nuclear weapons inside the united states. assuming those weapons were actually in good condition, i was wondering if you care to venture opinion on their viability now? >> well, i'm not really a ware of any of those reports. i would say -- i'm having a hard time answering that question. i don't know of any russian weapons being stored in the u.s., just kind of sleeper weapons what you would be referring to. but if they were stored, there would be some safety and reliability issues. so i guess your question is whether they would go off if they wanted them to. i'm not a scientist, so i can't answer that. but if they've been dormant for 20 years, i would think there would be some issues. >> shelby in orlando, florida, good morning. are you with us? >> caller: yes, hi, i'm sorry. you did answer my original question, but i had another question, and it's really hard

to find information about you guys online. >> by you guys, who do you mean? he's a senior reporter but we're talking about the national nuclear safety commission. >> caller: i mean the nuclear weapons and materials monitor. one of my questions was about how you are meeting environmental concerns? are these nuclear weapons being stored? are there any nuclear waste that people need to worry about? what happens when we don't want these weapons anymore, what do we do with them? >> well, you know, as you probably know, there's a large effort from the administration to kind of draw down our stockpile. so with that, you're seeing reduced numbers. so there is nuclear weapons being dismantled. there's a very large cue of weapons waiting to be dismantled. there's a plant in amarillo,

texas, and those weapons are taken apart there, the various radioactive parts, they're taken apart and stored there. so that's one of the most ultrasecure facilities around the world. with that effort, there's a separate nonproliferation effort to use those plutonium pits. so they're building a facility in south carolina and that will use the plutonium that was in our nuclear weapons, turn it into a commercial nuclear fuel that will be burned at nuclear power plants around the country. so it's taken what was once nuke weapons and converting it into something that can be used for a different purpose. on the environmental concerns, there's a whole separate part of the department of energy that's in charge of the cleanup of our

nuclear stockpile. that's a $5 billion endeavor itself, and aside from the eight main sites that currently make up the weapons complex that i cover and that i -- and that maintain our weapons, there's various sites around the nation that are trying to be cleaned up. and that's a decades long effort, as well. >> todd jacobson, senior reporter, tell us about the monitor, the website is exchangemonitor.com. >> we're an independent newsletter. we're mainly read by congress, we're mainly read by folks in the industry. we're read by arms control groups. we don't take a side on this. we're completely nonpartisan. we try to be a voice, an objective voice covering these issues. i cover a ton of congressional hearings, i pore over budget documents, i go over reports and really try to get to the heart

of what our nuclear weapons policy is, what our stockpile is like right now. so sometimes it's a difficult issue because it's up like a lot of department of energy programs, this has a lot of classified information. but you can get a sense of what, you know, what's going on. >> does it cost more to maintain or dispose of nukes? >> it costs more to -- well, that's a tough question, because we have to maintain our stock mile. you can't just get rid of the warheads that we have. but if you were to dispose of them it could be cheaper. president obama has been at the forefront of kind of pushing an arms control agenda that sees an end result of a vision of world free of nuclear weapons. at the same time he's said that's not going to happen overnight, and probably not going to happen in his lifetime. in the meantime, you have to make sure what you have is safe. so you can't just carte blanche

say we're going to get rid of our nuclear weapons, it's going to be cheaper because the rest of the world isn't thinking that way. so in the meantime, we're going to have nuclear weapons and the thinking is, and this is the president that's said, you know, he sees a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. >> jeff joins us from clear water, florida. good morning. >> caller: yes, in regards to -- i'm just curious about what your opinion is as far as any -- no matter what the party affiliation, what would cause opposition to safety of not just today in the present moment, but our future -- what portion of our society would oppose being that we live in such a fragile

society? whether it's nuclear weapons, terrorist threats, et cetera, et cetera? >> so jeff, do you see that allocation of funds for future safety coming into play when we're talking about disarmament? >> caller: i think it's a very rational reason.

>> there's folks in congress who think, you know, we don't need to be spending billions of dollars on infrastructure projects. that's a big part of this whole debate is, you know, as part of the new treaty signed in 2010, there's a -- part of the debate on that was what we're doing with our current stockpile and how much we're modernizing it. so to get that treaty through, there was a large commitment made, $88 billion over the next ten years, to build some new facilities, to replace older facilities that were cold war era facilities. some people think that's too much, that we're spending too much on that and we could have a smaller stockpile and that could secure our nation just as well. so that's the push and pull in congress over these issues.

>> jim writes on twitter, we must rid the world of all nuclear weapons. our guest just talked about the number of nuclear weapons in the united states. this number as of 2009 was over 5,100 warheads. and then the number of warheads dismantled from 1994 to 2009 was 8,700 warheads. >> that's correct. and i think i mentioned earlier, there's about 2,500 to 3,000 more still in the cue to be dismantled. it's a difficult thing to do. the national nuclear security administration just completed the dismantlement last year of one of the world war vestiges, one of those weapons that doesn't have a use called the b-53, and it was the size of a minivan or maybe bigger. it was one of the most powerful weapons we ever had and there's no strategic reason to have it now. so part of what the nsa does is

they dismantle a weapon like that and it's a really difficult thing when you're talking about dismantling something the size of a minivan with plutonium and high explosives. so you don't just take screwdrivers out and take it apart. it's a very methodical process. i'm sure you can imagine just moving something like that is really difficult. so they have to develop special tools, special hoists and cranes to kind of do that. so that's part and parcel of what the nsa does is they maintain what we have and dismantle stuff that we don't need. it actually happens at the same plant in texas that i mentioned earlier. they do the modernization efforts. they do kind of the surveillance and they also take apart the warheads that we don't need anymore. >> i read a tweet a moment ago by jim who wanted to get rid of all nukes. a different jim says -- the

jeannie is out of the bottle. we're basically leaving ourselves vulnerable. >> i don't think anyone out there says we need to -- we should get rid of all of our nuclear weapons tomorrow. you know, down the road, people see that as a potential future, there's a lot of hurdles and dissenting opinions on that. there's a lot of people that disagree with the president. but it has to be a slow, methodical process. i think most people recognize that, that for the meantime we can't just say we're done with these. you're right, the jeannie is out of the bottle. we have to, along with the international community, we have to take things down a slow path. that means kind of having treaties with russia, like the one we had, the new start treaty in 2010. that means eventually bringing in france and china and the uk into these kind of arms control discussions. but it's not a process that's going to happen overnight.

>> a republican in round rock texas. good morning. >> caller: good morning. right now iran is threatening us, while they're threatening to build a nuclear weapon. we have iran surrounded right now. and we have what you just said, over 5,000 nuclear weapons ourselves, plus we're the only country in the world that dropped nuclear weapons. what gives us the right to tell any country whether they can build a nuclear weapon or not when we've already dropped one? >> well, i think your point is well taken. but i would just go back to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, signed decades ago, which basically was an agreement among all countries that nuclear weapons are kind of a jeanngeni that's out of the bottle. the treaty was signed when there

was a fear that at the time there was just a handful of countries that had nuclear weapons. there was a fear then that decades from the '70s, that there would be 20, 30 countries with nuclear weapons. so at that time, there was an agreement that said these countries that have them, they're going to move to get rid of them eventually. other countries can't develop them. but at the same time, if you want to develop nuclear technology for energy, you can do that. so i think most people would agree that the security of the world would not be enhanced if every country had a nuclear weapon. because then you get into some really difficult issues with securing them and i think you had mentioned terrorism. that's a real concern. countries that are nuclear weapons, are they securing them enough and can they do that? because it's a fear of a lot of people in this country that a terrorist can get ahold of an unsecured nuclear weapon and do something bad with it on our

soil. >> let's look at this. we talked about the number of nuclear warheads in the united states over 8,500. and looking at the world's nuclear club, who around the world has nuclear weapons? russia, 11,000. this is an proximate number. the united kingdom, france over 300. china, over 240. and then israel, between 75 and 200. india, between 80 and 100. pakistan, between 90 and ten in north korea, five to six with this asterisks. that's the estimates. >> yeah. the whole point of the arms control regime out there is to get a handle on those countries and kind of stop and stem the nuclear club from expanding. that's why there's such a high level focus on iran, because if iran got a nuclear weapon, you

can see a cascade or dominos falling in the rest of the middle east as other countries pursue it. you saw syria a couple years ago. they were clandestinely pursuing a nuclear weapon, as well. so it's a real concern to kind of keep that number lower. right now when we're talking arms control and arms controls negotiation, it's u.s. and russia. but as the u.s. and russia's stockpiles creep closer to china, france and the uk, you're going have to see arms negotiations. >> greg on our independent line from california joins the conversation. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i just wanted to point out you said that israel has -- i don't know if you said over 400 -- or 75 nuclear weapons. how come they don't make that a point when they're talking about the middle east and iran? if israel has -- i don't think that it's declared.

why don't we send in nuclear inspectors to inspect their stock and know that, you forecast we're doing something proactive, we're showing the iranians it's not only you, and then go to iran? why is that not done? >> that's not really in the direct kind of line of what i cover. but yeah, you're right, israel is not a declared nuclear weapons state. it's widely assumed they have nuclear weapons but that's not something that is in the lane of what i do. so it's hard for me to answer why the u.s. doesn't have a policy of going into one of its allies and inspecting their nuclear weapons. >> we're talking about the nnsa, the national nuclear safety administration. it's charged with maintaining the nation's nuclear deterrence capabilities, securing vulnerable nuclear materials and the president requested a budget

for fiscal year 2013 of over $11 billion for the nnsa. the national academy of sciences says that the nnsa security of site such as lawrence liver more, national lab or las almos is affecting the security of the lab. talk to us about security. it says put a little trust in nuclear lab urges the report. according to a national research council report last month, lab employees say contracting oversight, security and human capital strains have diluted that primary goal and are putting research at risk. >> the real issue is how much overnight is on the labs. several years ago, the congress forced the nnsa to compete the contract for those labs.

>> so they're privately managed? >> they're privately managed. at the time they were managed by the university of california and had been for decades? the early 2000s, congress moved to force them to compete those. and that has brought in some private industry. both labs are run by teams. but what they would like, when they talk about trust in that article, they would like the nnsa to do less of telling them what to do. that's the old, you know, what they want is more freedom to explore the scientific issues that think they need to be explored without the nnsa telling them every step they need to take. so they say those administrative burdens are hampering the amount of work they can do. one of the examples in that

report is a scientist and one of the labs needed five signatures, needed to write a position paper to just, you know, go to a conference. so the scientists complain that all of their work, all their time is being taken up by red tape. so there's a debate as to where the sweet spot is so the money we spend on our weapons doesn't just go to filling out forms. that's one take on it at least. >> donna, democratic caller in baalleltimor hi. in response to your earlier caller, i would just like to say it was almost right after president obama cut the military budget, i think like $38 billion, and the following week gave $31 billion, yesterday i believe, at the israeli conference with netanyahu, gave them $31 billion for their

defense. it just seems redundant. also, my first question was, are they working on like everything is getting smaller, computers, everything, are they working on like tiny nuclears that w thing? >> no, i don't think that nuclear weapons would ever be on a drone. the debate right now is whether we keep all three legs of the nuclear triad, airborne leg, which is the bombers that we have that are equipped to carry our nuclear weapons. then there's the sea leg, which is the submarines out on patrol that carry ub missiles and the s that we have around the country. i don't think there's any possibility of having drones that would carry nuclear weapons. >> a couple folks are writing in. is yucca mountain nuclear disposal site operational? >> no, it's not.

it's also not within the budget of the national nuclear security administration. but i'm sure whoever wrote that question knows there's a debate about what to do with yucca mountain. you can't avoid this, around the country we have tons of nuclear waste from our nuclear energy that's sitting at various sites and we need to did pose -- find a disposal path. that's the place for years we thought we were going to put it. obviously the obama administration reversed course. got a lot of republicans, especially in the house, pressing for a reversal of that decision and it's in the courts right now. we'll see how that sorts out. >> yucca mountain is outside the jurisdiction of the nnsa? >> it the. nnsa is not into the disposal of commercial nuclear waste or anything like that. it's really about the agency i cover is really about how do we

maintain the stockpile that we have? there's -- it's kind of the other mission of securing nuclear material around the word, making sure that it's safe. that's been a big agenda of the obama administration, as well. towards efforts overseas to make sure that things are safe overseas. >> you mentioned a lot of this is classified, so you're reporting on a topic that's charging for a reporter to delve into. how close have you gotten to the story? have you ever been able to visit the sites, have you seen teams in action? >> i've been to five of the eight sites so i've been to lawrence livermore national laboratory. there's certain things i can see and certain things i can't.

if i go to los almos, i was not able to see them building pits. right now they call it the plutonium center of excellence and they are in charge of building the pits that would go into nuclear weapons. i think the 11, which is a far cry from how many they would do in the cold war. so when i went there, i was able to not see that, but i was able to tour some of the other things that they do, some of the nonproliferation angles, some of the construction that they were planning. so i took a tour of one of the facilities that was supposed to be one of the pillars of this whole modernization issue. at the time, it was a hole in the ground and it's still a hole in the ground because they've put it on hold now to reassess whether it's needed.

i was able to e that. just going to the sites, meeting the people, talking to the officials that make some of these decisions, it gives you a whole perspective on what they do. so as a reporter, it's great. even though i can't see -- they're not going to give me a pit to hold or anything. >> a story from "the new york times" yesterday. it talks about the role that the laboratory has played in new mexico, it's helped give birth to the manhattan project. last month the obama administration decided to defer construction of a new plutonium research facility at the lab for at least five years because of budget constraints. last month, the lab announced it would need to lay off up to 11% of its 7,600 employees. >> that's a huge issue. that was the facility that i mentioned that they deferred the cmr-mf, that's what it's called. and it's really an economic

engine in northern new mexico. pretty much everyone that lives in that town has something to do with the lab, whether people that sell food to people that work in the lab, so it's almost a crisis because their fudge et was cut even before the decision on that facility, their budget was cut by $300 million. so they've had to figure out how they're going to still meet the mentioned plutonium pits that they make there. without that facility and without the budget they need, they won't be able to meet the requirements that the administration and the military wants them to make. so there's a lot of hard decisions and assessing that's going on right now in terms of how they're going to -- what their path forward is. they're looking at 400 to 00 cuts. they want to do it without forced layoffs. they're taking applications

right now through april 5. >> for buyouts? >> yeah. they had a round of this in 2008 and they were able to avoid actual layoffs. they didn't get enough and had to force people to be laid off. it's been an incredibly difficult process. there's even a lawsuit still in the courts right now that will go to trial in october from people that feel like they were age discriminated against. so whenever you have to force people to leave an institution like that, people that worked there for 20, 30 years, it creates a huge issue for morale, for even the people that are still there. so livermore is still recovering. >> john is up next.

saratoga, new york. you're on with todd jacobson. >> caller: todd, good morning. first, i want to practice by what i saying i'm an independent, so i kind of deal in the real world and not the sides that you hear all the people, but for one thing the reality is, if so many nuclear -- 200, 300 of these things go off, does anyone really want to live on the earth? so why have 30,000 or whatever? the other second point is, this is what people don't understand about iran. iran wants to get one because then they know they have to be dealt with. if you get a nuke weapon, then you're on an equal playing field in diplomacy. if they ever got one, then you have to respect your enemy, if they have it. >> i don't think anyone believes that we really have to have a stockpile in the tens of

thousands. that's why we're on a gentle slope of lowering it. that's kind of the direction everyone is heading. and there's a current study going on right now in the pentagon as a follow-on to the new start treaty as to where we can go next. there's a debate whether we should go lower than that treaty, which capped our stockpile at 1,550 warheads. some people say we should go lower. that's the administration's stance. a couple weeks ago, jim miller, who is a pentagon official, said he believes we could maintain our security with potentially smaller numbers. so that's the direction we're going. there's a lot of republicans that feel we need to put the brakes on that, make sure we're modernizing and make sure what we have is safe and taken care of. there's a tremendous debate going on in congress about what is the right path forward and

some of the budget cutbacks hav administration's case recently. >> glenn, democratic caller from vermont, good morning. >> caller: thank you for making my call. >> please go ahead. >> caller: todd, i was wondering what your knowledge is on broken arrow incidents and what current effort on the part of the d.o.d. is to monitor those sites and possibly recover any material that might still be in the ground or in swamps off georgia? >> that's -- that is a d.o.d. effort, not something that the national nuclear safety administration does. i focus on the sites that ta the broken arrow stuff is not really within my direct line of sight. >> can you explain what it is? >> what he's referring to is when a nuclear warhead gets in an accident.

so it has happened, unfortunately, over the last 50, 60 years we've had nuclear weapons, where there's been airplanes that had nuclearasd. so there's sites around the country and around the world where that's happened. it's my understanding that the d.o.d. is in charge of monitoring those and the effort was made, you know, when it happened to clean up and make sure -- no time did it ever happen that a nuclear warhead detonated and there was a nuclear explosion because of one of those. but sometimes when a nuclear ou each though it doesn't detonate the way you want it to, radioactive material is disbursed. >> in brief, maryland writes in about thorium. that would eliminate some of the concerns about nuclear power being used for po