Kansas City is preparing for nuclear war. We don’t have to sit by and watch it happen | Opinion

We are preparing for nuclear war in Kansas City. Many of us are unaware of the startling details.

The Kansas City National Security Campus is located at Botts Road and Missouri Highway 150 in southern Kansas City. The new nuclear weapons plant, which opened there in 2014, has 1.5 million square feet of manufacturing space and has a proposed 2025 budget of $1.366 billion. And a brand new addition to the campus, directly across Botts Road to the east, will add another 2 million square feet of office and manufacturing space.

This expansion is because of an increase for the KCNSC from the current single project for nuclear weapons modernization to seven projects. These so-called “life extension programs” for new nuclear weapons nationwide are estimated to cost $1.7 trillion dollars over the next few decades. The Kansas City projects listed in the Department of Energy’s budget laboratory tables include the following weapons:

• The B61-12, a gravity bomb that the U.S. shares with five European air force bases. It has a Boeing tail kit that makes it a maneuverable “smart” bomb. This bomb costs more than its weight in gold.
• The W88 ALT 370 warhead, used in the Navy’s Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
• The W80-4 warhead, the Air Force’s long-range standoff weapon.
• The W87-1 modification program that replaces the W78 warhead.
• The W93/MK7 program, used in submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
• The Enterprise Pit Production-Plutonium Modernization and Plutonium Disposition program

The Kansas City campus is one of the eight major sites that together produce and maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal. After the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, interest in the nuclear threat waned. But we are now experiencing a new nuclear arms race that is proceeding without much fanfare.

Thankfully there are grassroots organizations that watchdog the nuclear production enterprise. One such network is the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. It is a national network of about 30 organizations, including PeaceWorks Kansas City, of which I am vice chair. Representing PeaceWorks at the fall ANA meeting in early December 2024, I shared news of the expansion of the Kansas City National Security Campus.

The ANA’s yearly fall meetings are held at U.S. nuclear weapons production or nuclear waste sites. The local grassroots organization hosting the ANA fall meeting provides in-depth information about health and environmental effects of the nuclear enterprise. I find these meetings extremely valuable, connecting anti-nuclear activists with one another to share information, resources and creative ideas. Each participant has expertise and often lifelong experience in watchdogging and strategizing for nuclear abolition. This year’s meeting was in Atlanta, Georgia, with a tour of Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina.

The Savannah River Site formerly focused on plutonium and tritium production for nuclear weapons. There is a new plan for the manufacturing facility to start producing 50 plutonium pits, the cores of nuclear bombs, and for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to make an additional 30 of them per year. Last year, a coalition of ANA groups and others won a four-year-long environmental lawsuit against this plan. As part of the settlement to this major victory, negotiations are underway for public government hearings to allow citizens to weigh in on the use of our tax money for this provocative and dangerous new nuclear arms race. Kansas City could possibly host one of these hearings.

This will be our opportunity to voice opposition to this massive escalation toward nuclear annihilation. Kerry Kennedy, a worldwide champion of human rights, reminded viewers how much our activism matters in a recent webinar I attended. She noted that several decades ago, Latin America was ruled by right-wing dictators; Eastern Europe was oppressed by communist dictators and South Africa was run by an apartheid government. All are gone now.

Let’s make a difference and speak out for our survival.

This story was originally published January 20, 2025 at 5:07 AM.