US nuclear approach is one-way street

WASHINGTON — For the White House, these have been dramatic days for nuclear disarmament. President Donald Trump exited the Iran deal, demanding Tehran sign a new agreement that forever cuts off its path to making a bomb, then the administration announced a first-ever meeting with the leader of North Korea about ridding his nation of nuclear weapons.

But for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the initiatives are all going in the opposite direction, with a series of little-noticed announcements to spend billions of dollars building the factories needed to rejuvenate and expand the United States’ nuclear capacity.

The contrast has been striking. On May 10, hours after Trump announced that his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would take place June 12 in Singapore, the Pentagon and the Energy Department announced plans to begin building critical components for next-generation nuclear weapons at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

The idea is to repurpose a half-built, problem-ridden complex that was originally intended to turn old nuclear weapons into reactor fuel to light U.S. cities. Now the facility will be used to revitalize the United States’ aging nuclear weapons, and to create the capacity to make many hundreds more.

The Pentagon, in its main nuclear strategy report released in February, cited North Korea’s ability to “illicitly produce nuclear warheads” as a major justification for the new effort.

Also last week, a strategic forces subcommittee in the House approved Trump administration plans to build a new kind of low-yield nuclear weapon, launched from submarines, to match