Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Friday, June 17, 2011.

Nuclear endgame: The Growing Appeal of Zero - The Economist [link [1]]

• Ridding the world of nuclear weapons has long been a cause of the pacifist left. But in the past few years mainstream politicians, retired military leaders and academic strategists have begun to share the same goal.
• That is partly thanks to a campaigning body called Global Zero, which is holding its third annual “summit” in London next week.
• By putting the dangers of proliferation and nuclear-armed terrorism at the forefront of its concerns, Global Zero would puncture the public’s post-cold-war complacency over nuclear weapons. Above all, Global Zero … stands for a realistic process that [is] phased, multilateral, universal and backed by hard-nosed verification.
• Global Zero’s persuasive backers, such as Amb. Richard Burt, have plausible answers to every objection raised by sceptics. But if the gap between what can be achieved and the high ambition of Global Zero grows too wide, its claim to temper idealism with gritty pragmatism will be in jeopardy.

The X-Men Didn’t Save Us - Joe Cirincione and Benjamin Loehrke in Huffington Post [link [2]]

• It wasn't the mutants. It was humans that caused the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only luck saved us from nuclear war. But other than that, the new film, X-Men: First Class, gets a lot right about the historic crisis that is central to its plot.
• Like most comic book movies, this one ends with the superheroes saving the world from imminent destruction. To add realism, X-Men takes place in a year when we actually came close...The film's creators touch on several underappreciated points about the actual crisis.
• First, we did come unbelievably close to thermonuclear war...Second, as the film shows, the crisis actually began in Turkey, not Cuba...Third, there really was a submarine escorting the missile-carrying cargo ships to Cuba.

Trimming the Nuclear Weapons Budget - Nick Roth and Stephen Young in All Things Nuclear [link [3]]

• The House Appropriations Committee yesterday...recommended $7 billion for nuclear weapons activities, $195 million above fiscal year 2011 levels but $497 million below the President’s request.
• The bill demonstrates how bloated the nuclear weapons budgets became because of the New START debate, when many senators demanded funding increases for nuclear weapons.
• The House Energy and Water bill cut almost $500 million from nuclear weapons programs without jeopardizing any of the major initiatives the NNSA is planning over the next 10 years or compromising the safety, security, or reliability of the stockpile.
• Our take on the key provisions … [B-61 LEP, complex footprint reduction, weapons transportation, advanced certification, CMRR, MOX, & W-78 LEP.]

KC Council Rejects Weapons Plant Idea - Lynn Horsley in the Kansas City Star [link [4]]

• The Kansas City Council voted 12-1 today against a proposal to convert a new weapons plant into a green technology facility.
• For more on the Kansas City Plant, see: “Fighting City Hall’s Nuclear Weapons [5]” by Joe Cirincione

NNSA Weapons Complex Funding: Only in Washington Is More Considered “Less” - Daryl Kimball in Arms Control Now [link [6]]

• Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee marked up the fiscal year 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations bill … [which] would increase—not decrease—the NNSA weapons activities budget above the previous year’s level.
• The House appropriations bill allocation … is $500 million (7%) less than the Barack Obama administration’s whopping $7.63 billion request … House Energy and Water Subcommittee Chair Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) said, “Only in Washington could an increase of this magnitude be seen as a cut.”
• Not only do the nuclear weapons laboratories have a deeper understanding of the arsenal than they ever did during the days of nuclear test explosion, but they also have more resources than ever.
• What is important is that the nuclear weapons labs remain focused on the highest priority tasks and that they pursue conservative warhead life extension strategies that minimize unnecessary and expensive alterations to already well-understood warhead types.

Pentagon Says US Must Salvage Relations with Pakistan to Protect Nukes, Regional Security - Associated Press [link [7]]

• “Those things that I fear in the future,” Adm. Mike Mullen told Pentagon reporters, are “the proliferation of that technology, and it’s the opportunity and the potential that it could fall into the hands of terrorists, many of whom are alive and well and seek that in that region.”
• Both [Gates] and Mullen repeated assertions that the bin Laden raid caused much consternation among the Pakistan leadership, and they must be given time to work through it.
• If the relationship with Pakistan crumbles or “were we to walk away, I think it’s a matter of time before the region is that much more dangerous and there would be a huge pull for us to have to return to protect our national interests,” Mullen added.