The START Treaty Gets a Push

The new START treaty between the United States and Russia (the previous one expired in December) has fallen off the radar a bit since President Barack Obama signed it and sent it to Congress last May. The treaty was not ratified before Congress’ August recess.

Here’s what the treaty means to do, in its own words:

1. Each Party shall reduce and limit its ICBMs and ICBM
launchers, SLBMs and SLBM launchers, heavy bombers, ICBM
warheads, SLBM warheads, and heavy bomber nuclear armaments, so that seven years after entry into force of this Treaty and thereafter, the aggregate numbers, as counted in accordance with Article I11 of this Treaty, do not exceed:

(a) 700, for deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed
heavy bombers;

(b) 1550, for warheads on deployed ICBMs, warheads on
deployed SLBMs, and nuclear warheads counted for deployed
heavy bombers;

(c) 800, for deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers,
deployed and non-deployed SLBM launchers, and deployed and
non-deployed heavy bombers.

Those 1,550 warheads for each country would represent a reduction from 2,200 warheads currently. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton gave a speech Wednesday to push the treaty along:

President Bush actually began this process more than two years ago with broad, bipartisan agreement that a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was imperative for the peace and security of our world. The Obama Administration has followed through with painstaking negotiations to finalize an agreement that lives up to this high standard and makes concrete steps to reduce the threat of strategic arms.

This treaty is another step in the process of bilateral nuclear reductions initiated by President Reagan and supported overwhelmingly by both Republican and Democratic presidents and congresses alike. In every instance, the Senate has ratified such treaties with overwhelming bipartisan support.

So far, only Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) has signaled approval on the Republican side of the aisle, but since he’s the ranking member on the Foreign Relations committee, his endorsement carries considerable weight.

Where Republicans have voiced concerns, it is about the state of the nuclear arsenal and a need to modernize it.

"There is a fair amount of concern among conservative circles that our strategic nuclear forces need to be modernized and indeed they do. The strategic forces the U.S. has today are the product of a recapitalization [modernization] effort done by the Reagan administration - so they are 20, to 30-years-old. They do need to be modernized," [Frank Miller, a former senior official on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush] said.

Here’s Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) on this issue:

That’s why I offered an amendment last year that requires the President to develop a plan to modernize our nuclear deterrent and submit it to the Senate along with a START follow-on treaty. Senators Byrd, Levin, McCain, Kerry, and Lugar joined me in writing to the President to emphasize the point. Subsequently, 41 Senators wrote to the President in December, articulating the objectives that a modernization plan must meet before a START follow-on agreement could win their support.

The treaty addresses modernization directly.

1. Subject to the provisions of this Treaty, modernization
and replacement of strategic offensive arms may be carried
out.

And the main provision regarding this is that, if Russia or the U.S. devise a new kind of weapon, the other can raise questions about it. However, the Senate wants to mandate that modernization, which the treaty does not do. Secretary Clinton offered some reassurance during her speech:

In fact, President Obama’s budget request for the next fiscal year represents a 13 percent increase for weapons activities and infrastructure. Over the next decade we are asking for an $80 billion investment in our nuclear security complex. Linton Brooks, the head of President Bush’s national security complex, has applauded our budget and our commitment to nuclear modernization.

I ran into some starkly wrong or overly partisan responses to the treaty, but they haven’t really gained much traction. It may be that the mid-term elections may ultimately delay a vote, but right now, it looks like debate will start in September. So let’s follow this one and see where it leads.

Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.). I haven’t seen enough of Kyl to know if he favors big gestures – but this one is pretty expressive.

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog