Senate OK's Bush plans for nuclear weapons research

By Nick Anderson, Los Angeles Times, 9/17/2003

WASHINGTON -- The Senate yesterday approved Bush administration plans to research new battlefield uses for nuclear weapons and improve the nation's capacity to make and test them.

The 53-41 vote to retain funding for the plan, powered by the administration's Republican allies, set up an unusual intraparty fight on Capitol Hill. The GOP-led House voted in July for legislation that would strip at least $16 million from Bush's nuclear weapons initiatives.

The Senate debate yesterday centered on whether the administration would be building nuclear bombs anytime soon. Democrats say things are moving rapidly in that direction; Republicans insist the administration's moves are only prudent planning.

The vote occurred before lawmakers approved a $27.9 billion bill funding the Energy Department and other programs in the fiscal year that begins next month.

"There's nothing in this bill that produces a single new nuclear weapon," said Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, whose state is home to critical weapons installations.

But Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, insisted otherwise. "This is the beginning," she said. "This money will go to field a new generation of nuclear weapons. We should not do this."

Feinstein and Senator Edward M. Kennedy had proposed an amendment to remove from the energy bill $15 million for research on an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon and $6 million for research on other "advanced concepts," including low-yield bombs.

Federal law for the past decade has prohibited research on such bombs, which carry an explosive force of five kilotons or less. But Congress, at the administration's urging, appears to be on the verge of repealing that prohibition. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 had an estimated yield of 12.5 kilotons.

Feinstein said the research would open the door to a new arms race among nations that see the United States as a superpower seeking to expand its nuclear capabilities. Domenici derided what he called an effort to "put blinders" on US scientists.

The amendment sponsored by Feinstein and Kennedy also would have blocked administration efforts to reduce the amount of time it would need to resume nuclear testing at an underground site in Nevada. The site requires up to three years before any test could be conducted. The administration wants to cut that timetable in half, even though officials said there were no plans to end a testing moratorium in place since 1992.

The California Democrat also sought to delay long-range plans for the construction of a facility to produce plutonium "pits," trigger-like devices that are a component in thermonuclear bombs.

Five Democrats joined 48 Republicans in voting to kill Feinstein's amendment. They were Evan Bayh of Indiana, Zell Miller of Georgia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida, and Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, whose state is a candidate for the new pit-production site.