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| | | published Wednesday, March 20, 2013 | 495 Views :: 0 Comments |
3/15/2013
By Greg Rohloff
The Amarillo Independent
During a daylong hearing on concerns over safety at Pantex, Dr. Peter S. Winokur, chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, addressed an array of National Nuclear Security Administration officials on Thursday and noted that, of all the facilities in the nuclear weapons complex, Pantex is the one he considered to be the gold standard for safety.
That a safety procedure review last summer would indicate employees felt undervalued by Pantex managers, that rocking the boat at the plant could lead to retaliation and possibly threaten the progress of a career, that meeting production schedules was valued more than meeting safety requirements, puzzled Winokur and other board members.
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| | | published Tuesday, October 02, 2012 | 1976 Views :: 0 Comments |
October 2, 2012
By John Fleck From the Albuquerque Journal
Efforts to refurbish the U.S. stockpile of aging W76 nuclear warheads are falling behind schedule and threatening to bust the project’s budget, according to an internal Department of Energy investigation.
The problem “could have national security implications” as the federal budget crunch collides with the need to upgrade the nation’s aging arsenal, according to a report from the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General.
Built in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the warheads are carried aboard U.S. missile submarines. An estimated 768 are deployed, according to nuclear weapons analyst Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. That number is more than any other nuclear weapon type in the U.S. arsenal.
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| | | published Wednesday, April 18, 2012 | 2438 Views :: 3 Comments |
For Immediate release: April 18, 2012 Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.920.7118, jay@nukewatch.org Santa Fe, NM – Our colleagues and friends at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) have released an explosive report based on a leaked Department of Defense memo concluding that “The Department of Energy’s network of privately-operated nuclear weapons laboratories are riddled with waste, redundancies and lackluster scientific standards.” POGO also found that “that seven of the top 15 officials at the three DOE nuclear labs make more than $700,000 per year, with one earning $1.7 million—more than the president of the United States and many government executives.” Coincidentally, Nuclear Watch New Mexico had been independently compiling data on the salaries of the three laboratory directors, as presented in the table below. It shows that the salary of the Los Alamos Director has nearly tripled since for-profit management began in June 2006, even as the Lab is cutting some 600 jobs. As seen below, privatization of the nuclear weapons labs’ management contracts has resulted in directors’ salaries far above average in both the federal government and the private sector.
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| | | published Thursday, April 12, 2012 | 1716 Views :: 0 Comments |
April 12, 2012
In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by ANA member group Nuclear Watch New Mexico on March 28, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has released the Performance Evaluation Reports for its eight nuclear weapons sites. These reports are the government's scorecard for awarding tens of millions of dollars to nuclear weapons contractors, and were available to the public until 2009. But since that time NNSA has withheld them in a general move toward less contractor accountability.
Click the links below to download the Performance Evaluation Reports for each nuclear weapons site (PDFs) Note: the Sandia National Laboratory report is still undergoing review by the NNSA before it is released.
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| | | published Monday, August 01, 2011 | 1933 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following Jul. 30, 2011 article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram highlights the work of ANA member group Peace Farm and quotes former ANA board member Mavis Belisle.
AMARILLO -- Deep in the Texas Panhandle, farmland sprawls as far as the eye can see, dotted by the occasional wind farm and herd of cattle. It feels like the heart of the middle of nowhere. Tucked away in the vastness is one of the nation's most heavily secured facilities, an 18,000-acre complex that houses thousands of the most dangerous weapons ever made.
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| | | published Thursday, February 10, 2011 | 4952 Views :: 1 Comments |
For immediate release, February 9, 2011
For further information:
Susan Gordon (505) 577-8438
The Obama Administration’s FY 2012 budget request is slated
to be released on Monday, February 14, 2011. Despite pledging to reduce
the U.S. nuclear stockpile in the recently ratified New START treaty,
the Department of Energy (DOE) will likely ask Congress for
significantly more funds for nuclear weapons activities, including
expanding U.S. warhead production capacity, while nonproliferation
programs are allowed to stagnate. The DOE request will not reflect
recent scientific conclusions that existing nuclear weapons can be
reliably maintained for decades under current programs or the
President’s stated goal of global nuclear weapons reductions.
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| | | published Tuesday, April 06, 2010 | 6763 Views :: 2 Comments |
for further information, contact:
Nickolas Roth 914-673-6666
Susan
Gordon 505-473-1670
for immediate release: April 6, 2010
GROUPS
IN COMMUNITIES WITH U.S. WEAPONS FACILITIES
RAISE CONCERNS OVER
OBAMA NUCLEAR POSTURE REVIEW
The Obama Administration’s nuclear
weapons strategy, made public today in the new Nuclear Posture Review
(NPR), is “a mixed bag of inconsistent policies,” according to the
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA).
“ANA applauds the NPR
for opposing development of new nuclear weapons, endorsing further
reductions in the stockpile, and limiting the role of nuclear weapons.
These policies will help reduce the global threat,” said, ANA director
Susan Gordon. “But, several parts of the NPR appear to contradict
President Obama’s pledge to pursue a world without nuclear weapons.”
ANA member group Press Releases
Nuclear Watch of New Mexico
Peace Works, Kansas City
Peace Action
Tri Valley CAREs, Livermore, CA
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| | | published Wednesday, April 08, 2009 | 6111 Views :: 1 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 Plutonium "Triggers" for Nuclear Bombs | |
| | published Monday, February 23, 2009 | 723 Views :: 0 Comments |
Plutonium pits — carefully fabricated spheres of metal — and high explosives are the “triggers” for modern thermonuclear weapons. The U.S. manufactured pits at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver until 1989, when the FBI raided the facility to investigate environmental crimes, effectively ending industrial-scale plutonium pit production.
Download 2009 Fact Sheet: Pits5 final.pdf
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2009 Fact Sheet Nuclear Weapons Environmental Cleanup | |
| | published Monday, February 23, 2009 | 798 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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