On July 24, the secretaries of defense, energy, and state sent a four-page report to Congress espousing what they see as the merits of the administration’s Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. Submission of the report came approximately a month after lawmakers started carving up the program with their budget knives. (See ACT, July/August 2007.)

The trio of secretaries argued that the RRW program is crucial to ensuring a safer and smaller future nuclear arsenal. Driving the 2004 initiative is the supposition that the present practice of refurbishing existing warheads to survive longer is untenable because, in doing so, each warhead gradually moves away from its original blueprint, casting doubt on whether it will detonate with as much power as designed.

Security officials for the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile sometimes had difficulty locating classified nuclear and non-nuclear components at two of three sites recently inspected by government auditors.

Both sites "could not readily account for or locate some of the items included in our inventory sample," the office of the Energy Department's inspector general, Gregory Friedman, said in a summary report on classified weapons parts.

The full report was not made public because it contains classified information. It did not include inspections of parts that contain "special nuclear materials" such as plutonium or highly enriched uranium.

Two pieces of a highly radioactive fuel rod are missing from a Vermont nuclear plant, and engineers planned to search onsite for the nuclear material, officials said.

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