Senate OKs Study of Nuclear Arms
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday 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 had voted overwhelmingly in July for legislation that would strip at least $16 million from Bush's nuclear weapons initiatives.
The Senate debate Tuesday 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 came before lawmakers approved a $27.9-billion bill funding the Energy Department and other government programs in the fiscal year that begins next month.
"There's nothing in this bill that produces a single new nuclear weapon," said Republican Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, whose state is home to critical weapons installations.
But Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) 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 had proposed an amendment to remove from the energy bill $15 million for research on earth-penetrating nuclear weapons and $6 million for research on other "advanced concepts," including low-yield bombs.
Federal law for the last 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, Japan, 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 U.S. scientists.
The amendment sponsored by Feinstein and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) 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. Currently, 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 that has been in place since 1992.
