Plan for a New Missouri Nuclear Weapons Plant is Premature

Late in October, plans by the U.S. Department of Energy to construct a new, $500 million nuclear weapons plant in Kansas City came closer to fruition: The White House Office of Management and Budget signed off on a novel private financing arrangement for the deal.

The plant would replace an existing facility, known as the Kansas City Plant, that makes roughly 85 percent of the components that go into building a nuclear warhead. Key members of the Missouri congressional delegation -- from Sens. Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill to Rep. Ike Skelton -- applauded the decision on the grounds that it will be an important source of jobs and income.

The financing scheme for the proposed new plant raises serious questions of accountability. The facility would be built, financed and owned by a private company and then leased back to the federal government over a 25-year period. The cost of the lease would be buried in the operations budget of the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, thereby undermining the ability of Congress to keep tabs on it.

Questions about environmental and health effects of the plant would be tangled up in an additional layer of bureaucracy that could make it harder to get this crucial information.

The most critical question is whether a new nuclear weapons plant is needed in the first place. The rationale for the new facility is tied closely to the Department of Energy's plans to build a new nuclear warhead known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead. But until we know what the nuclear strategy of the United States will be over the next several decades, we should not rush to build a new kind of warhead. Because the next president will have a great deal to say in this matter, it makes little sense to move ahead on the project now.

In keeping with these concerns, Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., and Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, eliminated funding for the RRW in the House version of the federal budget for 2008. A House-Senate conference partially restored the funding, but only at about one-third of the requested level.

National security experts outside the government also have raised questions about the need for a new warhead. A bipartisan group of ex-foreign policy practitioners -- led by former secretaries of state George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former defense secretary William Perry and former Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Sam Nunn -- has called for a "world free of nuclear weapons." Three presidential candidates -- Bill Richardson, John Edwards and Barack Obama -- also have called for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

No nuclear weapons would mean no Reliable Replacement Warhead, which in turn could mean no need for a nuclear facility in Kansas City, whether new or old. This would cost the Kansas City area 2,600 high tech jobs and leave the federal government holding the bag for millions of dollars in cancellation costs written into the lease for the new facility. Given this reality, it seems wise to develop a long-term plan to find alternative uses for the existing Kansas City plant.

Possibilities include developing technology for verifying nuclear arms reduction agreements; making equipment for cleaning up decades of accumulated nuclear waste at nuclear weapons sites around the country; or producing clean energy technologies in conjunction with a diversified national weapons lab complex focused on this urgent need.

Now is the time to consider alternatives for the Kansas City Plant, before a shift in U.S. nuclear policy renders it unnecessary. Doing so can provide an insurance policy for Missouri's economy if new policy directions threaten its viability.