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1A) Nuclear Weapons

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, while I am on the floor, I wish to mention that a couple of my colleagues--I believe, Senator Feinstein and Senator Kennedy--will be on the floor later today with an amendment dealing with the issue of nuclear weapons. I want to join them in pointing out my special concern about what is happening with respect to nuclear weapons.

   We have roughly 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world--30,000 nuclear weapons, the use of any one of which would cause a catastrophe, as all of us know. So we have had what we call a doctrine of mutually assured destruction for a long, long while, with the other nuclear superpower believing no one would be able to use a nuclear weapon in an attack because they would be obliterated by the other side.

   That doctrine of mutually assured destruction has lasted for well over a half century. There are many in the world that aspire to achieve nuclear weapons for their own use--terrorists and other countries.

   The world depends on us and on our leadership to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. There is no--I repeat, there is no--duty that is more important, in my judgment, than for this country to use its leadership capability to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. For surely, if nuclear weapons proliferate in this world, they will, one day, be used, and when used in anger will persuade others to use them; and this Earth will not be the kind of Earth that we recognize in the future.

   The Energy and Water appropriations bill contains certain money to develop new bunker-buster nuclear weapons and to come up with so-called advanced concepts for new more ``useable'' nuclear weapons, and it has money to make it easier to end the ban on testing so we would begin testing once again.

   This is, in my judgment, reckless discussion, reckless talk. It certainly falls under the rubric of free speech and free debate, but I happen to think this country ought to say to the rest of the world: We want to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, No. 1. And we don't need to develop new nuclear weapons. We have far more than anyone needs. And second, the last thing we ought to do is to suggest to anyone there is a green light for anyone to use, at any time, under any circumstances, nuclear weapons.

   Here on this chart is what the House of Representatives said in their report recently about the administration's plans for nuclear weapons:

   It appears to the Committee the Department is proposing to rebuild, restart, and redo and otherwise exercise every capability that was used over the past forty years of the Cold War and at the same time prepare for a future with an expanded mission for nuclear weapons.

   As indicated on this other chart, here is the stockpile of nuclear weapons--roughly 30,000. We have about 10,000; the Russians have about 18,000--you can see a few others around--the use of any one of which or the stealing of any one of which or the loss of any one of which to a terrorist group or a rogue nation would be devastating if they were to detonate.

   The people who are talking about developing new nuclear weapons are saying: What we ought to do is take a look at earth-penetrating, bunker-buster nuclear weapons. What a wonderful idea that is, they say.

   Well, the best scientists tell us you cannot penetrate

   the earth much more than 45 or 60 feet; you just can't. But they are talking about nuclear weapons up to 1 megaton, 60 to 70 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb. That is what they talk about here: earth-penetrating, bunker-buster nuclear weapons. That means this country would build a nuclear weapon that we could actually use, not to deter someone else from using it, but a nuclear weapon that would be a useful weapon for designer purposes. If you have a bunker that you can't bust, lob over a nuclear weapon.

   Here is a picture of what a 100-kiloton nuclear explosion 635 feet underground does at the surface. These are not tiny, little designer nuclear weapons. These are huge explosions.

   The explosion shown on this picture was 635 feet underground. Likely, a bunker-buster weapon would be detonated at 50 to 60 feet underground.

   The point is this: We have a responsibility in this country, it seems to me, on these policies to exhibit great restraint. We have countries in the world that do have nuclear weapons, and we worry a great deal about them using them. India and Pakistan each have nuclear weapons. They don't like each other very much. There have been moments when we have been very concerned about the command and control of nuclear weapons in some other countries.

   Our job, at this point, is not to be talking about building new nuclear weapons: low-yield nuclear weapons, bunker-buster, earth-penetrator nuclear weapons, to begin testing nuclear weapons. Our job, it seems to me, is to talk about restraint.

   We have all the nuclear weapons we will ever need, well over 10,000, both theater and strategic nuclear weapons. We do not need to be building more. We do not need to talk about using nuclear weapons. Those who talk about building specific-use nuclear weapons and saying there is a use for actual employment of nuclear weapons in conflict, that is not, in my judgment, in the long-term interests of this world or this country. I hope we will exhibit much more restraint than that.

   I know some will say: Well, we are simply beginning research on some of these issues. I say we do not need to research earth-penetrating, bunker-buster nuclear weapons. That is not in our country's interest, with due respect.

   What we ought to do is to exhibit every ounce of energy that we can and that we have to try to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, so that, God forbid, other countries do not acquire nuclear weapons, and then begin to work to reduce the number of nuclear weapons around the rest of the world.

   I know the amendment that will be offered by my colleague Senator Feinstein, this afternoon, will be controversial and will be debated. I respect people who do not share my own opinion on this issue, but I feel very strongly that the only conceivable future for nuclear weapons--for my children and grandchildren and yours--is to try to prevent nuclear weapons from ever again being used. That is the only thoughtful and conceivable future that will not address the future of this world in a very negative way.

   We must use our leadership capabilities. We are a great country and a mighty country. We must use our capabilities to persuade others that the use of nuclear weapons is not something that is thinkable or conceivable.

   We must exert every energy to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to so many others who want to obtain them in a way that would be destructive to our long-term interests.

   I yield the floor.

1B) S.A. 1655 to Energy Appropriations

AMENDMENT NO. 1655

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that this administration is reopening the nuclear door. They are doing this to develop essentially a new generation of nuclear weapons. They call them low yield. It is contained in words such as ``advanced concepts.'' Essentially, they are battlefield tactical nuclear weapons.

   This latest Defense authorization bill reversed the Spratt-Furse amendment which had existed for 10 years and had prohibited the development of low-yield nuclear weapons. So for 10 years there was a prohibition on this reopening of the nuclear door.

   With this year's Defense authorization bill, that went down the tubes. Now we see in this Energy appropriations bill money to move along in the development and the research of these weapons.

   What is interesting to me is when you ask these questions in committee, as I did of Secretary Rumsfeld--and I will get to that--what we hear is: Oh, it is just a study.

   In fact, last year, $14 million was appropriated for the study. It is more than just the study. It is the study and development.

   I rise today to send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy; the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Reed; the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Lautenberg; the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden; and the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

   The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

   The Senator from California [Mrs. Feinstein], for herself, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Reed, Mr. Lautenberg, Mr. Wyden, and Mr. Feingold, proposes an amendment numbered 1655.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To prohibit the use of funds for Department of Energy activities relating to the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, Advanced Weapons Concepts, modification of the readiness posture of the Nevada Test Site, and the Modern Pit Facility, and to make the amount of funds made available by the prohibition for debt reduction)

    After section 503, insert the following:

    SEC. 504. (a) REDUCTION IN AMOUNT AVAILABLE FOR NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION.--The amount appropriated by title III of this Act under the heading ``ATOMIC ENERGY DEFENSE ACTIVITIES'' under the heading ``NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION'' under the heading ``WEAPONS ACTIVITIES'' is hereby reduced by $21,000,000, with the amount of the reduction to be allocated so that--

    (1) no funds shall be available for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator; and

    (2) no funds shall be available for Advanced Weapons Concepts.

    (b) PROHIBITION ON USE OF FUNDS FOR CERTAIN MODIFICATION OF READINESS POSTURE OF NEVADA TEST SITE.--None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act for the Department of Energy may be obligated or expended for the purpose of modifying the readiness posture of the Nevada Test Site, Nevada, for the resumption by the United States of underground nuclear weapons tests from the current readiness of posture of 24 months to 36 months to a new readiness posture of 18 months or any other readiness posture of less than 24 months.

    (c) PROHIBITION ON USE OF FUNDS FOR SITE SELECTION OF MODERN PIT FACILITY.--None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act for the Department of Energy may be obligated or expended for the purpose of site selection of the Modern Pit Facility.

    (d) REDUCTION OF PUBLIC DEBT.--Of the amount appropriated by this Act, $21,000,000 shall not be obligated or expended, but shall be utilized instead solely for purposes of the reduction of the public debt.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I am very concerned that through a policy of unilateralism and preemption, combined with the creation of new nuclear weapons, we may very well be encouraging the very nuclear proliferation we seek to prevent. It seems to me that pursuing the development of new tactical battlefield nuclear weapons not only lowers the threshold for possible use but also blurs the distinction between nuclear and nonnuclear weapons.

   The amendment I have just sent to the desk essentially in many ways mirrors what the House of Representatives has done. Much to the credit of Chairman Hobson, the House of Representatives has deleted this funding. I believe very strongly the Senate should follow.

   The amendment I proposed would strike $15 million for the study of the development of the robust nuclear earth penetrator and $6 million in funding for advanced nuclear weapons concepts, including the study for development of low-yield weapons--these are battlefield tactical nuclear weapons--and it would prohibit spending--this is where it is a little different in the Senate version than in the House version--in the 2004 year to increase the Nevada Test Site's time to test readiness posture from the current 24 to 36 months to 18 months. The House actually cut the 24 $8 million. We fence it for this year.

   Secondly, it would implement site selection for the modern pit facility. The House cut $12 million. We would delay it for 1 year.

   The House also redirected the savings from this bill for water projects. We essentially use the money for deficit reduction. By seeking to develop a new generation of 5-kiloton, or below, tactical nuclear weapons, which produce smaller explosions, the administration is suggesting we can make nuclear weapons less deadly. It is suggesting we can make them more acceptable to use. Neither is true.

   By seeking to develop a robust nuclear earth penetrator, the administration seems to be moving toward a military posture in which nuclear weapons are considered just like other weapons--like a tank, a fighter aircraft, or a cruise missile. By seeking to speed up

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the time to test requirement for the Nevada Test Site, the administration is taking us down a road that may well lead to the resumption of underground nuclear testing, overturning a 10-year moratorium. By seeking to move forward with the modern pit facility, the administration appears to be seeking to develop a facility that will, in 1 year, allow the United States to produce a number of plutonium pits that exceeds the entire current arsenal of China.

   Given that the United States has a robust pit stockpile and plans for a facility that will be able to produce an adequate number of replacement pits in the coming years, questions must be asked as to why a facility like the modern pit facility is necessary, and why now? What sort of message is the United States sending to the rest of the world, at a time when we are trying to discourage others from developing their own nuclear arsenal, by our taking this action? We say to North Korea, you cannot do this. We say to Iran, you cannot do this. Yet we set a precedent whereby countries such as Pakistan and India--each with their own indigenous nuclear capability, each diehard enemies--may well take the example and say: If they can do it, we can do it. We should start our own advanced concepts program.

   I deeply believe the combined impact of studies or development of new nuclear weapons enhancing the posture of our test sites and developing a new plutonium pit facility could well have the result of leading these other nuclear powers and nuclear aspirants to resume or start testing and to seek to enlarge their own nuclear forces--action that would fundamentally alter future nonproliferation efforts and undermine our own security. Instead of increasing it, it will undermine it.

   The House of Representatives had the foresight to realize that going down this path was not in the best interest of the United States national security. I truly hope this Senate will respond and do the same. I cannot say enough good things about Chairman Hobson. I have had the privilege of

   working with him on MilCon, and I think he has shown dramatic courage, spunk, individualism, good thinking, and solid common sense.

   Nearly 60 years ago, our world was introduced to nuclear weapons. I was 12 years old when the Enola Gay left our shores. I saw a 15-kiloton bomb destroy Hiroshima. It killed up to 140,000 people--just that bomb killed 140,000 people. A 21-kiloton bomb then destroyed Nagasaki, killing 80,000 people. Two bombs, 220,000 people dead, and the largest pattern of destruction the world has ever seen--just look at it on this photo.

   For the decades that followed, we saw a standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union with armadas of nuclear weapons, many of which remain today. They are targeted at each other's cities even right this very minute. We have seen other nations become nuclear powers--the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan. And others--like I said, Iran and North Korea clearly have nuclear aspirations. But after decades of steady progress, our efforts against nuclear proliferation have also produced a number of dividends. Nuclear-capable states, like South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan have either forgone developing nuclear weapons or, like the States of the former Soviet Union, given up the weapons they possessed. China has recently signaled it might be willing, finally, to sign onto the comprehensive test ban treaty. When U.S. policy can urge others to act responsibly, the world is a far safer place and the United States is safer as well.

   As we continue to prosecute the war on terror, it should be a central tenet of the U.S. policy to do everything at our disposal to make nuclear weapons less desirable, less available, and less likely to be used. This does just the opposite.

   This administration appears to be looking for new ways to use our nuclear advantage, to restructure our force so nuclear weapons are more ``usable.'' That sends a very troubling message to others who might also aspire to obtain or use nuclear weapons.

   Let me just quote a Pentagon spokesperson in saying this:

   This administration is fashioning a more diverse set of options for deterring the threat of weapons of mass destruction. That is why the administration is pursuing advanced conventional forces and improved intelligence capabilities. A combination of offensive and defensive and nuclear and nonnuclear capabilities is essential to meet the deterrence requirements of the 21st century.

   I profoundly disagree. If the most potent conventional military on Earth cannot meet the challenges without new nuclear weapons, it is a tragedy indeed. The administration's own nuclear posture review, released in January of 2002, did not focus solely on the role of nuclear weapons for deterrence. It stressed the importance of actually being prepared to use nuclear weapons. In fact, the review noted we must now plan to possibly use them against a wider range of countries.

   To that end, I would like to put into the record a New York Times article by Michael R. Gordon, dated March 9. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the RECORD following my comments.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   (See exhibit 1.)

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, in addition, the nuclear posture review said we need to develop new types of weapons so we can use them in a wider variety of circumstances and against a wider range of targets, such as hard and deeply buried targets, or to defeat chemical and biological weapons. Even the New York Times suggests we would even consider a first strike against a nonnuclear country if that country possessed biological or chemical weapons.

   It seems clear that this administration is no longer focused solely on the role of nuclear weapons for deterrence. Rather, the new triad proposed by the administration has grouped nuclear and conventional weapons together on a continuum, believing each has an equal role on the battlefield.

   During the cold war, the nuclear triad consisted of air, land, and sea nuclear forces--bombers, ALBMs, ICBMs and SLBMs. The new triad consists of offensive strike forces, missile defense--which has yet, incidentally, been shown to work--and a responsive infrastructure to support the forces. Strategic nuclear forces are combined dangerously, in my view, with conventional strike capabilities in the offensive leg of the new triad.

   This new triad represents a radical departure from the idea that our strategic nuclear forces are primarily intended for deterrence, not for offense as the new triad proposes.

   In a few months, after issuing the Nuclear Posture Review, President Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 17 indicating the United States might use nuclear weapons to respond to a chemical or biological attack. I find the Nuclear Posture Review and NSPD-17 deeply disturbing.

   Some have maintained we don't need to concern ourselves too much with these documents because they are merely intellectual exercises. In fact, at a hearing of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in May, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld about where the administration was going on these issues. He responded, in essence, that there was nothing to be concerned about because current research to develop nuclear weapons is just a study. But the fact is, the administration has begun to take concrete steps toward developing new classes of nuclear weapons. In fact, the administration's statement of policy for the fiscal year 2004 Defense authorization bill may well have been more honest than intended. This is the statement of administration policy:

   The administration appreciates the Senate Armed Services Committee's continued support of our national defense and support for critical research and development for low-yield nuclear weapons.

   As Fred Celec, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense for Nuclear Matters, stated: If a hydrogen bomb can be successfully designed to survive a crash through hard rock or concrete and still explode, ``it will ultimately get fielded.''

   That is his statement: If a hydrogen bomb can be successfully designed to survive a crash through hard rock or concrete and still explode, ``it will ultimately get fielded.''

   That is where we are going, Mr. President. I believe it is in this context that we must view the funding requests in this bill.

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   This is not an esoteric funding request. I don't believe it is just a study. I believe it is the second step in the study and in the development of these so-called advanced nuclear concepts of moving up test readiness, of building a huge modern pit facility. The legislation before us today contains funding to start that process of developing this next generation of nuclear weapons, clear and simple.

   I strongly support a robust military, and our safety interests and our security interests should be protected, but I believe we are going to make our Nation and our allies less secure, not more, if the United States opens the door to the

   development, testing, and deployment of new tactical and low-yield nuclear weapons.

   I think there are several things wrong with the logic which suggests that using these weapons is acceptable. First, using nuclear weapons, even small ones, will cross a line that has been in place for 60 years. I don't want to be a Member of the Senate who crosses that line and has to explain to my five grandchildren why I voted to sanction a new generation of nuclear weapons, whether it is a robust earth penetrator or whether it is a tactical battlefield weapon, because you cannot protect from the radiation. What grandmother or mother wants to send their son or daughter on to a battlefield with tactical nuclear weapons? Sixty years of history is in the process of being reversed.

   It was the Secretary of State, GEN Colin Powell, who wrote in his autobiography about possibly using tactical nuclear weapons in Europe to thwart a Soviet invasion. Let me read what he said. He wrote:

   No matter how small these nuclear payloads were, we would be crossing a threshold. Using nukes would mark one of the most significant political and military decisions since Hiroshima.

   That is what we are doing, I say to my colleagues--one of the most significant decisions since Hiroshima--and his statement in his book is just as true today.

   Second, I wish to speak for a moment about the fact that there is no such thing as a clean or usable nuclear bomb. According to Stanford University physicist, Dr. Sidney Drell, the effects of a small bomb would be dramatic. A 1-kiloton weapon detonated 20 to 50 feet underground--1 kiloton detonated 20 to 50 feet underground--would dig a crater the size of Ground Zero and eject a million cubic feet of radioactive debris into the air. This chart shows 1 kiloton at 30 feet and it will eject a million cubic feet of radioactive debris into the air.

   A low-yield weapon would have very little utility in trying to destroy a deeply buried underground bunker. Given the insurmountable physics problems associated with burrowing a warhead deep into the earth, destroying a target hidden beneath a thousand feet of rock will require a nuclear weapon of almost 100 kilotons. That is 10 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

   As this chart shows, if a bunker buster were able to burrow into the earth to reach its maximum feasible depth--that is about 35 feet--it still would not be deep enough to contain a bomb with an explosive yield of only .2 kilotons, 75 times smaller than the bomb that exploded over Hiroshima, let alone a 100-kiloton bomb.

   Let me make the point. To destroy a typical bunker or another underground target, such as a chemical or biological weapons facility, you would need to burrow down at least 800 feet, which is not physically possible, or detonate a 100-kiloton weapon whose fallout and destruction belie the idea that an antiseptic nuclear weapon can be developed. Anything short of that would not contain the fallout.

   A fireball would break through the surface, scattering enormous amounts of radioactive debris--1.5 million tons for a 100-kiloton bomb--into the atmosphere. As this map of the Korean peninsula shows, just the path fallout, with travel in typical weather, would place both South Korea and Japan in severe danger while placing millions of innocent people at risk if a nuclear bunker buster were to be used in North Korea. We can see it used at this point. We can see the path of fallout. It is devastating.

   Ultimately, the depth of penetration of the robust nuclear earth penetrator is limited by the strength of the missile casing. The deepest our current earth penetrators can burrow is 20 feet of dry earth. Casing made of even the stronger material cannot withstand the physical forces of burrowing through 100 feet of granite, much less 800 feet.

   I believe it is deeply flawed to argue, as some robust nuclear earth penetrator proponents do, that because it would penetrate the earth before detonating, it would be a clean weapon. It will not be.

   In fact, far more than the added explosive power a nuclear weapon provides, the most important factor in destroying a deeply buried target is knowing exactly where it is. Someone is not going to drop a bomb such as a robust nuclear earth penetrator unless they know exactly where the target is. If they know exactly where the target is, there are other things that can be done. It can be destroyed with conventional weapons. Access to it can be prevented by destroying entrances, cutting off electricity, cutting off air ducts. Cutting off a bunker in this way renders it useless just as effectively as destroying it with a nuclear blast.

   The fact is that our intelligence is weak. So I very much doubt we are going to be throwing around bunker busters of 100 kilotons that are nuclear with this fallout spread when we really do not know, among the tens of thousands of holes the North Koreans have in the ground, exactly what is what.

   Thirdly, the development of new low-yield nuclear weapons could lead--and this is where we are going--to the resumption of underground nuclear testing in order to test the new weapons. This would overturn the 10-year moratorium on nuclear testing. So we are changing 60 years of history. We are overturning a 10-year moratorium. This could lead other countries to resume or start testing, actions that would fundamentally alter future nonproliferation and counterproliferation efforts.

   The March 2003 Arms Control Today points out an interesting thing:

   In 1995, many of the world's nonnuclear states made it clear their continued adherence to the NPT was contingent on the cessation of all nuclear-yield testing. ..... A decision to resume testing to build low-yield nuclear weapons could deal the regime a fatal blow while providing the United States a capability of questionable military value.

   This is where we are going with this bill. We are moving up test readiness from 24 to 30 months to 18 months. So inherent in this bill is the beginning of expedited testing, overturning 60 years, going against the nonproliferation treaty, which will then encourage other nations to do the same, and beginning testing once again.

   According to the 2003 Report to Congress on Nuclear Test Readiness, 18 months is the minimum time necessary to prepare a test once a problem is identified. Yet even during the cold war when tests were ongoing on a regular basis, the

   Nuclear National Security Agency found that it required 18 to 24 months to design and field a test with full diagnostics.

   As purely a technical matter, 18 months is also an extremely short timeframe for test readiness. So why are we doing it? Why are we doing it now with no pressing need? Why is the administration pushing so hard for the absolute minimum time necessary to conduct a test?

   This tells me exactly where this administration is going. Even putting aside the concern I have about the message that the United States moving ahead with test readiness sends to the rest of the world, this short time period may well not be technologically feasible.

   In an op-ed in the Washington Post on July 21, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said this:

   We are not planning to resume testing; nor are we improving test readiness in order to develop new nuclear weapons. In fact, we are not planning to develop any new nuclear weapons at all.

   Then what are we doing this for? Fourteen million dollars last year, $50 million this year, a $4 billion modern pit facility program over 10 years. What are we doing it for? I think what the Secretary did by these comments is really an injustice in terms of casting a web over these moves that is not credible.

   I can only deduce that despite all the ``this is just a study'' rhetoric, there is an intention to test, and this administration is reopening the nuclear door

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to develop a new generation of tactical battlefield nuclear weapons, and I do not want to be a part of it.

   In fact, in a September 3 interview, Fred Celec stated:

   If you say, I've got to go to design a new nuclear weapon ..... you probably will have to have a nuclear test.

   Likewise, I have serious concerns about the intentions behind the funds included in this bill for work on the modern pit facility. As I have said, the modern pit facility is the administration's proposed $4 billion plan where new plutonium pits for nuclear weapons will be fabricated. This facility, when completed, would be able to produce 250 to 900 plutonium pits per year.

   To put this in perspective, if the proposed modern pit facility operated at half of its capacity, it could equal or exceed China's entire new nuclear arsenal in 1 year. This production would be in excess of our current inventory of 15,000 plutonium pits.

   What does this say to other nations? What does this say to China? What does it say to Iraq? What does it say to Iran, Pakistan, India, or any other nation? What does it say to North Korea?

   At a time when we should be lessening our reliance on nuclear weapons and lessening the amount of fissile material available which might fall into the hands of terrorists, encouraging other countries in the world to do likewise by following our example, why do we need this new production capability?

   The Department of Energy has already begun a separate $2.3 billion pit fabrication and plutonium chemistry complex at Los Alamos, which will begin producing 20 pits per year in 2007 and can be equipped and enlarged to produce as many as 150 pits per year. So what do we need this for? No one has answered that question.

   With the current age of our stockpile pits averaging 19 years, and the Department of Energy estimating a pit minimum lifetime to be 45 to 60 years, with no ``life-limiting factors'' being identified, why put our Nation $4 billion further into debt by creating additional capacity for plutonium pits we don't need? We can't find anything that indicates why we need these additional plutonium pits. As I said, we already have a $2.3 billion program to produce 20 pits that can go up to 150 pits. Are we going into some kind of enormous program that we don't know about?

   The House report language in their version of the energy and water bill put it this way:

   It appears to the Committee that the Department is proposing to rebuild, restart, and redo and otherwise exercise every capability that was used over the past 40 years of the cold war, and at the same time prepare for a future with an expanded mission for nuclear weapons. Nothing in the past performance of NNSA convinces this Committee that the successful implementation of the Stockpile Stewardship Program is a foregone conclusion, which makes the pursuit of a broad range of new initiatives premature.

   This was just written. This was considered by the House of Representatives, and the House of Representatives had the guts to take it out of the bill. So this amendment would put in place a 1-year stay. It is a little different from the House bill. It would put in place a 1-year stay on site selection for the modern pit facility. If the administration can come forward with a convincing rationale and plans in a year, we can revisit this issue. But until then, we should not be supporting this new initiative.

   Today, America's current conventional and nuclear forces vastly overpower those of any other nation. So for me, it is difficult if not impossible to reconcile building a multibillion-dollar nuclear bomb factory, which is what this is, as we preach the importance of limiting proliferation and preventing other nations from developing weapons of mass destruction. And, if I may say so, it is hypocritical. It is hypocritical; we say one thing to others and we do an entirely different thing ourselves. If that is not hypocrisy, I don't know what is.

   Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nuclear weapon states are committed to halting so-called vertical proliferation. That means they are prohibited from increasing their nuclear stockpiles. They are prohibited. The purpose is to encourage other nations to halt horizontal proliferation, whereby more and more nations become nuclear capable. That is what the NPT is trying to do. They are trying to stop it, and we are doing exactly the opposite. If our country goes down the road of developing and bringing the modern pit facility on line, we will effectively undermine the nonproliferation treaty.

   I know the Bush administration doesn't like it. I know they don't attend meetings. I know we are now on a big unilateral binge, where we know better than anybody else. But this is for our children and our grandchildren. Perhaps more than any other this represents the country we try to be and the country we are going to be.

   I think with this legislation, and by going down this path, we undermine the nonproliferation treaty. Maybe that is what they want to happen. And by our example we create an incentive and we present a challenge to others with nuclear aspirations to develop them.

   I don't know whether that is the intention. We know ballistic missile defense does the same thing. I think we are seeing, in Iraq, where unilateralism is not working. We have before us an $87 billion supplemental which will bring the cost of the war to about $166 billion so far. Yet we are starting a whole new nuclear program.

   I guess why I don't like it, most of all, is it is all done under the guise of study, of development. The facts are never really put on the table. It just kind of happens. Then some get kind of ``suckered'' into it, if I can use that word, because of the economics of doing it in this State or that State or competing for it.

   We need to begin to think what we are competing for. I don't want us to compete for something that is going to encourage China to begin nuclear weapons production or begin testing. I don't want to encourage something that is going to say to Pakistan and India: We developed tactical battlefield nuclear weapons. Look at our example. That is what we are doing and we don't see it.

   Finally, to those who argue that the United States needs new weapons for new missions, I should point out that the United States already has a usable nuclear bunker buster, the B61-11, which has a dial-to-yield feature, allowing its yield to range from less than a kiloton to several hundred kilotons. When configured to have a 10-kiloton yield and detonated 4 feet underground, the B61-11 can produce a shock wave sufficient to crush a bunker buried beneath 350 feet of layered rock.

   If, indeed--I don't think there is--but if there is a legitimate military mission for these kinds of weapons, the experts tell us we already have one. We don't need new nuclear weapons. On the other hand, the U.S. military, the strongest and most capable military force the world has ever seen, has plenty of effective conventional options designed to penetrate deeply into the earth and destroy underground bunkers and storage facilities. These range in size from 500 pounds to 5,000 pounds, and most are equipped with either a laser or a GPS guidance system. The 5,000-pound bunker buster, like the guided bomb unit 28/B, is capable of penetrating up to 20 feet of reinforced concrete, or 100 feet of earth.

   The GBU-28 was used with much success in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

   Other conventional bunker busters were used to take out Saddam Hussein's underground lairs in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In fact, the U.S. military possesses a conventional bunker buster--the GBU-37--which is thought to be capable of taking out a silo-based ICBM.

   I only wish that instead of beginning the research and development of a new generation of weapons, this administration would lead efforts to prevent nuclear development and prevent the spread and delegitimize the use and utility of nuclear weapons. Oh, how I wish they would. Instead, with these appropriations a new nuclear arms race will begin. Let there be no doubt. I know it as sure as I am standing here now. I know it from the judgment of past history. I know how difficult it has been. I know just how difficult it was to reach agreements with the Soviet Union to begin to ratchet down the nuclear arsenal of both of our countries. We will be dealing with governments far more difficult to deal with than the Soviet Union, like those typified by North Korea.

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   If we appropriate these dollars, we can expect that other nations will follow, that a new nuclear race will begin to develop, and the chance that one day, somehow, some way they will be used against us. Those chances are clear. Let there be no doubt.

   As the Economist concluded in its May 17 issue:

   In their determination to leave no weapons avenue unexplored [the administration] is proposing to lead America along a dangerous path.

   This is why our amendment seeks to strike the funding in this bill for the development of the robust nuclear earth penetrator and the other so-called advanced concepts--I hate calling nuclear weapons ``advanced concepts''--including low-yield weapons, and to limit the funding for enhanced test readiness and the modern pit facility.

   Right now our country is spending well over $400 billion on defense. Next year we will spend more on our military than all of the other 191 nations on the planet combined. If we can't protect ourselves without thinking about nuclear weapons, who can? Who can? We spend more than 191 nations combined--all of the other nations on Earth. Yet the proposal is that we reopen the nuclear door and begin a new generation of nuclear weapons.

   I think once again we will see rogue states basically conclude that they will be safe from the United States only if they develop their own nuclear weapons quickly. I think that is exactly what is happening in North Korea, which has responded to the Bush administration's aggressive posture by claiming that only a ``tremendous military deterrent'' will protect it from the United States. Now Iran is following suit. Will we encourage India and Pakistan to develop tactical nuclear weapons as well?

   Indeed, by seeking to develop new nuclear weapons ourselves, we send a message that nuclear weapons have a future battlefield role and utility. This is the wrong message. It takes us in the wrong direction. In my view, it will cause Americans to be placed in greater jeopardy in the future.

   We are telling others not to develop nuclear weapons and not to sell fissile materials, but we continue to study and design new nuclear weapons ourselves. Again, ``hypocrisy.''

   I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. The House has totally eliminated the money. We don't do exactly that. We eliminate some and we fence others. We delay the pit facility for 1 year. We don't use the money for water projects, and we don't use it for deficit reduction.

   I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I urge them to realize that we are at a historic turning point. It may well be that people do not remember the Enola Gay, they don't remember Hiroshima, they don't remember Nagasaki, and they don't remember that 220,000 people were killed instantly in both of those strikes. They don't remember Chernobyl and what radioactive fallout does to people.

   I see this as a very historic vote. The way is carved for us by the House of Representatives. They have eliminated funding. They have done what is right. I hope we follow suit.

   I yield the floor.

   Exhibit 1

[From the New York Times, March 10, 2002]

   U.S. Nuclear Plan Sees New Targets and New Weapons

(By Michael R. Gordon)

   Outlining a broad overhaul of American nuclear policy, a secret Pentagon report calls for developing new nuclear weapons that would be better suited for striking targets in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya.

   The Nuclear Posture Review, as the Pentagon report is known, is a comprehensive blueprint for developing and deploying nuclear weapons. While some of the report is unclassified, key portions are secret.

   In campaigning for office President Bush stressed that he wanted to slash the number of nuclear weapons and develop a military that would be suited for the post-cold war world.

   The new Pentagon report, in fact, finds that non-nuclear conventional weapons are becoming an increasingly important element of the Pentagon arsenal. But the report also indicates that the Pentagon views nuclear weapons as an important element of military planning.

   It stresses a need to develop earth-penetrating nuclear weapons to destroy heavily fortified underground bunkers, including those that may be used to store chemical and biological weapons. It calls for improving the intelligence and targeting systems needed for nuclear strikes and argues that the United States may need to resume nuclear testing.

   The New York Times obtained a copy of the 56-page report. Elements of the report were reported today by the Los Angeles Times.

   One of the most sensitive portions of the report is a secret discussion of contingencies in which the United States might need to use its ``nuclear strike capabilities'' against a foe.

   During the cold war, the United States used nuclear weapons to deter a Soviet attack on Western Europe.

   But now, the Pentagon report says, the nation faces new contingencies in which nuclear weapons might be employed, including ``an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors, or a North Korean attack on South Korea or a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan.'' Another theme in the report is the possible use of nuclear weapons to destroy enemy stocks of biological weapons, chemical arms and other arms of mass destruction.

   Pentagon and White House officials turned down repeated requests for interviews on the report. The Pentagon issued a statement this evening noting that the purpose of the review was to analyze nuclear weapons requirements, not to specify targets.

   ``It does not provide operational guidance on nuclear targeting or planning,'' the Pentagon statement said. ``The Department of Defense continues to plan for a broad range of contingencies and unforeseen threats to the United States and its allies. We do so in order to deter such attacks in the first place.''

   ``This administration is fashioning a more diverse set of options for deterring the threat of weapons of mass destruction,'' the Pentagon statement continued. ``That is why the administration is pursuing advanced conventional forces and improved intelligence capabilities. A combination of offensive and defensive, and nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities is essential to meet the deterrence requirements of the 21st century.''

   Critics responded to the report by complaining that the Bush administration was not only pushing for the development of new types of nuclear weapons, but broadening the circumstances in which they might be used.

   ``Despite their pronouncements of wanting to slash nuclear arms, the Bush administration is reinvigorating the nuclear weapons forces and the vast research and industrial complex that support it,'' said Robert S. Norris, a senior research associated at the Natural Resources Defense Council and an expert on nuclear weapons programs. ``In addition the Bush administration seems to see a new role for nuclear weapons against the `axis of evil' and other problem states.''

   Classified versions of the report were provided to Congress in January but the disclosure now could become a public relations problem for vice President Dick Cheney, who is scheduled to leave on Sunday for a 10-day trip to Britain and Middle Eastern countries. The disclosure of the administration's ambitious nuclear plans is likely to spark criticism from European groups that have long supported more traditional approaches to arms control. Middle Eastern leaders may be alarmed to learn that the Pentagon sees Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya as potential nuclear battlegrounds.

   One of the most sensitive portions of the report is its discussion of countries that do not have nuclear arms. Recalling the Cuban missile crisis, the report noted that the United States might be caught by surprise if an adversary suddenly displayed a new ability involving weapons of mass destruction or it a nuclear arsenal changes hands as a result of a coup in a foreign land.

   ``In setting requirements for nuclear strike capabilities, distinctions can be made among the contingencies for which the United States must be prepared,'' the Pentagon report states. ``Contingencies can be categorized as immediate, potential or unexpected.''

   ``North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya are among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies,'' it added. ``All have long-standing hostility toward the United States and its security partners; North Korea and Iraq in particular have been chronic military concerns.''

   It said, ``All sponsor or harbor terrorists, and all have active'' programs to create weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

   Among Iraq, Iran, Syria or Libya none has nuclear weapons, though Iraq and Iran are making a serious effort to acquire them, according to American intelligence.

   American intelligence officials believe that North Korea may have enough fissile material for one or two nuclear weapons, but there is considerable debate as to whether it has actually produced one.

   Significantly, all of those countries have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Washington has promised that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty unless those countries attack the United States or its allies ``in alliance with a nuclear weapon state.''

   The policy was intended to discourage outsider nations from seeking to develop nuclear weapons. But conservatives argue that Washington should be able to threaten the use of nuclear weapons as a way to deter one state from attacking the United States with chemical or biological weapons.

   Earlier this month, Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, repeated the policy but then added that ``if a weapon of mass destruction is used against the United States or its allies, we will not rule out any specific type of response.'' His qualified statement along with the Pentagon report raises the question of whether the Bush administration still plans to abide by the longstanding policy.

   One former senior American officials said that the development of new weapons to attack non-nuclear states would not in itself contradict American policy since it would be no more than a contingency. But using them would contradict the policy, he said, unless the nations violated their commitments to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by developing nuclear weapons.

   ``I would not say that developing a bunker-busting nuclear weapon for use against these countries would by itself violate that pledge,'' the former American official said. ``But using nuclear against them would unless they violated their assurance by acquiring nuclear weapons.''

   The Pentagon report discussed other contingencies as well. The report stated that China is also a potential adversary and is modernizing its nuclear and conventional forces. While Russia has the most formidable nuclear force, the report took the view that relations with Moscow have vastly improved.

   ``As a result, a contingency involving Russia, while plausible, is not expected,'' the report states. Still, the report said that the United States cannot be sure that relations with Russia will always be smooth and thus must be prepared to ``revise its nuclear force levels and posture.''

   In addition to surveying the potential situations in which nuclear weapons might be employed, the report discussed the sort of force that might be needed. The Bush administration has said that it plans to reduce strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads, a big reduction from the 6,000 or so nuclear weapons that the United States has now.

   Critics of the Bush administration say the cuts are roughly the same as those foreseen by the Clinton administration, which agreed that future strategic arms treaty should reduce nuclear weapons to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads. While the reductions projected by the Bush administration seem deeper, the Pentagon has changed the rules for counting nuclear weapons and no longer counts bombers or nuclear missile submarines that are in the process of being overhauled.

   Adding new detail to previous briefings, the Pentagon says that its future force structure will have the following components. By 2012, the United States will have 14 Trident submarines with two in overhaul at one time. They will be part of a triad that will include hundreds of Minuteman III land-based missiles and about 100 B-52 H and B-2 bombers.

   ``This will provide an operationally deployed force of 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads and a wide range of options for a responsive force to meet potential contingencies,'' the report says.

   But the Pentagon report said that nuclear planning is not merely a question of numbers. The Pentagon also wants to improve existing nuclear weapons and possibly develop new ones.

   The report cites the need to improve ``earth-penetrating weapons'' that could be used to destroy underground installations and hardened bunkers. According to a secret portion of the Pentagon study, more than 70 nations now use underground installations. It notes that the only earth-penetrating weapon that exists is that B61 Mod 11 bomb and that it has only a limited ``ground-penetration capability.''

   The report argues that better earth-penetrating nuclear weapons with lower nuclear yields would be useful since they could achieve equal damage with less nuclear fallout. New earth-penetrating warheads with larger yield would be needed to attack targets that are buried deep underground. The report said it is very hard to identify such underground targets but that American Special Operations Forces could be used for the mission.

   Another capability which interests the Pentagon are radiological or chemical weapons that would be employed to destroy stockpiles of chemical or biological agents. Such ``Agent Defeat Weapons'' are being studied. The report also argues that Washington needs to compress the time it takes to identify new targets and attack them with nuclear weapons, a concept it calls ``adaptive planning.''

   In general, the Pentagon report stresses the need for nuclear weapons that would be more easy to use against enemy weapons of mass destruction because they would be of variable or low yield, be highly accurate and could be quickly targeted.

   Pentagon officials say this gives the United States another tool to knock out enemy chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. But critics say that the Bush administration is, in effect, lowering the nuclear threshold by calling for the development of nuclear weapons that would be easier to use.

   The need to maintain the capability to rapidly expand the American nuclear arsenal in a crisis, such as ``reversal of Russia's present course,'' is also a theme of the report. The Pentagon calls this hedge ``the responsive force.'' The notion that the United States is reserving the right to rapidly increase its nuclear forces has been an important concern for Moscow, which has pressed Washington to agree to binding limits and even destroy some of its warheads.

   The Responsive Force, the Pentagon report says, ``retains the option for the leadership to increase the number of operationally deployed forces in proportion to the severity of an evolving crisis,'' the Pentagon report said. As part of this concept, bombs could be brought out of the non-deployed stockpile in days or weeks. Other efforts to augment the force could take as long as a year.

   To maintain the nuclear infrastructure a number of steps are planned. The Pentagon says that an ``active'' stock of warheads should be maintained which would incorporate the latest modifications and have the key parts.

   The report says that the United States needs a new capability to produce plutonium ``pits,'' a hollow sphere made out of plutonium around which explosives are fastened. When the explosives go off they squeeze the plutonium together into a critical mass, which allows a nuclear explosion. The Pentagon said the production of Tritium for nuclear warheads will resume during the fiscal 2003 year.

   Another sensitive political point involves the report's discussion of the United States moratorium on nuclear testing. The Bush administration has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, but says it has no plans yet to resume nuclear testing. But the report suggests that it might be necessary to resume testing to make new nuclear weapons and ensure the reliability of existing ones.

   ``While the United States is making every effort to maintain the nuclear stockpile without additional nuclear testing, this may not be possible in the indefinite future,'' it said.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, can we get the yeas and nays?

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second.

   The yeas and nays were ordered.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I don't know how much time I will take but obviously some amount of time. There are a number of other Senators on our side who wish to speak but I want to speak to this amendment.

   First, fellow Americans and friends here, there are a lot of issues that the wonderful Senator from California talked about that deserve some real clarification. There is an inference that we are not interested in nonproliferation and that we are going in the wrong direction. Everybody should know that the United States of America not too many years ago had 40,000 nuclear weapons. We are moving rapidly toward 5,000--40,000 moving rapidly toward 5,000. In fact, both the United States and the former Soviet Union are having difficulty getting rid of what comes out of these nuclear weapons because they are moving so fast. That which is coming out of them is creating proliferation itself because we are moving so rapidly. We do not know what to do with the plutonium that comes out of them. The Russians don't know where to put it. But in terms of getting rid of nuclear weapons, the United States is on a path from 40,000--and I can't give you the classified number but I can tell you it is 5,000 or less.

   That is point No. 1.

   Point No. 2: The pit--the plural ``pits'' is not a very nice sounding word--is an absolutely necessary incremental part of a nuclear weapon. Without a pit, there is no nuclear weapon--none.

   The United States is not engaged in producing new weapons but, rather, is seeing to it that we make sure what we have will work. That is called science-based stockpile stewardship, which means about 6 or 8 years ago we voted to have no more nuclear underground testing. There is nothing in this amendment that says we are going to break that. If it was, we would be up here arguing that we are here to break the agreement that the United States has. The Senate voted, then the House followed, and the President signed. It was Mark Hatfield who offered the amendment. It passed here as a consequence.

   We are not involved in underground testing. I repeat: We are not involved.

   This amendment would strike a provision--let us take them one at a time--that says over there in Nevada there is a great operation wherein we used to do underground testing.

   It is huge. It is complex in nature. We said in the Senate when we put our blood on the line, no more testing. That is a vote far from unanimous. We said, we will always keep that Nevada desert test site ready for tests.

   Did we say that because we planned a new generation of nuclear weapons? Of

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course not. We said that because there is a huge risk to America in the science-based stockpile stewardship as a method of assuring the validity of our nuclear weapons. There are scientists in America who at their own expense would come and tell us it will not work. In a few years, you will not know whether your weapons will work or not. That is why we said, keep Nevada ready.

   All this amendment says--and it is high time; we should have done it 4 or 5 years ago--spend a little bit of money, less than $20 million, and begin to make the Nevada Test Site ready so instead of taking 3 years to get it ready for a test, we get it ready in 18 months. That is all it says.

   Incidentally, Senator Feinstein, we are both worried about our grandchildren. We probably cannot decide who loves our grandchildren more. At this time in my life, I have twice as many plus three, so if you are worried about your five, I am worried about my 13. But I am clearly not worried that this amendment, the language you are striking, this funding, has any chance of harming my grandchildren. That is an absolute myth.

   Does making the Nevada Test Site capable of conducting an underground test ready in 18 months endanger the children of America? Fellow Senators, there is a valid argument it helps the future of our children and America's future to have it ready on 18 months' notice instead of 3 years. That part does not belong in this amendment and should not be stricken. It should be in this bill. We should make Nevada modern so if we need it, we use it, not 3 years after we decide we need a test because we have some idea there is something amiss in some of our weapons which are 35, 40, and 45 years old. Our nuclear weapons are that old. And we are saying, they will work. We used to test them. But now we have these great scientists and the laboratories--two of them in my State--and they are doing it by assimilation. And they are saying, we think they will work.

   Then the Senator talks about the planning or a plant to manufacture pits for the nuclear weapons. Fellow Senators, we need to manufacture pits for the weapons we have, not the weapons someone is dreaming we will build. There is nothing in this law that says we will build one additional nuclear weapon. Does the Senator know that every country which has nuclear weapons has spare pits, extra pits, to make sure they will never run short--except one country. This country. We have no spare pits. I don't want to infer it is the end of the world. It is just a fact. For those who think we could make a new nuclear weapon and break all our agreements, they have to know right now we do not have a spare pit to put in a nuclear weapon. And the world knows it.

   Senator Domenici is not giving any secrets to anyone. It is a truism. For 8 years we have been fooling around with funding at Los Alamos to see if we can make a pit. I regret to say it has been one terribly tough job. I cannot state today--and I know as much as anyone--whether

   they have produced one that meets all the test requirements. Frankly, it is the only place in America that if tomorrow we said, Get a pit, we need to replace one, one of our nukes needs a new pit, it is the only place to look to. What in the world is wrong with an administration that says the time has come to build a manufacturing center for pits?

   The good Senator from California ties it into the fact that she thinks it is for a new generation of nuclear weapons. Where is the authority to build a nuclear weapon? Read this law we are funding and tell me where there is authority to build a new nuclear weapon. This Senate would have to stand up and vote to build a new nuclear weapon. Believe you me, it would be a bigger day of debate than this particular afternoon in the Senate. It would be a red-letter day when the United States sends to the Senate floor a proposal to build more nuclear weapons. And it is not this day. That is not what we are doing. There is not one single word that says we are going to build a new nuclear weapon.

   So two proposals the Senator is talking about in this language, the fear for the future and what we are going to do to the world: In building pits for the future we are going to do nothing to the world. They are already wondering why we have not built them. That is what others are wondering. They are asking, What is the matter with America?

   We want to begin a plan. I am not sure when they bring the plans that I am going to agree to as big a plant as they want. Maybe we will build a little plant. But this says, begin the planning and designing. It provides not one penny for construction, nor does it decide where this place to build pits will be. Do they need it now? It could wait. But we have been waiting pretty long--for 9 years, maybe 10. The planners ask what is going on, why can't we build one? We keep asking scientists to build it at Los Alamos, but that is not a production center. They do not have the facilities. They have built the facilities and I have seen them. It is more like a science lab than a manufacturing plant. One could say, let them keep doing it that way. I don't like it and I don't think anyone planning for the future thinks it is a very good idea to plan for our future in terms of replacements at Los Alamos.

   That leaves the part of this amendment wherein we agreed with the Senate. We already voted in this Senate on these issues. We voted affirmatively in the Senate on these issues in the armed services authorizing bill. We already voted on every one of these issues. The nuclear posture review suggested the credibility of our nuclear deterrence is dependent upon flexibility and adaptive production complexes, ones that would be able to fix safety or performance problems on aging stockpiles as they arise.

   The Senate bill does that.

   The Nuclear Posture Review suggests we should keep our nuclear scientists engaged and thinking about the nuclear stockpile of the future and what it should look like. Might I repeat, the Nuclear Posture Review suggests we should keep our nuclear scientists--the greatest in the world, excited about their work, living at one of three great laboratories--engaged and thinking about what the nuclear stockpile of the future should look like.

   It does not commit us to build any new weapons. And there is no money in this bill to build new weapons. Let me repeat, there is no money in this bill to build new weapons. It suggests that our scientists should remain flexible, that we should not have to have them worried all the time whether thinking about certain aspects of a nuclear weapon of the future is a violation of the law or not.

   They should be permitted to think about--based upon what we have learned, what we know about both our friends and our enemies and war so far, and what people are creating in the world--they should be able to think and design and posture, but not build a single new weapon, whether it be one the Senator from California talks about in terms of tactical weapons--I do not even know where that comes into this thinking. There is no authority for tactical weapons in this bill, in this money, as the Senator in the chair knows. There was nothing in the authorizing committee that said that.

   There is much more to say, but I believe I have done my best, in a few moments, to dispose of the idea that America is on a path that will cause the world to start rebuilding new nuclear bombs in anyone's stockpile to react to our improving the Nevada weapons site. The idea that any country is going to react by saying, ``We are going to go do something now and build more bombs because they are getting Nevada ready,'' is an absurdity. It has no logic to it.

   We should never have let it go to 3 years. That is what it takes to get ready to test one there--not test a new one, to test one we have, to test one if science-based stockpile stewardship fails.

   I repeat, the other part of it is we do not want to start planning a design for a manufacturing center for pits in an inventory which would then make America have an inventory of spare parts like other countries do instead of being the only one without them.

   Now, if you finish those two, and then you argue the one that wants to give these engineers and scientists authority to think about what weapons might look like in the future, you have the whole substance--the cake, the strawberries. Everything that goes with it in this amendment is encapsulated in those three ideas.

   Now, I have argued with many Senators. I have been in the Chamber on

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many issues. I have respect for some, great respect for others. The Senator from California is among those for whom I have great respect. But in this instance, the conclusions that have been drawn with reference to what is in this bill, and what was proposed by the review people of the United States who review our nuclear posture, are just not so, plain and simple.

   I think the Senate should not follow the House. The House, for some reason, decided to spend this money on water projects. That is fine.

   I say to the Senator, we would like $40 million more for water projects. But this Senator is not going to prevail and preside over a committee, because we are short of water money, that looks at these projects in the wrong way and then, in the end, says: Well, we will have $21 or $24 million more for you House Members' water projects. Not this Senator. We will put it right here. This is what this money ought to be for.

   We are going to vote on this bill. We are going to vote sooner rather than later. Hopefully, Senators will see it like they saw it before. A substantial majority voted yea on the authorizing bill to do this. We came along in an appropriations bill and said: The Senate told us to do this.

   We voted for it. So we have done what the Senate asked us to do.

   I hope the Senate will say: Having done what we asked you to do, we will leave the money that you put in to do what we asked you to do. We will leave it right there. We won't put it on the debt or put it in water projects. We will put it right where you asked us to put it.

   With that, I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, has the Pastore rule run its course?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. It has not.

   Mr. BYRD. How long will it require to do so?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. It will run its course at about 5:30.

   Mr. BYRD. Five thirty. Very well.

   Mr. DOMENICI. I ask the Senator, what was the question? I am sorry, I did not hear it.

   Mr. BYRD. I made a parliamentary inquiry of the Chair. It has nothing to do with what you are saying, your argument or hers.

   Mr. DOMENICI. OK.

   Mr. BYRD. I want to speak on another subject. That is what I want to do.

   Mr. DOMENICI. OK.

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I have the floor, do I not?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.

   Mr. BYRD. May I inquire of the distinguished Senator from California if she wishes to respond in any way to the Senator from New Mexico?

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Senator from West Virginia. I would. But I know Senator Kennedy has come to speak on this amendment. At an appropriate time--I have made some notes--I would like to respond to him. But I do not want to delay everybody else.

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I am going to speak on another subject, and I do not want to interfere with the discussions on this amendment.

   Does the Senator from Massachusetts wish to speak on this same subject?

   Mr. KENNEDY. Yes, I would like to do so. This is an amendment offered by Senator Feinstein and myself dealing with the development and testing of nuclear weapons.

   Mr. BYRD. All right. Does the Senator from Arizona wish to speak on this subject also?

   All right.

   Mr. President, inasmuch as I have the floor, I would like to propound a unanimous consent request.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator may proceed with his request.

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the four Senators on the floor at the moment, other than I, finish their discussions on this amendment, I be recognized. I make that request. Now, what I am saying is, when Senator Domenici, when Senator Kyl of Arizona, when the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, and the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, have finished their colloquies, their discussions, or their statements, that I then be recognized to speak on another subject.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

   The Senator from New Mexico.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me just talk with the Senator for a moment.

   That means I have a chance for rebuttal?

   Also, I say to the Senator, I wanted to tell you--I am not sure if you knew--the yeas and nays have been ordered on this amendment, and I assume you are going to debate an issue unrelated to this. How long might we expect you to speak?

   Mr. BYRD. I would suspect that my speech would require an hour.

   Mr. DOMENICI. An hour?

   Mr. BYRD. Yes, sir.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

   Mr. DOMENICI. I have no objection.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. BYRD. I thank the Chair and all Senators.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

   Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from West Virginia for being typically courteous to the Members offering this amendment and also being courteous to the consideration of this issue which is of central importance not only to this appropriations bill but also in terms of the whole question of security for our country. We don't find too often where our colleagues and friends wait their time here on the Senate floor and are so willingly generous to give up some time.

   I don't intend to take an undue period of time, but it is typical of the Senator from West Virginia, his courtesy and his respect for the institution, to permit us to make a presentation on an extremely important matter. I thank him very much.

   Mr. BYRD. I thank the Senator.

   Mr. KENNEDY. I am not surprised, but I am always impressed with the spirit with which the Senator respects this institution and an individual Member's ability to raise important matters to make the case which Senator Feinstein and I are making this afternoon.

   Mr. BYRD. I thank the distinguished Senator.

   Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, we live in a dangerous world, and the greatest danger of all is still the danger of nuclear war or the use of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist group. We know that terrorists are still plotting each and every day to find new ways to kill Americans.

   The United States has a responsibility to do what it can to make this a safer world--not as a lone ranger, not as the world's policeman, but for our national security, and for the principles of freedom and democracy that make our country what it is.

   We can't afford to let our own policy help ignite a new nuclear arms race. At the very time when we are urging other nations to halt their own nuclear weapons programs, the administration is rushing forward to develop our own new nuclear weapons.

   This bill contains $6 million for the development of the so-called ``mini-nukes'', and $15 million for the so-called nuclear bunker-buster. They want to speed up the testing of nuclear weapons, and select the site for a new pit facility--a factor for new nuclear warheads.

   These provisions demonstrate the dangerous new direction of our nuclear weapons policy. They continue the go-it-alone, damn-the-torpedoes approach to the delicate balance of international arms control in today's world.

   By passing this amendment, we can demonstrate that we are not embarking on this reckless new nuclear policy. It makes no sense for us to tell other nations to ``Do as we say, not as we do.'' We must do a better job of leading the way in reducing reliance on nuclear weapons and honoring our commitments to international arms control. The House bill takes this approach, because it prohibits the use of funds for the development of low-yield nuclear weapons and nuclear bunker busters.

   There's a reason why arms control has been such a key element of our foreign policy and defense policy over many decades. Last month, an infuriated gathering took place in Hiroshima to honor those who died there in 1945. The world knows the massive devastation that a nuclear weapon can unleash. Since 1945 nuclear weapons have never been used again in war.

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   Yet, this year on the anniversary of those tragedies, the Bush Administration's Strategic Command held a secret meeting in Nebraska at Offut Air Force Base to discuss the plan for a new generation of nuclear weapons. They barred congressional staff from the meeting. Their nuclear policy is being discussed in the dark, without telling the American people or our allies what the policy is.

   The administration disbanded an advisory committee to the National Nuclear Security Administration with membership that ranged from James Schlesinger to Sidney Drell. Obviously, the administration is not interested in what some of the best minds in our country and the world have to say about nuclear policy in today's world. It's wrong to begin a new nuclear arms race by designing, building, and testing new weapons.

   The administration wants to lift the 1993 statutory ban imposed on developing ``mini-nukes.'' But these weapons are far from the type of small, surgical-strike weapons that the name suggests. They will not keep us safer or more secure. Mini-nukes are a dream come true for rogue regimes and terrorists, and a nightmare for every other nation on Earth. Just one of these weapons, carried by a terrorist in a suitcase, can devastate an entire city. A five-kiloton weapon would be half the size of the Hiroshima bomb.

   Some claim that these weapons are needed against deeply buried, hardened bunkers. But current technology will allow such a warhead to burrow only fifty feet into the ground or less. Detonating even a one-kiloton weapon at that depth would create a crater larger than the World Trade Center, larger than a football field. It will spew a million cubic feet or radioactive dust into the atmosphere. Imagine what a five-kiloton blast would do.

   Not only is the Bush administration developing their new nuclear weapons, it's also rushing to test them. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Fred Celec said in 2003, if you, ``design a new nuclear weapon ..... you will probably have to have a nuclear test.''

   In fact, the administration coupled its request to design their nuclear weapons with a request to speed up the time it would take to test them.

   No one questions the safety of our nuclear stockpile. This accelerated test readiness is not needed to preserve our existing arsenal. The only reason for rushing to achieve the shortest possible testing time is to test new kinds of nuclear weapons.

   Consistent with this goal, the administration has also requested funds to design a large-scale production facility for plutonium pits, which are factories for new nuclear warheads. The administration wants a facility able to produce 500 of these pits a year, a level that far exceeds what is needed to maintain the current stockpile.

   The administration claims that it is reducing its current nuclear stockpile from 7,500 tactical warheads to less than 2,200. But while they plan for these reductions, the Department of Energy continues to ask for funding sufficient to support the stockpile levels set by the START I Arms Control Treaty in 1991 a level set before the fall of the Soviet Union. If we build 500 plutonium pits a year, it will far exceed the number needed for the current stockpile, even if we make the reductions planned by the administration. The numbers don't add up. We are escalating the nuclear arms race, not reducing it.

   These actions demonstrate the administration's contempt for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the foundation of all current global nuclear arms control. The Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed in 1968, has long stood for the fundamental principle that the world will be safer if nuclear proliferation does not extend beyond the five nations that possessed nuclear weapons at that time--the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and France. It reflected the worldwide consensus that the greater the number of nations with nuclear weapons, the greater the risk of nuclear war.

   The Non-Proliferation Treaty has clearly prevented a worldwide nuclear arms race. Since the treaty was signed, only five additional nations acquired nuclear weapons, and out of them South Africa later got rid of them. Israel, India, and Pakistan never signed the treaty. North Korea signed it in 1985, but withdrew from it last year.

   The Bush administration's policy jeopardizes the entire structure of nuclear arms control so carefully negotiated by world leaders over the past half century, starting with the Eisenhower administration.

   The history of those years is still vivid in our minds. I was 13 years old on that fateful day in August 1945, when a B-29 bomber named ``Enola Gay'' dropped the first nuclear weapon, ``Little Boy,'' over Hiroshima. More than four square miles of the city were instantly and completely destroyed. More than 90,000 people died instantly. Another 50,000 died by the end of that year. Three days later, another B-29 dropped ``Fat Man'' over Nagasaki, killing 39,000 people and injuring 25,000 more.

   In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, it became clear that two oceans could not protect us from a nuclear attack at home.

   The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 showed the entire world how close it could come to catastrophe, and gave supreme urgency to nuclear arms control.

   In 1968, the Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in Moscow, London, and Washington, DC, and went into full effect in 1970. For the next 20 years, the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated a series of landmark treaties to keep the world from blowing itself up.

   Some say these efforts on arms control have not prevented the spread of nuclear weapons. But look at the past 15 years; South Africa, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Ukraine--the world's third largest nuclear power--renounced the use of nuclear weapons and joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear states.

   Britain and France ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Even though the U.S. Senate did not ratify this landmark treaty, every signatory and ratifier has obeyed the spirit of the treaty and not tested nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia have removed thousands of nuclear weapons from alert status, reduced the number of weapons, and coordinated in protecting nuclear materials from theft.

   Without this amendment, we turn our backs on five decades of progress in reducing the threat we and the world face from nuclear weapons. Some in the administration argue that in today's world the yield of the nuclear weapons in our current arsenals is so immense that our enemies know that we will never use them. They argue that these massive nuclear weapons have no deterrent value against many of today's adversaries and that we need smaller, more ``usable'' nuclear weapons to make deterrence more credible.

   In fact, if we start treating nuclear weapons as just another weapon in our arsenal, we will increase the likelihood of their use--not only against our adversaries, but also against ourselves. We would be dangerously blurring the line between nuclear and conventional weapons, and tear down the firewall between these weapons that has served us so well in preventing nuclear war in the entire half-century since World War II.

   As Secretary of State Powell said last year, ``Nuclear weapons in this day and age may serve some deterrent effect, and so be it, but to think of using them as just another weapon in what might start out as a conventional conflict in this day and age seems to me to be something that no side should be contemplating.''

   It is difficult to believe that these new types of nuclear weapons serve any rational military purpose. As we saw in the first Persian Gulf war and again in the war against Iraq, precision-guided conventional and stand-off weapons serve us incredibly well. How could low-yield nuclear weapons be any more effective than the precision-guided conventional weapons? And their radioactive fall-out would be far more dangerous to our ground troops and to civilian populations.

   Our goal is to prevent nuclear wars, not start them. I urge my colleagues to approve the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment, and say ``no'' to any such fateful step on the road to nuclear war.

   I wanted to thank my good friend and colleague from California for her presentation earlier this afternoon and also for her eloquence when we addressed this issue earlier in the session.

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She has reminded us in this body about how this administration has been evolving its whole nuclear policy with very subtle changes, moving us in a very dramatic and different direction than has been generally embraced over the period of the last 50 years.

   What she has commented on, and what troubles me and, I think, increasingly Members of the Senate at these hearings that have been held, by and large under security conditions and not in the broad daylight for public debate and discussions--I think, hopefully, as a result of these discussions and the understanding we have developed here, and has been particularly well developed--I think in the House of Representatives by many of those on both sides of the aisle, I might add, Republican and Democrat alike, who have examined this in considerable detail, they have reviewed this and made a very strong recommendation we not move in this direction.

   I don't think anyone can say our House colleagues have been negligent in assuring that we were going to develop the kinds of defense systems and also the defense capability to ensure the protection for our national security.

   As shown on this chart, we review very briefly the half century of arms control. Going back over the period of time, in 1963 there was the Partial Test Ban Treaty, and there was the Nonproliferation Treaty in 1970. We also see the SALT and ABM Treaties, and also SALT II. These are all efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to move us away from the real dangers of nuclear confrontation and nuclear war. As we remember, a number of years ago we talked about the ``nuclear winter'' as well. We have seen enormous progress that has been made and great leadership by both Republicans and Democrats. Many of our colleagues in the recent past, such as Senators Richard Lugar and Sam Nunn, with the development of the Nunn-Lugar provisions, tried to get those countries that have been willing to sign on and move us away from the dangers of nuclear proliferation, to get help and assistance from the United States to help them achieve that goal. Now we have a very different direction.

   Finally, we have these statements made by the administration. Fred Celek said:

   If a nuclear bomb could be developed to penetrate rock and concrete and still explode, it will ultimately get fielded.

   I have a bias in favor of the lowest usable yield because I have advised the use of that which will cause minimum destruction.

   We are basically talking about an effort that recognizes a very important part of our history--Republicans and Democrats--to move us away from nuclear proliferation, and the United States has been a leader. Other countries have been willing. That has been the result of 50 years of work of Republicans and Democrats.

   Now, in a world of increased tension, in many respects as a result of terrorism, we are finding ourselves in a situation where the administration wants to alter that policy in terms of development and testing. Mininukes--and there is really no such thing as a small nuke; a nuke is a nuke. It is no different by nature, disposition, and its capability. Those who have served in the military are familiar with a great deal of information regarding nuclear weapons. Our present Secretary of State wrote a book and included the comments I stated. As a former military officer, he understands this. At a time, frankly, when we are unsurpassed in terms of our military capability, why in the world do we want to develop small conventional systems which will trigger other countries to do that. That could compromise what we have today in terms of our military and our Armed Forces.

   There is one modern military force in the world, and it happens to be the United States. We have to keep it that way. Why put at risk that advantage with the proliferation by other countries of small useful nukes--I think that is unwise--as well as the dangers it would pose in terms of the growth of terrorism.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. MURKOWSKI). The Senator from California.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Chair.

   Madam President, I very much thank the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts for his remarks. I appreciate very much his leadership and support on this issue. I want to make some comments in response to the chairman's comments.

   The first is, on July 16, the House published their report. I would like to read excerpts from the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act into the RECORD because I think it sets some things straight:

   Before any of the existing program goals have been successfully demonstrated, the Administration is now proposing to spend millions on enhanced test readiness while maintaining the moratorium on nuclear testing, aggressively pursue a multi-billion dollar Modern Pit Facility before the first production pit has even been successfully certified for use in the stockpile, develop a robust nuclear earth penetrator weapon and begin additional advanced concepts research on new nuclear weapons. It appears to the Committee the Department is proposing to rebuild, restart and redo and otherwise exercise every capability that was used over the past forty years of the Cold War and at the same time prepare for a future with an expanded mission for nuclear weapons. Nothing in the past performance of the NNSA convinces this Committee that the successful implementation of Stockpile Stewardship Program is a foregone conclusion, which makes the pursuit of a broad range of new initiatives premature. Until the NNSA has demonstrated to the Congress that it can successfully meet its primary mission of maintaining the safety, security, and viability of the existing stockpile by executing the Stockpile Life Extension Program and Science-based Stewardship activities on time and within budget, this Committee will not support redirecting the management resources and attention to a series of new initiatives.

   What they are saying is, shouldn't we certify before starting this program? Shouldn't we certify to its safety? There are just a few reasons to do that. I am going to bring up the Rocky Flats plant northwest of Denver.

   Fourteen years ago, this plant, which had produced pultonium pits, sank permanently into a multibillion-dollar cesspool of contamination, criminality, and managerial incompetence. I am quoting from an article in the bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

   Not to worry says, the Department of Energy, Rocky Flats II will have all the necessary equipment for suppressing plutonium fires that regrettably cannot be totally eliminated, but whose frequency and severity can be reduced, and even planned for, in the structural and process designs.

   This keeps getting mixed up. We already have $2.3 billion appropriated for a pit facility at Los Alamos, and that facility will begin producing 20 pits per year in 2007 and can be equipped to produce as many as 80 pits per year and can be further enlarged to produce 150 pits per year. At what are we throwing this money? How big does this thing have to get? That is what is going on in this. It may be that Los Alamos is having trouble with it. I don't know. But I do know this: Throwing money at it is not the solution.

   It might be useful to put the entire report language in the RECORD. I ask unanimous consent to print the report language in the RECORD.

   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

   Funding, House Language on New Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Testing, September 12, 2003

   The Senate is currently considering the Energy & Water Appropriations bill. On Tuesday, Senators Feinstein and Kennedy will offer an amendment to reduce and restrict funding for specific nuclear weapons budget items. Details on what has already transpired are below.

\1\ The Committee directed that the DOE use the $5 million to work with the DOD ``to maximize the dual-use applicability for both conventional and nuclear weapons.''

   EXCERPTS FROM THE HOUSE ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004--HOUSE REPORT 108-212

   The Committee provides $5,000,000 for RNEP and eliminates funding for additional advanced concepts research in favor of higher priority current mission requirements. The Committee is concerned the NNSA is being tasked to start new activities with significant outyear budget impacts before the Administration has articulated the specific requirements to support the President's announced stockpile modifications. Under current plans, the NNSA is attempting to modernize the industrial infrastructure of the weapons complex and restore production plant capability in order to refurbish the entire START I stockpile, reengineer the Federal management structure of the complex

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and downsize the workforce by 20 percent by the end of fiscal year 2004, while struggling to successfully demonstrate its core mission of maintaining the existing stockpile through the Stockpile Stewardship Program. Before any of the existing program goals have been successfully demonstrated, the Administration is now proposing to spend millions on enhanced test readiness while maintaining the moratorium on nuclear testing, aggressively pursue a multi-billion dollar Modern Pit Facility before the first production pit has been successfully certified for use in the stockpile, develop a robust nuclear earth penetrator weapon and begin additional advanced concepts research on new nuclear weapons. It appears to the Committee the Department is proposing to rebuild, restart, and redo and otherwise exercise every capability that was used over the past forty years of the Cold War and at the same time prepare for a future with an expanded mission for nuclear weapons. Nothing in the past performance of the NNSA convinces this Committee that the successful implementation of Stockpile Stewardship program is a foregone conclusion, which makes the pursuit of a broad range of new initiatives premature. Until the NNSA has demonstrated to the Congress that it can successfully meet its primary mission of maintaining the safety, security, and viability of the existing stockpile by executing the Stockpile Life Extension Program and Science-based Stewardship activities on time and within budget, this Committee will not support redirecting the management resources and attention to a series of new initiatives. (Emphasis added.)

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Chair. Madam President, it may be useful to think for a moment--the chairman started me thinking. He asked the question: Why did we need 40,000 nuclear weapons? The answer is we didn't. Now 40 years later, we are left with enormous problems: 40,000 nuclear weapons which this country entered into the study, the research, the design, and the development of. We could blow up this Earth time and time and time again, obliterate it from existence. Does anyone think that makes sense--40,000? No, because what happens is the economic urge, the parochial nature of States--all of this takes over and subliminally, under the radar, huge weapons systems become developed which need to be maintained, secured, activated, and deactivated.

   It is a crazy system, and we all pat ourselves on the back and think we are good Americans. Does anybody believe the United States of America needed 40,000 nuclear weapons? But we built them. That is what is happening here again. That is exactly what is happening here again.

   We are appropriating money for a $4 billion bomb factory in addition to the $2.3 billion bomb factory we already appropriated. If they can't do it for $2.3 billion--and I am talking about Los Alamos run by the University of California--if they can't do it, let's take a good look at the reasons.

   Other nations know what we are doing. The Finnish Foreign Minister, just a week ago, commenting on our failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the move sent completely the wrong message to the international community.

   That is exactly what I have been saying. That is exactly what we are doing. We are sending a message we are doing it and, believe me, others will follow suit.

   Then he went on and said:

   We should be concerned about the development of weapons of mass destruction even in the case of low-yield weapons, the foreign minister said in an interview to be published in the Austrian daily Die Press on Friday. Muhammad el-Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, accused the United States last week of effectively breaking a ban on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction through its research on so-called mini-nukes.

   The chairman says there is no research going on regarding mininukes. Then why did we repeal the Spratt-Furse language that for 10 years prevented the development of mininukes? Why did we do it if we were not going to build it? This is the deception. This is the covert nature of these programs. I do not doubt that we are building them.

   To say this is not happening really bothers me. If my colleagues do not believe it is happening, reread the Nuclear Posture Review. Every Member has access to the classified version of the Nuclear Posture Review which came out in January of 2000. They can read the unclassified version. For these purposes, I am going to quote from the New York Times of March 10. This is about the Nuclear Posture Review.

   It stresses a need to develop earth-penetrating nuclear weapons to destroy heavily fortified underground bunkers, including those that may be used to store chemical and biological weapons.

   Now I am quoting from parts of the article.

   There is a quote again from the Pentagon: This administration is fashioning a more diverse set of options for deterring the threat of weapons of mass destruction. That is why we are pursuing advanced conventional forces and improved intelligence capabilities. A combination of offensive and defensive and nuclear and nonnuclear capabilities is essential to meet the deterrence requirements of the 21st century.

   In my mind, what that means is the smaller nuclear weapons will be built below 5 kiloton. The difference is kind of blurred between conventional and nuclear weapons and it makes it easier to use the nuclear weapon on the battlefield. That is what I believe is going on.

   Another place states: Adding new detail to previous briefings, the Pentagon says that its future force structure will have the following components. By 2012: 14 Trident submarines with two in overhead at one time. They will be part of a triad that will include hundreds of Minuteman III land-based missiles, 100 B-52, H and B-2 bombers. That is an operationally deployed force of about 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads.

   The Pentagon said that nuclear planning is not merely a question of numbers. The Pentagon also wants to improve existing nuclear weapons and possibly develop new ones. The report cites the need to approve earth-penetrating weapons. In general, the Pentagon report stresses the need for nuclear weapons that would be more easy to use against enemy weapons because they would be of variable or low yield, be highly accurate, could be quickly targeted.

   It is going on. No matter how one wants to cloak advanced weapons concept designs, it means new nuclear weapons, and that is what we are doing. We are breaking a 60-year tradition. We are going to move up testing. Testing does not need to be moved up. Why do they want to move up testing to the basic minimum time possible when the experts say it is not possible to do it in 18 months?

   Now, you can believe that we can be fairly assured by the fact that we spend $400 billion a year on our defense, more than every other nation on Earth combined; that maybe ought to give us an element of security; but I think to open this door, to walk through a nuclear door, to propose that we are going to begin to develop low-yield nuclear weapons and nuclear bunker busters sets an example for the world. They read the Nuclear Posture Review. They read the Washington Post. They read the French press. They read the speeches. They know

   what is happening. So we are setting an example for other nations. We say all the time that we do not want to proliferate, and we are encouraging proliferation by our own actions. Forty thousand nuclear weapons, I guess 45 years ago or 40 years later--I bet there is no one in the United States who can say we need 40,000 nuclear weapons, but we develop them. They are there. A lot of them have been disarmed.

   We are going to begin now this next generation. It is wrong. It is morally wrong. It is wrong for our children. It is wrong for our soldiers who have to go on the battlefield.

   Take another look at Hiroshima. Both Senator Kennedy and I spelled out the number of deaths. If we add them all up within a year, I think between Hiroshima and Nagasaki it totals 220,000 dead. That is a combination of a 15-kiloton bomb--what was it, a 21-kiloton bomb at Nagasaki--and we are talking about a 100-kiloton nuclear bunker buster.

   Look at this devastation. This is one bomb. I will never forget as a 12-year-old what we grew up with. Children today have different fears, but what we grew up with was the fear of an atomic bomb. That is why the daisy spot that was used in the Goldwater campaign had such an impact because there was a whole generation of young children who were impacted by it. I was one of them. Senator Kennedy is the same generation. He was one of them.

   When we were young, we said: We are never going to let this happen again. But in the Senate we are letting it happen again. If this Senate does not do

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what the House of Representatives does, I think there is a moral degradation spread over this whole body because we will then become the ones who launched the new generation of nuclear weapons.

   Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator be good enough to yield for one or two questions?

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Yes.

   Mr. KENNEDY. I saw the photograph that the Senator has of Hiroshima. I have a chart that gives us a for instance. If we use a 5-kiloton earth-penetrating nuclear explosion in Damascus--this is just a for instance, obviously--and they had the traditional winds that flow from the east to the west, it gives the general flowline of where the radioactivity and the dust would flow, but we can see roughly it would go from Syria, across northern Israel through southern Lebanon, just north of Haifa. The best estimates would be 230,000 fatalities and 280,000 casualties. This is a 5 kiloton bomb.

   I have heard the Senator from California talk about the fact that this is a mini-nuke, but she has just again restated very clearly that there is really no such thing as a mini-nuke. We are talking about weapons that have such a massive, distinctive, unique, and special quality that they have such an extraordinary danger to all of those who are directly affected, and those who would be indirectly affected well into the future.

   So we are looking at these casualties the Senator mentioned, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We can also look at what the casualties would be with the 5-kiloton earth penetrator that went down to 30 feet in depth. We are talking about major devastation that this country, as Senator Feinstein has said so eloquently, has never accepted--through Republican and Democratic control; this has not been a partisan issue over a long period of time.

   Let me just ask the Senator a final question that is the question I think all Americans are wondering about: whether we have security of our current nuclear capacity. This is raised in discussion and debate. Why should we ever take a chance, in terms of what we do have, in terms of a current capability?

   I have seen and read and heard the directors of the laboratories that have responsibility for this repeatedly indicate their sense of assurance. They are skilled, committed individuals who have dedicated basically their lives to ensure the deterrent capability of our capacity, in terms of nuclear weapons. They give the assurance to us that we can give to the American people that we have the capability and it is current.

   I am just interested, as someone who has spent a great deal of time on this, because this is an issue that has been talked about a great deal even during the course of this debate, whether the Senator believes she can give assurances unequivocally to the American people from what we do have--from her knowledge of the lab directors--that we are able to give them the assurance that our nuclear stockpile is current and capable and ready to meet the test if called upon.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Through the Chair, respectfully, to the Senator from Massachusetts, I think no one can give an unequivocal statement that our nuclear supplies, plants, et cetera, are unequivocally safe. I think a lot of steps have been taken.

   As to whether they are adequate to meet any challenge, I have never heard anyone say they were not.

   Mr. KENNEDY. I appreciate the distinction the Senator has made. She gets to the nub of the issue: The question, in other words, is whether we have an adequate stockpile--more than an adequate stockpile, as the Senator has pointed out.

   I thank the Senator. This is an issue of enormous importance and consequence. I share the view of the Senator that we have many different, important issues that are before Congress this year: Obviously, the overarching issues, the conflict in Iraq and the war on terror, and how we are going to deal with those, as well as other priorities to which we are committed. But the issue in terms of the security, even as we are thinking about the nature of terrorism, I think she would agree with me, is also related to the whole issue of the battle against terrorism, as well, in terms of what the potential may be in the future with the development of these, what they call mini-nukes, and what that means in terms of the proliferation issue.

   I thank the Senator for her comments.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts. The Senator was not in the Chamber. But the chart I used was of a predicted radioactive fallout from a B61-11, the 300-kiloton explosion in west Pyongyang, North Korea, using historical weather data for the month of May. It is a similar chart to what the Senator has shown, but it gives the 48-hour dose of radiation contamination. The possible effects of radioactive fallout should a nuclear weapon be used include, possible radiation burns; change in blood chemistry, hemorrhaging, as well as deaths in weeks or months--it is a terrible chart to have to look at. Of course, this is an extraordinarily large device, so we are not talking about a bunker buster. That is 300 kilotons. But that is the chart that we happen to have.

   I think the thing that bothers me most about this program is that nobody really knows what is going to be produced with all this money. It always happens kind of under the shelf. Then the economics of it become so important that there needs to be a continuation of it. I really suspect that is why we ended up with 40,000 nuclear bombs--because once you get into it, it just keeps going and keeps rolling; there are constant demands. I think that is indicated by the fact that we have already appropriated $2.3 billion for this plutonium pit facility at Los Alamos and reportedly this pit facility, if it is able to be built correctly, can take care of all of the needs for the foreseeable future.

   But this is another $4 billion program--that is over 10 years--of which an amount is authorized in this bill that we are trying to strike because there is no need for it. I think we have tried to lay out the arguments here. This is not an easy issue. I really believe we will probably never have more of an issue of conscience in this session than we do in this vote. I think the House of Representatives have given their consciences a test and measured up by eliminating the funds. They said clearly we are not ready to spend these funds in the report language that I read and put in the RECORD. And the balance really rests with the Senate.

   I suspect we may be defeated. It will be a conferenceable item, and all of those who want this new generation of nuclear weapons will end up prevailing. But I can tell you I don't want my fingerprint on it. I don't want to have to say what I have done to my children.

   Every bit of information I have ever received indicates that with the most superior conventional weapons forces in the world, and an amount of money spent that is more than that spent by all of the nations put together, a huge nuclear arsenal, and the ability to dial up or down the kilotonnage of our nuclear bombs--my hope is we will continue our commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; that we will not be hypocritical; that we will live by our words, our statements; if we want other nations not to proliferate; that we will see that we do not develop the mechanisms by which proliferation is incentivized or carried out.

   So I think this is a very big vote. I really hope the Members of this esteemed body will vote yes to strike the money from this bill.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, Senator Kennedy is still in the Chamber, and he asked a question of the distinguished Senator from California about the safety of our nuclear weapons.

   Senator Kennedy, once a year, each of three civilian men--it happens in this case they are men. I don't think there has been a woman in charge of either of the three nuclear laboratories since their inception. But, once a year, three civilians certify to the President of the United States that, to the best of their knowledge, the nuclear stockpile is intact, safe, and reliable.

   That has been going on for well over 60 years. But only 8 years ago, or 9, we changed the way those men concluded the weapons were safe and reliable and ready. Properly or improperly, we said no more underground testing. Prior to that, every time a certification was

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made to the President, it was predicated upon the single best way to determine the validity of a weapon, and that was to test it.

   Now we have said let us do it another way. Let us send a signal to the world we don't want to test underground. This amendment is relevant, which I will tell you about in a moment.

   We said to the scientists, How much money do you need to get the best equipment, including new equipment, to determine the validity of the weapons without testing? That is called science-based stockpile stewardship. There are many who do not think it will work, that we will have to return someday not for a new stockpile, but to answer that question we might have to return to testing.

   I know the Senator from Massachusetts has studied these issues, and he is a very involved Senator. But I spent a huge portion of my life learning this. We are going through the throes of the most incredible kind of research just to determine there is nothing wrong with the innards of a 40-year-old bomb, or 30-year-old bomb as we reduce from 40,000 to 5,000, or less, which is where we are now and heading down.

   Yes. The answer is if you follow that sequence, those men not too long ago told the President they are OK. But in this amendment, one portion the Senator from California strikes is a provision that could be freestanding and important. It has nothing whatsoever to do with a new weapons system. It just says bring the test site in Nevada current so it doesn't take 3 years if you make a decision to use it. One portion does that. Instead of letting that system in Nevada degenerate so that if you need it, it will take 3 years to build it up, part of this amendment says move it along so it is only 18 months.

   If you want to conclude that is in there because we want to build a whole new system of weapons, you can do that. But the truth is it is in there because the time has come to get it more relevant to the problems we may be confronted with in terms of one of these directors saying we had better test the weapon. Then we have to wait 3 years. Part of this amendment says no, you will only have to wait 1 1/2 years. That part should pass under all circumstances. Why the United States House of Representatives said no, I can't understand. The Senate said yes already, overwhelmingly.

   This amendment would take it out and say leave it at 3 years; let the reliability kind of lie in wait in case we need it to test a weapon; let it be 3 years instead of 1 1/2 years.

   The second part of this amendment: There is no use today on the floor of the Senate in terms of this amendment to talk about the fact that years ago we had 40,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union had 60,000. Those are true numbers. That happened. I am not sure the last number is right, but it is plenty more than 40,000. We are on the way down substantially while three or four new countries are added that I don't think had anything to do with this amendment. Pakistan had nothing to do with this amendment as they developed their nuclear weapon. I don't believe this amendment has anything to do with the North Koreans. This amendment says get that site ready in case we have to test the weapons we own.

   We can get up here and talk all we want about America is already building new nuclear weapons, but it isn't true. If any Senator stands up here and says we are making new nuclear weapons and they are just little nuclear weapons, I submit they ought to ask anybody they want under oath anywhere in the Government, and the answer will be we aren't, we haven't, and we will not build a nuclear weapon until Congress says we can.

   Building a nuclear weapon is not in this language. Look at it. Look at every single word. See if it says you are going to build one nuclear weapon with the money in this appropriations bill. It in no way permits the building of a nuclear weapon. It does what I said about the Nevada Test Site. It says to our scientists at these laboratories, In the meantime you can study, you can research weapons of the future. And it names the kinds of things we might be looking at in the future.

   I submit that for a great nation to say anything to its scientists but you can do that is absolutely crazy. Do you mean we are going to tell these great scientists we don't know what is going to be here in 15 years, but you better not be studying what kind of weapons we are going to need in 15 years because we are scared of that, we think that means we are going to build new weapons? I don't believe that. I believe they ought to be permitted to study. They ought to be permitted to think. We ought to be wondering about underground chemical plants that might be building things to destroy the world. I see nothing wrong with that. I do not see that as threatening to anyone, for it builds nothing. If anything, it builds brainpower on the part of the great scientists, and that is it.

   The last one about a plant to manufacture pits: This request says that for the next 40 years--40 years--we may need pit replacements from time to time for our nuclear weapons. That is a given. It says let us design the complex to do that.

   This amendment doesn't say cut it in half, we don't want you to make it so big. We say send us the plans and we will look at them. This says don't do it. Why not do it? Every other country with nuclear weapons has spare pits, I regret to say. But for us, it doesn't mean much. Nobody has to be scared. That doesn't mean next week or next month, but it is something our experts are saying shouldn't exist too long. And we are busy trying to build a couple in a makeshift manner, to which my friend from California alludes. It is not a factory. It will not take care of 30 or 40 years of the future. It is a makeshift assembly in the city of Los Alamos as part of the research laboratory. It has been a devil of a job for them to manufacture consistent with the need for a plutonium pit for a nuclear weapon.

   Today we are discussing things which we hardly ever discuss. But I believe at 10 minutes of 5 on the 15th day of September on a Monday, if we were authorizing the building of new nuclear weapons, there would be a block of Senators on this floor. There would be steam heat from those who oppose it.

   The truth is that isn't what the amendment does. It is not an amendment that will build any new nuclear bombs.

   I repeat: As important as it is, and as magnificent as the Senator from California is in her presentation on September 15, it is not an amendment that has anything to do with building or not building nuclear weapons, for we are not authorizing that. It won't happen because of what we are doing. And she won't stop it from happening with her amendment because it isn't happening to begin with.

   Essentially, the Senator indicated it is a moral issue. That is an easy term to throw around--a moral issue.

   I could probably say it is a moral issue, also. I understand it in stark, objective terms. It does not frighten me a bit.

   As a matter of fact, I am more frightened to think of having the scientists who have manned our nuclear laboratories told they cannot think and plan for the future regardless of what their great brains say might be around the corner, over the hill, or in some decade to come, for these United States. That frightens me more and creates more of a moral issue than the issue that is not even an issue, to wit, we are building more nuclear weapons, a new arsenal, and the like.

   It cannot be a moral issue for me because a negative can hardly be. If you are not doing it, it does not seem to me to be an issue, moral or otherwise. That is how I see it.

   The Senator suspects we will win. I am not sure. If the Senate has any consistency, we should. We already won once. In fact, since then we have learned a lot more. But we have reduced it to dollars and to programs that had been authorized. It is easier to see what we are and are not doing in this amendment, in this appropriations bill, than it was when we voted in favor of the authorization bill. I am not sure how it will come out. I am not sure what will happen in the House. I guarantee if the Senate votes to go to conference with the language we have written in this bill that came out of Appropriations, we will consider it a very important issue for America's future. It will not be easy to give it away to a House that canceled it and spent the money on water projects instead of these issues. That was the outcome.

   Mr. KENNEDY. If I could inquire quickly of the Senator, as I remember,

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we had the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time in 1998 when we considered the comprehensive test ban treaty. We did not ratify it, but it was supported. I don't know, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, of any request by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that they have made, any representation to the Armed Services Committee that they believe our nuclear capability and capacity is in any way threatened today.

   We do have the testing capability. It takes anywhere from 24 to 36 months to move ahead on the tests. I don't know that we know of any requests made by the Joint Chiefs or any chiefs or the Secretary of Defense specifically suggesting our capability regarding our nuclear weapons is anything but robust and capable now. It is very important we know as we debate this issue. I would be interested in the Senator's answer to that.

   Second, I understand what has been done with the separate amendment which prohibited the development and testing of mini-nukes, as well as a number of provisions in the Spratt amendment in the authorization committee. When we get a conference report, as a member of that conference, the conferees understand that issue will be resolved. The Spratt amendment will no longer be in effect.

   So on the one hand the authorization committee will eliminate the Spratt amendment, which would have actually prohibited the development of anything below the 5 kiloton. Now we are on the second phase of this appropriations process in terms of the Department of Energy, and the Senator is saying the money in here cannot be used for this development. But it is clear, as the Senator from California has pointed out, from the Nuclear

   Posture Review, the debate on the authorization, and the elimination of the Spratt amendment, the continued effort to put the money in mini-nukes, this is the dangerous direction the administration is moving.

   I hear what the Senator has said and the assurances the Senator has given to Members, but I wonder why we cannot have more clarity regarding the legislation.

   Finally, I will add with regard to the scientists and what they were able and not able to pursue. As the Senator knows, we had the most extraordinary upgrading of weaponry, particularly in the Iraq situation, particularly on the precise guidance and precision bombs. We will not take the time in this debate to review it, but there has been absolutely extraordinary progress made in the area of conventional forces. The scientists have been working effectively. That has enhanced our capability.

   I am interested whether the Senator knows of any Joint Chiefs who believe the nuclear weapon stockpile would require additional testing?

   Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, let me answer this way: I don't believe there is a single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a single expert in the United States of America on its nuclear weapons arsenal, that if asked would they prefer that the Nevada Test Site be ready for tests in 18 months or 3 years, would not answer: 18 months; 3 years is too long.

   If you ask me, I will tell you. I believe there is no one who is certain that over time what we are doing is going to work and that we are not going to have to go to testing at some time. Almost everyone says that. Since they say it, I am confident they would rather have the Nevada Test Site ready in a shorter timeframe rather than longer.

   I thank the Senator for the question. I yield the floor.

   Mr. KENNEDY. If the only question, then, is an issue of timing and upgrading the testing to reduce it from 2 years to 18 months or 2 1/2 years, I don't think we would have an amendment here. We know that alone does not show the thrust of what we believe will be permitted with this policy.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.

   Mr. KYL. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this amendment in support of the Senator from New Mexico and in opposition to the proponents of the amendment.

   It seems to me, this amendment seeks to put our head in the sand and ignore circumstances around us in the vain hope that somehow everyone else in the world has as good intentions as the United States and if we just wish hard enough that they will not cause trouble.

   The amendment says we ought to at least be thinking about what we would do in the event that we decide our deterrent was no longer credible enough to deter the threats against us.

   Everyone supports the idea of a deterrent. That includes a nuclear deterrent. That is, frankly, one of the things that kept the Soviets and the United States from engaging in a hot war during the cold war.

   What we are saying is, sometimes when things change, you have to think about what that means in terms of your defense posture. This is one of those times. What the amendment would do is stop us from thinking about it. If you concede we need a nuclear deterrent, you should not propose an amendment that says we cannot think about it.

   One thing that has changed, we no longer face an opponent which, like the United States, had these huge multimega tonnage weapons that were basically conceived, developed, and deployed in order to scare the other side into believing if they ever attacked, we would incinerate most of the people in the other country. These were not bunker-busting bombs. These were city-killing bombs, bombs that would be detonated over the opponents' city, killing literally millions of people. That was such a scary thought in the cold war it deterred aggression.

   The question is, Would that same deterrent work? I ask in the case of Iraq, if Iraq used chemical or biological weapons against the United States, does anyone believe that a credible United States threat would have been dropping one of our large massive nuclear weapons over Baghdad, killing millions of innocent Iraqis?

   It is not a credible deterrent.

   So in a world where you have terrorist organizations and terrorist-sponsored states, and you no longer have the two great superpowers--the Soviet Union and the United States--facing off against each other, the question is, What kind of a nuclear deterrent should we have?

   What this amendment would do is stop us from even thinking about that. It seems to me we ought to be thinking about that. And if smaller, more precise weapons could do the job just as well, wouldn't people of good will, who are concerned about unnecessary death, be interested in at least thinking about weapons that would pose a deterrent to an attack but would not kill as many people, would not kill so indiscriminately?

   One of the great lessons from this Iraqi experience is that we now have the capability of delivering weapons very precisely. Wouldn't it be better to do that, even in a nuclear context, than the one we are in now?

   The Senator from Massachusetts just alluded to the great progress made in precision conventional weaponry. Even that, however, was not sufficient to destroy at least one, and I believe some, of the bunkers in Iraq. And without getting into a lot of detail, let me just say we are well aware that there are countries in the world that have developed extraordinarily robust underground facilities that we are going to have to take out if we are ever to win a military conflict with them. If we do not have the capability of doing that, they have the upper hand.

   Wouldn't it make sense to be able to deliver very precisely the kind of weapon that we are asking just to be able to think about here in order to destroy that kind of facility? The conventional weaponry will not do it, as precise as it is. As the Senator from New Mexico pointed out, we are not asking for money to do it. We are just asking to allow our scientists to think about what would be necessary and what would be possible--perhaps maybe not even necessary but perhaps make recommendations to us so we could then act on those recommendations.

   To this matter of the time, I am glad the Senator from Massachusetts perhaps conceded the point that if we need to reduce the time necessary to prepare our Nevada Test Site, we should have the ability to do that. All of the experts--the Senator from New Mexico is correct--agree that we should not have to wait 3 years to even test a weapon. As a matter of fact, one of the problems is that we do not necessarily

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know whether our nuclear weapons--the existing ones--will work well after all of these years. And our opponents do not necessarily know.

   Also, the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which is merely a bunch of computers designed to tell us, as best they can, whether they think these weapons will work, is not a perfect system at all. It is not going to be done for years. It is not at all sure it will provide us what we need to know.

   But if we have an inkling that one of our weapons cannot be certified, and we decide to have a test in order to determine whether it can be certified, right now we are in for a very long period of time in which our potential enemies know full well that we do not have full confidence in our stockpile; that we are preparing to conduct tests, and obviously the only reason we are preparing to conduct tests is that we do not have full confidence, and we are going to

   have to test something in order to see what kind of changes would have to be made. And that process would take 3 years. That process makes no sense at all.

   Another argument that makes no sense at all is that it is important for the United States to lead and that it is going to be impossible for us to argue--how little confidence this shows in the United States. Can we have confidence that we are right? The argument is that we cannot lead if we even think about developing new nuclear weapons; we cannot tell others in the world to stop developing nuclear weapons as long as we are developing nuclear weapons.

   Now, that is perverse thinking. When the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was entered into, it recognized that certain countries in the world, including the United States, had nuclear weapons. This was not a bad thing. In fact, the NPT even called for us to share our nuclear peaceful technology with other countries if they would foreswear development of their weaponry.

   We have had a self-imposed moratorium now for many years even on the testing of any nuclear weapon. Has it stopped countries from developing nuclear weapons? Has it stopped North Korea? Apparently not. Is it stopping Iran? No. Did it stop China? No. Did it stop India? No. Pakistan? No.

   It looks to me as though the self-imposed moratorium is not very effective. And leading the world by saying, ``We are not going to test any weapons, would you please not test weapons,'' has resulted in a whole host of countries, most of which are not our allies, developing or seeking to develop nuclear weapons. That is not a good thing. It shows a failed strategy, not a successful strategy.

   If these countries are led to believe that the United States will keep up with them, or at least we will not prevent ourselves from thinking about keeping up with them, maybe they will be a little less likely to develop these weapons.

   If North Korea, for example, just speaking hypothetically, believes we are serious about preventing them from acquiring a lot of nuclear weapons and proliferating them around the world, clearly, that must mean we are willing to use our own nuclear weapons. They have to depend upon the United States being confident of our nuclear deterrent and being willing to use it under certain circumstances. If they cannot be confident of that, then what incentive do they have, except their good will, to not develop their nuclear weapons?

   So far, the idea that we have to not develop or even think about our nuclear weapons in order to induce other countries not to do the same has proven an utter failure. And there are other countries in the world, whose names I could mention, that we believe are also trying to acquire this nuclear capability. So our self-imposed moratorium of even thinking about these weapons is not doing a very good job of convincing other countries to do the same. Better that we recognize reality, get our head out of the sand, and acknowledge that if we are going to rely upon a nuclear deterrent, we had better be able to think about it and even, at some point in the future, be able to do something about it.

   Let me just make a couple of quick other points, Madam President.

   We have made the commitment, subject to future development, of course, to reduce the very large arsenal of our nuclear weapons, and not just to reduce the number but to reduce the quantity of the very high megatonnage weapons. One of the reasons--well, there are a couple of reasons that are relevant here, but one of the reasons is that we do not think we would need that kind of weapon in the future because we no longer are facing a superpower potential enemy such as the Soviet Union. They are also expensive to maintain, I might add. And, thirdly, we know that over time these weapons deteriorate, and at some point we are going to want to remove them from our arsenal in any event. So we have made that commitment.

   Now, which is better? Which is better? That we follow through with that commitment to remove this large number of extraordinarily powerful nuclear weapons that may or may not be all that safe, and think about substituting, in some cases, much smaller, much more precise, much safer weapons maybe or just keeping those large weapons around, hoping they will be safe, hoping they will not deteriorate, hoping they will work but, if we ever had to use one, understanding that it would result in massive casualties?

   It seems to me that the people who really value life would want us to think in 21st-century terms, not middle-of-the-20th-century terms, in that regard.

   Another point: There is a very important relationship between research and development, and I do not think we should fall into the trap of attempting to separate research from development.

   The Senator from New Mexico made the point that nobody is talking here about producing weapons. And we are not. But I hope we do not get to the point that we are so committed to eliminating U.S. nuclear weapons that we would make a decision that said we will never develop or, at this point, we are going to put a legislative ban on the development of any such weapons.

   That would send a very bad signal to countries of the world against which we want to have some kind of nuclear deterrent. It is a little bit like asking what our exit strategy from Iraq is. We would like to leave Iraq. But the point is, you don't start signalling before the time is ready that we want to get out of there as soon as we can or the terrorists will simply wait us out. You want to demonstrate that you are committed to stay as long as it takes.

   We want to demonstrate to our potential enemies that we are prepared to do what it will take to defend the United States. Why would you want to signal to them that you are going to put an absolute moratorium on research and an absolute prohibition on development? That makes absolutely no sense.

   It also ensures that the great scientific minds that in the past have been willing to work on these projects are no longer going to be willing to come to the National Laboratories of the great prominence we have all been so proud of in the past because there is no future in it. They tell us now that they are not getting the kind of students coming out of the universities they were used to. Their manpower, in terms of the capability in nuclear testing, has dwindled to virtually nothing. If they ever had to go back to a test, let alone develop, a nuclear weapon, they would have to bring people out of retirement who understood how it worked back in the 1960s and 1970s, but they would have a lot of difficulty even working with the new kinds of materials, with the new computer technology and other advancements that we would probably want to incorporate into any new designs.

   If we are going to entice the best minds to think about this, to keep up with people in other countries that have no compunction about doing this, we have to send them a signal that we are not forever going to shut off any work in this area. What young scientist would want to commit his life's work to this when there is obviously no future in it?

   We have to think about these things and not be a Luddite about it, saying there is no problem; we are not going to think about it; we will just shove it under the rug; we are not for progress; we are for only retaining what we developed back in the 1960s and hoping it will work.

   That is very backward thinking. It is very dangerous thinking.

   There are a lot of issues involved in this particular amendment. What it

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boils down to, though, is this: Our first obligation is to ensure the security of the United States.

   One of the pillars of our security is our nuclear deterrent. It must be safe and it must be workable. It must be relevant to the new threats we face. If we are precluded by this amendment from even thinking about those things, we have done a great disservice to our constituents. At a time when we are not at peace but at war with terrorists around the globe and at a time when we are not the only nuclear power, but there are all kinds of countries that we are, frankly, quite concerned about developing nuclear weapons, countries such as North Korea and Iran and others that I could mention, that is exactly the wrong time to be sending the signal this amendment would send; that we are going to stick our head in the sand; we are not going to support scientists thinking about these issues and even potentially recommending to us the development of some kind of new 21st century weapons that could better protect our troops, better protect the American homeland, and better defeat our enemies who would do us harm.

   I can't think of any reason why Americans would want to support that kind of a policy. Remember, we have not been successful in deterring other nations by this unilateral embargo on our own testing and development. They have gone right ahead with their programs, some of the worst countries in the world. The ``axis of evil,'' North Korea and Iran, has gone right ahead with their programs. So what makes us think that by the United States continuing this see-no-evil unilateral moratorium that the great moral situation of the United States will prevent these countries from moving right along with their projects? History does not support that view.

   Better that we have peace through strength. And strength is the strength of the United States in terms of its commitment, in terms of its scientific capability, and in terms of its willpower to think about what we are going to need to defend America in the future.

   I hope my colleagues will defeat this amendment as they have before.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, by prior unanimous consent agreement, it is now the opportunity for Senator Byrd to address the body for 1 hour. I know Senator Lincoln had one brief statement she wanted to make. If there is no objection, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Lincoln be permitted to make her remarks at this time, and perhaps the clerk could notify Senator Byrd that his time has arrived.

*************************

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. ENZI). Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of H.R. 2754, which the clerk will report.

   The legislative clerk read as follows:

   A bill (H.R. 2754) making appropriations for energy and water development for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and for other purposes.

   Pending:

   Feinstein amendment No. 1655, to prohibit the use of funds for Department of Energy activities relating to the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, Advanced Weapons Concepts, modification of the readiness posture of the Nevada Test Site, and the Modern Pit Facility, and to make the amount of funds made available by the prohibition for debt reduction.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am very pleased today that we have set a time and we are going to vote on the so-called Feinstein amendment. I am also pleased we will hear from a very distinguished Senator whose thoughts and reputation in the Senate, from this Senator's standpoint, are becoming more valid, more looked upon, and listened to.

   The issue before us is a straightforward issue that is trying to be made complex. It is not the issue of building new nuclear weapons. Senator Chambliss and I can start off by saying there is nothing in this bill that permits us to build a single, solitary, new nuclear weapon. That requires an act of Congress that is not before us.

   Secondly, the Senator knows it provides for the testing ground in Nevada, which we had said since we put it in mothballs, it should be ready for testing at any time. Any time today means 3 years. Under this legislation, at the request of the administration, it will be modernized so it will only take 1 1/2 years to get ready for a test, if a test is necessary.

   So far, those things I have said, it would seem to me, should pass this Senate 100 to 0. There are two other issues I am sure my friend from Georgia will explain, but none of them do anything to build a new line of nuclear weapons for this great Nation. That is not the issue, and I hope the Senator from Georgia will join me in convincing a few more Senators this is an issue to be defeated. Small funding, big ideas; little, tiny funding with great repercussions if we fail to do what we ought to do.

   I yield the floor and welcome the Senator's comments.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

   Mr. CHAMBLISS. I thank the Senator from New Mexico for his kind comments, but most importantly I thank him for his strong leadership on the issue of energy and any number of other issues. In my years in the House I had the privilege of working with the Senator when he was chairman of the Budget Committee. What great leadership he provided, and he is carrying that forward as chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy now. It is indeed a privilege and a pleasure to work very closely with him to make sure a strong energy policy is developed in the United States of America, something that is sorely lacking. Under the Senator's leadership we are going to make sure that happens.

   Before I make my comments relative to this amendment, though, I cannot help but take a minute to say to the Presiding Officer that as a grandfather twice over, I am very happy for the Chair and Diana. I will say if he thinks he is having fun today, every day gets more and more fun.

   Being the obnoxious grandparent I am, I would like to compare pictures with the Presiding Officer as he moves down the road. My pictures of little John and little Parker are something special that I hold very near and dear. I see the Chair already has his. So we will compare them early on.

   I rise today to speak in opposition to the amendment offered by my distinguished colleague, Senator Feinstein. I do not support this amendment for several reasons and I would like to take a few minutes to outline my concerns. The amendment offered contains four provisions, all of which will negatively affect our Nation's security and our ability to maintain a modern and safe nuclear weapons capability.

   This amendment prohibits our Nation's scientists from researching one of the foremost military challenges our Nation faces, which is an enemy using a hardened, deeply buried facility to protect weapons of mass destruction or carry out command and control operations. Our Nation has just begun exploring whether modified existing warheads might be effective in countering such targets. The underlying bill provides funds to conduct the second year of a 3-year feasibility study to see if existing weapons can be modified to address this critical threat. The bill allows the United States to simply explore--and I emphasize the word--the full range of weapons concepts that could offer a credible deterrent and response to new and emerging threats. It is imperative that our Nation continue to perform this research. It absolutely has to be done.

   The funding for advanced concepts that this amendment strikes will also prohibit our scientists from exploring and incorporating changes to our existing nuclear-related programs, including upgrades to safety and security measures that make our nuclear arsenal more reliable and safer. Advanced concepts are the ``idea machines'' for scientists and engineers at our national laboratories that allow them to take advantage of advancement in technology. Essentially, this amendment would restrict our scientists from doing their job, which is to improve the reliability and sustainability of our programs.

   The amendment also restricts funding for the improvement of our country's timeline to prepare for an underground nuclear test. Our goal is to reduce the timeline from the current threshold of 36 months to 18 months. The President could decide that a test is necessary to confirm a problem or test a fix to a problem involving the safety, security or reliability of a nuclear weapon in the stockpile. This administration has determined that, should such a test become necessary, the United States should not have to wait 3 years to address the problem in the stockpile. As our nuclear systems age, the necessity to conduct a test becomes more likely, should the President determine that it is in the national interest to do so. This amendment would make our Nation and our nuclear arsenal less, not more, secure.

   The last provision in this amendment would have the most drastic effect, I believe, to our Nation's security. For the first time in more than a decade, the United States will now be able to

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design and implement a program to manufacture a plutonium pit, an essential nuclear warhead component. The lack of this proficiency has seriously constrained our ability to maintain our nuclear stockpile. In fact, the Department of Energy, in 2002, indicated that the U.S. is the only nuclear power that lacks the ability to manufacture ``pits.'' All pits currently in the U.S. nuclear stockpile were made at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, CO, which opened in 1952. The Department of Energy halted pit manufacturing operations there in 1989. The administration has proposed a multi-year planning and design process that would result in a final decision on constructing a modern pit facility in 2011. If construction is approved, the proposed facility would begin full operation in 2020. The modern pit facility allows us to incorporate this capability into our nuclear weapons program and modernize our systems accordingly.

   Should this amendment pass, the United States' capabilities for ensuring a safe, reliable nuclear arsenal will continue to regress for several years. This amendment will prohibit the U.S. from taking advantage of the latest technology.

   Let me reiterate, the U.S. is not planning to resume testing; nor are we improving test readiness in order to develop new nuclear weapons. In fact, the U.S. is not planning to develop any new nuclear weapons at all. Our goal is to maintain a safe, secure, reliable, and effective nuclear weapons program, and for this reason I oppose the pending amendment.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.

   Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the amendment. I thought I would comment in three areas.

   First of all, I have had an opportunity to visit our laboratories in the United States. I will talk a little bit about that. Then I would like to review where we are in the overall aspect as far as our nuclear weapons are concerned. Finally, I will talk a little bit about what is in the authorization bill we passed in the Senate earlier on in the year, and talk a little bit about the fact that we have considered most of these amendments already. I don't understand why we are bringing them up for reconsideration, because the Senate has spoken.

   I had an opportunity earlier this year to go around and visit the laboratories. I began to understand how important it is--that we need to study our nuclear weapons and we need to understand where we are in regard to the strategic nuclear stockpile.

   Not long ago, several years back, the hope for the strategic nuclear stockpile was that it would work, but there was skepticism in the scientific community. But going around the laboratories earlier this year, those scientists, very capable scientists, very dedicated employees we have in our laboratories--and they want to see world peace and they don't necessarily want to see the proliferation of nuclear weapons--understand the need for us to know what is happening as far as our own strategic stockpile is concerned; that we need to continue to evaluate the threats from our enemies or potential enemies and where we stand in relation to that threat.

   I was convinced that we need to do studies; we need to do some design thought; we need to bring it up for discussion. Nobody is out here saying we need to go into a nuclear arms race. I think that is overstated. But I think there is a lot of science that needs to be known, still, as far as nuclear weapons. We are going through a period of time where our stockpile is aging. Because it is aging, there are some phenomena that we perhaps do not understand. We want to make sure we understand. We want to make sure we have a safe environment and, from a safety aspect, that we understand what happens with aging.

   The administration's budget request for fiscal year 2004 included several initiatives to advance their agenda as spelled out in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. The Nuclear Posture Review laid out a plan to reduce the nuclear threshold by making advances in conventional munitions and missile defense capabilities, and in revitalizing our nuclear weapons infrastructure, while at the same time reducing the number of nuclear weapons--reducing the number of nuclear weapons in our stockpile from around 6,000 to between around 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed nuclear warheads.

   One focus of the Nuclear Posture Review is to make advances in our nuclear weapons capabilities to deter future threats instead of maintaining a nuclear weapons stockpile which was designed to deter past threats.

   This bill includes funding to support the administration's initiatives. Specifically, the Senate bill provides $6 million for advanced concepts, $15 million to continue a 3-year feasibility study on the robust nuclear earth penetrator, which is commonly referred to as RNEP, and $25 million to enhance our test readiness capabilities at the Nevada Test Site. That was mentioned in previous comments

   on the Senate floor, how important it is in order to meet our 18-month response requirement that this needs to be met. There needs to be money to meet that requirement. And there is $23 million to continue conceptual design efforts for a modern pit facility. Each of these individual facilities will enhance our Nation's readiness and capabilities in support of the Nuclear Posture Review.

   I think the Members of the Senate need to know the Nuclear Posture Review was analyzed by those people in the know, those people who understand what is happening in other countries, people who understand the science and understand where we are in this country.

   The advanced concepts initiative will support preconceptual and concept definition studies and feasibility and cost studies approved by the Nuclear Weapons Council. With advanced concepts, we are beginning to challenge our scientists, designers, and engineers to consider what is within the art of the possible. They will be challenged to think, discover, create, and innovate. By supporting the administration's request for the advanced concepts initiative, we will ensure there is an active advanced development program to assess the capabilities of our adversaries, conceptualizing innovative methods for countering those threats, developing weapon system requirements in response to our adversaries, and prototyping and evaluating the concepts.

   The advanced concepts initiative will also help our experts to design enhanced safety and security aspects for our nuclear weapons, particularly the aging nuclear weapons that we possess.

   The Feinstein amendment would strike this funding for advanced concepts.

   The RNEP study is not a new issue for the Congress to consider. Last year, Congress authorized and appropriated $15 million for the first of the 3-year feasibility studies on the robust nuclear earth penetrator. This bill provides funding for the continuation of the feasibility study. It does not authorize the production or deployment of such a capability. The RNEP feasibility study will determine if one of two existing nuclear weapons can be modified to penetrate into hard rock in order to destroy a deeply buried target that could be hiding weapons of mass destruction or command and control assets.

   The Department of Energy has modified nuclear weapons in the past to modernize their safety, security, and reliability aspects. We also modify existing nuclear weapons to meet new military requirements. The B61-11, one of the weapons being considered for the RNEP feasibility study, was already modified once before to serve as an earth penetrator to hold specific targets at risk. At that time, the modification was to assure the B61 could penetrate frozen soils. The RNEP feasibility study is an attempt to determine whether the same B61 or another weapon, the B83, could be modified to penetrate hard rock or reinforced underground facilities.

   Funding research on options, both nuclear and conventional, for attacking such targets is a responsible step for our country to take.

   Admiral James Ellis, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, confirmed in testimony before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee on April 8, 2003, that not all hardened and deeply buried targets can be destroyed by conventional weapons. Many nations are increasingly developing hardened and deeply buried targets to protect command and communications and weapons of mass destruction production and storage assets. It is prudent to support the study

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of potential capabilities to address this growing category of threat.

   What the Senate bill provides funding for is simply the second year of the 3-year feasibility study, nothing more. Should the National Nuclear Security Administration determine through this study that the robust nuclear earth penetrator can meet the requirements to hold a hardened and deeply buried target at risk, NNSA still could not proceed to full-scale weapon production development or deployment without an authorization and appropriation from Congress.

   We should allow our weapons experts to determine if the robust nuclear earth penetrator could destroy hardened and deeply buried targets and to assess what would be the collateral damage associated with such capability. Then Congress would have the information it needs to decide whether development of such weapons is appropriate and necessary to maintain our Nation's security.

   The Feinstein amendment would strike funding to continue the ANEP feasibility study.

   The enhanced test readiness initiative has also been closely considered by the Congress and the administration. The House and the Senate Armed Services Committees required the Department of Energy, in consultation with the Department of Defense, to do a study to determine the optimum readiness posture for the Nevada Test Site. After a thorough review, the optimal test readiness posture chosen by the Department of Energy was 18 months.

   Against the thoughtful consideration of both the Congress and the administration, the Feinstein amendment would strike the funding to allow our Nation's readiness to be enhanced at the Nevada Test Site.

   Another important initiative is the continuing efforts to design and construct a modern pit facility to ensure the United States can, once again, manufacture plutonium pits for our existing nuclear weapons stockpile and for future weapons design, if necessary. The United States is the only nuclear power which does not have the current ability to mass produce plutonium pits.

   Let me restate that. The United States is the only nuclear power that does not have the current ability to mass produce plutonium pits.

   Although we have limited capabilities to produce a few pits at the Los Alamos National Laboratory since the shutdown of Rocky Flats in my home State of Colorado, the United States has not produced plutonium pits. That is a problem for our aging nuclear weapons stockpile since the pits and those weapons are aging beyond their design life, and as a radioactive material, plutonium continues to deteriorate until the pits can no longer be usable. The Feinstein amendment would strike funding for the modern pit facility.

   All of the administration's nuclear weapons initiatives are designed to make sure the United States has the best and the brightest scientists and engineers prepared to innovate, create, test, and even manufacture, if necessary, to make sure any adversary is deterred from conducting harmful actions against the United States or its allies.

   There are protections in the National Defense Authorization Act which provide that, at a minimum, no engineering design work can occur on the robust nuclear penetrator without specific authorization from Congress. We maintain our ability to control any mass production of those nuclear weapons.

   We already had that debate. We should allow these initiatives to continue. Therefore, I am urging my colleagues to join me in voting against the Feinstein amendment.

   There are a couple more issues I would like to cover. First, I ask unanimous consent that an op-ed by the Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, from the Washington Post on Monday, July 21, 2003, be printed in the RECORD.

   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

[From the Washington Post, July 21, 2003]

   Facing a New Nuclear Reality

(By Spencer Abraham)

   The United States took another step toward eliminating the last vestiges of Cold War nuclear weapons production in May when the Department of Energy awarded contracts for construction of fossil fuel power plants to replace three Russian nuclear reactors. These reactors produce not only heat and electricity but also weapons-grade plutonium, enough to build 1 1/2 nuclear weapons a day. When the new U.S.-financed power plants are constructed and the nuclear reactors shut down, weapons-grade plutonium will no longer be produced in Russia.

   President Bush is deeply committed to reducing the number of our nation's strategic nuclear warheads by two-thirds, and to preventing nuclear and radiological materials from falling into the hand of terrorists. This $466 million project is the latest advancement in an aggressive nonproliferation effort that has expanded from $800 million to $1.3 billion per year since the president took office. That's why I was perplexed, during congressional debate on the defense budget by the hysterics over the $21 million that would allow our scientists to contemplate advanced weapons concepts that could be used to protect against 21st-century threats. (In all, some $6.4 billion in the budget is for Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs.)

   This funding should not have surprised anyone. It is the logical result of early Bush administration initiatives, endorsed by Congress, to conduct a thorough review of the nation's nuclear weapons policy. That review determined that the 21st-century national security environment differs greatly from that of the past half-century.

   Deterrence during the Cold War led to a predictable--if chilling--balance of terror that has now largely vanished. Henceforth threats will likely evolve more quickly and less predictably. It is a situation that demands the restoration of our capacity to meet new challenges.

   Recently the United States has begun making great strides to rebuild those capabilities. Now, for the first time in more than a decade, we are able to manufacture a plutonium pit--also known as a trigger--an essential nuclear warhead component. The lack of this proficiency has seriously constrained our ability to maintain our nuclear stockpile. We have also launched a much-needed facility modernization program. But maintaining our capability to address 21st-century challenges requires more.

   Should our scientists decide we cannot certify the reliability of our nuclear stockpile, we must be capable of conducting a nuclear test in a much shorter time frame than the current three years. The capacity to test within 18 months is a critical capability every president must have. We must also give our weapons scientists the resources and authority to explore advanced weapons concepts, including research related to low-yield weapons. Funding constraints and confusing legal prohibitions have stifled most new thinking on these issues. This has, in turn, made us less capable of devising the best responses to emerging threats.

   The challenges posed by rogue nations or terrorists possessing weapons of mass destruction are strikingly different from that posed by the Soviet Union. Yet our best thinkers aren't being allowed to fully shift their focus from winning the Cold War to meeting new challenges.

   Finally, we must move ahead to address one of the foremost military challenges identified in our recent review--an enemy using hardened, deeply buried facilities, to protect its weapons and other assets. We have just begun to explore whether modified existing warheads might be effective in attacking such targets. Similar analyses of the applicability of conventional weapons to addressing this threat are also being done.

   We are not planning to resume testing; nor are we improving test readiness in order to develop new nuclear weapons. In fact, we are not planning to develop any new nuclear weapons at all. Our goal is designed to explore the full range of weapons concepts that could offer a credible deterrence and response to new and emerging threats as well as allow us to continue to assess the reliability of our stockpile without testing.

   This is a sensible course that meets our national security requirements by restoring our capabilities and ensuring that we have the flexibility to respond quickly to any potential problems in the current stockpile, or to new threats that require immediate attention. Our policies are designed to strengthen the deterrent value of our nuclear weapons so that they don't ever have to be used.

   Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I would like to briefly point out some of the things we had in the Defense authorization bill as it applied to a number of areas affecting nuclear weapons. The section that dealt with the developing low-yield nuclear weapon--section 3131 of the Defense authorization bill--repeals the ban on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons. But that same section also includes a provision which states that nothing in this repeal should be ``construed as authorizing the testing, acquisition, or deployment of a low-yield nuclear weapon.''

   Also included in that same provision is a section that limits DOE from beginning phase 3. Phase 3 is the full-scale engineering development or any subsequent phase of a low-yield nuclear weapon ``unless specifically authorized by the Congress.''

   Finally, also in that same section 3131, a report is to be submitted to determine if the repeal of the ban on research and development of low-yield

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nuclear weapons will affect the ability of the United States to achieve its nonproliferation objectives.

   On that section of the Defense Authorization Act, we had a number of amendments that we considered on the floor which we have already voted on. Again, one was the Feinstein amendment. Senator Feinstein offered an amendment to strike the repeal of the ban on low-yield nuclear weapons research. The motion to table was agreed to by a vote of 51 to 43. That was the Senate's position supporting the language of the Senate authorization bill on Armed Services.

   The Reed-Levin amendment was also brought up in that section. They offered an amendment which retains the ban on low-yield nuclear weapon research. This amendment would retain the ban on phase 3 and subsequent phases but allow research on phases 1, 2, and 2A. This amendment was very similar to a House-Senate Armed Services Committee provision.

   Chairman Warner offered an amendment in the form of a substitute which struck the Reed-Levin amendment and added a limitation which required a specific authorization from the Congress before the Secretary of Energy can proceed with phase 3--which again is engineering development--or any subsequent phases of low-yield nuclear weapons. The Warner substitute passed by a vote of 59 to 38. The Reed-Levin amendment, as amended by the Warner substitute, passed by a vote of 96 to 0.

   In another section in the Senate Armed Services Committee authorization bill dealing with the robust nuclear earth-penetrator--commonly referred to as RNEP--there was an authorization for $15 million for RNEP, which was the amount of the request we had in the budget proposal. That was section 1050.

   Section 3135 also requires DOE to receive a specific authorization from Congress before commencing with phase 3 or any subsequent phase of the RNEP.

   Time and time again, the Senate has spoken--that there will not be any further procedure on nuclear weapons development and advanced engineering unless there is specific authorization from the Senate.

   Under the RNEP, there were a couple of Senate floor amendments that we considered. For example, Senator Dorgan offered an amendment to prohibit the use of funds for the nuclear earth-penetrator weapon, and the motion to table was agreed to by a vote of 56 to 41.

   There was a Nelson amendment on RNEP. That amendment limited the DOE from beginning phase 3--full-scale development--or any subsequent phase of the robust nuclear earth-penetrator without a specific authorization from Congress.

   Chairman Warner prepared a very similar amendment, and the Nelson amendment was agreed to by a voice vote.

   We have debated this issue thoroughly. The Senate has spoken on these amendments and on these provisions. The appropriators have language supporting what we have already voted on and what has been passed by this body. I think it is time to move forward.

   I think it is important that we move forward with the appropriations bill in light of our energy needs in this country. We shouldn't delay.

   I rise in support of the bill, and I rise in opposition to the Feinstein amendment and ask my colleagues to join me.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. SESSIONS). The Senator from New Mexico.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Colorado for his comments and overall summary of this situation. It has been extremely helpful. I am very grateful that he found time to do it today.

   I understand that Senator Bayh desires to speak as if in morning business shortly with reference to the death of the Governor of his State. He is on his way. When he arrives, I will yield to him. He said he wanted 7 minutes.

   Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to explain my reasons for supporting the Feinstein amendment. This amendment first and foremost seeks to reduce the funding for the robust nuclear earth penetrator, or RNEP. While on the Armed Services Committee, I took the lead on numerous occasions in opposing this program. I believe that it sends the wrong signal to other nations when we are proposing to expand our nuclear arsenal at the very same time we are trying to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction worldwide.

   Further, this country clearly has superiority in advanced conventional weapons, as evidenced by the recent conflict in Iraq. Very few, if any, nations can compete with the U.S. in conventional weapons. We should be relying on this advantage in conventional weapons rather than forcing other nations to compete with us on nuclear weapons as we did before the end of the cold war.

   There is also a pragmatic reason why I believe the RNEP is not needed. In my opinion, our existing arsenal, particularly the B-83 tactical nuclear bomb, is more than adequate to serve as a deterrent against the hardest underground targets that confront us today. The administration envisions the RNEP as a weapon that will destroy deep underground targets. Yet proponents of this argument seem not to have considered the loss of function to an underground target that a B-83, whose yield is in excess of 1 megaton, will cause. I am sure that after such a devastating explosion, very little, if any, of the deepest underground targets will pose much of a threat to the U.S.

   Further, the amendment seeks to strike funding for the advanced concepts initiative. The administration claims that such funds are needed to keep our weapons scientists on the cutting edge of warhead design but they have not explained to us what avenues of research they wish to pursue. In my opinion, we barely know enough about modeling how our existing warheads function under the stockpile stewardship program. Our modern strategic warheads, such as the W-76 and W-88, are very complicated; modeling them challenges even the most advanced calculations on our laboratory supercomputers. There is no need at this time to embark on the new avenue of research in the advanced concepts initiative when we don't understand the science underlying the stockpile stewardship of our deployed arsenal. The advanced concepts initiative will be a dangerous distraction from the stockpile stewardship program.

   The third provision of this amendment is somewhat more complicated. Let me begin by stating that I strongly support the construction of a modern pit facility as an integral component of the stockpile stewardship program. An earlier version of this amendment struck the funding for conceptual design work on this facility, which, in my

   opinion, was a mistake. I expressed my concerns to Senator FEINSTEIN, and I am pleased that this version of the amendment retains these conceptual designs funds.

   There is a fundamental reason why I think the modern pit facility is important. Our pits are approaching ages in some cases of up to 35 years old. Our best scientists do not fully understand the way aging affects on these plutonium pits. At Los Alamos National Laboratory, we are just now at the stage where we can produce our first prototype test pit, 15 years after the Rocky Flats plant stopped production of these pits. But the Los Alamos facility cannot expand to handle the production that our stockpile may require 15 years from now.

   With regard to siting the facility, I do not believe that we will have all the information we will need to do so by 2004. I have not seen any statements by the administration on what size the stockpile will be in 2012, when the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty reduces the stockpile down to 1200 to 1700 strategic weapons. I note that this treaty does not account for the deployed warheads found in gravity bombs. As a result of this lack of precision in future stockpile size, the DOE's Environmental Impact Statement gives production rates that range by a factor of four from 100 to 450 pits per year. Given that the stockpile size has not been decided at this time, and that the modern pit facility will not start operations until 2018, I cannot see how the Department of Energy can configure, much less site, their pit production facility in fiscal year 2004. I concur with Senator FEINSTEIN that the DOE can hold off siting the facility for a year, while continuing its design to

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match the stockpile requirements from the Department of Defense.

   I would like to note that I have advocated that if and when DOE justifies the facility's size, then Carlsbad, NM is the best location for it. Carlsbad's close proximity to Los Alamos National Laboratory means that the scientists who are researching the best ways to re-manufacture pits will be able to easily travel and impart that knowledge to the production plant. Carlsbad has a top-notch workforce at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant well-trained for handling radioactive materials that will be essential to the pit facility. The Carlsbad community has shown strong support for the facility as well.

   I support this amendment, but I also want to make clear that I also support the goal of constructing a modern pit facility, provided that they have a clear mandate from the Department of Defense on the facility's size based upon the stockpile, and we expect in 2018, when it begins operation.

   Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I stand today in support of my colleague Senator Feinstein, and her amendment to strip the funding from the robust nuclear earth-penetrator and the advanced weapons concepts program, and to stop the enhancement of the time-to-test readiness at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and the site selection of the modern pit facility. I fully support Senator Feinstein's efforts to attempt to put an end to nuclear proposals that have not yet been justified by hard arguments but would likely result in adverse consequences.

   Almost a decade ago, the United States, our allies, and the freedom-loving nations around the world rejoiced as the cold war ended peacefully and the threat of total nuclear annihilation was lifted. We dreamed then and we hope now that we will never again enter into a global struggle with thermonuclear consequences.

   Yet there are those in this world who would still do us harm, and they are armed with weapons of mass destruction. To pretend otherwise would be to pander to a most dangerous delusion. There is a real danger that they seek to secure those weapons in hardened or deeply buried bunkers. We must put our best scientists to work to learn how to neutralize this threat.

   At the same time, we must be careful that in seeking to neutralize this threat, we do not aggravate it by pursuing dangerously destabilizing policies and weapons programs.

   As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I have been briefed on our military's conventional and nuclear capabilities. Like most Americans, I have also watched with pride as our armed forces prove in Iraq and around the world that they are second to none. Based on these observations, I am convinced that we can and will meet the threat posed by our enemies without having to resort to developing nuclear weapons to destroy deeply buried or hardened targets at this time. To do so would be premature at best and dangerous and misguided at worst.

   I am further convinced by the testimony and writings of experts, both those who have worn our Nation's uniform and those who did not, that not only is the utility of these nuclear weapons questionable, but so is the very fact of whether or not they will work as hoped.

   Developing low-yield nuclear weapons at this time would also severely undermine our global nonproliferation efforts. I believe that at a time when the United States is seeking to convince the North Korean leadership that they do not need to engage in a brazen drive for a robust nuclear capability; at a time when our diplomats are trying to deescalate nuclear tensions along the Indian and Pakistani border; at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency is presently engaged in negotiations with Iran over denuclearization and inspections, that we would be naive to think that we can coax these nations to drop their nuclear plans while we invest in pursuing our own new nuclear capabilities.

   In addition to undermining our international nonproliferation efforts, a new generation of nuclear weapons, especially the low-yield variety envisioned by the administration, will blur the bright lines between conventional and nuclear capabilities, and raise the likelihood of resorting to the latter. I am not alone in this concern. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili stated this concern clearly and persuasively: ``[a]ny activities that erode the firebreak between nuclear and conventional weapons or that encourage the use of nuclear weapons for purposes that are not strategic and deterrent in nature would undermine the advantage that we derive from overwhelming conventional superiority.''

   The world we live in is indeed a dangerous place. In response to these dangers, however, we must guard against rash actions that undermine our ultimate security. The new nuclear weapons the administration advocates will not substantially increase our sense of security and may in fact detract from it.

   Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I rise today to support Senator Feinstein's amendment to remove funding for the development of new nuclear weapons. The administration is seeking $15 million to fund more research on the robust nuclear earth penetrator a nuclear bunker buster and $6 million for research on new nuclear weapons.

   I must register my shock that the administration has requested this funding, reversing almost 60 years of U.S. nuclear policy. Funding such a request is the first step on a ``slippery slope'' that could irreversibly lead us to testing and maybe even deploying these new nuclear weapons.

   It is imperative that we nip this mischief in the bud by supporting Senator Feinstein's amendment.

   Let me remind my colleagues that the administration has consistently identified one distinct threat to U.S. security and reiterated this threat innumerable times in the past year: The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their transfer to terrorists.

   In the President's speech to the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, in his address to Congress in October, 2002, in his State of the Union speech this past January, he repeatedly expressed his concern about the proliferation of biological, chemical, and especially nuclear weapons.

   Many Members of Congress voted to send our young men and women to Iraq to eliminate the threat of Saddam Hussein's supposed nuclear arsenal. We were told that while Saddam had not yet developed nuclear weapons, he was actively intent on doing so and the consequences would be horrific.

   Meanwhile, during this same year, the administration is looking to create new nuclear weapons.

   Our diplomats have just returned from six-way talks in Beijing aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis instigated last fall when Kim Jong IL announced his defiance of the 1994 Agreed Framework. How can our negotiators in good faith reassure the North Koreans and the other participants at these talks of peaceful United States intentions in the region, while at home, in our labs, nuclear scientists are experimenting with new nuclear weapons that will eventually have a yield 70 times that of the bomb dropped at Hiroshima?

   It is abundantly clear that there is a copycat effect of U.S. military planning. According to former Undersecretary of Energy, Rose Gottemoeller:

   Other countries watch us like a hawk. They are very, very attentive to what we do in the nuclear arena. I think people abroad will interpret this as an enthusiastic effort by the Bush administration to re-nuclearize. And I think definitely this nuclear funding is going to be an impetus to the development of nuclear weapons around the world.

   I clearly remember the devastation that the atom bombs wrought not only on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but on all society. As Adlai Stevenson put it, ``Man wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert.''

   Since those two unforgettable days in 1945, administration after administration, Republicans and Democrats, have made it clear that nuclear weapons have held a special status within the U.S. arsenal. U.S. policymakers have committed to the international nuclear arms control regime.

   The research funding in this bill for the nuclear earth penetrator departs from 60 years of nuclear policy. If these weapons are researched, they will be inevitably be tested, which will undermine a 10-year U.S. commitment to a nuclear testing moratorium.

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   I am deeply concerned about the standing of the United States in the international community.

   As a result of the unilateral approach the Bush administration has taken in Iraq, we have lost friends, trust, respect and admiration in the global community. This new nuclear policy departure will only further erode U.S. leadership and esteem in the world.

   I urge my colleagues to support this vital amendment.

   Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise to support Senator FEINSTEIN's amendment to strike funding allocations for certain nuclear weapons research and development activities contained in H.R. 2754 the energy and water appropriations bill. Before I discuss the particulars of this amendment, let me explain why it matters so very much in the context of the international environment in coming decades.

   Today, the United States is the pre-eminent conventional superpower in the world. We spend more on our Nation's military than the rest of the world combined. As the dazzling display of firepower exhibited by our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrates, our Nation boasts the mightiest military machine in world history.

   But none of that means our Nation is secure or can afford to rest on its laurels. As September 11 graphically exhibited, the world is a very dangerous place, if only because our adversaries and rivals are turning to asymmetric warfare to nullify our military advantages and exploit our weaknesses. One key asymmetry lies in the use of weapons of mass destruction. The spread of technology around the world allows a greater number of states and non-state actors to access the knowledge, technology, and infrastructure required to develop and produce nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

   Nuclear weapons, in particular, can nullify the overwhelming conventional military strength of the United States. Today no weapons system can defend against the detonation of a nuclear weapon in an American city. National missile defense holds out the prospect one day of preventing the delivery of nuclear weapons via intercontinental ballistic missiles, but the technology is so premature that any effective system is years, if not decades, away. Indeed, a terrorist is unlikely to use an ICBM with a return address. And there is absolutely no system that can prevent a barge from sailing into New York City's harbor and detonating a nuclear explosive on board.

   So nuclear proliferation represents the gravest threat today to our national security, a threat from which our overwhelming conventional military strength provides little protection. How do we best respond to this threat? One school calls for the development of new nuclear weapons for possible use in an otherwise nonnuclear conflict. In order to ensure that a North Korea or an Iran cannot secure its chemical and biological weapons or hide its leaders in underground bunkers, some people call for new nuclear weapons capable of penetrating layers of earth and destroying deeply buried targets.

   Advocates of new nuclear weapons go off the deep end, however, when they suggest that low-yield weapons could ever destroy deeply buried targets, or that a ``bunker-busting'' weapons would not cause horrific civilian casualties. The laws of physics dictate that a warhead cannot penetrate more than 50 feet of dry rock before gravitational forces cause the warhead to break up. That means that a nuclear weapon big enough to destroy a deeply buried target--even a target 100 feet below ground--cannot be ``low-yield''. Any low-yield weapon would simply lack the explosive power necessary to destroy a target buried at that depth or lower. So the nuclear weapons designers tell us explicitly: A Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator will never be a low-yield weapon.

   But what would happen if a low-yield weapon were used against a buried target? According to the physicist Sidney Drell, a one-kiloton nuclear weapon, well below the 5-kiloton threshold below which nuclear weapons are called ``low-yield'', detonating at a depth of 40 feet below the surface would still create a crater larger than the entire World Trade Center impact zone and churn up about 1 million cubic feet of radioactive material into the air. This very small one-kiloton nuclear weapon would wreak tremendous damage, contaminating the surrounding area for miles on end with dangerous gamma rays and other radiation. This reality is vastly different from the image of a surgical weapon promoted so often by its advocates.

   Advocates of low-yield nuclear weapons are trying to have it both ways. They want a weapon powerful enough to take out bunkers, neutralizing any stored chemical and biological agents, that are buried deeply below the Earth's surface. At the same time, these weapons must be small enough to minimize civilian casualties and destruction on the surface. Unfortunately, scientists and weapons designers say it just can't be done.

   Weapons designers will tell you that the real purpose for low-yield nuclear weapons is not to strike underground targets when all other options have failed. Rather, these weapons could strike regular surface targets like leadership compounds--while reducing the damage that a more regular-sized nuclear weapons would cause. But that resurrects the misguided strategic concept that nuclear weapons are just handy tools, like any other weapon--a bizarre notion that should have expired along with Dr. Strangelove decades ago. Besides, low-yield weapons are nothing new. Every time we developed them, however, the military concluded that they weren't worth the effort.

   Any deterrence benefits that new low-yield nuclear weapons would provide are far outweighed by both the risk that they will actually be used and the dangerous signal that they send to other countries--intentionally or not--that we intend to fight nuclear wars. Low-yield weapons, in particular, blur the traditional firewall between nuclear and conventional war. The sidestep the fact that a nuclear weapon is a weapon of a wholly different order and magnitude from any other weapon in existence today--something that any sane and rational society would only use as a truly last resort. As Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated in 1945, even crude nuclear weapons are city-killers.

   Let me point out one final challenge to the possible use of low-yield nuclear weapons to strike deeply buried targets. Any decision to order such a strike must rely upon unimpeachable intelligence, because no rational President will order even a low-yield nuclear weapons like without great confidence in the success of the mission. It is precisely that type of intelligence which is so difficult to obtain when it comes to acquiring information on the location of WMD stockpiles and leadership compounds in rogue states. Just look at what happened during the war on Iraq this spring. Twice, we thought we had Saddam in our sights. Our intelligence folks told the President they had good information that Saddam was in a particular location at a given time--but in both cases they were wrong. Saddam either was never there or had left before the bombs arrived. And as for taking out Saddam's chemical or biological weapons, ``all the king's horses and all the king's men'' will get back to us later.

   I'm not casting blame on our intelligence community--it is an incredible challenge to gain real-time tactical information in the heat of battle. But imagine the international outcry had the United States used a low-yield nuclear weapons to go after Saddam. Not only would we have failed to kill him because he was not in the bunker, we would have caused incalculable civilian casualties, razed a large part of Baghdad, and breached the nuclear threshold.

   Is this a price any future Commander in Chief would or should be willing to pay? Our enemies are not stupid--they will increasingly locate valuable targets near or next to civilian sites, such as mosques and hospitals. They may will bury deeply hidden bunkers under these sites. Again, should any President give the OK to use a low-yield nuclear weapon under such circumstances? If not, why incur the fiscal expense, diplomatic costs, and strategic risks of developing these new weapons in the first place? Why give other countries the sense that nuclear weapons are a vital element in our war-fighting plans, when there would still be no rational reason for us to use them except in retaliation?

   So what's the right response to the world we live in today, where nuclear

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proliferation poses the greatest security threat we face? I wish I could offer you one simple solution that will effectively answer this challenge. Unfortunately, no such magic bullet exists. Instead, we need to rely on a shrewd combination of accurate intelligence, diplomacy, multilateral cooperation, arms control, export controls, interdiction, sanctions, and when appropriate, the threat or use of military force, to deter and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

   In those situations where we must target deeply buried targets, conventional weapons offer a promising alternative to introducing nuclear weapons into the conflict. After all, chemical or biological weapons stored in an underground site can do no harm as long as they remain within that bunker. And an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon could spread far more chemical or biological agents than it burned up, unless it landed very precisely on the target. So our military could employ large conventional bombs to seal or destroy the entrance and exit tunnels to underground sites, so that any weapons stockpiles stored in such sites will not be going anywhere for a while.

   Other scientists have discussed the feasibility of targeting a series of conventional missiles, one following the other, in order to burrow a ``pilot hole'' toward a deeply buried target. So let's be clear--nuclear weapons are not the only possible solution for attacking an underground target.

   The neoconservative school argues that diplomacy, arms control, and international ``norms' have failed to deter rogue states like Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons programs. There may be some truth to that, but diplomacy has been instrumental in slowing down the progress of these programs and restraining their scope. In addition, nonproliferation regimes and international norms have provided tremendous value in convincing more established states in the international system to remain non-nuclear. For example, it was their desire for international legitimacy which, in part, persuaded Argentina and Brazil to give up their nascent nuclear weapons programs in the 1980's. The same can be said for Japan, Taiwan, the Ukraine, and South Africa, which have all foregone, halted, or voluntarily given up their own nuclear weapons programs.

   How does the Feinstein amendment fit into this broader discussion over U.S. nuclear weapons strategy and the battle to combat nuclear proliferation? The energy and water appropriations bill includes the administration's original requests for funding of a series of controversial nuclear weapons activities, including research into advanced nuclear concepts, such as low-yield weapons, and reduction of the time period between when a President makes the decision to resume nuclear testing and when our nuclear weapons complex would be able to carry out a test.

   This new funding to enhance our readiness to resume nuclear weapons testing and conduct research on new weapons concepts and designs will lead us to a world where the further proliferation of nuclear weapons is more widely tolerated. While the senior officials in the current administration have disavowed any intent to resume nuclear testing or produce new nuclear weapons, their actions tell a different story.

   The Nuclear Posture Review of December 2001 identified not only Russia and China as potential targets in a future nuclear war, but also North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Libya. The latter countries were cited as seeking weapons of mass destruction, but not necessarily nuclear weapons.

   More recently, civilian Pentagon leaders ordered a task force to consider possible requirements for new low-yield nuclear weapons, even while assuring the Senate that no formal requirement has yet been established.

   A presidential strategy document reportedly stated that the United States might use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state possessing chemical or biological weapons.

   Senior officials publicly discuss the possible need to resume underground nuclear testing, either to ensure that existing weapons are safe and reliable or to test new weapons, all the while scorning the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

   The Feinstein amendment would strike out the $15 million allocation for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, eliminate the $6 million allocation for Advanced Weapons Concepts Initiative and prohibit the use of any appropriated funds to shorten the time period required to prepare for an underground nuclear test from the current 24 to 36 months to less than 24 months.

   It would also prohibit the use of funds for site selection or conceptual design of a Modern Pit Facility, which would produce replacement plutonium triggers for the existing nuclear stockpile. The amendment reallocates the eliminated funding to the paramount goal of deficit reduction.

   Let me remind my colleagues that this amendment only proposes to do what the Republican-controlled House largely already did in July, when it adopted its version of the Energy and Water appropriations bill. According to press reports, Representative DAVID HOBSON, the Republican chairman of the relevant House Appropriations subcommittee, defended his panel's decision to strike this funding by asserting the U.S. Government should first address the rising costs of managing its existing nuclear stockpile and disposing of its nuclear waste before moving ahead with new nuclear programs. Neither the full House Appropriations Committee nor the House as a whole challenged the subcommittee's mark.

   We should all remember the House's actions when our opponents charge that this amendment will jeopardize U.S. national security or represents some extremist, antinuclear weapons agenda. In fact, the opposite is true.

   So what's the bottom line here? Today, the United States deploys 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads and possesses in total more than 10,000 deployed or reserve nuclear weapons. As we are the overwhelming conventional military power in the world, it is decidedly against our interest to see others obtain and/or use nuclear weapons. Why on earth, then, are we considering the acquisition of additional and more advanced nuclear weapons?

   If we continue on these steps to develop these new weapons, our friends and enemies alike can easily dismiss our future admonitions on why nuclear weapons fail to provide true security. Indeed, our adversaries will take to heart one overriding lesson: Develop your own nuclear weapons to deter a preemptive U.S. strike.

   Let me close with a statement by Secretary of State Colin Powell, a man who spent the majority of his career in the uniformed military. In May 2002, Secretary Powell discussed the potential for an India-Pakistan conflict to evolve into a nuclear clash. But his larger point holds true for our debate today:

   Nuclear weapons in this day and age may serve some deterrent effect, and so be it, but to think of using them as just another weapon in what might start out as a conventional conflict in this day and age seems to be something that no side should be contemplating.

   The Feinstein amendment enhances U.S. national security by preventing our Nation from sleepwalking into an era when nuclear weapons are considered just another weapon. The United States is the leader of the world. Other nations watch us and they follow our lead. Let's not lead them astray.

   Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise today to comment on the debate over funding for the administration's request for studying new nuclear weapons in the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill.

   The administration proposes that Congress fund the study of two new nuclear weapons: a robust nuclear earth penetrator, RNEP, and a low yield nuclear weapon.

   Why does the United States need these new nuclear weapons?

   The administration's case for these new nuclear weapons presumes that deterrence may not be working well in the post-cold war security environment. Leaders of rogue states may conclude that the United States cannot attack their deep bunkers or weapons of mass destruction, WMD, and so act or use their WMD with impunity. These new nuclear weapons supposedly will bolster the U.S. deterrent.

   But does our nuclear arsenal no longer deter?

   Deterrence involves credibly threatening an enemy to deter them from taking unwanted actions. It involves having the forces to fulfill the threat

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and the resolve to carry out the threat. We have enough nuclear weapons to accomplish this goal. Over a decade after the end of the cold war we possess an arsenal that could still end life on earth as we know it. This massive destructive power should give pause to any nation or dictator that wants to attack the United States with nuclear weapons.

   While the Congress was on recess, the annual remembrance of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II passed. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later another was dropped on Nagasaki. Shortly thereafter Japan surrendered, ending World War II.

   The Hiroshima bomb had an explosive power of 15 kilotons of TNT and killed almost 70,000 people immediately and injured as many more. The Nagasaki bomb was 22 kilotons and killed 40,000 people and injured another 25,000. There had been devastating conventional bombing attacks during World War II. The fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo also caused widespread damage and loss of life. But the realization that one plane with one bomb could destroy a city was a new and fearsome development.

   After the end of World War II and the onset of the cold war, the U.S. arsenal expanded rapidly. By 1960, more than ten thousand nuclear weapons were in the U.S. arsenal. Weapons had expanded from kiloton to megaton size. The U.S. arsenal grew to have 20,500 megatons of TNT explosive power.

   A megaton is an enormous amount of destructive power. A kiloton is a thousand tons. A megaton is a million tons. In 1960, the U.S. arsenal had almost seven tons of TNT of explosive power for every one of the three billion men, women and children on the planet.

   The massive overkill of the U.S. arsenal, like its Soviet counterpart, has declined since the 1960s. The United States still keeps thousands of nuclear weapons. But the average explosive power of a U.S. nuclear weapons has decreased. As a result the U.S. arsenal today contains only some 1,200 megatons of explosive power. Still enough, however, for 400 lbs. for every person on Earth.

   Some advocates of small nuclear weapons claim massive firepower is a poor deterrent. They argue that the United States would not use a large nuclear weapon for a limited strike. They further argue that smaller, more usable nuclear weapons will be a more credible deterrent because rogue state leaders will believe the United States could use them. The administration proposes to investigate the possibilities of a new nuclear weapon with a yield of less than five kilotons to meet this goal.

   Five kilotons is one third the size of the Hiroshima bomb. It is not a low-yield weapon. It is equivalent to 5,000 tons of ten million pounds of TNT. Yet, the use of such new lower yield nuclear weapons is incredible because it is impractical and there are conventional weapons that can or will be able to do the job. We are told there are dozens if not hundreds of buried hardened targets. Without excellent intelligence on where WMD or rogue leaders may be hidden, the United States would need to drop dozens or hundreds of nuclear weapons. The radioactive fallout from such a strike would be large. The international political fallout would be massive and so would be the international environmental effects.

   The U.S. nuclear arsenal is currently diverse and flexible. the United States in fact already possesses such low-yield nuclear weapons. I asked Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham for the record when he was before the Senate Armed Services Committee this spring if the United States had operational nuclear weapons that could have yields of less than five kilotons. Secretary Abraham's unclassified written response was that, ``The U.S. has two existing nuclear weapons that have certified yields of less than five kilotons.''

   As for the robust nuclear earth penetrator, we already have one of these as well. As has been well publicized, in the mid-1990's, the United States deployed the B61-11 bomb for an earth penetrating mission.

   The administration claims the B61-11 is no longer adequate for the job. Energy Department officials informed congressional staff in an unclassified briefing that the B61-11 was designed not to penetrate rock but to attack only certain targets in hard or frozen soil in Russia. It is not able to counter targets deeply buried under granite rock. Moreover, it has a high yield, in the hundreds of kilotons. If used in North Korea, the radioactive fall out could drift over nearby countries such as Japan.

   Is the solution to a seeming limitation to the B61-11 exploring yet more and more nuclear weapon designs? This search for a perfect nuclear deterrent reminds me of the mad logic of the cold war where the United States and Soviet Union pursued more and more nuclear weapons of more and more sophisticated designs to try to cover more and more contingencies. These endless improvements are unnecessary, expensive and dangerous.

   For example, some argue using new small penetrator nuclear weapons is preferable to using conventional weapons for attacking buried chemical or biological weapons. They hope that a nuclear weapon would incinerate hidden weapons. However, calculations by Princeton physicist Robert Nelson indicate that, unless the strike is extraordinarily precise, the blast from a nuclear weapon has as good a chance of dispersing buried agents as destroying them. Our conventional forces can also attack or disable deeply buried targets. They will continue to improve in effectiveness and lethality. We should focus on improving their capability, not chasing some nuclear will o' the wisp.

   The $21 million for the RNEP and advanced weapons concepts, including the low-yield nuclear weapons, in the fiscal year 2003 budget could be better spent elsewhere to guard us against real nuclear threats. There is widespread agreement that al Qaeda or other terrorist groups would make use of a dirty bomb if they could get hold of radioactive materials. I have released three General Accounting Office reports this year that show the United States and international controls over radioactive sealed sources that could be used in a dirty bomb are severely lacking. The Energy Department could better spend the funds being proposed for new nuclear weapons on improving the tracking and security of dangerous radioactive sources here and abroad.

   Pursuing new nuclear weapons will undermine our non-proliferation goals. The example we set for the rest of the world does matter. Getting the world's approval for the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in 1995 was dependent on the United States and the other nuclear powers signaling they would rapidly negotiate a comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, CTBT.

   The United States and Russian decision to stop nuclear testing in the lead up to the CTBT talks put pressure on France and China to end their nuclear test programs in the 1990's. Had the United States and the other nuclear powers not stopped nuclear testing it would have been even more difficult to pressure Pakistan and India to put a quick to their nuclear tests. It would be even harder to put pressure on North Korea today.

   Getting the world to continue to help us to pressure North Korea and Iran will be more complicated if the United States weakens its commitments to non-proliferation. In early September, Russia complained that several states' failure to ratify the CTBT is delaying its entry into force at an international conference convened to look at this question. This controversy over the U.S. non-proliferation policy is not welcome news when the administration is now seeking support to condemn Iran's nuclear program at an upcoming IAEA meeting. News reports indicate that the United States will have a hard time doing this as Iran has more allies on the IAEA's board than does the United States.

   The non-proliferation regime, laboriously constructed by the United States and the international community over 30 years, has been a success. Rather than having dozens of countries with nuclear weapons, we confront a few, final, hard cases that have been a problem for many years but whose time is running out. New nuclear weapons are not the way to address the challenges these nations pose.

   Rather, a diplomacy of engagement, building the support of the international community, and maintaining our strong alliance commitments and conventional forces is the way forward.

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   The administration is learning that force and confrontation are not a solution to the non-proliferation problem. Saddam Hussein's weapon of mass destruction program was not an imminent threat. Continued inspections and indefinite monitoring which were envisioned under the U.N. resolutions would have contained his program. Confrontation with North Korea has led to an acceleration of the North Korean nuclear program not its demise. Now the administration must negotiate seriously with North Korea to bring and end to the crisis and create a new security regime in the Northeast Pacific.

   The administration should understand more and more types of nuclear weapons will not guarantee deterrence, prevent the proliferation of WMD, prevent war or conflict. In fact, during the cold war we found our ever increasing nuclear arsenal could not achieve these goals. Paranoid, pygmy or pariah states, as Professor Richard Betts once characterized them, sought nuclear weapons for their defense due to their imagined or justified fears, their perceived conventional weaknesses, or because of their outcast status. Nuclear weapons did not prevent the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Arab-Israeli wars, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

   Deterrence has many components: nuclear forces, conventional forces, strong alliances, a strong economy, and a strong resolve among them. At this moment in history we need an intelligent diplomacy, strengthened alliances and capable conventional forces more than we need more and new types of nuclear weapons.

   We have enough nuclear weapons to maintain nuclear deterrence. If anything, we should be seeking ways to further reduce ours and other countries' nuclear arsenals, not add to them. Talk to the contrary by promoters of new nuclear weapons misrepresents the strength of our existing forces and our resolve. We are sending the wrong message about our military strength.

   I urge my colleagues to reject funding for these new nuclear weapon designs.

   I urge my colleagues to vote for Senator FEINSTEIN's amendment.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, if I might have the attention of Senator Reid, it has come to my attention, for a reason involving an individual Senator, that it would be more accommodating if we started our vote at 2:45. Does the Senator have any objection to that?

   Mr. REID. I modify the request that the time between 2:15 and 2:45 be equally divided between both sides, Senator Domenici controlling 15 minutes and Senator Feinstein controlling 15 minutes.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. DOMENICI. I indicate to the Senate that we will have a few minutes before the vote. I will summarize again and we will have handouts if anyone needs to know what this Senator thinks the issues we will vote on are.

   In summary, No. 1, there is no authorization to build any new nuclear weapons. We are building none now. We have not built any for a long period of time.

   No. 2, a portion of this bill says the Nevada Test Site will be made ready so it can be used in 18 months rather than 3 years. Almost everyone knowledgeable in the field thinks it is high time that happened.

   No. 3, there is a small amount of money to begin planning, designing and feasibility, for a pit manufacturing facility. We are the only nation with nuclear weapons which has no spare pits, plutonium pits, the essential ingredient. We have tried to make them in Los Alamos. It is makeshift and it has been very expensive.

   It is clearly indicated for the next 40 or 50 years we need to build a facility. This bill provides a start on that long-term effort.

   Not yet have I said anything about new weapons or America engaging in a new course of conduct with respect to nuclear energy. That is not happening.

   Next, the bill says, do not tie the hands of our great scientists with reference to the future. Let them study, let them think, let them design, but do not let anyone build any new weapons. Let them think about the future and what might be needed in light of the changed circumstances in the world. It is very prudent to do that.

   In all three regards, there are clear cases the Feinstein amendment should fail. I hope it does so we can proceed ahead with these things that are necessary.

   I yield whatever time the distinguished Senator from Indiana needs. I share my grave concern and condolences over the death of his esteemed Governor.

   I yield the floor.

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Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, despite the recess, to be able to speak 3 minutes in opposition to Senator Feinstein's amendment.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   The Senator from South Carolina is recognized.

   Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to Senator Feinstein's amendment, certainly not in opposition to her. She is one of my closest friends in the Senate, and I admire her greatly. We just simply disagree on this particular amendment.

   Of all the debates we are going to have in the coming months, I think this is one of the most important. The amendment would prohibit the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy from pursuing an advanced concept and research design to transform some current inventories of nuclear weapons, to be able to do something they cannot do today; that is, to penetrate hardened sites to counter the war on terrorism.

   The war on terrorism is like every other war in many ways. The people we are fighting have the same hopes and aspirations as the people who fought in World War II. In Hitler's world, if you were not of a certain ethnic makeup, you could lose your life. And in Hitler's world, there was total obedience to the state. And the Japanese empire had a very intolerant view of the people who were different and disagreed.

   The idea that one particular group wants to shape the world in a very harsh fashion has been with us as long as time itself. And in the terrorist world, young girls don't go to school. In their world, there is one way to worship God. It is their way. If you choose to do it some other way, you could lose your life.

   So the basic concepts of the war on terrorism are very old. But the way we fight this war is going to take some adapting. The group that wins the war on terrorism will be the group that was able to adapt the best.

   Here is what I see coming down the road for the American military, for American policymakers. The terrorist organizations that perpetrated 9/11 and that we are pursuing all over the world today do not have navies and armies, and they do not have a nuclear force as we faced in the former Soviet Union. But they have a desire, unequaled by anybody, to build a nuclear weapon, to acquire chemical and biological weapons. Their desire is great. Their commitment to use it is unquestioned.

   Let it be said, without any doubt, if they could get a nuclear weapon, they would use it. If they could get chemical or biological weapons that would hurt millions of Americans or people who believe in freedom, they would use it.

   The only way they are not going to use it is to make sure they don't get it. And the best way to make sure they don't get it is to bring them to justice, and to end their ability to finance terrorist activities, to organize, and to project force.

   I can foresee in the near future, not the distant future, that terrorist cells will reorganize. They will use some remote part of the world to form their plans, to plot and scheme, and maybe to actually manufacture--some remote part of the world that is very well guarded and not subject to conventional attacks, in a part of the world where it would be hard to get conventional forces to neutralize the terrorist threat. I see that as a very real possibility in the coming decades, in the coming years, maybe even the coming months.

   The legislation we have before us would take off the table our ability to adapt our nuclear deterrent force to meet that threat. Look how much money we spent during the cold war to neutralize the Soviet threat--the Star Wars programs and other ideas that made it very difficult for our enemy at the time to keep pace. It is one of the reasons the world is safer today, because we were able to adapt.

   We took our nuclear programs, not to use the weapons, but to prevent those weapons from being used against us. We adapted our nuclear force in a way that eventually won the cold war.

   I think that same scenario exists today. We should have on the table the ability of the great minds in this country to adapt, if necessary. And there is nothing in this proposal by the administration to build a weapon. It is to look at our current inventory and see if it can be adapted to a real threat.

   I admire Senator Feinstein, but I think her amendment would do a great injustice to the future policymakers and the military men and women of the future when it comes to fighting the war on terrorism because this war has just started. It is not anywhere near over. The major players are still alive, but they are trying to get people to follow in their footsteps. So we are going to be in this war for a long time.

   The question before the Senate and before the country is, If we knew that bin Laden, or someone like him, was in some mountain fortress in Afghanistan or some other country, on the verge, within that fortress, of developing a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon, what would we do to stop it?

   I think we should do everything we can to stop it. And the idea of being able to use a redesigned nuclear weapon to keep a terrorist from hitting us with a nuclear weapon is something that we have to come to grips with because it is part of the war on terrorism.

   So I hope the Senate will reject Senator Feinstein's efforts to stop this inquiry because this is an inquiry that needs to be made sooner rather than later. I think the Bush administration is on the right course and the right path in taking the great minds of our time and letting them adapt our nuclear force to the coming threats because the coming threats are not from the Soviet bloc countries; they are going to be our allies. The coming threats are from people who hide in faraway places, deep in the bowels of the earth, with great hatred in their hearts.

   We need to meet that threat. So I ask each Member of the Senate to dig within their heart and to make sure their vote does not take an option off the table that may well save this country from something we never experienced: a major nuclear, chemical, or biological attack.

   Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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AMENDMENT NO. 1655

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask the Chair to let me know when 7 minutes have expired so I can defer to my cosponsor, Senator Kennedy.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair will inform the Senator.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that the names of Senators Johnson, Murray, Clinton, and Rockefeller be added to our amendment as cosponsors.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, yesterday Senator Kennedy and I came to the floor and we spent some time arguing on behalf of an amendment to this bill which contained language similar to what was recently past by a large majority in the House of Representatives. The bill passed by the House of Representatives struck the language that appropriates funds to begin a new generation of nuclear weapons.

   Now, there are some on the other side who say, and continue to say, this is just a study; there is no development. I believe that is not the case. Let me connect the dots for you.

   In January of 2002, the administration put forward a Nuclear Posture Review which advocates the development of new types of nuclear weapons. Later that year, the President signed National Security Directive 17, indicating that the United States might use nuclear weapons first to respond to a chemical or biological attack.

   Earlier this year, a decade-old prohibition on the development of low-yield nuclear weapons was rescinded in the Defense authorization bill. For 10 years, this kind of thing was prohibited. That prohibition, known as the Spratt-Furse amendment, was repealed earlier this year.

   This spring a statement of administration policy for the Defense authorization bill clearly included support for the research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons.

   In this bill the Senate is being asked to provide the dollars to begin this effort--$15 million for the study of a robust nuclear earth penetrator. We are talking in excess of 100 kilotons; $6 million for advanced concepts research, including low-yield weapons; funding for enhanced test site readiness; and a huge new $4 billion plutonium pit facility--all of this when we are already spending $2.3 billion for a Los Alamos facility that can provide replacement for the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

   We are strongly opposed to America beginning a new generation of nuclear weapons. We are opposed to it for two reasons: No. 1, the low-yield nuclear weapon--under 5 kilotons--essentially begins to blur the use between

   conventional and nuclear weapons, therefore making it easier to use. And, No. 2, because the world will watch this and the world will respond. The way in which they will respond is with a new nuclear arms race.

   If the United States begins to develop tactical, battlefield nuclear weapons, how long will it take for two indigenous nuclear powers, namely India and Pakistan, arch enemies, to say we should do the same thing. How long will it take for North Korea or Iran or any other nation that so seeks to begin such a similar program?

   As many internationally have said: America preaches nonproliferation, and then it goes ahead and develops new nuclear weapons.

   I think that is hypocritical. I do not think this country should be in that position.

   So we strike these items; we fence two, we place the rest of the money in deficit reduction.

   I want to say a few words about the nuclear pits because I think there is some misunderstanding. Although current production capacity may be limited, it is simply not true, as some have asserted, that the United States lacks the capacity to manufacture replacement pits. According to the Department of Energy's own Web site:

   The first pit that could be certified for use in the stockpile was manufactured in April 2003 as a first step to establish an interim--10 to 20 pits per year--production capability at Los Alamos in 2007.

   And the Los Alamos facility can be modified to produce 150 pits a year.

   Although the exact number is classified, reputable open sources estimate that there are between 5,000 and 12,000 extra pits in reserve at Pantex, beyond the 10,600 current intact warheads.

   The average age of the plutonium pits in the U.S. stockpile is 19 years, and the Department of Energy estimates a pit minimum life to be between 45 and 60 years, with no life-limiting factors.

   This is the beginning. This money will go to field a new generation of nuclear weapons. We should not do this. The House had the good sense to eliminate this language. The Senate should follow.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition? Who yields time?

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts.

   Mr. KENNEDY. How much time remains?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Five minutes ten seconds.

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   Mr. KENNEDY. And how much on the other side?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. They have 13 minutes.

   Mr. KENNEDY. Four minutes?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.

   Mr. KENNEDY. I am recognized for how long?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California has yielded 4 minutes.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I am happy to yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from Massachusetts.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized.

   Mr. KENNEDY. Then, would the Chair let me know when I have a minute and a half left, please?

   First of all, I welcome the opportunity to be here with my friend and colleague from California in what I consider to be one of the most important votes that we will have this year. It is an issue involving our security. It is an issue, I believe, also, in the battle on terrorism.

   It was just 40 years September 24, 40 years ago on September 24, that we had the signing of the first partial test ban treaty.

   This chart reflects in a very abbreviated way, but an enormously important way what has happened over the last 40 years as leaders of the Democrats and Republicans alike moved us away from the real possibility of nuclear confrontation, and we have seen enormous success. We have seen the willingness of countries around the world to give up their capability of developing nuclear weapons because they wanted to be a part of the worldwide effort on nuclear proliferation. They also recognized it would be a more secure world if we didn't have further nuclear expansion.

   We listened to the debate yesterday and the points that were well-made by my very good friend from New Mexico about how this legislation is really not about developing a new nuclear weapon. But the Senator from California pointed out three different references, all which have been included as a part of the RECORD. The most obvious is the administration's own statement of administration policy this past spring asking for the continued need for ``flexibility in the cooperative threat reduction program and support for critical research and the development''--I will say this again--``and the development for low-yield nuclear weapons.'' That is what this issue is about.

   Are we going to reverse the last 40 years? Do we possibly think there will be a safer America if we begin to move back towards the testing and the developing of what they call mini-nukes?

   I don't believe so, because I believe a nuke is a nuke is a nuke. It is an entirely different weapons system than those in our conventional forces. We understand that. We have to take what the administration has stated: they intend to move ahead in the development of a new nuclear capability.

   Those with responsibility within the administration have made it very clear. In February of 2003, Fred Celec, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Affairs, said:

   If a nuclear bomb could be developed to penetrate rock and concrete and still explode, it will ultimately get fielded.

   In April of 2003, Linton Brooks, Chief of Nuclear Weapons at the Department of Energy, stated before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

   I have a bias in favor of the lowest usable yield because ..... I have a bias in favor of things that might be usable.

   We have been warned. We have the capability that exists to make sure we have the deterrence on into the future. But this is a radical departure of 40 years of Republicans and Democrats alike moving us away from the dangers of nuclear confrontations and the dangers of nuclear proliferation to the development of small nuclear weapons. And we will find this an invitation for the terrorists around the world to come and seek out that weapon. If we develop a small nuclear weapon, what are we going to find? The corresponding action by countries around the world--the Iranians and the North Koreans continuing their progress in developing their own nuclear weapons system.

   That doesn't make sense in terms of the country that is the number one military force in the world today. It doesn't make sense, and it doesn't make sense for our battle against the war on terrorism.

   It is very clear why this amendment is needed. The administration pretends it is not really planning to produce these new kinds of nuclear weapons--the mini-nukes and the bunker busters. They just want to find out if they are feasible.

   We all know what is at stake. The administration wants us to take the first steps down a new path. But going down that path could easily make nuclear war more likely. Just a little step--they say. But it is still a first step. And a step down that path now could make the next step easier, and the next and the next. It is a path that makes nuclear war more likely, and the time to call a halt is now--before we take the first step.

   We ask for and implore the support of our colleagues to move us away from the real dangers of nuclear proliferation and the development of these dangerous mini-nukes that can pose a danger to the world population.

   I withhold whatever time is left.

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, before the chairman of the committee speaks, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Stabenow be listed as a cosponsor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   The Senator from New Mexico.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, fellow Senators, first of all, it should be understood by everyone that this language which is being stricken does not permit the United States of America to build any new nuclear weapons--large, small, medium-sized, or otherwise. There is no authority in this bill to build new nuclear weapons.

   No. 2, this bill says that in Nevada we used to test nuclear weapons for decades. Whenever our nuclear laboratory experts used to certify to our Presidents that the weapons were in good shape, ready, reliable, available, and safe, they did it principally because we had a testing ground in Nevada, and we tested bombs to know precisely their efficacy, reliability, et cetera.

   When we decided to no longer test, we essentially closed down or put that test facility in mothballs. But we knew we must always keep it in case we needed it. We left it there, saying if we ever need it, we can use it in 3 years.

   All this amendment does--it could be a totally freestanding amendment, if one wanted, but it is part of the amendment that the Senator from California strikes--is say let us upgrade that Nevada Test Site so if we need it, we can use it in 1 1/2 years. There are few American nuclear experts who do not think 1 1/2 years is the correct amount--not 3 but 1 1/2 . That has nothing to do with us setting about to build a brand new small nuclear weapon. It has nothing to do with us building a stockpile of new weapons. It has to do with just what I explained and nothing else.

   Third, regardless of what has gone on in Los Alamos for the last 7 years in an effort to produce for America plutonium pits--the ingredient for a nuclear weapon that must be there or you don't have a nuclear weapon--we have no American manufacturing center for the production of pits. The Los Alamos facility has been a facility that we just pushed. We pushed it and pushed it, and finally it has almost produced a pit. But it has not produced a certifiable pit yet in 7 years of effort. It has produced a pit or two, but they are not certifiable, which means they are not complete.

   All this bill says is the time has come to build a plant to manufacture pits for the next 40 years--not for a new weapons system but so we can have them in storage for the next 40 years. We are the only nuclear weapons power without spare pits for nuclear weapons. Yes, the only one. Why would we say we should not do that? The only reason we would do it is if we believed what the Senator from California alleges; that is, we are doing it because we are going to build a new set of nuclear weapons.

   If we were authorizing a series or a set of new nuclear weapons, this amendment would be the biggest amendment in the country. It would have been written about, talked about, harked about, and we would have been all over and upside down and inside out. But there is nothing in the bill that produces a single new nuclear weapon.

[Page: S11533]

   That comes to the final part. It is very simple, if you will just listen and know what we are trying to do.

   Those who manage our nuclear, those who are our nuclear experts, who use their minds to dream up ideas about where we are going to be, what troubles we might have in the future, and what new might occur in the world that might require changes, are the men and women of great talent. This bill does what the executive branch and the experts on nuclear management say: Let those people think, let those people design, let those people postulate, and don't put blinders on their brains and say you can't even think about these things because it might someday yield an idea that might cause us to do something different with a nuclear weapon.

   Frankly, I believe the men and women who already put that fantastic brainpower to work in this area deserve to have their brains used, not tied in knots by rules about what you cannot think about and what you cannot plan for.

   The third part, this amendment says you cannot plan, think about, design for the future, even when you know you cannot build them, which is what the rule is going to be.

   We have argued this about as long as we can. I have argued it about as hard as I can. I am getting close to being tired of arguing this, but it is so important we not make a mistake. It would be a tragic mistake to vote for the Feinstein amendment. There is nothing we are doing that the Feinstein amendment should stop. If, in fact, we were going to build nuclear weapons, you ought to be concerned and perhaps vote with her, if she is saying do not do it. But we do not plan to. It is not in here. And she cannot stop it because we are not going to do it. In that regard, the amendment is useless.

   But it is not useless when it comes to the three things that it does: It will stop us from planning the manufacturing plant of the future for pits. It will do that. And we should not do that. Second, it will stop the money and the planning and the work to bring the Nevada Test Site up to par and ready for a new test in 18 months rather than 3 years. It will do that. And third, it will put blinders on the scientists with reference to them being able to speak about the future and future needs, which change.

   How much time remains?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico has 4 minutes remaining. The Senator from California has 9 seconds.

   Mr. DOMENICI. I reserve my time.

*************************

VOTE ON AMENDMENT NO. 1655

   Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I yield the remaining time.

   Mr. DOMENICI. I yield my remaining time. I move to table the amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time having expired, is there a sufficient second?

   There is a sufficient second.

   The question is on agreeing to the motion. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.

   Mr. McCONNELL, I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. FITZGERALD) is necessarily absent.

   I further announce that the Senator from Oregon (Mr. SMITH) is absent because of a death in the family.

   Mr. REID of North Carolina. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. EDWARDS), the Senator from Florida (Mr. GRAHAM), the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. KERRY) the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. LIEBERMAN) are necessarily absent.

   I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. KERRY) would vote ``nay.''

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CRAPO). Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

   The result was announced--yeas 53, nays 41, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 349 Leg.]

YEAS--53

   Alexander

   Allard

   Allen

   Bayh

   Bennett

   Bond

   Brownback

   Bunning

   Burns

   Campbell

   Chambliss

   Cochran

   Coleman

   Collins

   Cornyn

   Craig

   Crapo

   DeWine

   Dole

   Domenici

   Ensign

   Enzi

   Frist

   Graham (SC)

   Grassley

   Gregg

   Hagel

   Hatch

   Hollings

   Hutchison

   Inhofe

   Kyl

   Lott

   Lugar

   McCain

   McConnell

   Miller

   Murkowski

   Nelson (FL)

   Nelson (NE)

   Nickles

   Roberts

   Santorum

   Sessions

   Shelby

   Snowe

   Specter

   Stevens

   Sununu

   Talent

   Thomas

   Voinovich

   Warner

NAYS--41

   Akaka

   Baucus

   Biden

   Bingaman

   Boxer

   Breaux

   Byrd

   Cantwell

   Carper

   Chafee

   Clinton

   Conrad

   Corzine

   Daschle

   Dayton

   Dodd

   Dorgan

   Durbin

   Feingold

   Feinstein

   Harkin

   Inouye

   Jeffords

   Johnson

   Kennedy

   Kohl

   Landrieu

   Lautenberg

   Leahy

   Levin

   Lincoln

   Mikulski

   Murray

   Pryor

   Reed

   Reid

   Rockefeller

   Sarbanes

   Schumer

   Stabenow

   Wyden

NOT VOTING--6

   Edwards

   Fitzgerald

   Graham (FL)

   Kerry

   Lieberman

   Smith

   The motion was agreed to.

1C) S.A. 1659 to Energy Appropriations

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, Senator JACK REED has an amendment that is acceptable, if he is ready. Is the Senator ready?

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   Mr. REED. I have my amendment.

   Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

   Mr. REED. Mr. President, I send amendment No. 1659 to the desk.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

   The legislative clerk read as follows:

   The Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. REED], for himself, Mr. Levin, Mr. Kennedy, Mrs. Feinstein, and Mr. Nelson of Florida, proposes an amendment numbered 1569.

   Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To prohibit the use of fund for certain activities relating to advanced nuclear weapons concepts, including the robust nuclear earth penetrator)

    At the end of title III, add the following:

    SEC. 313. No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Energy by this Act may be available for activities at the engineering development phases, phase 3 or 6.3, or beyond, in support of advanced nuclear weapons concepts, including the robust nuclear earth penetrator.

   Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Nelson of Florida be added as a cosponsor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am disappointed the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment did not pass because I believe that amendment really responded to the issues of the moment. We are in a dangerous time because we see around the globe where there are nations aspiring to become nuclear powers, where proliferation is one of the most dangerous threats this Nation faces, particularly proliferation that would provide fissile material to terrorists, which is the great fear of all of us.

   In order to resist the growth of nuclear powers around the globe, we have to be faithful to our commitment to arms control and our sense that further development of nuclear weapons--and, I would argue, weapons without military requirements--is really not so much an exercise in protecting the United States but it is an exercise that will lead us down a path that could see our country exposed to even more dangers. So I am very much concerned that the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment failed.

   Therefore, I am proposing an amendment that I hope will essentially put restraints upon the use of these dollars in the development of nuclear weapons, and I will explain it in more detail later. It would constrain the expenditure of funds to the the research phase. It would preclude monies to be used to engineer a weapon, to test a weapon, and to deploy a weapon. It is language that is consistent with the language included in the Defense Authorization Act which we passed several months ago.

   We are at a difficult moment in our history, as I mentioned.

   Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield for a question?

   Mr. REED. I would be happy to yield for a question to my cosponsor, Senator Nelson.

   Mr. NELSON of Florida. I appreciate the Senator offering this amendment and I just want to underscore with a question that the Senator's amendment will allow the research to go on as we intended in the Defense authorization bill but would not allow the development and the engineering where these weapons would be actually designed until such time as the executive branch would come back to the Congress to get approval to do that. Is that correct?

   Mr. REED. That is absolutely correct. It reflects the value of the contribution the Senator from Florida made in the Defense authorization debate.

   Mr. NELSON of Florida. I thank the Senator.

   Mr. REED. There are some who have criticized any attempts at arms control as futile, as failures. That, I think, is a dangerous idea. I hope arms controls work because history seems to show that, without controlling arms, eventually they wind up being used, and when it comes to the issue of nuclear weapons, that is a great nightmare that has haunted all mankind since 1945.

   Since that date, we have been successful in containing the use of nuclear weapons. It is because we took prudent steps to try to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the development of nuclear weapons. And at this juncture in history, to stand up and say arms control does not work not only misreads history but misses the point entirely. We have to make it work. Indeed, arms control has provided us at least some respite, some bit of breathing space, from the horrors of Hiroshima. That in itself is a success.

   Today, particularly when we look at North Korea, I think we had all better hope fervently that arms control can work because without some type of arms control there, we will be in an extraordinarily precarious situation.

   If we look at the situation in Iran, where the international arms control agency is trying to work with the Iranians, trying to get them to cooperate with the world community, that is an example of arms control in action. I hope--and I am sure I speak for everyone else--that that effort succeeds.

   Time and again, when we have had serious situations, we have been able to use the norms established by international arms control agreements as leverage in a particular crisis. Arms control is not perfect, but without it we would be in a much more dangerous and much more devastating world environment.

   This administration, however, has effectively turned its back on so many different initiatives: The repeal of the ABM Treaty, the failure to follow up the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty by sending it again to the Senate for a vote. This and so many other examples suggest that the administration has not effectively read the lessons of history. I believe they have the mistaken view that arms control will never work rather than trying to make it work, understanding it is not perfect but it is essential to our national security strategy.

   My colleague and friend John Spratt stated it very well in an article in the March 2003 edition of Arms Control Today. In his words:

   My greatest concern is that some in the administration and in the Congress seem to think that the United States can move the world in one direction while Washington moves in another, that we can continue to prevail on other countries not to develop nuclear weapons while we develop new tactical applications for such weapons and possibly resume nuclear testing.

   Congressman Spratt was very clear. In life, one really cannot have it both ways. I think this is an example of that. At one time, you cannot be trying to persuade, convince, and cajole other nations to abandon the development of nuclear weapons while you are blatantly going ahead and developing them yourself. The approach of the administration has been to attempt to get it both ways. It will be doomed to failure.

   I would argue that rather than declaring the arms control movement dead, we have to give it renewed life. Indeed, we can point to successes in the past that should give us some comfort to know that if we work hard, if we work in a disciplined and dedicated way, we can use arms control to enhance our security--not exclusively depend, certainly, on arms control, but it has to be an important part of our repertoire.

   In the early 1960s, when there were a few nuclear powers--the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China--there was a fear that within a decade or more, as President Kennedy expressed it, there would be at least 25 countries that developed nuclear weapons. What was feared did not come to pass because of effective, meaningful arms control exemplified in many respects by the nonproliferation treaty and other initiatives.

   Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has cited this record, indicating his support for continued efforts at arms control. In his words:

   [I]nstead of the 25 or so countries that President Kennedy once predicted, only a handful of nations possess nuclear weapons. Of course we suspect many more countries have chemical or biological weapons, but still short of the scores that had been predicted in the past. We have reached this state of affairs in no small part through the concerted effort of many nations. Agreements, such as the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention, organizations such as the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group--these constitute a global security architecture that has served us satisfactorily and kept us safe.

   But critics of arms control fail to acknowledge that Argentina and Brazil and South Korea and Taiwan ceased

[Page: S11535]  GPO's PDF

their suspected nuclear programs in part because of the international norms represented by the nonproliferation treaty. Without these norms and without the United States exemplifying these norms, I don't think we would have the success we have had in these cases that I have cited.

   Similarly, when the Soviet Union dissolved and the Newly Independent States of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine found themselves with nuclear weapons, they voluntarily turned them in as a result of the norms established by the international arms control regimes. South Africa has also given up their nuclear weapons.

   This is an example, not of perfect success but of success. If we begin to abide by our commitment to the nonproliferation treaty, to our commitments to reducing nuclear weapons rather than building new ones, we might be able to provide more leverage on countries such as India and Pakistan so that they would join the nonproliferation treaty and the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty. That is the kind of leadership we need at the moment. I hope we can get it.

   As I mentioned before, we also are facing very serious problems with North Korea and Iran. I hope they can be resolved peacefully. But that peaceful resolution implies extending arms control agreements to these countries. So disparaging arms control is doing a great disservice to our national security and to our strategy.

   The Bush administration has seemed bound since their first days in office to reverse 50 years of arms control activities, both by Republican and Democratic administrations. In December 2001, they published their Nuclear Posture Review.

   This review was troubling in many respects. For the first time in history, this review suggested that we would use weapons, nuclear weapons, not simply to deter another nuclear power but to engage a nonnuclear power. The report essentially said that we would consider for the first time and be prepared to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations that were nonaligned with a nuclear power--a tremendous

   reversal in our strategic outlook, blurring the distinction between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons, a distinction that since Hiroshima we on both sides of the aisle have endeavored mightily to maintain crystal clear. This blurring, this suggestion that we would use nuclear weapons in a first strike against nonnuclear powers, set the tone for other administration pronouncements.

   Last November, a memo from then-Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Pete Aldridge, became public. The memo directed nuclear weapons laboratories to:

   ..... assess the technical risks associated with maintaining the U.S. arsenal without nuclear testing ..... [and suggested the] U.S. take another look at conducting small nuclear tests.

   Following up to this memo, the President's budget for fiscal year 2004 included $24 million to reduce the time needed to prepare to conduct a nuclear weapons test from 2-3 years at present to 18 months--once again, a very sobering and ominous suggestion that we would begin to test nuclear weapons again; that we would abandon our efforts to assure the quality of our stockpile through nontesting means and that we would conduct tests.

   If the United States of America begins again to conduct nuclear tests, I think that would be an open invitation to other countries, such as India and Pakistan, and perhaps powers undeclared as yet, to begin a nuclear testing program. It certainly would be good cover internationally.

   The President's budget in 2004 also went on to request $22.8 million to accelerate the design and select a site for a new modern pit facility.

   Plutonium pits are necessary components of nuclear weapons. We have not had the ability to build such pits since 1988. We do need a pit facility. But the proposal of the administration goes far beyond any conceivable needs, given the current situation. They want to create a facility that is capable of producing up to 500 pits per year. That would be 500 nuclear weapons per year. That is a rate that rivals anything in the cold war, and according to the administration, the cold war is over--except, I guess, when it comes to nuclear policy or at least nuclear design and production policy.

   Then in addition to this development, the administration has been vigorously pressing for the design of a robust nuclear earth-penetrator to be used against hard and deeply buried targets. The RNEP would be a modification of an existing nuclear device, necessarily a very large nuclear device. It has been deemed a bunker buster. But, frankly, the kilotonnage or the tonnage of this RNEP is so large it would be a city buster, not a bunker buster. The kilotons of the weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 14 and 21 kilotons, respectively, and this RNEP could be 71 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That is not a bunker buster. That is not a discrete weapon that could take the place of precision conventional weapons. Yet the administration is pressing forward.

   Then this year the administration requested the repeal of the 1993 statutory ban on the research, development, and production of low-yield nuclear weapons and $6 million for funding for advanced nuclear weapons concepts.

   Current law prohibits work, design, research with respect to weapons below 5 kilotons. The administration seeks to repeal this ban--strike it out--even though there is no military requirement for these small sized nuclear weapons.

   When asked about this proposal, Ambassador Linton Brooks, the Acting Director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, stated before the Armed Services Committee:

   I have a bias in favor of something that is the minimum destruction. .....that means I have a bias in favor of things that might be usable.

   Here we have it. A history of 5 decades of trying to create a nuclear policy that dissuades the world from using nuclear weapons and we are trying to develop small nuclear weapons, which the scientists at this time say--the lab leaders say--are designed to be used. We have crossed a huge space between our policy of 5 decades and this newly emerging policy. We have moved from being the leader in arms control to being someone who treats arms control casually, if not flippantly. The irony, of course, is we stand to suffer the most. I hope we could reverse this trend.

   I had hoped very much that the Feinstein-Kennedy amendment would be agreed to because I think that would have sent a strong signal and be a practical and pragmatic step. But now we have the opportunity to constrain the funds that are being expended for those preliminary research aspects of nuclear weapons development. As my colleague, Senator Nelson, said, it will give Congress a chance to decide, after more information, more debate, and more justification, whether it is in our national interest to proceed with the development, engineering, and deployment of a new class of nuclear weapons.

   The amendment I offer today will allow the Department of Energy to use $22 million in funding that the President requested for advanced nuclear weapons concepts for research alone. The amendment would not allow money to be used for developing, testing, or deploying new nuclear weapons, or RNEP, which is a modification of an existing weapon.

   This amendment would assure that the appropriations bill is consistent with the language that is included in the fiscal year 2004 Defense authorization bill. During that debate, an amendment that would require the Department of Energy to seek specific authorization and appropriations before proceeding with phases beyond research passed this body by a vote of 96 to 0. The Senate has clearly spoken on this issue. The amendment I offer today will ensure that the Department of Energy will comply with the wishes of Congress by returning to the Congress before beginning development, testing, production, and deployment of a new nuclear weapon or the RNEP.

   I believe we should retain the prohibition on any research or development of low-yield nuclear weapons. But if that must change--if we must eliminate the threat-first amendment--I believe the research is all that is necessary at this time and that there should be a full and complete debate on any development funding for a system of nuclear weapons or the RNEP based upon research first.

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   The primary reason that the administration says it needs this money for advanced nuclear concepts is to, in their terms, ``train the next generation of nuclear weapons scientists and engineers.''

   Ambassador Brooks, Director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, stated that research must be funded to ``remove the chilling effect on scientific inquiry that could hamper our ability to maintain and exercise our intellectual capabilities to respond to needs that one day might be articulated by the President.''

   In July, Energy Secretary Abraham said: ``We are not planning any nuclear weapons at all.'' If research is the reason, if research is the justification, if we are planning no nuclear weapons, then this amendment provides the funding and the authority for the research.

   This amendment is very clear about what is allowed. There are very distinct phases in the development of nuclear weapons. Since 1953, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy have worked in a very formalized weapons development process. Indeed, the Atomic Energy Commission was one of the predecessors of the effort. And the Atomic Energy Commission was also involved in the formulation of the process.

All of these phases would be authorized, and the funds could be expended for concept definition, feasibility study, design definition, and cost study. But you could not go into phase 3, development definition. It is clear and precise--allowing the research and allowing all that is necessary, according to both the rationale to train our scientists and also the affirmation by the Secretary of Energy that we were not planning to develop new nuclear weapons.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator will yield.

   Mr. REED. I am happy to yield.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Did the Senator conclude amendment No. 1659 regarding the Energy Department's research on nuclear weapons?

   Mr. REED. I did not. In the next few minutes I will complete my comments on the amendment.

   Mr. DOMENICI. I wonder if the Senator might offer that amendment so I could give him my concurrence.

   Mr. REED. The amendment has been offered. I think Senator Levin wants to speak. But the Senator's concurrence will be invited as soon as I conclude.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, on this side of the aisle, we accept the Reed-Levin-Kennedy-Feinstein amendment because it is current policy. It just repeats current policy unequivocably. This is what the policy of the country is. We did not change that in our bill. The Senator is most welcome to try to make it eminently clear what that current policy is. For that reason, we will accept it whenever it is ready to be accepted by the Senate.

   Mr. REED. Mr. President, reclaiming my time, I thank the chairman for his kindness in accepting the amendment. The policy is included in the Defense authorization bill. But there is a debate ongoing about what the precise policy is. We want to at least set this limit with respect to the policy.

   The chairman suggesting that it will be accepted will prompt me to quickly conclude my comments.

   I note that my colleague from Michigan is here also seeking recognition.

   We brought this measure to the Defense authorization debate. As was indicated in my discussion with Chairman Domenici, the Senate passed this provision overwhelmingly. This is now included in this appropriations bill. It is going to be an interesting conference because our colleagues in the House have stricken the money; that is the preference that I would suggest is the best approach. But short of that, this at least constrains the spending of the funds to the first three phases of research, which apparently, at least in my view, directly responds to the professed need for the funds, and it will also again support the statement of the Secretary of Energy that there is no plan to develop nuclear weapons.

   In a letter to the Armed Services Committee, Admiral Ellis, the Commander of the Strategic Command, which command is responsible for all nuclear weapons, stated that:

   U.S. Strategic Command is interested in conducting rigorous studies of all new technologies examining the merits of precision, increased penetration, and reduced yields for our nuclear weapons.

   Once again, this proposal corresponds to the request from our military leaders in what they are looking for today.

   I hope that not only this amendment will be incorporated into this pending appropriations bill but that in conference we at least maintain this.

   I again urge my colleagues to think hard again about the Kennedy-Feinstein proposal and the proposal that is already included in the House provisions. But today is an opportunity at least to slow down a rush to develop nuclear weapons which have no, or very limited, military requirements, and it would give us an opportunity as a Congress to debate the wisdom of our course of action.

   Let me conclude by saying we have changed course dramatically. After 50 years of being the leading nation in the world arguing for arms control, arguing for sensible constraints in the development of nuclear weapons and limits on nuclear weapons, we have become a nation that is casual about our commitment to arms control, that denigrates it too often, and that course has left us with the only other option which is I think less appropriate. As I said initially, if there are no arms control, then there is a higher probability of arms usage. With nuclear weapons, that is a thought that no one wants to contemplate.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.

   Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I commend my friend from Rhode Island for his leadership in this area. It is critically important that we show some constraint--at least in funding of new nuclear weapons and modifications of existing nuclear weapons in order to make them more usable.

   Appropriating funds, as this bill does, for research on a new nuclear weapon and research on a modification of existing weapons in order to make them more useful moves us in a dangerous new direction which marks a major shift in American policy. It is inconsistent with our longstanding commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to end the nuclear arms race. It undermines our argument to other countries around the world that they should not develop or test nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the bill before us supports this dangerous new direction by putting funds into research of both the new weapon and modification of existing weapons to make them more usable.

   At least the pending amendment of the Senator from Rhode Island puts an explicit constraint on the expenditure of that money.

   Why it is so important this language be included is that it makes explicit, before we can move to the developmental stage of these new weapons, there must be an explicit congressional vote. It cannot happen--this next stage, which we hope will never come--if the Reed language is adopted and maintained in conference, and if we were able to maintain similar language in conference in the authorization bill that development of these new weapons and modified weapons, to make them more usable, could not happen without an explicit action on the part of Congress.

   That is not the current policy that there be an explicit authorization. It is not inconsistent with current policy that there be an explicit authorization before we approve development, but it is not the existing policy.

   It is critically important that at least if we cannot stop this country from moving in a direction which is so totally inconsistent with what we are urging the rest of the world to do, at a minimum, we go as far as we can in expressing the determination of at least many of us that we move not at all, if possible, before we move that there be a formal vote on the part of Congress.

   I do not understand how we can argue to other countries, with our heads high, that they should not move in a nuclear direction at the same time we are doing research on new nuclear weapons. We are telling others, do not go down that road. But instead of being a leader in the effort to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we are going to move recklessly down that

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same road. We are following a policy that we do not tolerate in others.

   The adoption of the Reed amendment would at least put some brake on the speed at which we are going down that road, and hopefully, before development is reached, before taking the next milestone on that road.

   Appropriating funds for research in new nuclear weapons begins to take the United States in a dangerous new direction that marks a major shift in American policy, is inconsistent with our longstanding commitment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to end the nuclear arms race, and undermines our argument to other countries around the world that they should not develop or test nuclear weapons. Unfortunately the bill now on the Senate floor would also support this dangerous new direction. But the pending amendment puts an explicit constraint on it.

   Current U.S. law bans research and development of new nuclear weapons that could lead to their production. The specific weapons covered by the ban are so called low-yield nuclear weapons which have a nuclear explosive yield of 5 kilotons or less. Five kilotons is roughly a third the size of the nuclear bomb that was used at Hiroshima, which immediately killed an estimated 140,000 people and left many more injured.

   The Bush administration asked that this ban be repealed. If the ban is repealed, the purpose is to make nuclear weapons more usable. As stated by Linton Brooks, the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration in testimony before the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces of the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 8, 2003, ``I have a bias in favor of the lowest usable yield because I have the bias in favor of something that is the minimum destruction ..... I have a bias in favor of things that might be usable.''

   The language approved by a majority of the Armed Services Committee and included in the Senate passed version of the Defense authorization bill would repeal this ban. Without this ban there is no impediment in law to research, development, testing, production, or deployment of new, low yield nuclear weapons. The bill before us would also support the repeal of this ban by appropriating $6 million to begin the research on new low-yield nuclear weapons, or for any other advanced new nuclear weapons concept.

   The Defense authorization bill authorizes the National Nuclear

   Security Administration to continue work on a robust nuclear earth penetrator (RNEP). The Energy and Water bill would appropriate these funds.

   This effort would modify one of two existing high-yield nuclear weapons to create a nuclear weapon that will penetrate rock. Both weapons being looked at for possible modification are high yield nuclear weapons with yields that are approximately 30 and 70 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Without a requirement that the earth penetrator weapon be authorized by Congress, there is no legal impediment to its development, testing, production, or deployment.

   At a time when the United States is trying to dissuade other countries from going forward with nuclear weapons development, when we strongly oppose North Korea's pulling out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, when we are trying to prevent Iran from establishing a nuclear weapons program and when we are spending over a billion dollars to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons material and technology, these actions would send a terrible message. We are telling others not to go down the road to nuclear weapons. But instead of being a leader in the effort to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we are recklessly driving down that same road. In short, the United States is following a policy that we do not tolerate in others.

   President Bush on June 18 stated that the United States will not tolerate a nuclear Iran. Similarly in May President Bush, in a joint statement with the President of South Korea, said he would not tolerate a North Korean nuclear weapon.

   The leaked version of the Nuclear Posture Review identifies both North Korea and Iran as countries against which the United States should be prepared to use nuclear weapons. Clearly North Korea is the focus of the concern about hard and deeply buried targets and the desire to pursue the development of an RNEP.

   At the same time that the United States is actively engaging in talks with North Korea to persuade them to give up their nuclear weapons program and urging the IAEA to ensure that Iran does not pursue a nuclear weapons program, we are beginning the process to develop new nuclear weapons. The Bush administration is taking action to ensure that there is a robust complex to build new nuclear weapons and an accelerated test readiness program to test them.

   Where is the consistency in our actions? Having undertaken a preemptive war against an alleged imminent threat in the name of counter

   proliferation, can the United States effectively unite the world against Iran and North Korea's pursuance of nuclear weapons programs when the Bush administration appears to be on the verge of reversing a decades old nuclear policy and pursuing new tactical nuclear weapons? Weapons that, in the words of Linton Brooks, the Administrator of the National Security Administration, ``might be usable.''

   The inconsistency of U.S. action was noted in a May 17 editorial in the Economist Magazine:

   ..... America would dangerously blur the line against nuclear use by anyone. That would make it more likely, not less, that America's own forces would eventually have nuclear weapons used against them too. Mr. Bush has said repeatedly, with reason, that he wants America to rely less on nuclear weapons for its future security, not more. In their determination to leave no weapons avenue unexplored, his advisors are proposing to lead America along a dangerous path. Time the president called a halt.

   On July 17 of this year the New York Times also commented on the inconsistency between urging others to forego nuclear weapons development at a time when the United States is beginning to put in place all the elements of a new nuclear weapons program. Particularly a program whose goal appears to be to produce nuclear weapons that ``might be usable.''

   The July 17 editorial cautioned:

   Nuclear bombs should not be casually re-engineered for ordinary battlefield use at a time when countries like North Korea, Pakistan and India have added nuclear weapons to their arsenals and a chief objective of U.S. policy is to make sure these weapons are never used.

   I urge the Bush administration to continue to work to persuade both North Korea and Iran to disavow nuclear weapons programs. Arms control still has a vital role to play. As Deputy Secretary of State Armitage said, in defense of the Nonproliferation Treaty, ``Agreements such as the Nonproliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention, organizations such as the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group--these constitute a global security architecture that has served us satisfactorily and kept us sage.''

   As Rose Gottemoeller, a former Assistant Secretary of Energy said:

   Other countries watch us like a hawk. They are very attentive to what we do in the nuclear arena. This is going to be considered another step in the tectonic shift. I think people abroad will interpret this as part of a really enthusiastic effort by the Bush administration to renuclearize. And I think definitely there's going to be an impetus to the development of nuclear weapons around the world.

   Let us slow down and think about the road on which we are about to travel.

   Senator REED, Senator KENNEDY, and I offer an amendment today to once again preserve Congress's role in any decision to move toward the design, engineering, testing, or deploying of any new nuclear weapon. And equally important, this amendment will require us to stop and think seriously before going down the road toward new nuclear weapons.

   The amendment would require the Department of Energy to obtain a specific authorization from Congress before the Department could move to phase 3 or beyond in the nuclear weapons development process. Phase 3 is the engineering development phase, the point at which a concept would begin to be a new weapon.

   The amendment would also apply to this same phase, the engineering development phase, in the process of modifying an existing weapon for a new military requirement. When the Department modifies an existing weapon the engineering development phase is the 6.3 phase. This amendment would apply to the 6.3 phase as well.

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   Language similar to this amendment passed the Senate 95-0 during the consideration of the Defense Authorization Act. There was no disagreement then, and should not be now, that Congress retain a central role in any decision to seek new nuclear weapons.

   In 1994, Congress determined that the United States did not need to embark on a new nuclear weapons program, which would require nuclear weapons testing prior to being deployed, and banned research that could lead to production of new, low-yield, nuclear weapons. The current law is found at section 3136 of the Fiscal Year 1994 National Defense Authorization Act. It is commonly known as the Spratt-Furse provision.

   The Senate passed version of the Fiscal Year 2004 National Defense Authorization Act repeals the current Spratt-Furse law, while the House-passed version of the Fiscal Year 2004 National Defense Authorization Act, modifies the current law. The House modification would allow the Department of Energy to conduct research on low yield nuclear weapons but not to begin the engineering design phase of the nuclear weapons process.

   The conferees have been working for several months to resolve the many differences in the two versions of the Defense Authorization Act. One of the issues that the conferees have yet to resolve is the issue of the Spratt-Furse provision.

   The conferees are discussing whether Spratt-Furse should be modified, as in the House-passed bill, or repealed, as in the Senate-passed bill, or whether both provisions could be dropped and the current law preserved. It is important to note that the Reed amendment is consistent with any of the possible outcomes in the defense authorization conference.

   Whatever the outcome, the Reed amendment will ensure that Congress plays a role in future nuclear weapons decisions.

   Mr. REED. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, we have nothing further to say about the amendment. We are ready to accept it.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.

   The amendment (No. 1659) was agreed to.

3A) Health Care for Veterans of Project 112/Project SHAD Act of 2003

• Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2433, the Health Care for Veterans of Project 112/Project SHAD Act of 2003. From the year 1962 until 1973, the Department of Defense conducted various biological and chemical warfare tests, which involved several armed forces participants. These veterans were susceptible to the harmful effects of those biological and chemical agents, resulting in various illnesses that have been detrimental to their health and to their general welfare. The fact that these brave veterans have not been ensured essential medical services, hospital care, and nursing home care is a shameful one indeed.

• Experimental warfare testing has had notoriously degenerative effects upon its participants. The consequences of Vietnam-era toxins, for example, are still being researched to better understand just how damaging the exposure has been. Another instance, Gulf War Syndrome, has been attributed to numerous military endeavors, such as petroleum-related hazards to the depleted uranium shells of the M1-A1 Abrams battle tank. These unintentional, unfortunate side effects of warfare must not go unheeded.

• The noble service and duty of our proud veterans deserves gracious recognition and appropriate compensation on the part of the federal government. We cannot shun the treatment of unnecessary and preventable illnesses, nor can we rest idly while our nation's defenders succumb to such illnesses. There should be no requirement for proof of service-connection for the veterans who participated in the 1962 to 1973 testing. With their health care guaranteed by the federal government, we are rightly paying them back and providing the treatment that they need.

• In addition, the VA medical workforce is in need of a significant improvement of healthcare facilities. Working against the VA are the fluctating staff levels of the medical staff who form the backbone of the facility workforce. Their weekend pay is also subject to confusing advantages and disadvantages, depending on one's position. Current standards of promoting nurses do not take into account experience, but rather favor those with a Bachelor's degree in Nursing Science. These issues further complicate and hamper the efforts of honest, hardworking healthcare employees to administer proper care and treatment to patients.

• We must develop innovative methods of attracting medical personnel into the veterans' healthcare field, especially given the flight of skilled workers and patients to hospitals in the

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  private sector. Through fair labor negotiations between the VA and medical staffs, adequate staff levels and the means for the delivery of patient care can be properly outlined. Without sufficient communication and coordination on the parts of both the VA and its medical workers, everyone will ultimately suffer, and no one more than our veterans. The physical and emotional well being of our veterans should not be marginalized and this legislation is one step towards ensuring that they receive the proper high-quality care that they deserve.

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