John Garamendi: “Apparently, we want a debate on the plutonium pit issue. Well, let it happen. Let's get some facts here. The 80 pits per…”

“Apparently, we want a debate on the plutonium pit issue. Well, let it happen. Let's get some facts here. The 80 pits per year has little to do with nuclear arms, nuclear bombs, it has everything to do with a number that was invented by the committees of this House. So what are we going to do with these pits? First of all, the pits will not be built in Savannah River for at least a decade, and quite likely 15 years. Yes, perhaps they will in 15 years produce 50 pits per year. For what purpose? Specifically, now the pit production is taking place at Los Alamos National Laboratories, which is diligently and wastefully moving forward to produce 30 pits per year. The first pit at Savannah River--that is the war reserve pit--it is likely to be produced in 3 to 4 years from now, beginning at the rate of one a year and eventually moving to 30 per year, which will probably take a full decade and several billion dollars to do. What is that pit going to be used for? Maybe we ought to know before we start talking about the safety of this world and this Nation. The pits that are going to be built at Savannah River are specifically for a new nuclear bomb, the 87-1, which has not yet been produced. {time} 1045 Presumably, that bomb will go on the new Sentinel missile, which in and of itself is $150 billion that we will spend to replace the Minuteman III missiles that are now in the silos in the upper Midwest.…”