by Linda Rothstein

About the author: Linda Rothstein is the managing editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a bimonthly magazine focusing on nuclear arms and energy.

Over the past 50 years, the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars—at 1995 rates—to design and manufacture nuclear weapons. Now that the East-West arms race has finally ended, the nation may have to spend hundreds of billions more just to stabilize the poisonous mess left in the weapons complex.

Although her predecessors were all cut from the same secretive military cloth, Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary has flung open the windows and doors, presenting the weapons complex’s problems for public inspection. Two of the department’s reports issued in 1995—Closing the Circle on...