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Senate Votes for Additional Nuclear Materials Money By Amy Klamper and David Hess CongressDaily WASHINGTON — As it continued working through amendments to the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill yesterday, the Senate voted to authorize funding to secure vulnerable nuclear sites to keep radioactive materials out of the hands of terrorists (see GSN, April 15). Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) offered the amendment, which would affect sites regardless of whether the nuclear material was supplied by the United States or the former Soviet Union. It also urged President Bush to create an Energy Department task force on removing nuclear materials. “There are hundreds of facilities around the world that store plutonium or highly enriched uranium, including 24 sites that the State Department has identified as high priority sites,” Feinstein said in a statement issued Wednesday. “Yet, there is no single, integrated U.S. government program to facilitate the removal of these materials,” she added. The amendment’s sponsors said the Bush administration’s current efforts to remove international nuclear materials would take 10 to 20 years to complete at the rate of one facility per year. “I am deeply concerned that the Bush administration’s efforts do not adequately address the seriousness of the issue,” Feinstein said. “We must do everything in our power to prevent terrorists from ever getting their hands on nuclear material and developing nuclear weapons. We have little time to spare,” she said. Domenici and Feinstein’s amendment was one of 16 dealt with by the Senate during yesterday’s debate, which continued as the House began its own debate on its version of the defense authorization bill.
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