so that it could not be used
directly to make nuclear weapons, but would be suitable
for nuclear power plant fuel.
Russia currently has over a thousand tons of highly
enriched uranium, enough for 20,000 simple nuclear weapons.
Under a 1993 U.S.-Russian agreement, Russia will convert
500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium to low enriched
uranium by 2013, but this program was zeroed out in
the Department of Energy's budget. We would have changed
that.
According to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute,
only a quarter of Russia's nuclear sites are properly
secured. We would have added funding for global nuclear
security. We would have added funding for security upgrades
at nine Russian weapons complexes.
The irony of removing this funding, of not sensing this
urgency, after going to war in Iraq over weapons of
mass destruction stockpiles we have not found, when
we know there are massive stockpiles in the former Soviet
Union for which we have cooperative arrangements to
secure and destroy, could not be more apparent. The
urgency could not be greater.
We would have paid for these programs, we would have
provided for the national defense, and this must be
an urgency.
Osama bin Laden has declared that the acquisition of
weapons of mass destruction is a religious duty. After
the Taliban was defeated, blueprints of a crude nuclear
weapon were found in a deserted al Qaeda headquarters
in Afghanistan.
My amendment would not have gotten us all the way to
the $3 billion recommended by the Baker-Cutler Commission,
but it was an important first step. We must continue
that process now in the conference committee, and I
would urge the conferees to take up the cause of nonproliferation
with the urgency it deserves.
To conclude, Mr. Speaker, as Senator Nunn put it so
well, the most effective, least expensive way to prevent
nuclear terrorism is to lock down and secure weapons
and fissile materials in every country, in every facility
that has them.
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