Well, it was the arsenal they said was rusting. But it may be that the nukes might offer him more leeway than more conventional weaponry that, let's be blunt, we can easily afford to take out in short order no matter how much he has it polished up... well, it might seem to him that the money's better spent on nukes.
And it's not like he has to develop the most technologically advanced lightweight and compact nukes. Some really ancient nuke technology such as what we had in the 1950s (remember then? before B-52s, before calculators, before most Freepers) might do just fine.