Trump’s 2020 Nuclear Weapons Budget Escalates New Arms Race
Santa Fe, NM – Today the Trump Administration released more budget details for the Department of Energy and its semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons programs for fiscal year 2020. This same fiscal year will also mark the 75th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Global Nuclear Weapons Threats Are Rising
In sum, the world is facing the most serious nuclear threats since the first half of the 1980’s. At that time President Ronald Reagan said, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought” and called for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
Recent Posts
Did Trump Just Threaten to Attack Iran With Nukes?
He said he could destroy Afghanistan but was signaling elsewhere. The scary part is there’s already a plan.
BY SCOTT RITTER | theamericanconservative.com July 25, 2019
On Monday during a press conference between Donald Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump spoke rather casually of having reviewed plans to annihilate Afghanistan.
“I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people,” Trump said. “I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth, it would be gone. It would be over in, literally, in 10 days. And I don’t want to go that route.”
Trump’s seemingly blasé reference to a hypothetical mass murder on a scope and scale never seen in the history of mankind (it took Nazi Germany more than four years to kill six million Jews) was stunning. We know, given the state of play in Afghanistan, that it will never happen. But it wasn’t offhand. Such a policy of total destruction could also be seen as applying to Iran, and the potential for the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a U.S.-Iranian conflict is far from hypothetical. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Continue reading
As we mark the seventy-fourth anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in a handful of days, we will rightly remember the horrors of nuclear war.
BY ZACK BROWN & ALEX SPIRE
For a brief fraction of a second on an early March morning in 1954, the United States summoned a second sun into existence above Bikini Atoll.
As the four-mile wide fireball bathed the Pacific seascape in its angry, white-red light, onlookers recognized something nearly divine—and unquestionably ominous. “It was a religious experience, a personal view of the apocalypse or transfiguration,” said one observer. Another remembered feeling “like you stepped into a blast furnace,” even though he was over thirty miles away.
This was the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test, one of several dozen nuclear detonations the United States carried out in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War. At 15 million tons of TNT—one thousand times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima—it was the largest explosion ever set off by Americans.
Yukiya Amano, Head of the I.A.E.A. Nuclear Watchdog Group, Dies at 72
BY MEGAN SPECIA & DAVID E. SANGER | nytimes.com July 22, 2019
Yukiya Amano, a Japanese diplomat who played a central role in inspecting Iran’s compliance with the landmark 2015 nuclear deal as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, has died, the organization announced on Monday. He was 72.
The agency, part of the United Nations, did not cite a cause of death or say when and where he died, but word had begun to spread last week that Mr. Amano had planned to step down from his position as director-general after nearly a decade because of an unspecified illness. He was two years into a third term as the agency’s leader.
His death left the agency leaderless at a critical moment: just as Iran is edging away from the nuclear agreement and beginning carefully calibrated violations of the limits on how much nuclear material it can produce, and at what level of purity.
Inside the Secret Campaign to Export U.S. Nuclear Tech to Saudi Arabia
Industry coalition’s push to win over the Trump administration is concerning officials on Capitol Hill who are fearful that it could threaten U.S. national security.
ERIN BANCO | thedailybeast.com
When President Donald Trump took the stage in the East Room of the White House earlier this month to give his first speech on the environment, nuclear energy executives and industry leaders held their breath. They exchanged text messages with fellow colleagues during the speech’s broadcast, wondering aloud to one another if Trump had taken the bait.
Since the fall of 2016, the executives have built an underground coalition along with academics, technology experts and well-connected politicos, including some lobbyists, to get the president and his administration to support—even promote—an American nuclear energy comeback. The industry has declined in recent years due mostly to the closing of critical nuclear infrastructure and plants. Between 2010 and 2018, only one new nuclear power plant came online in the United States.
New & Updated
Lack Of Safety And Health Priorities Continue To Plague Los Alamos Beryllium Program
A new assessment finds that Department of Energy (DOE) is not conducting effective oversight of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) beryllium program, or of safety and health programs in general. In addition, DOE is not maintaining sufficient technical capability and knowledge of site and contractor activities to make informed decisions about hazards and risks. DOE indicated the lack of sufficient safety and health resources has presented a challenge to achieving effective oversight in this area.
Trump fires John Bolton
Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump abruptly announced in a tweet Tuesday that he has asked national security adviser John Bolton to resign, noting that he “strongly disagreed with many” of Bolton’s suggestions “as did others in the administration.”
….I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2019
Radioactive Barges Are Killing the Vibe on This Russian Beach After Deadly Missile Blast
A pair of pontoon barges suspected of being doused in radioactivity during a deadly nuclear missile accident in Russia washed up on a local beach three weeks ago, where they’ve reportedly been leaking radiation into the sea and sand ever since.
BY GREG WALTERS | vice.com
They landed near the mouth of the Verkhovka river, and have been sitting there with no official warning signs beyond a dirty red shirt stretched between two wooden poles, according local Russian media.
Radiation measurements as high as eight times normal background levels were taken on Aug. 31 from a distance of 150 meters, while earlier tests soon after the pontoons arrived peaked as high as 38 times normal, the outlet said. Those levels are still well short of life-threatening, but measurements closer to the barges haven’t been made.
“No idiots could be found to check the levels on the pontoons themselves without protection,” the local TV presenter deadpanned during a broadcast Monday.
One of the two barges washed up at the mouth of the Verkhovka River a day after the explosion, on Aug. 9. The other was left there by tugboats four days later, Belomorkanal reported.
Readings taken on Saturday, Aug. 31 measured from 70 to 186 microroentgen per hour. Earlier measurements in August peaked at 750 microroentgen per hour. Normal local background levels in the area are closer to 20 microroentgen per hour, according to Greenpeace.
There’s not enough data yet to know what the levels are like on the barges themselves.
The U.S. should carefully and prudently maintain its nuclear weapons stockpile
Defense News reports that “Nuclear gravity bomb and warhead upgrades face new delays” because of new components used in so-called Life Extension Programs (LEPs) to prolong the service lives of existing nuclear weapons. These programs also give existing nuclear weapons new military capabilities. For example, see How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze
The point of this blog is to raise the question of whether these Life Extension Programs really enhance U.S. national security while maintaining the safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile. In fact, perhaps the crux issue is prudent and conservative maintenance of the stockpile versus increasingly aggressive LEPs.
The latest proposed LEP for the W87-1 ICBM warhead will use “W87-like” plutonium pits instead of exact replicas (plutonium pits are the fissile cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons). This little known fact is serious because these pits cannot be full-scale tested given the current global moratorium, or alternatively could prompt the U.S. to return to testing with grave international proliferation consequences. Further, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans to spend at least $43 billion in expanded plutonium pit production over the next 30 years, despite the fact that some 15,000 existing pits are already stored at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX, and independent experts have found that pits have reliable lifetimes of at least a century.
Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s position is that the U.S. should carefully and prudently maintain its nuclear weapons stockpile – a curatorship program, if you will – instead of steamrolling its $1.7 trillion so-called modernization program. That program will completely rebuild the nuclear weapons stockpile and the production side of NNSA’s nuclear weapons complex, and buy completely new missiles, subs and bombers to deliver nuclear weapons. This will enrich the usual mega-defense contractors while possibly lowering confidence in stockpile reliability through the introduction of major changes. Further, it is fueling a new global nuclear arms race that definitely puts our national security at greater risk. Congress should stop this nuclear weapons “modernization” program but instead is too interested in the nuclear pork.
Nuclear Weapons Build-Up Insanity, Los Alamos Lab so-called “Clean-Up” – Jay Coghlan, Nukewatch NM – NH #428
Nuclear weapons – a reminder of what they look like and what they can do.
LISTEN HERE:
Nuclear weapons – their design, engineering, chances for implementation – that’s the topic we explore with Jay Coghlan, Executive Director of Nukewatch NM. Jay goes over the division of responsibility for nuclear weapons of mass destruction between Los Alamos National Laboratory(LANL), Sandia Laboratory, and California’s Lawrence Livermore Lab. He then rips into Department of Energy for the lies and “theatre” surrounding claims of a “more-than-halfway-completed” so-called “clean-up” of LANL that ignores the vast majority of radioactive contamination… and ultimately is funding the new nuclear arms race.
9 LANL waste containers denied shipment to WIPP
Barrels filled with transuranic waste fail inspection, remain at lab’s Plutonium Facility
BY TRIS DEROMA | lamonitor.com
DNSFB reports: https://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/document/18696/Los%20Alamos%20Week%20Ending%20July%2026%202019.pdf
Nine containers full of transuranic waste are stuck at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Plutonium Facility after the Carlsbad Waste Isolation Pilot Plant refused to take them in back in July.
The containers, which hold waste items such as gloves, tools and other items that have come into contact with radiological materials, were scheduled to be shipped to WIPP during the week of July 26.
The Department of Energy’s contractor N3B that operates WIPP inspected the drums at LANL prior to the shipping date and determined that the drums contained materials that could combust.
N3B Spokesman Todd Nelson said that there was never a chance the containers would have made it to WIPP in the condition they were in.
Proposed New Exhaust at WIPP Designed to Release Radiation
19 seconds – the amount of time airborne radiological contamination could be released before the safety dampers close. This assumes that all other components work perfectly.
A recent report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) explains the DNFSB’s calculations on the proposed new (estimated at nearly $300 million) safety significant confinement ventilation system (SSCVS).
The New Nuclear Arms Race Is Here. And Russia’s Already Paying the Price.
Meet 4 new nuclear weapons systems the Kremlin is testing — right now.
BY GREG WALTERS | vice.com
At the funeral for 14 Russian sailors, Captain Sergei Pavlov hailed the “blameless heroes” for dousing the fire that broke out on their nuclear spy submarine, called the Losharik, during a secret mission last month.
“At the cost of their lives,” Pavlov said, “they prevented a catastrophe on a planetary scale.”
But as Russia tests and deploys an array of exotic new nuclear weapons, fears are mounting that the next nuclear mishap may not be so easily contained.
This summer alone, Russia has suffered some two-dozen casualties in accidents related to exotic nuclear hardware, including the mysterious explosion linked to the Skyfall missile program that killed seven and sent local radiation levels spiking in a nearby city.
The deadly incidents are stoking fears of a return to Cold War-style runaway nuclear arms development, accompanied by dangerous accidents and Soviet-style cover-ups.
“We need to acknowledge that the Russians are engaged in wacky programs,” said Aaron Stein, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “It’s indicative of an arms complex that has been cut loose to pursue exotic, silly projects. And it’s dangerous.”
You can blame the renewed U.S.-Russian arms race, which nuclear experts warn is driving Russia to recklessly experiment with “absurd” new ideas.
On 29 August, the International Day against Nuclear Tests, Kazakhstan deposited its instrument of ratification for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, becoming the 26th state party.
From 1949 to 1989, an estimated 456 Soviet nuclear tests — including 116 atmospheric tests — were carried out at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan, with devastating long-term consequences for human health and the environment.
Upon the break-up of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan inherited approximately 1,400 nuclear warheads, which it subsequently gave up — recognizing that its security was best achieved through disarmament.
The date of 29 August 2019 has special significance for Kazakhstan. It marks 70 years since the first Soviet nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk site and 28 years since the formal closure of that site.
We congratulate Kazakhstan on its ratification and we acknowledge the persistent efforts of Alimzhan Akhmetov, of the Center for International Security and Policy in Kazakhstan, to encourage the Kazakh government to take this important step.
Pakistan ups nuclear rhetoric, carries out launch of ballistic missile
BY AJAY BANERJEE | tribuneindia.com Tribune News Service New Delhi August 29, 2019
Pakistan has successfully test-fired surface-to-surface ballistic missile ‘Ghaznavi’, capable of delivering multiple warheads up to 290 km, the Army said on Thursday, amid fresh Indo-Pak tensions after India revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.
Pakistan on Wednesday closed three aviation routes of the Karachi airspace till August 31, which had promoted speculation about the possible missile-testing.
Pakistan successfully carried out night training launch of surface to surface ballistic missile Ghaznavi, capable of delivering multiple types of warheads upto 290 KMs. CJCSC & Services Chiefs congrat team. President & PM conveyed appreciation to team & congrats to the nation. pic.twitter.com/hmoUKRPWev
— DG ISPR (@OfficialDGISPR) August 29, 2019
With this, Pakistan upped its ‘nuclear rhetoric’. The Director General of Inter Service Public Relations (DG-ISPR) said Pakistan on Wednesday night tested a short range nuclear missile in Sindh.
France Is Still Cleaning Up Marie Curie’s Nuclear Waste
Her lab outside Paris, dubbed Chernobyl on the Seine, is still radioactive nearly a century after her death.
BY TARA PATEL | bloomberg.com
In 1933 nuclear physicist Marie Curie had outgrown her lab in the Latin Quarter in central Paris. To give her the space needed for the messy task of extracting radioactive elements such as radium from truckloads of ore, the University of Paris built a research center in Arcueil, a village south of the city. Today it’s grown into a crowded working-class suburb. And the dilapidated lab, set in an overgrown garden near a 17th century aqueduct, is sometimes called Chernobyl on the Seine.
No major accidents occurred at the lab, which closed in 1978. But it’s brimming with radioactivity that will be a health threat for millennia, and France’s nuclear watchdog has barred access to anyone not wearing protective clothing. The lab is surrounded by a concrete wall topped by barbed wire and surveillance cameras. Monitors constantly assess radiation, and local officials regularly test the river.
“We’re proof that France has a serious nuclear waste problem,” says Arcueil Mayor Christian Métairie. “Our situation raises questions about whether the country is really equipped to handle it.”
Nuclear power accounts for almost three-fourths of France’s electricity, vs. a fifth in the U.S. There’s no lasting solution for the most dangerous refuse from the country’s 906 nuclear waste sites, including some of what’s in Arcueil.
Women’s Equality Day 2019: Diversity Encourages Innovation
nuclear diplomacy needs more women
“Negotiating successfully requires having the best people, regardless of gender, and recognizing that diversity enhances innovation.”
The story of women in nuclear security reflects many of the broader lessons we’ve learned about gender and politics: that women’s contributions have often been ignored or excluded, risking policies that lack key perspectives, nuance and debate. With today’s high stakes, we need national security policy that includes all of the best ideas. New and lasting solutions require diversity of representation and experience if we’re to solve the issues surrounding humanity’s survival.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/23/why-nuclear-diplomacy-needs-more-women/
Arms Control Association: #ThisWeek in Nuclear History: The Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear weapon on August 29, 1949 at Semipalatinsk in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Tests continued at the site until 1989 with little regard for their effect on the local people or environment. After the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, tests ended at the site and it was officially closed on Aug 29, 1991. The International Day against Nuclear Tests is now observed annually on August 29.
Critical Events
Remember that a nuclear war would instantly change the climate
Nuclear News
California lawmaker aims to stop closure of Diablo Canyon nuclear plant
Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham, R-Templeton (San Luis Obispo County), on Wednesday proposed a state constitutional amendment that would designate nuclear power as a source of renewable energy.
BY J.D. MORRIS | sfchronicle.com Sep. 4, 2019
Cunningham and two pro-nuclear organizations who support his amendment think its passage would make Diablo Canyon worth as much as $3.6 billion. A statement from Cunningham’s office said prolonging the life of Diablo Canyon would help the state fulfill its climate goals and “provide ratepayers with a cheap and constant source of energy for decades to come.”
But John Geesman, an attorney for the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, an anti-nuclear nonprofit, viewed the amendment as an attempt to prop up Diablo Canyon’s finances and said it had little chance of garnering the support it needs in the Legislature and electorate.
“That’s two mountains they’re probably incapable of climbing, realistically,” Geesman said. “The public just doesn’t want this stuff.”
Younger retiring as director of Sandia Labs
Sandia National Laboratories Director Steve Younger is retiring after two years on the job.
BY SCOTT TURNER / JOURNAL STAFF WRITER | abqjournal.com August 27, 2019
Younger told employees at the labs in an email Monday, saying he informed the National Technology and Engineering Solutions Board of Managers of his intent to retire on Dec. 31.
Trump Wanted to Nuke Hurricanes to Stop Them From Hitting U.S. Coast: Report
“I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” [Trump said] according to one source who was there.
BY MATT STIEB | nymag.com August 26, 2019
The president’s understanding of the natural world isn’t particularly deep. He thinks that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer. He’s called climate change a hoax and thinks that cold weather in the winter disproves global warming. He might not get how rivers work, and he definitely doesn’t understand how to stop a forest fire: Last year, he suggested a proper raking could have stalled the disastrous Camp Fire, which killed 83 Californians.
TPNW is now officially halfway towards entry into force!
On August 6th, 1945 at 8:16 am, a nuclear bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, killing over 140,000 people and wiping out most of the city. 74 years later, the bomb’s catastrophic consequences are still affecting people’s lives.
Today, tens of thousands of people have gathered in Hiroshima, and around the world, to commemorate the victims and echo the call of the Hibakusha – the survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – that such a thing must never happen again. And at the UN in New York, one such commemoration took a very special form today: Bolivia has just marked Hiroshima Day by depositing its ratification instrument for the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). With this ratification, TPNW is now officially halfway towards entry into force!
Read more about this special moment
Did Trump Just Threaten to Attack Iran With Nukes?
He said he could destroy Afghanistan but was signaling elsewhere. The scary part is there’s already a plan.
BY SCOTT RITTER | theamericanconservative.com July 25, 2019
On Monday during a press conference between Donald Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump spoke rather casually of having reviewed plans to annihilate Afghanistan.
“I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people,” Trump said. “I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth, it would be gone. It would be over in, literally, in 10 days. And I don’t want to go that route.”
Trump’s seemingly blasé reference to a hypothetical mass murder on a scope and scale never seen in the history of mankind (it took Nazi Germany more than four years to kill six million Jews) was stunning. We know, given the state of play in Afghanistan, that it will never happen. But it wasn’t offhand. Such a policy of total destruction could also be seen as applying to Iran, and the potential for the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a U.S.-Iranian conflict is far from hypothetical. He knew exactly what he was doing.
Continue reading
Yukiya Amano, Head of the I.A.E.A. Nuclear Watchdog Group, Dies at 72
BY MEGAN SPECIA & DAVID E. SANGER | nytimes.com July 22, 2019
Yukiya Amano, a Japanese diplomat who played a central role in inspecting Iran’s compliance with the landmark 2015 nuclear deal as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, has died, the organization announced on Monday. He was 72.
The agency, part of the United Nations, did not cite a cause of death or say when and where he died, but word had begun to spread last week that Mr. Amano had planned to step down from his position as director-general after nearly a decade because of an unspecified illness. He was two years into a third term as the agency’s leader.
His death left the agency leaderless at a critical moment: just as Iran is edging away from the nuclear agreement and beginning carefully calibrated violations of the limits on how much nuclear material it can produce, and at what level of purity.
Congress Introduces Legislation to Expand Compensation for Radiation Exposure
Luján, Members of Congress Introduce Legislation to Expand Compensation for Individuals Impacted by Radiation Exposure
Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), the U.S. House Assistant Speaker, introduced legislation to expand compensation for individuals exposed to radiation while working in and living near uranium mines or downwind from nuclear weapon test sites.
Tens of thousands of individuals, including miners, transporters, and other employees who worked directly in uranium mines, along with communities located near test sites for nuclear weapons, were exposed during the mid-1900s to dangerous radiation that has left communities struggling from cancer, birth defects, and other illnesses.
Critical Events
Remember that a nuclear war would instantly change the climate
New & Updated
Lack Of Safety And Health Priorities Continue To Plague Los Alamos Beryllium Program
A new assessment finds that Department of Energy (DOE) is not conducting effective oversight of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) beryllium program, or of safety and health programs in general. In addition, DOE is not maintaining sufficient technical capability and knowledge of site and contractor activities to make informed decisions about hazards and risks. DOE indicated the lack of sufficient safety and health resources has presented a challenge to achieving effective oversight in this area.
Trump fires John Bolton
Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump abruptly announced in a tweet Tuesday that he has asked national security adviser John Bolton to resign, noting that he “strongly disagreed with many” of Bolton’s suggestions “as did others in the administration.”
….I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2019
Radioactive Barges Are Killing the Vibe on This Russian Beach After Deadly Missile Blast
A pair of pontoon barges suspected of being doused in radioactivity during a deadly nuclear missile accident in Russia washed up on a local beach three weeks ago, where they’ve reportedly been leaking radiation into the sea and sand ever since.
BY GREG WALTERS | vice.com
They landed near the mouth of the Verkhovka river, and have been sitting there with no official warning signs beyond a dirty red shirt stretched between two wooden poles, according local Russian media.
Radiation measurements as high as eight times normal background levels were taken on Aug. 31 from a distance of 150 meters, while earlier tests soon after the pontoons arrived peaked as high as 38 times normal, the outlet said. Those levels are still well short of life-threatening, but measurements closer to the barges haven’t been made.
“No idiots could be found to check the levels on the pontoons themselves without protection,” the local TV presenter deadpanned during a broadcast Monday.
One of the two barges washed up at the mouth of the Verkhovka River a day after the explosion, on Aug. 9. The other was left there by tugboats four days later, Belomorkanal reported.
Readings taken on Saturday, Aug. 31 measured from 70 to 186 microroentgen per hour. Earlier measurements in August peaked at 750 microroentgen per hour. Normal local background levels in the area are closer to 20 microroentgen per hour, according to Greenpeace.
There’s not enough data yet to know what the levels are like on the barges themselves.
The U.S. should carefully and prudently maintain its nuclear weapons stockpile
Defense News reports that “Nuclear gravity bomb and warhead upgrades face new delays” because of new components used in so-called Life Extension Programs (LEPs) to prolong the service lives of existing nuclear weapons. These programs also give existing nuclear weapons new military capabilities. For example, see How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze
The point of this blog is to raise the question of whether these Life Extension Programs really enhance U.S. national security while maintaining the safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile. In fact, perhaps the crux issue is prudent and conservative maintenance of the stockpile versus increasingly aggressive LEPs.
The latest proposed LEP for the W87-1 ICBM warhead will use “W87-like” plutonium pits instead of exact replicas (plutonium pits are the fissile cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons). This little known fact is serious because these pits cannot be full-scale tested given the current global moratorium, or alternatively could prompt the U.S. to return to testing with grave international proliferation consequences. Further, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans to spend at least $43 billion in expanded plutonium pit production over the next 30 years, despite the fact that some 15,000 existing pits are already stored at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX, and independent experts have found that pits have reliable lifetimes of at least a century.
Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s position is that the U.S. should carefully and prudently maintain its nuclear weapons stockpile – a curatorship program, if you will – instead of steamrolling its $1.7 trillion so-called modernization program. That program will completely rebuild the nuclear weapons stockpile and the production side of NNSA’s nuclear weapons complex, and buy completely new missiles, subs and bombers to deliver nuclear weapons. This will enrich the usual mega-defense contractors while possibly lowering confidence in stockpile reliability through the introduction of major changes. Further, it is fueling a new global nuclear arms race that definitely puts our national security at greater risk. Congress should stop this nuclear weapons “modernization” program but instead is too interested in the nuclear pork.
Nuclear Weapons Build-Up Insanity, Los Alamos Lab so-called “Clean-Up” – Jay Coghlan, Nukewatch NM – NH #428
Nuclear weapons – a reminder of what they look like and what they can do.
LISTEN HERE:
Nuclear weapons – their design, engineering, chances for implementation – that’s the topic we explore with Jay Coghlan, Executive Director of Nukewatch NM. Jay goes over the division of responsibility for nuclear weapons of mass destruction between Los Alamos National Laboratory(LANL), Sandia Laboratory, and California’s Lawrence Livermore Lab. He then rips into Department of Energy for the lies and “theatre” surrounding claims of a “more-than-halfway-completed” so-called “clean-up” of LANL that ignores the vast majority of radioactive contamination… and ultimately is funding the new nuclear arms race.
9 LANL waste containers denied shipment to WIPP
Barrels filled with transuranic waste fail inspection, remain at lab’s Plutonium Facility
BY TRIS DEROMA | lamonitor.com
DNSFB reports: https://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/document/18696/Los%20Alamos%20Week%20Ending%20July%2026%202019.pdf
Nine containers full of transuranic waste are stuck at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Plutonium Facility after the Carlsbad Waste Isolation Pilot Plant refused to take them in back in July.
The containers, which hold waste items such as gloves, tools and other items that have come into contact with radiological materials, were scheduled to be shipped to WIPP during the week of July 26.
The Department of Energy’s contractor N3B that operates WIPP inspected the drums at LANL prior to the shipping date and determined that the drums contained materials that could combust.
N3B Spokesman Todd Nelson said that there was never a chance the containers would have made it to WIPP in the condition they were in.
Proposed New Exhaust at WIPP Designed to Release Radiation
19 seconds – the amount of time airborne radiological contamination could be released before the safety dampers close. This assumes that all other components work perfectly.
A recent report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) explains the DNFSB’s calculations on the proposed new (estimated at nearly $300 million) safety significant confinement ventilation system (SSCVS).
The New Nuclear Arms Race Is Here. And Russia’s Already Paying the Price.
Meet 4 new nuclear weapons systems the Kremlin is testing — right now.
BY GREG WALTERS | vice.com
At the funeral for 14 Russian sailors, Captain Sergei Pavlov hailed the “blameless heroes” for dousing the fire that broke out on their nuclear spy submarine, called the Losharik, during a secret mission last month.
“At the cost of their lives,” Pavlov said, “they prevented a catastrophe on a planetary scale.”
But as Russia tests and deploys an array of exotic new nuclear weapons, fears are mounting that the next nuclear mishap may not be so easily contained.
This summer alone, Russia has suffered some two-dozen casualties in accidents related to exotic nuclear hardware, including the mysterious explosion linked to the Skyfall missile program that killed seven and sent local radiation levels spiking in a nearby city.
The deadly incidents are stoking fears of a return to Cold War-style runaway nuclear arms development, accompanied by dangerous accidents and Soviet-style cover-ups.
“We need to acknowledge that the Russians are engaged in wacky programs,” said Aaron Stein, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “It’s indicative of an arms complex that has been cut loose to pursue exotic, silly projects. And it’s dangerous.”
You can blame the renewed U.S.-Russian arms race, which nuclear experts warn is driving Russia to recklessly experiment with “absurd” new ideas.
On 29 August, the International Day against Nuclear Tests, Kazakhstan deposited its instrument of ratification for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, becoming the 26th state party.
From 1949 to 1989, an estimated 456 Soviet nuclear tests — including 116 atmospheric tests — were carried out at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan, with devastating long-term consequences for human health and the environment.
Upon the break-up of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan inherited approximately 1,400 nuclear warheads, which it subsequently gave up — recognizing that its security was best achieved through disarmament.
The date of 29 August 2019 has special significance for Kazakhstan. It marks 70 years since the first Soviet nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk site and 28 years since the formal closure of that site.
We congratulate Kazakhstan on its ratification and we acknowledge the persistent efforts of Alimzhan Akhmetov, of the Center for International Security and Policy in Kazakhstan, to encourage the Kazakh government to take this important step.
Pakistan ups nuclear rhetoric, carries out launch of ballistic missile
BY AJAY BANERJEE | tribuneindia.com Tribune News Service New Delhi August 29, 2019
Pakistan has successfully test-fired surface-to-surface ballistic missile ‘Ghaznavi’, capable of delivering multiple warheads up to 290 km, the Army said on Thursday, amid fresh Indo-Pak tensions after India revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.
Pakistan on Wednesday closed three aviation routes of the Karachi airspace till August 31, which had promoted speculation about the possible missile-testing.
Pakistan successfully carried out night training launch of surface to surface ballistic missile Ghaznavi, capable of delivering multiple types of warheads upto 290 KMs. CJCSC & Services Chiefs congrat team. President & PM conveyed appreciation to team & congrats to the nation. pic.twitter.com/hmoUKRPWev
— DG ISPR (@OfficialDGISPR) August 29, 2019
With this, Pakistan upped its ‘nuclear rhetoric’. The Director General of Inter Service Public Relations (DG-ISPR) said Pakistan on Wednesday night tested a short range nuclear missile in Sindh.
France Is Still Cleaning Up Marie Curie’s Nuclear Waste
Her lab outside Paris, dubbed Chernobyl on the Seine, is still radioactive nearly a century after her death.
BY TARA PATEL | bloomberg.com
In 1933 nuclear physicist Marie Curie had outgrown her lab in the Latin Quarter in central Paris. To give her the space needed for the messy task of extracting radioactive elements such as radium from truckloads of ore, the University of Paris built a research center in Arcueil, a village south of the city. Today it’s grown into a crowded working-class suburb. And the dilapidated lab, set in an overgrown garden near a 17th century aqueduct, is sometimes called Chernobyl on the Seine.
No major accidents occurred at the lab, which closed in 1978. But it’s brimming with radioactivity that will be a health threat for millennia, and France’s nuclear watchdog has barred access to anyone not wearing protective clothing. The lab is surrounded by a concrete wall topped by barbed wire and surveillance cameras. Monitors constantly assess radiation, and local officials regularly test the river.
“We’re proof that France has a serious nuclear waste problem,” says Arcueil Mayor Christian Métairie. “Our situation raises questions about whether the country is really equipped to handle it.”
Nuclear power accounts for almost three-fourths of France’s electricity, vs. a fifth in the U.S. There’s no lasting solution for the most dangerous refuse from the country’s 906 nuclear waste sites, including some of what’s in Arcueil.
Women’s Equality Day 2019: Diversity Encourages Innovation
nuclear diplomacy needs more women
“Negotiating successfully requires having the best people, regardless of gender, and recognizing that diversity enhances innovation.”
The story of women in nuclear security reflects many of the broader lessons we’ve learned about gender and politics: that women’s contributions have often been ignored or excluded, risking policies that lack key perspectives, nuance and debate. With today’s high stakes, we need national security policy that includes all of the best ideas. New and lasting solutions require diversity of representation and experience if we’re to solve the issues surrounding humanity’s survival.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/23/why-nuclear-diplomacy-needs-more-women/
Arms Control Association: #ThisWeek in Nuclear History: The Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear weapon on August 29, 1949 at Semipalatinsk in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Tests continued at the site until 1989 with little regard for their effect on the local people or environment. After the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, tests ended at the site and it was officially closed on Aug 29, 1991. The International Day against Nuclear Tests is now observed annually on August 29.
Must Reads
Doom Towns
A graphic novel by Andy Kirk with artist Kristian Purcell
“The U.S. tested nearly a thousand atomic weapons in the Nevada desert 125 miles north of Las Vegas…. Did they really build fake towns out in the desert and then blow the whole place up with atomic bombs? And the answer is yes, in fact, they did do that…
“The purpose as stated by the civil defense agencies of creating these “Doom Towns” and then widely disseminating on film their being destroyed was to encourage Americans to be concerned about the possibility of civilians being the target of nuclear attack.”
1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink
Taylor Downing, Da Capo Press, 4/24/18
Recently, a declassified report lifted the veil on the events of a week in November 1983, the year KAL007 was shot down and America watched “The Day After”, when we had in fact, a very close brush with World Death. The Able Archer story is a timely and important reminder of the variety of things that can happen to drive a situation to the brink of nuclear disaster when there is posturing and provocation and no trust.
Excerpts from the Christian Science Monitor book review:
“Able Archer 83 was sparked by a routine NATO military exercise. But, as writer Taylor Downing documents in “1983: Reagan, Andropov and a World on the Brink”, a carefully-researched and absorbing book, it occurred when mistrust and suspicion between the superpowers was sky-high. Indeed, relations were so tense that Soviet political and military leadership believed the exercise was a ruse to enable NATO to launch a pre-emptive strike… The Soviets concluded that this was not an exercise but the real thing and put their own military on the highest readiness level. So fully armed fighter planes sat continuously idling on runways waiting for a signal to take off. Meanwhile, in Washington, nothing seemed amiss. Only much later did the United States realize that Soviet leaders had been petrified with fear. A top-secret US report concluded, “We may have inadvertently placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger.” (source: CSM)
More on Able Archer: Slate’s cover story from April 2017:
The Week the World Almost Ended- In 1983, the U.S. simulated a nuclear war with Russia- and narrowly avoided starting a real one. We might not be so lucky next time..
Daniel Ellsberg: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
Ron Rosenbaum, in his fascinating and highly readable “How The End Begins” (2011) notes that when Kissinger told Nixon that Ellsberg was “the most dangerous man in America” he wasn’t referring to the Pentagon Papers but to what Ellsberg knew about top secret nuclear war plans from his work at RAND. Ellsberg had also made off with thousands of nuclear war-fighting strategy documents in addition to the Pentagon Papers, but decided to release the latter first. As it turned out much of the nuclear papers were lost during the turmoil following the Pentagon Papers release. This book, long overdue, is about what he learned then.
Ellsberg recalls being tasked to review the strategic war-fighting plans in effect under Eisenhower, and discovering that they called for “hitting every city, actually every town, above 25,000 population” in Russia and China and to some extent East Europe. Pressed for an estimate of death toll, the pentagon came back with 600 million dead. And that was not counting US and West European death tolls. “I thought, ‘This is the most evil plan that has ever existed. It’s insane.'”
Referring to US and Russian ICBM forces still to this day on alert: “Here is what we now know: the United States and Russia each have an actual Doomsday Machine.”
Democracy Now interview with transcript
Harper’s Magazine excerpt, Dec 6, 2017
The U.S. Sprayed, Injected and Fed Radiation to Countless Innocents in Secret Cold War-Era Testing
Military scientists exposed American civilians to radiation without their knowledge or consent.
“Behind the Fog” documents a dark chapter of “large-scale organizational deviance”…
From the publisher:
“Martino-Taylor documents the coordinated efforts of a small group of military scientists who advanced a four-pronged secret program of human-subject radiation studies that targeted unsuspecting Americans for Cold War military purposes… Agency and academic partnerships advanced, supported, and concealed the studies from the public at large who ultimately served as unwitting test subjects.
‘They targeted the most vulnerable in society… They targeted children. They targeted pregnant women in Nashville. People who were ill in hospitals. They targeted wards of the state. And they targeted minority populations.’
Martino-Taylor’s comprehensive research illuminates a dark chapter of government secrecy, the military-industrial-academic complex, and large-scale organizational deviance in American history. In its critical approach, Behind the Fog effectively examines the mechanisms that allow large-scale elite deviance to take place in modern society.”
Quotes
“…given that France is a nuclear state, it would be ordinary citizens who would be committing a “crime”
if they were found to be “publicizing, spreading and reproducing false information intended to cause public disorder [while raising concerns about radioactive tritium in drinking water]”
— Linda Pentz Gunter
“Today, watching as the edifice of [nuclear weapons] strategic stability slowly but surely collapses, Washington and Moscow are acting as if time is on their side. It is not.”
The Return of Doomsday
Sputnik / Alexei Nikolsky / Kremlin via Reuters
The New Nuclear Arms Race—and How Washington and Moscow Can Stop It
