Sophie Stroud, Communications and Associate Director, represented NukeWatch at the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability's (ANA) fall meeting Nov. 21-23 in Las Vegas, hosted locally by Ian Zabarte, Principal Man of the Western Shoshone, Secretary of State of the Western Shoshone National Council, and Secretary of the Native Community Action Council (NCAC). The Nevada Test Site, now called the "Nevada National Security Site" and Yucca Mountain are both nuclear sites on Shoshone Land, and nuclear issues continue to threaten the Western Shoshone People. Yucca Mountain is Western Shoshone property with Constitutional protection, and the Department of Energy cannot prove ownership. ANA is a national network made up of 30 organizations whose members live near US nuclear bomb plants and their waste sites. The meeting was scheduled in coordination with the renowned International Uranium Film Festival — uraniumfilmfestival.org. As an organizer of the ANA Meeting as well as the International Uranium Film Festival, NCAC, composed of Shoshone and Paiute peoples, believe these films are a necessary part of the ongoing awareness, witness and resistance to nuclear war, human health and a livable Mother Earth. As 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the first atomic bombings at the Trinity Site, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, the world faces a new nuclear arms race that includes nuclear "modernization" of weapons, as well as the fast-tracking of uranium mining for nuclear-powered artificial intelligence data centers.
Friday morning, Nov. 21, the group traveled to the Mercury Exit gate of the Nevada Test Site with banners opposing nuclear weapons and nuclear testing. On October 29, before a meeting in South Korea with Chinese President Xi, President Donald Trump announced on social media that he “instructed the Department of War to start testing [U.S.] Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis” with Russia and China. The post contains various inaccuracies and ambiguity over whether he wants to resume underground nuclear explosive testing — an act the United States, Russia, and China have not undertaken in over 30 years — or continue testing of delivery systems.
Press Release: The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability Condemns the Suggestion of Nuclear Testing by President Trump
