LAT: Nuclear Spending Comes Under Fire

[DeepModem Mom]

Nuclear Spending Comes Under Fire
Congress members question the need to modernize weapons facilities, citing trouble with management.
By Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2006

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — The sprawling nuclear weapons laboratory here is just starting construction of a $1-billion plutonium research center, part of an ambitious plan to modernize its outdated facilities.

But congressional analysts and outside watchdogs are calling it a boondoggle — a facility that will be obsolete less than eight years after it opens. A congressional report this spring called the plan "simply irrational," and House lawmakers are trying to kill the project....

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It was a tough — but increasingly routine — rebuke for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, a vast enterprise of labs and factories from South Carolina to California that has thrived in the post-Cold War era.

The federal government has spent more than $65 billion on the complex over the last decade, and experts agree the United States has nuclear weapons that are reliable for use in war, safe from accidental detonation and secure from terrorists.

But Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as outside analysts, have grown increasingly concerned about what they see as sloppy management by the National Nuclear Security Administration....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nuke30jul30,0,83140,full.story?coll=la-home-nation

[mom cat]

1. It is about time that such questions be assked. We should also

be asking them about funding for new nukes, weapons in space and all research on use of various wave weapons.