Some of the 1,502 amendments filed in the House for an annual defense policy bill deal directly with the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise, including a call to allow the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) more time to make 80 new plutonium pits annually.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) filed an amendment
to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would change existing law that requires the agency to reach certain plutonium pit production milestones by certain dates.
Garamendi filed his amendment with the House Rules Committee, which was scheduled on Tuesday to start preparing the 2024 NDAA for debate on the floor of the House of Representatives. In the House, unlike the Senate, all bills need a debate rule to reach the floor.
If passed – the vast majority of NDAA amendments do not – Garamendi’s proposal would eliminate a requirement that the NNSA to produce at least 30 war reserve pits per year “during 2026” and 80 pits “during 2030.”
Instead, under Garamendi’s amendment, the NNSA administrator would be given the chance to reach the milestones ‘‘during a period that the Administrator for Nuclear Security determines technically achievable and cost-effective.”
Garamendi tried and failed to get a virtually identical amendment into the version of the NDAA that passed the House Armed Services Committee in June. The House Rules Committee meeting sorting through the amendments and writing rules for floor debate at noon Eastern time on Tuesday.
The NNSA planned to comply with current law by making at least 30 pits per year at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and another 50 or more at a new Plutonium Production Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Earlier this year, the NNSA acknowledged that the Los Alamos pit plant may not have equipment installed to make 30 pits a year until 2030. Senior officials at Los Alamos recently told the Monitor that it would happen by 2030, if not sooner.
Meanwhile, progressive Rep. Jamila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called for reducing defense spending overall and asked the Comptroller General of the U.S. to submit to Congress cost analyses of certain agencies by Dec. 7. Topping the list of reports is one on “options for reducing the nuclear security enterprise,” according to Jayapal’s amendment.
Another progressive, Rep. Earl Blumenhauer (D-Ore.), filed an amendment to halt all efforts at retiring the B83-1 gravity bomb, from which the NNSA proposed cutting $28 million in its fiscal 2024 budget request.
Blumenhauer also offered an amendment that says “it is the sense of Congress that the United States should not use nuclear weapons first,” reiterating the longstanding no-first-use policy.
The non-voting Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-Washington, D.C.), wants to eliminate all nuclear weapons by requiring the U.S. to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which her amendment says will “result in the dismantlement and elimination of all nuclear weapons in every country. Holmes also proposes using funding currently spent on the nuclear weapons enterprise on peaceful nuclear energy initiatives.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D.-Calif.) wants the Secretary of Defense to “ensure that ‘meaningful human control’ is required to launch any nuclear weapon” and that artificial intelligence never oversees or operates the U.S. nuke arsenal. Humans should select and decide to engage targets and choose the time, location and manner of any nuclear strikes, Lieu’s amendment to the NDAA states.
This story first appeared in Defense Daily affiliate publication Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.