for further information:
Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773 cell (239) 699-0468
March 15 – 19, 2010 (202) 544-0217 x2502

A national network of organizations working to address issues of
nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup

for release at 10:00am, Monday March 15, 2010, 2322 Rayburn News Conference
NUCLEAR WEAPONS WATCHDOGS GIVE PRES. OBAMA MIXED GRADES
ON NEW WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT, WASTE CLEANUP, & REACTOR FUNDING

President Barack Obama today received a mixed report card for his Administration’s first-year policies relating to nuclear weapons production, waste cleanup and reactor funding. Grades presented by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) at a Capitol Hill news conference ranged from an “A” for keeping his campaign promise to terminate the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste dump to an “F” for proposing to increase taxpayer subsidies for construction of new nuclear reactors. ANA is a national network of nearly three dozen groups representing the concerns of communities downwind and downstream from U.S. nuclear weapons sites.

for further information:
Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773 cell (239) 699-0468
March 15 – 19, 2010 (202) 544-0217 x2502

A national network of organizations working to address issues of
nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup

WHAT: News briefing to release 1st Year Radioactive Report Card on President Obama and his Administration to grade their performance on policies on nuclear weapons production, waste cleanup and reactor funding.

WHEN: Monday, March 15, 2010 - - 10:00am

WHERE: Room 2322 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC

WHO: Leaders of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) a national network of organizations representing the concerns of people living downwind and downstream from U.S. nuclear research, testing, production and waste disposal facilities

- Michele Boyd, Director, Safe Energy Program, Physicians for Social Responsibility -- taxpayer subsidies for new reactors, radioactive waste disposal, and nuclear contamination cleanup

- Ralph Hutchison, Coordinator, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance -- new Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear production plants, the next generation of weapons they may help support, and the implications for U.S. treaty obligations

- Nick Roth, Program Director, Alliance for Nuclear Accountability -- performance of President Obama and his Administration during its first year in office and changes that must be made to improve its grades.

March 3
This piece is available at the Democratic Policy Committee website, here.

There is broad, bipartisan support among political leaders and national security experts for negotiating a follow-on START treaty with Russia. Further mutual reductions in U.S. and Russian Cold War-era nuclear arsenals are considered critical for maintaining strategic stability in our relations, enhancing the global nonproliferation regime, and, in effect, advancing U.S. security. Despite this widespread consensus in favor of a new START, some analysts have advanced unsubstantiated myths, unfounded concerns, and political slogans as negotiators have worked toward a treaty. With the Senate poised to consider the new treaty once finalized in the coming months, it is vital that these misleading and irresponsible claims be debunked, ensuring that the debate is grounded in the facts.

New York Times Editorial
February 28, 2010
Available here.

Every four years the White House issues a “nuclear posture review.” That may sound like an anachronism. It isn’t. In a world where the United States and Russia still have more than 20,000 nuclear weapons — and Iran, North Korea and others have seemingly unquenchable nuclear appetites — what the United States says about its arsenal matters enormously.

President Obama’s review was due to Congress in December. That has been delayed, in part because of administration infighting. The president needs to get this right. It is his chance to finally jettison cold war doctrine and bolster America’s credibility as it presses to rein in Iran, North Korea and other proliferators.

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."

For Immediate Release: February 18, 2010
Peace Action is a member of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
This release can also be found here.

Washington, DC — In response to today’s speech on nuclear weapons by Vice President Biden at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, Peace Action’s — a group founded in 1957 to abolish nuclear weapons and the largest grassroots peace organization — policy director, Paul Kawika Martin, stated the following after attending the speech:

for further information, contact:
Nickolas Roth 914-673-6666
Susan Gordon 505-577-8438

for immediate release: February 1, 2010

Washington, DC - The Administration’s budget, released today, contradicts President Obama’s pledge to reduce the nuclear weapons threat by working toward their elimination, according to a national network of groups in communities downwind and downstream from U.S. nuclear sites. Instead, the spending plan boosts funding for nuclear weapons production facilities by $625 million from last year.