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| | | published Monday, February 01, 2010 | 890 Views :: 1 Comments |
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 Monday, October 19, 2009 | 516 Views :: 1 Comments |
Comment of the Western States Legal Foundation on the scope of the proposed
Environmental
Impact Statement for the Continued Operation of the Department of
Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Test Site
and Off-Site Locations in the State of Nevada
Submitted by Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director
and Andrew Lichterman, senior research analyst
October 16, 2009
Introduction
Western
States Legal Foundation (WSLF) is a non-profit, public interest peace
and environmental organization which, since 1982, has participated in
administrative proceedings, litigation and grassroots advocacy to
promote the end of the nuclear race and global abolition of nuclear
weapons and cleanup of federal facilities engaged in nuclear weapons
research, development and production.
Since 1994, WSLF has
participated as an accredited Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)
observer in every Preparatory Committee meeting and Review Conference
of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in Geneva, New York and
Vienna. In 1994, WSLF participated as an accredited NGO observer in
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiations in Geneva, and in
2001 was an accredited NGO observer at the CTBT Entry-Into-Force
Conference at United Nations headquarters in New York.
Summary
The
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Continued Operation of the
Nevada Test Site (NTS) should include an alternative based on closure
of the NTS as a matter of good faith, in connection with the
anticipated Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
(CTBT), and in consultation with the Western Shoshone National Council.
This analysis should separately examine alternatives for all nonnuclear
activities currently conducted at the NTS and off-site locations in
Nevada.
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| | | published Monday, October 19, 2009 | 718 Views :: 2 Comments |
Tri-Valley CAREs’ Public Comment
on the Scope of the Proposed Environmental Impact Statement
for Continued Operation of the Dept. of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Location in the State of Nevada
Pursuant to The National Environmental Policy Act
October 16, 2009
To: Linda M. Cohn, NNSA Nevada Site Office
Nepa@nv.doe.gov
INTRODUCTION:
Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) is a non-profit organization located in Livermore, California. We have undertaken this analysis on behalf of our more than 5,000 members, including those who reside in Nevada near the Nevada Test Site (NTS).
Tri-Valley CAREs has monitored activities in the Dept. of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons complex, including the NTS for twenty-six years. Since its inception, Tri-Valley CAREs has participated in numerous National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) administrative review processes involving the nuclear weapons complex, including NTS. The organization has also participated in federal litigation to uphold NEPA at NTS and other sites in the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) complex.
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| | | published Monday, September 14, 2009 | 663 Views :: 1 Comments |
Originally published at
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090910_a_hundred_holocausts_an_insiders_window_into_us_nuclear_policy/
Posted on Sep 10, 2009
By Daniel Ellsberg
Editor’s note: This is the first installment of Daniel Ellsberg’s
personal memoir of the nuclear era, “The American Doomsday Machine.”
The online book will recount highlights of his six years of research
and consulting for
the Departments of Defense and State and the White House on issues of
nuclear command and control, nuclear war planning and nuclear crises.
It further draws on 34 subsequent years of research and activism largely on nuclear policy , which followed the intervening 11 years of his preoccupation with the Vietnam War . Subsequent installments also will appear on Truthdig. The author is a senior fellow of theNuclear Age Peace Foundation .
American Planning for a Hundred Holocausts
One
day in the spring of 1961, soon after my 30th birthday, I was shown how
our world would end. Not the Earth, not—so far as I knew then—all
humanity or life, but the destruction of most cities and people in the
Northern Hemisphere.
What I was handed, in a White House office,
was a single sheet of paper with some numbers and lines on it. It was
headed “Top Secret—Sensitive”; under that, “For the President’s Eyes
Only.”
The “Eyes Only” designation meant that, in principle,
it was to be seen and read only by the person to whom it was explicitly
addressed, in this case the president. In practice this usually meant
that it would be seen by one or more secretaries and assistants as
well: a handful of people, sometimes somewhat more, instead of the
scores to hundreds who would normally see copies of a “Top
Secret—Sensitive” document.
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| | | published Friday, June 26, 2009 | 1786 Views :: 2 Comments |
17 Groups Urge Senate to Change CEDA Bill
06/25/2009
SustainableBusiness.com News
In
a letter to the members of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, 17 major groups--including the Union of Concerned
Scientists, the League of Conservation Voters and Sierra Club--warned
that the proposed Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) in the
American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 will not "reduce
greenhouse gas emissions in the most efficient, environmentally sound
manner possible."
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| | | published Wednesday, April 08, 2009 | 4388 Views :: 0 Comments |
FOR RELEASE, April 8, 2009 Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505-989-7342 cell 505.920.7118 jay@nukewatch.org
Transforming the U.S. Strategic Posture and Weapons Complex
For Transition to a Nuclear Weapons-Free World
“…as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act... So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009, Prague, Czech Republic.
Washington, DC - - Today, April 8th, in the nation’s capital, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network released a major report outlining how the President’s vision of a nuclear weapons-free world can begin to be concretely realized in the near-term. First, the United States must declare that its strategic stockpile exists for only one purpose — to deter the use of nuclear weapons by others until the world is free of nuclear weapons. For that interim deterrence, a total stockpile of 500 warheads is more than sufficient, and the nuclear weapons complex can be downsized from eight sites to three.
Maintaining a Potent Deterrence
The U.S. stockpile has been extensively tested. Further, recent lifetime studies have shown it to be even more reliable than previously thought. The stockpile can be maintained through a nuts-and-bolts “curatorship” program, instead of the expensive and speculative “Stockpile Stewardship” Program that erodes confidence by intentionally introducing changes to existing nuclear weapons. Under a minimalist (but still extremely potent) nuclear deterrent, U.S. strategic forces can be progressively reduced step-by-step and the weapons complex downsized accordingly, in alignment with the President’s stated national goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Re-focusing Research Critical for the 21st Century
Our plan is the plan that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under the Bush Administration should have proposed for its misnamed “Complex Transformation” – but did not. NNSA’s archaic plan is dead on arrival in the Obama Administration, while our plan sets a reasonable path for 21st Century security on which the U.S. can and should embark. Our plan takes the Lawrence Livermore Lab out of nuclear weapons programs and directs it toward the energy, environmental and global climate change research that our country so desperately needs. It also ends NNSA control of the Sandia Lab in California and the Nevada Test Site by 2012, and ends weapons work at the Kansas City Plant by 2015. As the arsenal is reduced toward 500 warheads, the Savannah River Site near Aiken, SC, and then the Y-12 Site near Oak Ridge, TN, would also cease to be part of the nuclear weapons complex.
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2009 Fact Sheet Nuclear Weapons Environmental Cleanup | |
| | published Monday, February 23, 2009 | 394 Views :: 0 Comments |
Six decades of U.S. nuclear weapons research, testing, and production activities have left dozens of Department of Energy (DOE) sites polluted with massive amounts of radioactive and hazardous wastes. Most DOE sites are now on the Superfund list of the nation’s most environmentally dangerous facilities. Their contamination threatens millions of people living near the sites or along major waste transportation routes. Some of the nation’s most important water resources are endangered.
Download 2009 Fact Sheet: Cleanup5.1 final.pdf
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| | | published Tuesday, February 17, 2009 | 2049 Views :: 0 Comments |
Congress refused to fund production of the last two new nuclear warheads proposed by DOE—the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (“Bunker Buster”) and the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). At the same time, DOE is making an end run around the Congressional rejection of new nuclear weapons by modifying the W76 through its Life Extension Program.
The FY 2008 LEP budget is $234 million; for FY 2009: $211 million. The decrease reflects the completion of the B61 LEP, but the W76 LEP is now ramping up. Additional monies may be included in other parts of the DOE budget.
DOE just finished a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for “Complex Transformation.” The estimated cost for refurbishing the nuclear weapons complex is more than $150 billion. Despite claims that the overall “footprint” of the complex will be reduced, the eight production sites will all add manufacturing facilities in order to construct new design nuclear weapons. This plan is in addition to the current Life Extension programs which are already in place and the Stockpile Stewardship Programs that annually certify that the nuclear arsenal is safe and secure.
-From ANA's 2008 DC Days Fact Sheet
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| | | published Tuesday, February 17, 2009 | 1710 Views :: 1 Comments |
Under Life Extension Programs, DOE plans to upgrade every type of nuclear warhead in the planned United States arsenal. Upgrades have already been done on the W87 warhead and are nearing completion on the B61.
Upgrades of the W76 warhead are slated to begin in 2008. Modifications to the W76 are so extensive that it is being given a new number: the W76-1/Mk4A. A new fuse that allows for a ground burst capability and strongly improved accuracy for the reentry vehicle fundamentally change the military application of this Trident submarine warhead—it can now be used on “hard targets.” The Bush Administration recently decided to convert 2,4000 W76 warheads to W76-Is.
Congress refused to fund production of the last two new nuclear warheads proposed by DOE—the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (“Bunker Buster”) and the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). It seems DOE is now making an end run around the Congressional rejection of new nuclear weapons by modifying the W76 through its Life Extension Program.
-From ANA's 2008 DC Days Fact Sheet
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| | | published Thursday, February 05, 2009 | 5471 Views :: 2 Comments |
Dear Senator,
We write to express concern over the $1 billion proposed for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in S.336, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With Congress seeking to make substantial cuts in the total price tag of the bill, we strongly urge you to eliminate the $1 billion for NNSA. This money is not a cost effective way of accomplishing S.336’s primary stated goals of creating jobs, restoring economic growth and strengthening America’s middle class. Moreover, it would be premature to make major investments in NNSA’s nuclear weapons research and production infrastructure, which the agency proposes to revitalize through “Complex Transformation.” NNSA has a long history of cost overruns and poor management, and is one of the least likely agencies to give taxpayers a sound return on their investment when economic stimulus is so vitally needed. Finally, it is unlikely that this money will go towards preventing terrorism.
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