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Santa Fe New Mexican: Is Acid Canyon clean enough? Depends who you ask

“With the help of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, [Chemist and Northern Arizona University professor emeritus] Ketterer took samples of soil, water and plants from a few locations around Acid Canyon, which he then analyzed using mass spectrometry. He looked in particular at the proportions of two main isotopes, plutonium-239 and plutonium-240, in each sample, which he said can begin to answer questions about where and when the contamination originated.

Alaina Mencinger | November 24, 2024 santafenewmexican.com

Takeaways: Samples from Acid Canyon showed plutonium contamination in water and soil at levels one researcher called “unusually high.” Those findings were presented to lawmakers earlier this month. Department of Energy and LANL officials have pushed back against claims that the levels measured are unsafe or unexpected.

Ex-Westinghouse VP sentenced to jail in $9 billion nuclear heist of SC ratepayers

“In both the SC and GA cases, the state governments helped pave the way for the financial mismanagement of the projects by legislating that state electric ratepayers be responsible to pay for the nuclear construction in their monthly bills many years ahead of receiving a single watt of utility services.”

Beyond Nuclear | November 21, 2024 beyondnuclear.org

On November 20, 2024, the ex-Westinghouse Electric Corporation Vice President, who once headed the company’s AP1000 advanced reactor global marketing division, Jeffrey Alan Benjamin was sentenced in the District of South Carolina Federal Court to one year and a day in prison and a $100,000 fine for his role to defraud the South Carolina Public Utility Commission (PUC) and state electric ratepayers out of billions of dollars following the 2017 abandonment of the V.C. Summer units 2 & 3 nuclear plant construction project.

The US Justice Department had originally charged Westinghouse’s senior global nuclear project manager with 16 federal felony counts including conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud by withholding and providing false financial information to South Carolina regulators and state customers while the V.C. Summer AP1000 pressurized water reactor project was financially collapsing from skyrocketing cost overruns and mounting construction delays. After years of legal wrangling, Benjamin entered into a guilty plea deal to a single “information felony charge” for “aiding and abetting the failure to keep accurate corporate records.”

Arms Control Association: Putin’s Decision to Lower Threshold for Nuclear Use Is Irresponsible and Dangerous

“Because nuclear war would affect all people, Russia’s dangerous behavior demands a global response.”

Statement by Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director, Arms Control Association | November 19, 2024 armscontrol.org

(Washington, D.C.) — As foreshadowed by an earlier statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin issued a decree that revises Russian policies regarding the employment of nuclear weapons in war in a way that further blurs the threshold for Russian use of nuclear weapons and adds significant uncertainty to the already unsteady balance of nuclear terror between Russia and the United States and other members of the NATO alliance.

The new doctrine includes language that asserts that Russia “reserves the right” to use nuclear weapons to respond to a conventional-weapons attack that creates a “critical threat” to its “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” whereas the previous doctrine, which was issued in 2020, only reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if an attack on Russia threatens “the very existence of the state.”

Santa Fe New Mexican: Santa Fe County commissioners grill federal official over LANL legacy cleanup

Santa Fe County commissioners on Tuesday pressed an official from the Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office on legacy waste cleanup, including the status of a toxic chromium plume under the area’s canyons.

By , Santa Fe New Mexican | November 13, 2024 santafenewmexican.com

The U.S Energy Department office is in charge of the cleanup of the legacy contamination of radioactive and chemical materials and waste resulting from operations during the Manhattan Project and the Cold War at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jessica Kunkle, manager of the Los Alamos field office, briefed the commissioners in a presentation at the urging of Commissioner Anna Hansen.

At one point, Kunkle noted remediated land known as the “Middle DP Road Cleanup” site had been turned over to Los Alamos County for “continued economic development.” In January, the Department of Energy announced radiologically contaminated materials, including metal items, debris and glass, had been removed from the site, which is located in Los Alamos’ industrial district a little east of downtown.

‘Help us,’ UN nuclear watchdog chief tells Iran ahead of visit

– Grossi seeks more monitoring cooperation at nuclear sites
– Iran enriching uranium to 60%, close to bomb-grade
– IAEA board of governors to meet next week in Vienna

By , Reuters | November 12, 2024 reuters.com

BAKU, Nov 12 (Reuters) – U.N. atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi appealed to Iran’s leadership on Tuesday to take steps to resolve longstanding issues with his agency a day before he arrives in the Iranian capital for crunch talks over its nuclear programme.

The International Atomic Energy Agency head has for months sought progress with Iran on issues including a push for more monitoring cooperation at nuclear sites and an explanation of uranium traces found at undeclared sites.

But little has come from Grossi’s efforts and with the return of President-elect Donald Trump, who is widely expected to restore a maximum-pressure policy on Iran, Grossi’s trip on Wednesday should provide indications of how Iran wants to proceed in the coming months.

“I am far from being able to tell the international community … what is happening. I would be in a very difficult position. So it’s like they (Iran) have to help us, to help them to a certain extent,” Grossi told Reuters on the sidelines of the COP29 climate summit in Baku.

Y-12 uranium facility delayed to 2030s, costs rise to $10B for national security priority

“The cost estimate changed last year, when the National Nuclear Security Administration submitted a budget request to Congress that revised the cost to between $8.5 billion and $8.95 billion and the completion date to 2029. In the same request, the agency said it would spend more than $200 million on ‘reprogramming to prevent further delays.'”

By Daniel Dassow, Knoxville News Sentinel | November 12, 2024 knoxnews.com

Workers at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge will have to wait several more years before moving uranium processing out of a crumbling Manhattan Project building to a new facility that will not be operational until 2031.

The Uranium Processing Facility, one of the largest construction projects in Tennessee history, will cost around $10.3 billion, and construction will not be complete until 2027, project manager Brian Zieroth said at a Knoxville business and tech conference on Oct. 30.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Energy agency that owns Y-12, held for nearly a decade that the project would cost no more than $6.5 billion and would be finished by 2025.

DOE’s 2037 Deadlines for SRS: Realistic or Illusory?

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) has two major milestones to achieve by 2037. One is legally binding, the other is a commitment that remains negotiable.

By Don Moniak, The Aiken Chronicles | November 12, 2024 aikenchronicles.com

Surplus Weapons Plutonium

DOE is legally bound to removing 9.5 metric tons of surplus military plutonium to another state. While any state will do, the plan is to ship the plutonium in a diluted waste form to the underground transuranic waste dump in New Mexico known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).

This commitment is enshrined in the $600 million Settlement Agreement between the State of South Carolina and the federal government; more commonly known as “The Plutonium Settlement.”

Any failure of DOE/SRS to remove all or part of the 9.5 metric tons* of surplus plutonium (Pu) metals and powders will trigger new financial penalties that could be worth billions of dollars to South Carolina. The potential penalties involve two formulas.

First, the percentage of the 9.5 tons remaining on January 1, 2037 will be multiplied by $1.5 billion. Thus, five tons remaning could yield the state $7.5 billion, if the agreement is enforced.

Second, $1 million per day, but only up to $100 million per year, will be awarded to the State for any plutonium not removed after January 1, 2037; and for each year thereafter.

However, the loophole is that the agreement cannot be enforced until 2042 if DOE/SRS has removed more than half, or 4.75 MT, of surplus Pu by 2037.

The surplus Pu is currently being converted to a more stable waste form via a process called “dilute and dispose.” Plans to increase production through the development of a second glovebox processing line remain as tentative as the funding that is required—in this case upwards of $880 million.

Why America Can’t Afford A New Nuclear Buildup In 2025

“The real test of Trump’s stance on all-things nuclear will be his approach to the Pentagon’s multi-year effort to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines, plus new warheads to go with them, a plan that some experts suggest could cost up to $2 trillion in the next three decades.

The nuclear plan has already been plagued by major cost overruns, including an 81% increase in the projected cost of the new intercontinental ballistic missile, dubbed the Sentinel, and developed and produced by Northrop Grumman. The cost overrun prompted a government review of the program, but the assessment ended up pronouncing that the program was too important to cancel.”

By William Hartung, Forbes | November 11, 2024 forbes.com

Donald Trump’s return to power raises serious questions about the future of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. His statements on nuclear weapons have been all over the map, but a 2017 review by Anthony Zurcher of The Guardian of Trump’s statements since the 980s concluded that “his thoughts on atomic weaponry reflect a certain strain of Cold War arms-race enthusiasm and diplomatic brinkmanship.” And in 2016, after he was challenged when he said ‘possibly, possibly” nuclear weapons could be used, Trump went on to say that if they weren’t to be used, “Then why are we making them?” On the flip side, he has also called nuclear war “the ultimate catastrophe.” It’s unclear what his administration’s nuclear policy will be in 2025.

As for his actions in office during his previous term, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which by all objective accounts had been working to stop Tehran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. And in 2019, the Trump administration withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces in Europe treaty (INF), which had banned ground-based ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in the range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

…

The review of the Sentinel was a missed opportunity. Former secretary of defense William Perry has called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons we have,” because the president would have only a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch them on warning of attack, increasing the risk of a nuclear confrontation sparked by a false alarm.

Families living in shadow of Cold War facility blame government for their cancer, death

“Do you believe the Department of Energy; our own government is telling the truth?” asked Duane Pohlman.
“Nobody believes that. If you do, you’re a fool,” said Guy Reynolds.”

PIKETON, Ohio (WKRC) – In the communities surrounding the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS), a decommissioned Cold War-era facility near Piketon that enriched uranium for nuclear reactors and atomic weapons, cancer has become a devastating reality for many families, leaving a trail of grief and loss.

By Duane Pohlman WKRC | November 4 local12.com

THE FAMILIES AND FACES OF FALLOUT:

Guy Reynolds survived melanoma and is keenly aware of the tragic cancer landscape in the area he calls home.

“Seems like anybody who dies, they die from cancer,” Reynolds said.

Families living in shadow of Cold War facility blame government for their cancer, death

Heather Blanton, a 42-year-old mother from Piketon who’s battling stage four metastatic breast cancer, explained that there’s no hope for her recovery.

“It’s terminal,” Heather said.

Joanne Ross of Piketon lost her 13-year-old son Aaron to kidney cancer in 1994 and still mourns his loss every day.

“I’ll always be his mother,” Ross said.

Shawna Houston, who now lives in Hillsboro, watched her 15-year-old son Garrett suffer and die from acute myeloid leukemia on March 4, 2016, 11 months after he was first diagnosed.

“It’s something I don’t wish on any parent,” said Houston.

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MORUROA FILES: Investigation into French nuclear tests in the Pacific

Poisoned legacy

Leukemia, lymphoma, cancer of the thyroid, lung, breast, stomach … In Polynesia, the experience of French nuclear tests is written in the flesh and blood of the inhabitants. Strontium has eaten into bones, cesium has eaten away at muscles and genitals, iodine has seeped into the thyroid.

The story of this largely unknown health disaster began on July 2, 1966. On that day, the army carried out the Aldebaran fire, the first of the 193 tests fired from the nuclear atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa until 1996. The first , also, of a series of tests among the most contaminating in the history of the French nuclear program: the tests in the open air. Between 1966 and 1974, the military carried out 46 such explosions.

Disclose and Interprt, in collaboration with the Science & Global Security program at Princeton University (USA), investigated the consequences of atmospheric testing in French Polynesia for two years. With the help of thousands of declassified military documents, hundreds of hours of calculations and dozens of unpublished testimonies, this investigation demonstrates for the first time the extent of the radioactive fallout that struck the inhabitants of this vast territory as the ‘Europe.

According to our calculations, based on a scientific reassessment of the doses received, approximately 110,000 people were infected, almost the entire Polynesian population at the time. Modelling toxic clouds to support, we also unveil how the French authorities have concealed the true impact of nuclear testing on the health of Polynesians for more than fifty years.

On February 18, 2020, the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) published, at the request of the Ministry of Defense, a report on “the health consequences of nuclear tests” in French Polynesia. According to this expertise, its authors felt that they could not “make a solid conclusion” to the existence of “links between the fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests and the occurrence of radiation-induced pathologies”. And the college of experts stressed the need to “refine the estimates of doses received by the local population and by civilian and military personnel”. This is precisely what we have endeavored to do in this investigation.

Why the World Needs a New UN Study on the Effects of Nuclear War

“Given that the United States relies on a strategy of nuclear deterrence, which seeks to obtain security by threatening nuclear war, it seems obvious that this country should want to fully understand the risks it is running.”

On the persistence of U.S. nuclear deterrence policy: bostonreview.net/articles/the-extortionists-doctrine/

“Nuclear-armed states do not run these risks alone. The rest of the world can be affected by nuclear war via radioactive fallout, environmental changes such as nuclear winter, and disruption of the global economic system. Almost any nuclear war would be a global problem.”

By Laura Grego, Union of Concerned Scientists | October 29 blog.ucsusa.org

Coming up for a vote in early November is a resolution advanced by the Ireland and New Zealand delegations to the United Nations (UN) to commission a critical new scientific study on the effects of nuclear war. The study, which would be the first under UN auspices in more than 30 years, would be run by an independent scientific panel of 21 members and would examine the physical effects and societal consequences of a nuclear war on local, regional, and planetary scales. It would be comprehensive in its scope, including the climate, environmental, and radiological effects of nuclear war and how these would impact public health, global social and economic systems, agriculture, and ecosystems over periods of days, weeks, and decades.

By Zia Mian, Scientific American | October 28 scientificamerican.com

At the United Nations, an effort is underway in the General Assembly to establish an international panel of scientists to assess, communicate and advance our current knowledge of the effects of nuclear war. The effort would lead to a more fully informed and inclusive global debate on how much and how little everyone—including the nuclear armed states themselves—actually know of the catastrophic large-scale long-term human, environmental, ecological, economic and societal impacts of using nuclear weapons. Ideally, the findings could build a basis for action toward the total elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide and secure a safer future for people and our planet.

Everyone, not just scientists and their respective professional societies, in all nations, including the nuclear-armed states and their allies, should speak in support of this effort to build a shared understanding of the risks posed by nuclear war plans and nuclear deterrence threats.

In September the U.N.’s member states overwhelmingly agreed on the Pact for the Future, which declares: “A nuclear war would visit devastation upon all humankind.” But it has been over 30 years since the last report by the U.N. on this threat.

BOSTON REVIEW: The Extortionist’s Doctrine

“Thus massive second strike—the key to deterrence defined as the practice of preventing nuclear war by discouraging a first strike—somersaults into the perceived position of a first strike.

‘The bar of deterrence,’ [former head of US Strategic Command] Butler writes, ‘ratchets higher, igniting yet another cycle of trepidation, worst-case assumptions and ever-mounting levels of destructive capability.'”

By Elaine Scarry, The Boston Review | October 2024 bostonreview.net

The key structure of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is audible in the September 4, 2024, speech by U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Cara Abercrombie: “Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the United States or its allies and partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime.” The doctrine, which the United States has embraced since the Cold War, aims to prevent an adversary from launching a nuclear weapon by assuring that any first strike will be followed by a retaliatory second strike, whose effects will equal or exceed the original damage and may eliminate the adversary altogether. This annihilating reflex of deterrence is equally audible in the quiet words of the Department of Defense in its web page on “America’s Nuclear Triad,” its sea-based, land-based, and air-based delivery platforms: “The triad, along with assigned forces, provide 24/7 deterrence to prevent catastrophic actions from our adversaries and they stand ready, if necessary, to deliver a decisive response, anywhere, anytime.”

Framed wholly as defensive and preventative (and from day to day, largely successful in deflecting our attention from the actual first use stance the country has had for nearly eighty years), deterrence would almost have the aura of peacekeeping, were it not the mental platform undergirding our fourteen Ohio-class submarines (each able to singlehandedly destroy one of Earth’s seven continents), four hundred land-based ICBMs, and sixty-six B-52 and B-2 stealth bombers.

Although the physical act of unbuilding the nuclear architecture is easily within reach—it would take at most four weeks to dismantle all the nuclear triggers throughout the world, a decisive because disabling first step—the mental architecture of deterrence is the major impediment to doing so.

Searchlight NM: Plutonium just had a bad day in court

Searchlight NM: Plutonium just had a bad day in court

In a major decision whose consequences are still being assessed, a federal judge declared that plutonium pit production — one ingredient in the U.S. government’s $1.5 trillion nuclear weapons expansion — has to be performed in accordance with the nation’s strongest environmental law

“…The court found that the agencies charged with reviving the nuclear weapons complex have not properly evaluated the perils that could come with turning out plutonium pits at two different sites, thousands of miles apart. For the plaintiffs in this case — which include Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition — Lewis’s decision to intervene is a milestone.”

“We’ve had a pretty significant victory here on the environmental front,” said Tom Clements, the director of Savannah River Site Watch. “Nonprofit public interest groups are able to hold the U.S. Department of Energy accountable.”

Over the past twenty-plus years, there have been four attempts by NNSA to expand pit production through the NEPA process. All failed. According to Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, this string of defeats could have led to the NNSA’s circumvention of the NEPA process during this round of planning for pit production. Adhering to the rules of the NEPA process, he added, “benefits both the public and the government.”

By Alicia Inez Guzmán, Searchlight New Mexico | October 17, 2024 searchlightnm.org

Most Americans don’t seem aware of it, but the United States is plunging into a new nuclear arms race. At the same time that China is ramping up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Russia has become increasingly bellicose. After a long period of relative dormancy, the U.S. has embarked on its own monumental project to modernize everything in its arsenal — from bomb triggers to warheads to missile systems — at a cost, altogether, of at least $1.5 trillion.

Los Alamos National Laboratory plays a vital role as one of two sites set to manufacture plutonium “pits,” the main explosive element in every thermonuclear warhead. But as a recent court ruling makes clear, the rush to revive weapons production has pushed environmental considerations — from nuclear waste and increases in vehicular traffic to contamination of local waterways, air and vegetation — to the wayside.

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OPINION: Nevada has already passed the test

“A return to explosive nuclear testing in the United States would almost certainly trigger a return to explosive nuclear testing in Russia, China and probably other nuclear-armed states.

…America’s nuclear veterans and local downwinders understand all too well the health risks of radiation exposure from above ground nuclear explosive testing conducted until 1963.”

By Ernest J. Moniz, The Nevada Independent | October 16, 2024 thenevadaindependent.com

Department of Energy photo of mannequins used for nuclear testing taken in 1953 at the Nevada Nuclear Test site. (Public Domain)

Many Nevadans remember the days when the United States was driven by necessity to conduct explosive nuclear tests of America’s nuclear arsenal. By testing, we sought to prove the designs of our nuclear weapons and impress on any potential adversary the futility of striking America or our allies. Today, we are long past the point when explosive nuclear testing is required to ensure their effectiveness, and our adversaries well understand their power. Ignoring these essential facts would put us at peril.

Since the first nuclear weapon test explosion in New Mexico in 1945, the United States conducted more than 1,000 such tests. Nine hundred and twenty-eight of those, or 90 percent, have been conducted in Nevada, the last in 1992, more than 30 years ago.

Now, voices from outside Nevada are making the case for a resumption of nuclear explosive testing in the desert, just 65 miles from Las Vegas. That case is not justified by science or military necessity, especially when a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing could trigger an even more precarious nuclear arms race abroad and endanger the physical and economic health of Nevadans at home.

New Interactive Series from The New York Times: "The Price" of New U.S. Nuclear Weapons

New Interactive Series from The New York Times: “The Price” of New U.S. Nuclear Weapons

The output at Rocky Flats, which at one point during the Cold War hit 1,000 pits per year, dwarfs the modern ambitions of Los Alamos. Still, the new production is expected to generate levels of radiological and hazardous waste that the lab has not experienced. This comes on top of the contamination already present, which the government estimates will cost some $7 billion to clean up.

“We’re endangering our community for an unnecessary arms race that puts us all at risk,” says Jay Coghlan, the executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a Santa Fe-based watchdog.

By W.J. Hennigan | Photographs by An-My Lê – THE NEW YORK TIMES October 10, 2024 nytimes.com

Opinion: America Is Updating Its Nuclear Weapons. The Price: $1.7 Trillion Over 30 Years.

Letter To the Editor in Response to the Article Above by Dr. Ira Helfand:

Re “The Staggering Cost of America’s Nuclear Gamble,” by W.J. Hennigan (Opinion, “At the Brink” series, Oct. 13):

Mr. Hennigan says, almost in passing, that “nuclear weapons do deter our adversaries.”

There is a lot to unpack in these six words. There certainly are situations in which one country’s nuclear weapons do deter its adversaries. Russia’s threats to use its nuclear weapons have clearly deterred the United States and NATO from doing more to support Ukraine.

But does deterrence guarantee that these weapons will not be used? Because a failure of deterrence will cause a catastrophe beyond reckoning.

A nuclear war between the United States and Russia could kill hundreds of millions of people in the first afternoon, and the ensuing climate disruption and famine could kill three-quarters of humanity over the next two years. Is there any conceivable benefit that can be derived from possessing these weapons that is worth running this terrible risk?

There have been many near misses already during the nuclear weapons era, crises where certain countries actually began preparations to launch nuclear weapons.

As former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara pointed out, we have not survived this far into the nuclear era because we knew what we were doing. Rather, as McNamara put it, “It was luck that prevented nuclear war.”

The idea that deterrence makes us safe is a dangerous myth. As our highest national security priority, we should be actively seeking a world without nuclear weapons. We don’t know if such an effort can succeed; we have never tried. We do know what will happen if deterrence fails.

Ira Helfand
Northampton, Mass.
The writer is a former president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which received the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.

Santa Fe County commissioners object to environmental finding on LANL power line

From Dec 23, 2023, NNSA/LANL Environmental assessment for power line, page 22
From Dec 23, 2023, NNSA/LANL Environmental assessment for power line, page 22

“‘This is sacred land. We have alternatives. There are other ways to do this,’ said Commissioner Camilla Bustamante. ‘I couldn’t be in more support of finding an alternative to taking a power line and putting a scar on something that is not equal to just any other physical location.'”

By Cormac Dodd, Santa Fe New Mexican | October 8, 2024 santafenewmexican.com

Santa Fe County commissioners are objecting to a recent “finding of no significant impact” from U.S. Forest Service officials for a controversial proposed power line that would cut through 14 miles of the Caja del Rio Plateau to bolster Los Alamos National Laboratory’s power supply.

The Energy Department just made one plutonium pit. Making more is uncertain

Coinciding with NNSA’s announcement of the first diamond-stamped pit, a US District Court ruled that the Energy Department and the NNSA violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with pit production, requiring the agency to conduct a programmatic environmental impact assessment.

This was a victory for transparency and the community groups—among them, Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition—who, for years, have been asking for such an assessment.

By Dylan Spaulding, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists | October 10 thebulletin.org

Two conflicting developments arose this month in US efforts to produce new plutonium pits for its nuclear weapons: The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced it had produced a warhead-ready pit—the explosive core of a nuclear weapon—for the first time in decades, and a federal court ruled that NNSA will be required to consider the cumulative environmental and health impacts of its pit production program.

Overshadowing these events is a vigorous debate over the necessity for new pits at all. Previous analyses have found that plutonium pits have viable lifespans well beyond the expected service life of the current stockpile, whereas production of pits for new weapons is part of a sweeping US nuclear modernization that raises concern over the future of arms control and any possibility for stockpile reductions at a time of deteriorating international relations.
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Judge finds plutonium production plans violated environmental laws

Both sides of the case are ordered to present a joint plan to address violations by Oct. 25

One of the plaintiffs, Jay Coghlan, the executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico called that a “pretty large hurdle to overcome,” for both parties. It’s unclear what happens if the parties fail to present a joint solution.

By:  – Source NM | October 8 sourcenm.com

U.S. energy officials illegally neglected to study impacts to the environment in efforts to increase plutonium production for nuclear weapons in New Mexico and South Carolina, a federal judge has ruled.

South Carolina District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis sided with environmental, anti-nuclear proliferation and community groups last week who sued the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which oversees the nuclear weapons stockpile as part of the U.S. Department of Energy.

The U.S. is investing billions into restarting the manufacture of plutonium “pits,” the grapefruit-sized spheres developed for nuclear weapons. The federal government halted its manufacturing program at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado in 1989 after an FBI raid due to safety concerns and environmental crimes.

The stated goal has been to produce 80 pits per year starting in 2030, split between Savannah River facility proposed in South Carolina and at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The project has faced safety concerns and delays. The Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, found the NNSA had no comprehensive timeline or cost estimate for pit production, but estimates it’s in the tens of billions of dollars.


Community, environment and anti-nuclear groups brought the lawsuit in 2021, alleging that the NNSA failed to consider alternatives to its two-site proposal and violated the law by not reviewing or changing its last analysis from 2008, when it approved the decisions to move forward in 2020.
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U.S. Nuclear Weapons Sites Violated Rules, Judge Finds

In a statement Jay Coghlan, the director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico and a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, said, “These agencies think they can proceed with their most expensive and complex project ever without required public analyses and credible cost estimates.”

By , Newsweek | October 4 newsweek.com

A federal judge ruled this week that some nuclear weapons sites in the U.S. do violate environmental regulations.

On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that the National Nuclear Security Administration violated environmental regulations by failing to adequately assess the environmental impact of its plan to expand plutonium pit production at facilities in South Carolina and New Mexico.

The case involves a lawsuit that targeted a 2018 plan to establish two plutonium pit production sites—one at South Carolina’s Savannah River and the other at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Plaintiffs argued the plan was based on an outdated environmental impact study, which failed to properly assess the implications of simultaneous production at both locations. They also insisted the plan weakened safety and accountability measures for the multibillion-dollar nuclear weapons program and its associated waste disposal.

In the ruling on Thursday, Judge Mary Geiger Lewis said, “Defendants neglected to properly consider the combined effects of their two-site strategy and have failed to convince the court they gave thought to how those effects would affect the environment.”

‘Significant Victory’: Court Rules Planned Plutonium Pits for New Nukes Violate US Law

“Public scrutiny is especially important because the activities at issue here, by their very nature, result in the production of dangerous weapons and extensive amounts of toxic and radioactive waste,” a plaintiffs’ lawyer said.

By , CommonDreams | October 3 commondreams.com

In what advocates called a major win for frontline communities and the rule of law, a U.S. district court judge ruled on Monday that the federal government could not move forward with producing plutonium pits—”the heart and trigger of a nuclear bomb“—at two proposed sites in New Mexico and South Carolina.

Instead, Judge Mary Geiger Lewis agreed with a coalition of nonprofit community groups that the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to fully consider alternatives to producing the pits at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and South Carolina’s Savannah River Site (SRS). Now, the federal government must conduct a full environmental impact statement of how pit production would work at sites across the U.S.

“This is a significant victory that will ensure NEPA’s goal of public participation is satisfied,” attorney for the plaintiffs Ben Cunningham, of the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, said in a statement. “Public scrutiny is especially important because the activities at issue here, by their very nature, result in the production of dangerous weapons and extensive amounts of toxic and radioactive waste. I hope the public will seize the upcoming opportunity to review and comment on the federal agencies’ assessment.”

The Bulletin – Nowhere to hide: How a nuclear war would kill you — and almost everyone else.

“The impacts of nuclear war on agricultural food systems would have dire consequences for most humans who survive the war and its immediate effects.

The overall global consequences of nuclear war—including both short-term and long-term impacts—would be even more horrific causing hundreds of millions—even billions—of people to starve to death.”

By François Diaz-Maurin, Design by Thomas Gaulkin | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | October 20 thebulletin.org

This summer, the New York City Emergency Management department released a new public service announcement on nuclear preparedness, instructing New Yorkers about what to do during a nuclear attack. The 90-second video starts with a woman nonchalantly announcing the catastrophic news: “So there’s been a nuclear attack. Don’t ask me how or why, just know that the big one has hit.” Then the PSA video advises New Yorkers on what to do in case of a nuclear attack: Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned to media and governmental updates.

But nuclear preparedness works better if you are not in the blast radius of a nuclear attack. Otherwise, there’s no going into your house and closing your doors because the house will be gone. Now imagine there have been hundreds of those “big ones.” That’s what even a “small” nuclear war would include. If you are lucky not to be within the blast radius of one of those, it may not ruin your day, but soon enough, it will ruin your whole life.

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