Compiled by leaders of groups from communities located in the shadows of U.S. nuclear weapons sites. The report card grades looks to the future and lays out an agenda for the next administration.
2008 Radioactive Report Card Grade Book
Press Release
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| | | published Thursday, February 25, 2010 | 179 Views |
Livermore Opens Its Doors to Outsiders
Long-Secretive Weapons Labs to Build Energy Research Center Where Government Scientists, Businesses Can Collaborate
By BENJAMIN PIMENTEL Found on WSJ.com; view here. Livermore, home to two major U.S. weapons laboratories, existed as a city of fences and secrets during the Cold War and for years afterward. Now, some of those fences are receding. Both of the city's weapons labs—Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories—are moving forward on plans to build a campus where government scientists and outside researchers can work together on clean-energy technology. ... But the open campus also has attracted critics. Marylia Kelley, of
Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, an advocacy
group long opposed to the labs' nuclear-weapons development, says the
project could be "a green-washing, public-relations move" meant "to
give an imprimatur of environmental responsibility" to what she calls
"the very dirty work of researching and developing new and modified
nuclear bombs."
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| | | published Tuesday, February 02, 2010 | 678 Views |
Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010
By Martin Matishak
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON
-- The Obama administration yesterday unveiled a spending plan that
would increase funding for the U.S. National Nuclear Security
Administration to $11.2 billion in the next fiscal year (see GSN, Jan.
29).
The agency, a semiautonomous branch of the Energy Department, would
receive a 13.4-percent budget increase in fiscal 2011 to maintain the
country's nuclear stockpile and conduct nonproliferation activities
around the globe, according to the White House funding request.
More than $7 billion would be devoted beginning Oct. 1 to "weapons
activities," which ensure the safety and performance of the nation's
atomic stockpile. The amount is a $624 million increase from this year.
Another
$2.7 billion would be funneled to the agency's Defense Nuclear
Nonproliferation program, a hike of 25.8 percent above fiscal 2010.
That effort seeks to secure nuclear materials around the globe that
could be used for weapons and convert them for peaceful purposes.
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| | | published Monday, February 01, 2010 | 811 Views |
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY
McClatchy Newspapers
Fri, Jan. 29, 2010
The
Obama administration plans to ask Congress to increase spending on the
U.S. nuclear arsenal by more than $5 billion over the next five years
as part of its strategy to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and
eventually rid the world of them.
The administration argues that
the boost is needed to ensure that U.S. warheads remain secure and work
as designed as the arsenal shrinks and ages nearly 18 years into a
moratorium on underground testing and more than two decades after
large-scale warhead production ended.
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| | | published Friday, January 29, 2010 | 981 Views |
for further information, contact:
Susan Gordon 505-577-8438
or local contacts listed at end of advisory
for immediate release Friday, January 29, 2010
BLUE RIBBON NUCLEAR WASTE COMMISSION IS SERIOUSLY IMBALANCED
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) is disappointed that the Department of Energy did not follow our repeated requests to appoint a balanced Blue Ribbon Commission on nuclear wastes with a broad range of perspectives, including members from directly affected sites. “The Commission faces a huge credibility problem. It includes no one from communities downstream and downwind of major nuclear weapons sites,” said Susan Gordon, Director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, “However, we are still hopeful that the Commission will find ways to consider a broad range of perspectives, including independent experts, public interest organizations, environmental and public health stakeholders, and impacted parties, including Native American Tribes.”
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| | | published Friday, January 29, 2010 | 672 Views |
By Patrick Oppmann, CNN
January 29, 2010 8:02 a.m. EST
Hanford Nuclear Site, Washington (CNN) -- The federal government has set aside nearly $2 billion in stimulus funds to clean up Washington State's decommissioned Hanford nuclear site, once the center of the country's Cold War plutonium production.
That is more stimulus funding than some entire states have received, which has triggered a debate as to whether the money is being properly spent.
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| | | published Friday, January 29, 2010 | 486 Views |
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
January 27, 2010
http://www.hanfordnews.com/news/2010/story/14707.html
RICHLAND -- Speakers at a public hearing Tuesday night split their comments between calling for the Fast Flux Test Facility to be saved and worries that proposed cleanup plans for Hanford would not protect the environment and human health.
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| | | published Wednesday, January 27, 2010 | 1422 Views |
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability a national network of organizations working to address issues of nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup
http://www.ananuclear.org
for further information, contact:
Nickolas Roth 914-673-6666
Susan Gordon 505-577-8438
or local contacts listed at end of advisory
for immediate release Wednesday, January 27, 2010
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN THE U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY FY 2011
NUCLEAR WEAPONS BUDGET REQUEST
The FY 2011 budget request will be released on Monday, February 1,
2010. The Obama administration has laid out an aggressive
nonproliferation agenda that includes deep reductions in nuclear
stockpiles, ratification of a nuclear test ban, and decreased
prominence for nuclear weapons in US defense policy. Despite this
agenda, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) budget request will ask
Congress to significantly increase nuclear weapons activities,
including funding for construction of new facilities that will expand
U.S. warhead production capacity. The DOE request will not reflect
recent independent scientific conclusions that existing nuclear weapons
can be reliably maintained for decades under current, well-established
programs.
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a
national network representing communities downwind and downstream from
U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, is concerned that increased funding
for nuclear energy and weapons research and production will rob
precious resources for needed environmental cleanup and clean,
sustainable energy solutions.
Items of interest:
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| | | published Monday, January 25, 2010 | 594 Views |
Published on National Catholic Reporter
by Joshua J. McElwee
The
Obama administration is moving ahead with the development of new
nuclear weapons components at three key weapons facilities at the same
time it is conducting a sweeping review of U.S. nuclear weapons
policies that could lead to further slashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
For
the moment, U.S. nuclear weapons policies appear to be running in
contrary directions, and while some critics of U.S. nuclear policy are
cautiously optimistic, they are also worried President Obama’s nuclear
disarmament vision is not yet being supported by concrete policy
actions.
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| | | published Wednesday, January 06, 2010 | 749 Views |
Wall Street Journal Article Makes Ill Advised Recommendations on the Future of Nuclear Weapons
Yesterday,
the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed supporting recommendations
made in a letter sent to the President by 40 Republican Senators and Senator Joe Lieberman. The op-ed supports construction of new
facilities and new warheads. The following is ANA’s analysis of the
letter:
Modernization takes focus away from investments in nuclear weapons complex expertise that actually do need to be made.
- Verification: The national nuclear laboratories can uniquely develop
technologies that will contribute to detecting nuclear tests around the
world and facilitate verification of nuclear weapons reductions under
arms control treaties with Russia.
- Safeguards: The national
laboratories can improve technologies to detect diversion for military
purposes of nuclear power technology or materials in countries without
nuclear weapons.
- Dismantlement: The Labs can increase the rate of
dismantlement (process by which nuclear warheads are removed from the
stockpile, disassembled, and disposed of) to support permanent
reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
- Threat reduction at the
source: Consolidation, reduction and elimination of stockpiles of
nuclear weapon and nuclear weapons-usable materials where these
materials are produced and stored worldwide. Increasing funding for
these efforts advances U.S. ability to reduce and lock down vulnerable
nuclear materials and reduces the risk of nuclear terrorism
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| | | published Friday, December 11, 2009 | 1211 Views |
Associated Press - December 10, 2009
LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) - A federal report says improper accounting practices at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have hidden $80 million in additional costs for a new facility dedicated in May.
The National Ignition Facility studies nuclear fusion, which could provide the country with another clean energy source (sic). The October report by the National Nuclear Security Administration says the facility is not contributing its fair share to the overall running of Lawrence lab in accordance with federal accounting standards. That means other departments have been left to pick up the tab, which amounts to about $80 million in this fiscal year alone.
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