U.S. lacks plan to dismantle nuclear warheads

The U.S. has no coordinated, comprehensive national policy on dismantling nuclear warheads. And the prospects of developing such a policy are uncertain. These are the major conclusions of a report published last week by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). The report points out that appropriate disposal of no-longer-needed nuclear warheads represents a new mission for the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy (DOE). However, OTA says, these agencies still approach the retiring and dismantling of warheads as a short-term modification of existing practice—rather than as a change of focus from their past missions of production and stockpile maintenance. At press time, DOE said that it had not yet had time to respond to the report. The task is enormous. Both the U.S. and Russia have withdrawn most of their tactical nuclear weapons. And they have a mutual goal of each reducing its strategic warhead stockpile from more than 10,000 warheads ...