
UNITED NATIONS -- Members of civil society advocating nuclear disarmament are putting modernization programs under the spotlight ahead of a high-level U.N. conference this spring.
The Count the Nuclear Weapons Money campaign will publicly hand-count $100 million per minute in fake $1 million bills in a weeklong performance to highlight the estimated $1 trillion that nine countries will spend over the next decade on modernization. For the U.S. alone, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last October that operating, incrementally upgrading and modernizing nuclear forces would cost $1.2 trillion for the period from 2017 to 2046.