Dianne Feinstein: “This amendment is something about which I feel passion, and the reason I do is because the country, of which I am a…”

“This amendment is something about which I feel passion, and the reason I do is because the country, of which I am a part, in this bill authorizes the opening of a nuclear door to the development of new nuclear weapons. One of the things I realized is Americans forget what a nuclear weapon does. Both Senator Kennedy and I were very young teenagers when the first nuclear bomb was dropped. The first nuclear bomb that was dropped was 15 kilotons, and it was dropped on Hiroshima. This is what Hiroshima looked like when that bomb was dropped. Let me show you what a 21-kiloton nuclear bomb did, because that was the second bomb that was dropped, and that was on Nagasaki. In the course of a year, between the two cities, 200,000 people died-- 200,000--many of them in the most horrible of ways from radiation sickness. Radiation is a major problem whenever you look at a new nuclear weapon--where it can be contained, how it can be contained, and where it cannot be contained. In this bill, there is authorization for a 100-kiloton nuclear bunker buster. In this bill, there is a request for authorization of $9 million for advanced nuclear weapons concepts which translates into strategic battlefield nuclear weapons under 5 kilotons--battlefield nuclear weapons.”