Reply #9: Nuke redevelopment plan a boon for Livermore Lab [View All]

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The Bush administration's presentation Wednesday of a blueprint for a new, redesigned nuclear arsenal and a smaller, more modern nuclear weapons complex caps more than a year of talks with federal lawmakers and the weapons sites they represent.

Along the way, a key California congresswoman dropped her objections to taking weapons plutonium out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher also eased her skepticism about the design of new, age-resistant H-bombs called "reliable replacement warheads," or RRW, in the hope that they lead to a smaller nuclear arsenal and a global ban on nuclear testing.

"Like everything else, RRW on the face of it sounds very promising," Tauscher, D-Alamo, said Thursday.

The deal surprised critics of security at the nation's weapons complex. For years, they pointed to Livermore in particular as a huge risk for a terrorist attack — a lab storing enough plutonium and uranium to make dozens of atom bombs within 50 miles of three major cities and 7 million people.

Yet because the lab was surrounded by suburban homes and apartments, its security forces until recently were not armed with machine guns, much less the grenade launchers and truck bombs that terrorists were deemed likely to bring.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_3683813


"Orwellian nonsense. Building more weapons will mean less weapons in the future, and an end to such weapons, according to twits like Tauscher.