The U.S. spent $52 billion on nukes last year, according to the The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States.

The United States spent over $52 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs in fiscal year 2008, but only 10 percent of that went toward preventing a nuclear attack and slowing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology.

Here’s more from the executive summary of the report:

By way of comparison, the 2008 nuclear weapons and weapons-related “budget” exceeds all anticipated government expenditures on international diplomacy and foreign assistance ($39.5 billion) and natural resources and the environment ($33 billion). It is nearly double the budget for general science, space, and technology ($27.4 billion), and it is almost fourteen times what the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated for all energy-related research and development.

I’m sure that there are conservatives arguing that we should double that annual spending, in order to make ourselves twice as “safe.”  Truly, how many times do we need to be able to destroy the entire earth in order to feel safe?