http://www.brook.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/WEAPONS.HTMThe ONLY estimate made of the cost: a 1998 report....
cost estimate: $ 5.5 TRILLION DOLLARS...and for that, we POISONED OURSELVES !!!!!
Aerial view of Technical Area 1 at Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Troops participating in exercises at "Camp Desert Rock" (the Nevada Test Site) observe the formation of a mushroom cloud following the detonation of the Dog test on November 1, 1951. This test involved a 21 kiloton device dropped from a B-50 bomber. The device exploded at a height of 1,417 feet (432 meters).
The cumulative cost of U.S. nuclear weapons is nearly $5.5 trillion (in constant 1996 dollars), according to an unprecedented new study, Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, published by the Brookings Institution Press. When the average estimated future-year costs for dismantling of nuclear weapons and the management and disposal of nuclear waste are included, the total rises to more than $5.8 trillion. That amount of money, represented as a stack of $1 bills, would stretch more than 459,000 miles, to the Moon and nearly back again.
Based on four years of extensive research, including access to previously classified government documents and data, Atomic Audit reveals that
government officials have never fully understood either the annual or the cumulative costs associated with building and maintaining the nuclear stockpile and have never attempted to track the total costs over time. In fact, surprisingly few government officials sought to find the answer. This lack of oversight, when combined with pervasive nuclear secrecy, meant that U.S. officials could not weigh the perceived benefits of deterrence against its actual costs."In order to make informed decisions about how best to spend our tax dollars, the public and policymakers require accurate and timely information on how and why public funds are being expended," says Stephen I. Schwartz, the book's editor and Director of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project. "In the realm of nuclear policy, budgetary data have too often been fragmentary or unavailable, rendering such matters fiscally and politically unaccountable. With the release of Atomic Audit, an honest and fully informed debate can finally begin."