American Forum Op-Ed

In April President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START), a measure designed to mutually and verifiably reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Specifically, it would reduce U.S. and Russian warheads by approximately one third and would continue and strengthen the verification regime that has allowed the inspections and surveillance that have informed U.S. intelligence about Russian nuclear forces for decades.

The treaty is now before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and may come before the full Senate for a vote on ratification this summer.

Over the last several months, America’s military leaders and national security experts—from both Republican and Democratic administrations—have testified before Senate committees, all with the same message: the treaty’s modest mutual reductions and strengthened verification regime improve our national security, and the Senate should ratify the treaty.

On the benefits afforded by the treaty, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen was clear: “Through the trust it engenders, the cuts it requires, and the flexibility it preserves, this treaty enhances our ability to do that which we have been charged to do: protect and defend the citizens of the United States.”

Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, made it clear that Admiral Mullen was not alone: “The New START Treaty has the unanimous support of America's military leadership,” he wrote.

Testimony in favor of the treaty has also come from former Secretaries of Defense James Schlesinger and William Perry, former Secretaries of State James Baker and Henry Kissinger and former National Security Advisors Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft and Stephen Hadley.

In fact, 30 high-level national security experts from across the political spectrum – including Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Frank Carlucci, Chuck Hagel and John Danforth – published an open letter in support of the treaty.

One of the most compelling reasons for ratifying the treaty is the enormous risk involved in failing to do so. Rejection of this treaty would amount to voluntarily giving up our decades-old capacity to keep tabs on the Russian arsenal.

As General Kevin Chilton, STRATCOM Commander, testified, “If we don't get the treaty, [the Russians] are not constrained in their development of force structure and … we have no insight into what they’re doing. So it’s the worst of both possible worlds.”

Some who oppose the treaty have repeatedly raised concerns that the treaty somehow limits U.S. missile defense capabilities. Again and again, Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen and others have assured Senators that those concerns are unfounded and that the treaty does not limit missile defense.

Director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, was even more emphatic, stating that, “Relative to the recently expired START Treaty, the New START Treaty actually reduces constraints on the development of the missile defense program.”

Despite the remarkable bipartisan consensus in support of the treaty, its fate in the Senate is hardly assured.

Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee may well set the tone in determining whether the bipartisan support the treaty enjoys among the military leadership and national security experts is reflected in the Senate. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Ranking member of the committee, has announced his support for the treaty and called for its prompt ratification. Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC) and James Inhofe (R-OK) have announced their opposition. Those undecided are Senators Bob Corker (R-TN), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), James Risch (R-ID), John Barrasso (R-WY) and Roger Wicker (R-MS).

The importance of the treaty demands a statesmanlike approach to this debate. As the vote approaches, the pressure to politicize the issue will increase. But this is an issue that should be above politics. The expert consensus is clear, and those who would disregard the facts and the advice of our nation’s military leadership in an attempt to make political hay do so at the risk of our national security.

The undecided members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee deserve recognition for the seriousness with which they have approached this debate. Having weighed the issue, let us hope they, along with the rest of the Senate, decide to stand with our nation’s military leadership and the combined experience of security experts from Republican and Democratic administrations alike when it comes time to vote.

As Secretary Gates noted, “For nearly 40 years, treaties to limit or reduce nuclear weapons have been approved by the U.S. Senate by strong bipartisan majorities. This treaty deserves a similar reception and result - on account of the dangerous weapons it reduces, the critical defense capabilities it preserves, the strategic stability it maintains, and, above all, the security it provides to the American people.”

Alongside rivers and lakes, on ocean shores and tidal bays, nearly 63,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste – which remains dangerous for longer than recorded history – sits in “temporary” storage. In some cases, it’s been there for decades. And it’s almost certain to remain for decades longer, scattered around 33 states.

Some of that waste is squeezed into small pools housed inside flimsy buildings; some sits outside in storage containers never intended to be permanent. In both instances, the spent fuel from the nation’s nuclear power plants is exceedingly vulnerable to accidents and terrorist attacks.

Like so many of society’s waste problems, out-of-sight, out-of-mind has become a de facto “solution” -- except to the thousands of Americans who live near these high-level waste storage sites. I am one of them. I reside near two spent fuel pools, one in Massachusetts, at the now-shuttered Yankee Rowe reactor, and another at the troubled Vermont Yankee reactor, only 16 miles away. Together, these pools hold more than 90 million curies of radioactivity. (The bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki released 1 million curies of radiation.)

Recently, President Obama canceled the ill-conceived and costly Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste disposal project. After 35 years, the deep geological repository in Nevada – chosen on the basis of politics, not science – was finally declared unsuitable. A special blue-ribbon commission has been created to find an alternative. Nobody is even hinting that an answer might come anytime soon. This spring, America reaches an alarming milestone: Enough waste will exist to completely fill Yucca Mountain. We are now about to start filling a second repository – if one existed.

So what should this nation be doing with its spent fuel that – like it or not – is going to stay put for the foreseeable future? Instead of ignoring the problem, or choosing expedient “solutions,” we need to face it realistically. For that reason, more than 170 national and grassroots organizations, including the Citizens Awareness Network, are supporting the “Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors.”

These principles are based on the urgent need to protect the public from threats posed by vulnerable storage of spent fuel. While others are using the shortage of disposal options as an opportunity to promote reprocessing this fuel, this is not a solution. Reprocessing is expensive, causes pollution and poses nuclear-weapons proliferation risks.

Rather, the best choice is to improve existing on-site storage until a safe permanent solution can be achieved. In no way should our support of these principles be construed as support of nuclear power or the creation of more radioactive waste. What these principles do represent, however, is a realistic framework for dealing with a problem that threatens all Americans, wherever they may live.
Briefly, this is what we recommend:

• Require a low-density, open-frame layout for fuel pools. Fuel pools originally were designed for temporary storage of a limited number of spent fuel assemblies. Today, waste in many pools is almost as densely packed as the fuel assemblies inside an operating reactor core. Loss of cooling water from an accident or attack could produce a fire and release large quantities of radiation. Returning to the low-density, open-frame design of these pools would reduce the risk of a disastrous radiation release.

• Establish hardened on-site storage. Waste removed from fuel pools must be safeguarded in hardened, on-site storage facilities. The waste must be retrievable and carefully monitored. The overall objective is to make the waste so secure that it’s unattractive as a terrorist target. This can be achieved in two ways: Making the containers resistant to severe attacks (such as with a large aircraft) and by placing the canisters in areas that make detection difficult.

• Increase protection of fuel pools to make them capable of withstanding an attack equal to the force and coordination of the 9/11 attacks.

• Periodic review of each storage facility, including fuel pools and hardened on-site facilities.

• Fund local and state governments to independently monitor these sites.

• Prohibit reprocessing.

A landscape littered with deadly fuel cores is the legacy we must confront. What we propose will give this nation the opportunity to find a safe and responsible permanent solution. Even though the storage modifications we recommend are “temporary,” they will give us time – and security – while we find the right answers.