The new language is expected to be offered as part of a wide-ranging consensus amendment to the defense authorization bill today. The new language restores order, balance, and common sense to the decision process on tritium production and plutonium disposition, now under way in the Department of Energy. The need for, and timing of, tritium production depends on the size of the arsenal one wants to maintain.
Plutonium is the key ingredient of U.S. nuclear weapons.
Horner also noted that the Committee language had called for a three-year assessment of the multipurpose reactor for the plutonium and tritium missions. In deleting the earmark for the multipurpose reactor, the Senate acted for the second time this week to reject funding for a reactor to carry out plutonium disposition.