In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan and and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
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Watchdogs want US to address extreme plutonium contamination in Los Alamos’ Acid Canyon
“This is an unrestricted area. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in the United States,” the professor told reporters. “It’s just an extreme example of very high concentrations of plutonium in soils and sediments. Really, you know, it’s hiding in plain sight.”
Ketterer teamed up with the group Nuclear Watch New Mexico to gather the samples in July, a rainy period that often results in isolated downpours and stormwater runoff coursing through canyons and otherwise dry arroyos. Water was flowing through Acid Canyon when the samples were taken.
BY SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS | August 15, 2024 apnews.com
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Watchdogs are raising new concerns about legacy contamination in Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and home to a renewed effort to manufacture key components for nuclear weapons.
A Northern Arizona University professor emeritus who analyzed soil, water and vegetation samples taken along a popular hiking and biking trail in Acid Canyon said Thursday that there were more extreme concentrations of plutonium found there than at other publicly accessible sites he has researched in his decades-long career.
That includes land around the federal government’s former weapons plant at Rocky Flats in Colorado.
While outdoor enthusiasts might not be in immediate danger while traveling through the pine tree-lined canyon, Michael Ketterer — who specializes in tracking the chemical fingerprints of radioactive materials — said state and local officials should be warning people to avoid coming in contact with water in Acid Canyon.
A nuclear legacy in Los Alamos
After three cleanups, independent analysis shows 80-year-old plutonium persists in Acid Canyon and beyond
By Alicia Inez Guzmán, Searchlight New Mexico | August 15, 2024 searchlightnm.org
The world’s oldest documented plutonium contamination may not lie not in the Chihuahuan Desert at the Trinity Site, where the first-ever atomic bomb ripped open the skies and melted the sand into green glass. Rather, that distinction more likely goes to Los Alamos’s Acid Canyon, according to an independent study by Michael Ketterer, professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry at Northern Arizona University.
Ketterer announced these findings at an online press conference held by Nuclear Watch New Mexico on Aug. 15, after collecting and analyzing soil, water and plant samples in Acid Canyon, a popular hiking area in the middle of town. Beginning in 1943, the year the Manhattan Project came to Los Alamos, workers released radioactive waste into the canyon. Three remediations would follow, but as Ketterer’s analysis found, “a super weapons-grade” plutonium persists in the soil, water and plant life in and around Los Alamos, representing some of the earliest ever made.
One thought came to his mind as he analyzed samples from the area, collected last month:
“I’ve never seen anything like this in any samples anywhere,” he told Searchlight New Mexico in an interview.
High Detections of Plutonium in Los Alamos Neighborhood – As We Enter a New Nuclear Arms Race the Last One is Still Not Cleaned Up
In April Nuclear Watch New Mexico released a map of plutonium contamination based on Lab data. Today, Dr. Michael Ketterer, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Arizona University, is releasing alarmingly high results from samples taken from a popular walking trail in the Los Alamos Town Site, including detections of some of the earliest plutonium produced by humankind.
On July 2 and 17 Dr. Ketterer, with the assistance of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, collected water, soil and plant samples from Acid Canyon in the Los Alamos Town Site and soil and plant samples in Los Alamos Canyon at the Totavi gas station downstream from the Lab. The samples were prepared and analyzed by mass spectrometry at Northern Arizona University to measure concentrations of plutonium, and to ascertain its sources in the environment.
High Detections of Plutonium in Los Alamos Neighborhood – As We Enter a New Nuclear Arms Race the Last One is Still Not Cleaned Up
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 15, 2024
Dr. Michael Ketterer – 928.853.7188 | Email
Jay Coghlan – 505.989.7342 | Email
Santa Fe, NM – In April Nuclear Watch New Mexico released a map of plutonium contamination based on Lab data. Today, Dr. Michael Ketterer, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Arizona University, is releasing alarmingly high results from samples taken from a popular walking trail in the Los Alamos Town Site, including detections of some of the earliest plutonium produced by humankind.
On July 2 and 17 Dr. Ketterer, with the assistance of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, collected water, soil and plant samples from Acid Canyon in the Los Alamos Town Site and soil and plant samples in Los Alamos Canyon at the Totavi gas station downstream from the Lab. The samples were prepared and analyzed by mass spectrometry at Northern Arizona University to measure concentrations of plutonium, and to ascertain its sources in the environment.
How a US health agency became a shield for polluters
Companies and others responsible for some of America’s most toxic waste sites are using a federal health agency’s faulty reports to save money on cleanups, defend against lawsuits and deny victims compensation, a Reuters investigation found. A Missouri neighborhood’s tale.
By JAIMI DOWDELL, M.B. PELL, BENJAMIN LESSER, MICHELLE CONLIN, PHOEBE QUINTON and WAYLON CUNNINGHAM, Reuters | August 11, 2024 reuters.com
When they bought their homes in the Spanish Village neighborhood northwest of St. Louis, many residents had no idea a radioactive landfill sat less than a mile away.
Health conditions mounted over the years, suggesting something wasn’t right.
Wester warns: ‘We are now in a nuclear arms race far more dangerous than the first’
“…There is a frustration that our world leaders are not listening. The tragedy of the 200,000 killed both in Hiroshima and Nagasaki seems to fall on deaf ears.
We are now in a nuclear arms race arguably far more dangerous than the first. We see countries modernizing their nuclear arsenals and spending scads of money in what appears to be (a move toward) ‘nuclear weapons forever.’”
By OSV News | August 6, 2024 catholicreview.org
Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, N.M., has traveled to Japan on a “pilgrimage of peace” commemorating the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The pilgrimage, which the archbishop undertook last year as well, was announced Aug. 3 by the Santa Fe Archdiocese.
The attacks on the two Japanese cities — launched by the U.S. on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, in an effort to force the unconditional surrender of Japan and hasten the end of the war — killed an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people. The true number of casualties is “probably fundamentally unknowable,” according to nuclear weapons historian Alex Wellerstein.
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Hiroshima – The Unknown Images
On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., a bright flash set the sky over Hiroshima ablaze. A gigantic column of smoke rises above the city. The first nuclear bomb in history has just been dropped on the largest metropolis in western Japan.
This 2015 documentary shows this tragedy from the inside using photos taken that day.
Nuclear disarmament seemed possible. The imagined destruction of a Kansas town helped get us there.
“While part of the rationale for modernizing the American arsenal is safety — some of the warheads in the stockpile are 50 years old — the other part is deterrence. Despite the end of the Cold War, the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction continues. We find ourselves in a new arms race, one that aims to keep existing stockpiles stable but make new weapons out of them that are more reliable and precise, and hence deadlier.”
By Max McCoy, Kansas Reflector | August 4, 2024 kansasreflector.com
From miles above the midwestern prairies, I got a first-hand look at the machinery of doomsday.
Lying on my stomach in a pod beneath the tail of a KC-135 Stratotanker I watched as the operator next to me guided the flying boom behind us toward an aircraft keeping pace just below. This was a midair refueling mission, and the boom would top off the tanks of the receiving aircraft. That plane, with its white upper fuselage and black nose, was an EC-135 airborne command post, code named “Looking Glass.”
I’ve been thinking about that flight lately as the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki again approach. On Tuesday, it will be 79 years since the U.S. destroyed Hiroshima with an atomic bomb, followed three days later by the bombing of Nagasaki. More than 200,000 people were killed, mostly civilians. The bombings hastened the end of World War II but heralded the passing of our technological innocence — we finally had the power to annihilate ourselves as a species.
Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons: Archbishop John C. Wester to Honor the 79th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
ALBUQUERQUE, NM – Saturday, August 3, 2024 – IMMEDIATE RELEASE—Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons: Most Rev. John C. Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Jay Coghlan, Executive Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, are set to embark on a pilgrimage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, to commemorate the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombings. This visit underscores the Archdiocese of Santa Fe’s unwavering commitment to advocating for universal, verifiable nuclear disarmament.
During this multi-day journey, they will engage with Japanese and Korean bishops, fostering dialogue and solidarity in the shared mission to eliminate nuclear weapons globally. This pilgrimage is a testament to the enduring spirit of peace and reconciliation and a call to action for renewed and serious conversations about disarmament in New Mexico and around the world.
“Standing in the very places where the catastrophic consequences of nuclear warfare were first realized compels us to rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of a world free from nuclear weapons,” said Archbishop Wester. “This pilgrimage is not only a gesture of remembrance but also a commitment to continue our work toward global peace and security.”
He emphasized the critical need for sustained advocacy. “The lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are more relevant than ever. As we honor the victims and survivors of these tragedies, we must also challenge the status quo and push for real progress in nuclear disarmament.”
The visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki will include participation in memorial ceremonies, meetings with survivors (hibakusha), and discussions with key religious and civic leaders. These activities will serve as a powerful reminder of the moral and ethical imperatives to dismantle nuclear arsenals and prevent future nuclear catastrophes.
Does the United States Need More Nuclear Weapons?
The United States is estimated to have roughly 3,700 warheads in its active arsenal. This includes 1,670 thermonuclear warheads deployed on 660 powerful long-range missiles on land and at sea or available for delivery on strategic bombers. There are also another 100 tactical nuclear bombs that can be delivered on shorter-range aircraft, according to independent estimates.5 The use of a fraction of these weapons, many primed for launch within minutes, would lead to mass destruction on an unprecedented global scale.
Contrary to the hype, more nuclear weapons would not improve, on balance, the U.S. capability to deter nuclear attack. In fact, significant increases in the U.S. deployed nuclear arsenal would undermine mutual and global security by making the existing balance of nuclear terror more unpredictable and would set into motion a counterproductive, costly action-reaction cycle of nuclear competition.
By Daryl G. Kimball, Arms Control Today | July/August 2024 armscontrol.org
The experience of the Cold War proves that nuclear arms racing produces only losers and increased risks for everyone.
Nevertheless, following more than a decade of deteriorating relations between the United States and its main nuclear rivals, dimming prospects for disarmament diplomacy, and major nuclear weapons modernization efforts, China, Russia, and the United States are now on the precipice of a dangerous era of unconstrained nuclear competition. Concern in U.S. national security circles about Chinese and Russian nuclear capabilities has grown since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine effectively shut down the U.S.-Russian nuclear risk reduction and arms control dialogue. The Kremlin has rejected the White House proposal to negotiate a new nuclear arms control framework to replace the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which expires on February 5, 2026.1 China has declined U.S. offers to continue bilateral discussions on reducing nuclear risk and on nuclear postures.2
Moreover, as the U.S. intelligence community forecasts that China could amass as many as 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030, with several hundred of them deployed on a larger force of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), some members of the nuclear weapons establishment, leading members of Congress, and Biden administration officials have suggested that the massive U.S. arsenal may not be sufficient to deter two “near peer” nuclear rivals.3 China is currently estimated to have some 500 nuclear weapons and 310 long-range, nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.4
New York Times: Olympic Surfing Comes to a ‘Poisoned’ Paradise
In 1974, a radioactive cloud from a French nuclear test drifted over Teahupo’o, Tahiti, now the surfing venue for the Paris Games. Villagers still feel the effects.
ByHannah Beech / | July 30, 2024 nytimes.com | Hannah Beech and Adam Ferguson spent a week in French Polynesia, documenting the impact of nuclear testing on a territory that is hosting the Olympic surfing competitions.
Fifty years ago this July, as the waters of the South Pacific rushed toward the shores of Teahupo’o in a perfect, powerful curl, as they have always done, another wave visited the tiny hamlet. This time it was an invisible and airborne one: a surge of radiation escaping from a nuclear weapon test conducted by France in this far-flung reach of their republic.
Navajo Nation plans to test limit of tribal law preventing transportation of uranium on its land
The Navajo Nation plans to test the limits of a tribal law that banned the transportation of uranium ore on its lands
By FELICIA FONSECA, ASSOCIATED PRESS | July 30, 2024 abcnews.com
PHOENIX — The Navajo Nation planned Tuesday to test a tribal law that bans uranium from being transported on its land by ordering tribal police to stop trucks carrying the mineral and return to the mine where it was extracted in northern Arizona.
But before tribal police could catch up with two semi-trucks on federal highways, they learned the vehicles under contract with Energy Fuels Inc. no longer were on the reservation.
Navajo President Buu Nygren vowed to carry out the plan to enact roadblocks while the tribe develops regulations over the first major shipments of uranium ore through the reservation in years.
“Obviously the higher courts are going to have to tell us who is right and who is wrong,” he told The Associated Press. “But in the meantime, you’re in the boundaries of the Navajo Nation.”
The tribe passed a law in 2012 to ban the transportation of uranium on the vast reservation that extends into Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. But the law exempts state and federal highways that Energy Fuels has designated as hauling routes between the Pinyon Plain Mine south of Grand Canyon National Park for processing in Blanding, Utah.
Still, Nygren and Navajo Attorney General Ethel Branch believe the tribe is on solid legal footing with a plan for police to block federal highways, pull over drivers and prevent them from traveling farther onto the reservation.
New Mexico ‘birth to grave state’ for nuclear, critics say
Jay Coghlan at Nuclear Watch New Mexico read a letter to officials from Archbishop of Santa Fe John Wester, a critic of nuclear proliferation advocating for disarmament. He called for a sitewide environmental review of Los Alamos National Laboratory before the government expands the lab’s activities.
“Nuclear weapons were invented here in my arch dioceses, and thus I feel a responsibility to address this threat,” Coghlan read. “Nuclear disarmament is a right to life issue. The very possession of nuclear weapons is immoral. What does this say about expanded pit production without providing the public the opportunity to review and comment?
“You’re very good at creating them, now show us how smart you are by showing us how to get rid of nuclear weapons. Let’s preserve New Mexico’s potential to manifest God’s love for all of his creations.”
By Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus | July 24, 2024 currentargus.com
New Mexico was a fixture in the federal government’s plans to develop more nuclear weapons in the northern part of the state, and that could mean more nuclear waste being sent the southeast corner.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad disposes of transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste, made up of clothing materials, equipment and other debris irradiated during nuclear activities at federal sites around the country. It’s trucked into the site and buried in a salt deposit about 2,000 feet underground.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy through its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is planning to build up to 30 plutonium pits – triggers for nuclear warheads – per year by 2030, along with 50 a year at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Candice Robertson, senior adviser at the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) said during a Monday townhall in Santa Fe that WIPP did have enough space for “planned TRU waste,” as officials estimated the repository could remain active until about 2083.
