After it leaked to the media that the Senate’s fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) had a sliver of funding for nuclear-explosive test readiness, the five Democrats of Nevada’s congressional delegation released a letter to the White House condemning any return to testing.
“With no stated justification to resume testing, we unequivocally oppose any Administration’s efforts to resume explosive nuclear testing in Nevada,” the state’s two U.S. senators and three of its four House members stated in a June 12 letter released late Monday by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.). Only Rep. Mark Amodei, the delegation’s sole Republican, did not sign the letter.
In the letter, the lawmakers requested written answers to 10 questions by July 3. Among other things, they asked point blank whether the White House plans to resume nuclear-explosive testing at the Nevada National Security Site, and how much it might cost to do so.
On Monday, news organizations reported that the Senate’s version of the 2021 NDAA would authorize $10 million worth of funding to “carry out projects related to reducing the time required to execute a nuclear test if necessary.”
The language came from an amendment offered by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the firebrand conservative who helped convince President Trump to increase the 2021 budget request for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to almost $20 billion. The $740 billion defense policy bill would authorize that amount for the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency.
The Washington Post reported in May that some in the White House have advocated for a “rapid” nuclear explosive test to induce Russia and China to negotiate a trilateral nuclear arms-control agreement to replace the New START treaty between Washington and Moscow.
The Senate Armed Services Committee approved its NDAA last week, but the text had not been released at deadline Tuesday for sister publication Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. The panel has said the full Senate could approve the upper chamber’s NDAA before the July 4 weekend.
The House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to mark up its NDAA from June 22 to July 1.