Tell Barbara Boxer, 'No New Nukes'

As a Californian with a Representative on the House Appropriations Committee, you have a special opportunity to stop the Bush Administration's plans to build new nuclear weapons.

A Peace Action Delegation has recently visited Senator Barbara Boxer's Washington, D.C. office and we were told that Senator Boxer hasn’t yet made her mind up about whether or not to fund Bombplex 2030 and “Reliable Replacement Warheads.” This means that we have an opportunity to educate and persuade Senator Boxer.

Please take a moment to personalize the sample email that Peace Action has composed below and send it to your Senator. You can incorporate the following talking points or learn more about New Nuclear weapons by clicking the "learn more link below.

Nuclear Bombplex 2030 Talking Points

It’s an unnecessary waste of taxpayer money. At the request of Congress, an independent panel of scientific experts recently completed a thorough study of the lifetime of the plutonium pits in our warheads (the cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons). This panel announced that pits have a lifetime of at least 100 years, more than double the Department of Energy’s (DOE) original estimate of 45 years.
The Bush administration and DOE have argued that Complex 2030 and the revamp of our weapons system is necessary because our weapons were aging and becoming unreliable. This new independent study proves them wrong, and undercuts the need for this complex, which is projected to cost billions of dollars.
It sends the wrong message to the rest of the world. At a time when the international community is working to stop the spread of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea, building a new generation of U.S. weapons sends the wrong message. If the U.S. continues down the path of nuclear weapons development, you can be sure that other countries will follow.
It’s based on outdated Cold War thinking. Building up our offensive nuclear capabilities makes no sense when the greatest threat the U.S. faces is from non-state terrorist groups and the proliferation of weapons to other states. Spending billions of dollars on new nuclear weapons will not make America safer and ignores the real dangers we face.
It violates our international commitments and U.S. law. When the U.S. signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the treaty became U.S. law. Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the U.S. agreed to negotiate in good faith to get rid of nuclear weapons. Complex 2030 diverts attention from the need to begin planning further nuclear reductions and the eventual elimination of our nuclear stockpile.

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September 10, 2010

Subject:

Honorable Representative Schiff

Senator Boxer, As your constituent, I am writing to follow up on a recent lobby visit by a Peace Action delegation to your Washington, D.C. office. Your Legislative Fellow, Ann Norris, informed our delegation that you do not yet have firm positions on Department of Energy proposals for the Reliable Replacement Warhead and Complex 2030 – I hope that we can convince you to oppose these dangerous and wasteful programs. The Reliable Replacement Warhead is a new nuclear weapon that would reduce our authority to demand nonproliferation efforts from other countries and divert needed funds from more useful taxpayer-funded projects. Complex 2030, aka the Nuclear Bombplex, will weaken global nonproliferation efforts, create the same kind of pollution that resulted in the FBI shutting down the Rocky Flats Plutonium Pit Production Plant in 1988, and cost a minimum of $150 billion. We at Peace Action appeal to your loyalty to our Constitution and your sense of fiscal responsibility in asking that you use your position on the House Appropriations Committee to zero out funding for both the Reliable Replacement Warhead and Complex 2030. Both of these programs would lead to new nuclear weapons that are both inconsistent with our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and would diminish our ability to demand nonproliferation measures from countries such as Iran and North Korea. Both of these new nuclear weapons programs would also require hundreds of billions of dollars that could be better spent on other things.
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