MK254
JF-Expert Member
- May 11, 2013
- 31,654
- 48,430
Haka kadunia ketu naona tunaelekea kukafuta hivi hivi tukiona.
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AIKEN, U.S. -- While China is bolstering its nuclear capabilities, the U.S. -- the first country to produce atomic weapons, in 1945, and the world's top economic and military superpower -- is facing a deeply worrying situation.
That is underscored by a site in the south of the nation that at first glance looks like a desolate chemical plant. But yellow signboards here and there reveal what it really is. One of them reads, "This facility is under the supervision of the Atomic Weapons and Special Nuclear Materials Rewards Act."
When the reporter drove through the forests of Aiken County, South Carolina, last year, the Savannah River Site -- a facility that opened in the early 1950s during the Korean War -- came into view with its numerous pipelines and tanks.
The roughly 800-square-kilometer compound is about the same size as New York City and houses five disused nuclear reactors. The SRS was virtually the country's sole producer of plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons, something it did until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Now, this remnant of the Cold War is coming back to life.
The U.S. House Budget Committee last June approved the Department of Energy's draft budget for fiscal 2024. The SRS is part of the DOE, with the latter overseeing the management of nuclear weapons. The budget earmarked $19.1 billion for boosting atomic weapons production and stockpiles, with a focus on modernizing so-called plutonium pits -- a key component in these weapons that actually causes a nuclear explosion.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina covers a site that is roughly the size of New York City. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Handout via Reuters
The SRS began using surplus plutonium for peaceful purposes in the 2000s. It was supposed to be converted into a plant to produce mixed oxide fuel, often known as MOX, from reprocessed uranium and plutonium. However, the plan was frozen due to a budget overrun.
The Donald Trump administration took notice of the half-built MOX plant and decided to start operating the facility by 2030 as a weapons factory that would produce 50 plutonium pits a year. The administration of President Joe Biden has inherited the plan and quietly started upgrading and expanding the production equipment.
Reaction among the local community has been mixed. "The plan leads to environmental pollution and a huge waste of taxpayers' money. We have too many nuclear weapons. Why do we need more?" Tom Clements, a local activist who has been monitoring the facility for years and asking the government to disclose information on the site, told Nikkei.
He estimates that the construction cost for the pit production facility will be $20 billion, including the amount already spent on the MOX plant. "It will be the most expensive building in U.S. history, far surpassing the cost for One World Trade Center," Clements said, referring to a mammoth skyscraper in New York.
The U.S. has a pressing reason to speed up pit production.
"The government is testing its nuclear stockpile components and figuring out how to make 50-year-old weapons last longer," explains Joseph Kent, director of the National Atomic Testing Museum, who is an expert on nuclear security.
The U.S. possesses more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, but many of them were manufactured during the Cold War. Plutonium pits, which are mounted on warheads, may have deteriorated over time. Washington considers replacing them with new ones to be an urgent task, as the country has no plant that can mass-produce the pits. Expectations for the SRS are high.
On top of that, China is rapidly catching up.
The U.S. Defense Department estimates that China will possess over 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, more than double its current 500. If the U.S. takes too much time replacing the plutonium pits, China could overtake it by deploying state-of-the-art weapons.
There is an economic hurdle, too.
This reporter saw an unexpected name near South Carolina's capital of Columbia, when he came across the Westinghouse Columbia Site.
This is a fuel processing facility run by the nuclear technology company Westinghouse Electric. The former subsidiary of Toshiba went under in 2017 and is now in talks to join a major Canadian mining group. Despite the global headwinds against nuclear power, Westinghouse is said to be optimistic.
"Westinghouse never fails to find itself in the winning circle. It has made a full comeback," Clements said. Based on information disclosed by Washington, he now believes that some of the fuel rods that Westinghouse produces in Columbia for commercial nuclear power plants are taken to the SRS by the DOE to help extract tritium to make nuclear weapons more powerful.
The DOE and Westinghouse did not respond by the time of publication.
Businesses with close ties to the military, such as Fluor and Huntington Ingalls Industries, are also participating in the SRS expansion. "Everything is connected," Clements said.
Interconnection between the state and businesses is nothing new in military affairs. The harsh reality is that requirements from the national security strategy come before what the local community wants.
The same situation can be found elsewhere in the U.S.
"They probably spotted us. Can I make a U-turn?" said Karen Pettit after she saw two muscular men carrying automatic rifles at what appeared to be a security checkpoint.
A short distance from the casinos of Las Vegas in the state of Nevada lies a sprawling desert. Pettit was taking this reporter to a mysterious town, where some of the roads leading in are obscured in Google Maps.
Mercury in Nye County is located within the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), which conducts nuclear tests. Residents are scientists and military officers. Mercury is a closed town where access is strictly limited.
Pettit works as an assistant schoolteacher in Las Vegas. The mother of two began developing suspicions about the NNSS four years ago and now openly expresses her opposition.
She first encountered the issue through church activities. Meeting people who developed health problems and Indigenous people who were driven out of their ancestral land made her realize that there is something she believes is wrong about the site. "The White House priority gets its way here."
The NNSS has been expanding its facility for subcritical nuclear experiments as part of efforts to modernize the nation's nuclear arsenal. Adjacent to the NNSS is Creech Air Force Base, a major drone operations headquarters. The government spends massive amounts of money to order equipment and weapons for the two facilities from private companies.
Pettit names Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon Technologies -- now called RTX -- and Honeywell International, among others. "They spend millions of dollars to lobby for the government, and the government protects their interests in return. That's how the U.S. has expanded its nuclear weapons stockpiles," she said.
The U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimates that the country will need about $750 billion in the next decade to boost its nuclear capability.
A country supposed to be free and open has a government that is not just big, but enormous. And ordinary people are drawn into its machinations. They can express objection or criticism, but they cannot easily refuse the construction or presence of nuclear-related facilities.
"I spent three hours to and from work on a bus. When you did it every day, you would fall asleep within two minutes after boarding," said 78-year-old Michael Heiner, who worked for the NNSS for 40 years until 2012.
He has vivid memories of a mushroom cloud he saw. It would be a lie for him to say that he didn't feel uncomfortable about doing a job associated with nuclear weapons. But, he said he met good friends and colleagues. "I'm middle class, but I was able to bring up my two daughters. It has been a really good life," Heiner added.
========
AIKEN, U.S. -- While China is bolstering its nuclear capabilities, the U.S. -- the first country to produce atomic weapons, in 1945, and the world's top economic and military superpower -- is facing a deeply worrying situation.
That is underscored by a site in the south of the nation that at first glance looks like a desolate chemical plant. But yellow signboards here and there reveal what it really is. One of them reads, "This facility is under the supervision of the Atomic Weapons and Special Nuclear Materials Rewards Act."
When the reporter drove through the forests of Aiken County, South Carolina, last year, the Savannah River Site -- a facility that opened in the early 1950s during the Korean War -- came into view with its numerous pipelines and tanks.
The roughly 800-square-kilometer compound is about the same size as New York City and houses five disused nuclear reactors. The SRS was virtually the country's sole producer of plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons, something it did until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Now, this remnant of the Cold War is coming back to life.
The U.S. House Budget Committee last June approved the Department of Energy's draft budget for fiscal 2024. The SRS is part of the DOE, with the latter overseeing the management of nuclear weapons. The budget earmarked $19.1 billion for boosting atomic weapons production and stockpiles, with a focus on modernizing so-called plutonium pits -- a key component in these weapons that actually causes a nuclear explosion.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina covers a site that is roughly the size of New York City. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Handout via Reuters
The Donald Trump administration took notice of the half-built MOX plant and decided to start operating the facility by 2030 as a weapons factory that would produce 50 plutonium pits a year. The administration of President Joe Biden has inherited the plan and quietly started upgrading and expanding the production equipment.
Reaction among the local community has been mixed. "The plan leads to environmental pollution and a huge waste of taxpayers' money. We have too many nuclear weapons. Why do we need more?" Tom Clements, a local activist who has been monitoring the facility for years and asking the government to disclose information on the site, told Nikkei.
He estimates that the construction cost for the pit production facility will be $20 billion, including the amount already spent on the MOX plant. "It will be the most expensive building in U.S. history, far surpassing the cost for One World Trade Center," Clements said, referring to a mammoth skyscraper in New York.
The U.S. has a pressing reason to speed up pit production.
"The government is testing its nuclear stockpile components and figuring out how to make 50-year-old weapons last longer," explains Joseph Kent, director of the National Atomic Testing Museum, who is an expert on nuclear security.
The U.S. possesses more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, but many of them were manufactured during the Cold War. Plutonium pits, which are mounted on warheads, may have deteriorated over time. Washington considers replacing them with new ones to be an urgent task, as the country has no plant that can mass-produce the pits. Expectations for the SRS are high.
On top of that, China is rapidly catching up.
The U.S. Defense Department estimates that China will possess over 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, more than double its current 500. If the U.S. takes too much time replacing the plutonium pits, China could overtake it by deploying state-of-the-art weapons.
There is an economic hurdle, too.
This reporter saw an unexpected name near South Carolina's capital of Columbia, when he came across the Westinghouse Columbia Site.
This is a fuel processing facility run by the nuclear technology company Westinghouse Electric. The former subsidiary of Toshiba went under in 2017 and is now in talks to join a major Canadian mining group. Despite the global headwinds against nuclear power, Westinghouse is said to be optimistic.
"Westinghouse never fails to find itself in the winning circle. It has made a full comeback," Clements said. Based on information disclosed by Washington, he now believes that some of the fuel rods that Westinghouse produces in Columbia for commercial nuclear power plants are taken to the SRS by the DOE to help extract tritium to make nuclear weapons more powerful.
The DOE and Westinghouse did not respond by the time of publication.
Businesses with close ties to the military, such as Fluor and Huntington Ingalls Industries, are also participating in the SRS expansion. "Everything is connected," Clements said.
Interconnection between the state and businesses is nothing new in military affairs. The harsh reality is that requirements from the national security strategy come before what the local community wants.
The same situation can be found elsewhere in the U.S.
"They probably spotted us. Can I make a U-turn?" said Karen Pettit after she saw two muscular men carrying automatic rifles at what appeared to be a security checkpoint.
A short distance from the casinos of Las Vegas in the state of Nevada lies a sprawling desert. Pettit was taking this reporter to a mysterious town, where some of the roads leading in are obscured in Google Maps.
Mercury in Nye County is located within the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), which conducts nuclear tests. Residents are scientists and military officers. Mercury is a closed town where access is strictly limited.
Pettit works as an assistant schoolteacher in Las Vegas. The mother of two began developing suspicions about the NNSS four years ago and now openly expresses her opposition.
She first encountered the issue through church activities. Meeting people who developed health problems and Indigenous people who were driven out of their ancestral land made her realize that there is something she believes is wrong about the site. "The White House priority gets its way here."
The NNSS has been expanding its facility for subcritical nuclear experiments as part of efforts to modernize the nation's nuclear arsenal. Adjacent to the NNSS is Creech Air Force Base, a major drone operations headquarters. The government spends massive amounts of money to order equipment and weapons for the two facilities from private companies.
Pettit names Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon Technologies -- now called RTX -- and Honeywell International, among others. "They spend millions of dollars to lobby for the government, and the government protects their interests in return. That's how the U.S. has expanded its nuclear weapons stockpiles," she said.
The U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimates that the country will need about $750 billion in the next decade to boost its nuclear capability.
A country supposed to be free and open has a government that is not just big, but enormous. And ordinary people are drawn into its machinations. They can express objection or criticism, but they cannot easily refuse the construction or presence of nuclear-related facilities.
"I spent three hours to and from work on a bus. When you did it every day, you would fall asleep within two minutes after boarding," said 78-year-old Michael Heiner, who worked for the NNSS for 40 years until 2012.
He has vivid memories of a mushroom cloud he saw. It would be a lie for him to say that he didn't feel uncomfortable about doing a job associated with nuclear weapons. But, he said he met good friends and colleagues. "I'm middle class, but I was able to bring up my two daughters. It has been a really good life," Heiner added.
