Holy See tells nations at UN to end threat of nuclear weapons, even as deterrence
Amid a global arms race, ending the threat of nuclear war — and even the testing of nuclear weapons — is imperative, said the Holy See’s diplomat to the United Nations.
By OSV News | September 8, 2025 catholicreview.org
Archbishop Gabriele G. Caccia, the Holy See’s U.N. permanent observer, shared his thoughts in a statement he delivered Sept. 4 at U.N. headquarters in New York, during the General Assembly High-level Plenary Meeting to Commemorate and Promote the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, observed that same day.
“The pursuit of a world free of nuclear weapons is not only a matter of strategic and vital necessity, but also a profound moral responsibility,” Archbishop Caccia in his remarks.
He pointed to the introduction of nuclear weapons — first detonated by the U.S. in 1945 over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people, during World War II — as unveiling to the world “an unprecedented destructive force.”
Historic peace vigil partially dismantled after Trump orders: ‘Take it down’
Law enforcement officials on Sunday removed parts of the White House Peace Vigil, which has sat just outside the White House for decades.
By Marissa J. Lang, The Washington Post | September 8, 2025 washingtonpost.com
But over the past week, it faced a new threat as Trump turned his attention to the vigil and federal officers picked apart the structure that shields protesters and their signs from the elements. The vigil is maintained by a rotating cast of volunteers who keep the protest going 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
On Friday, Brian Glenn, a correspondent for the conservative network Real America’s Voice, told the president during a gathering with reporters that there was “a blue tent” in front of the White House that was “an eyesore.” Trump initially said he was unaware of it, but he then quickly ordered its removal.
Photo by Sig. Chiocciola, Creative Commons: The White House Peace Vigil on March 30, 2025 staffed by volunteers, Philipos Melaku-Bello (left) and Joe Brown (right).
For 80 years, nuclear weapons have been the unused threat
Amid a global arms race, ending the threat of nuclear war — and even the testing of nuclear weapons — is imperative, said the Holy See’s diplomat to the United Nations.
By Matt Kelly, mkelly@virginia.edu, September 3, 2025 news.virginia.edu
In the 80 years since World War II, which ended with the use of two atomic bombs, the world has maintained a tenuous relationship with nuclear weapons.
Philip Potter, professor of public policy at the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and director of the National Security Data and Policy Institute, said he worries about the current delicate nuclear balance.
“Eighty years of non-use is the product of both good diplomacy and a recognition of the potential consequences,” Potter said. “The fearsome power of nuclear weapons causes countries pause before they use them, but a great deal of work has also gone into nonproliferation and the management of crises to keep them away from the nuclear brink. In some ways the dynamics of the Cold War made managing the potential for nuclear confrontation easier.”
It’s a very different strategic scenario now, where there are nine nuclear powers and less capacity to manage them.
A House of Dynamite review – Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear endgame thriller is a terrifying, white-knuckle comeback
★★★★★: Amid a global arms race, ending the threat of nuclear war — and even the testing of nuclear weapons — is imperative, said the Holy See’s diplomat to the United Nations.
By Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian | September 2, 2025 theguardian.com
Kathryn Bigelow has reopened the subject that we all tacitly agree not to discuss or imagine, in the movies or anywhere else: the subject of an actual nuclear strike. It’s the subject which tests narrative forms and thinkability levels.
Maybe this is why we prefer to see it as something for absurdism and satire – a way of not staring into the sun – to remember Kubrick’s (brilliant) black comedy Dr Strangelove, with no fighting in the war room etc, rather than Lumet’s deadly serious Fail Safe.
Strong Political and Public Opposition Means Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF) in NM “Impossible in the Near Future”
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/15/nuke-waste-storage-nm-holtec
The two articles above describe new updates on Holtec’s nuclear waste storage plan in New Mexico.
Background: In June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision reinstated the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) license for a private “interim” high-level nuclear waste storage facility, formally known as a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF), in West Texas by the company Interim Storage Partners, reversing a prior appeals court ruling. Holtec claims this ruling also effectively restores their previously vacated license for its proposed CISF in Lea County, New Mexico.
New Mexico’s legal resistance to Holtec holds firm. State lawmakers passed Senate Bill 53 in March 2023, prohibiting any state agencies from permitting high-level radioactive waste storage projects. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has reiterated strong opposition, saying “Holtec is not welcome” in the state. https://sourcenm.com/2025/06/18/state-laws-protect-new-mexico-despite-scotus-nuclear-storage-ruling-against-texas-experts-say/
Big News: Just last month, on July 28, 2025, Holtec informed the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance (its local partner) that state legislation and political resistance have made the project “impossible in the near future.” Holtec intends to pursue termination of its revenue-sharing agreement with Eddy-Lea. Even with a license in hand, Holtec cannot proceed without state permits, and New Mexico law (SB 53) prohibits those.
The New Mexico and Texas state laws blocking CISF facilities were hard-won victories, and aggressive advocacy is ongoing to continue legal and legislative pressure against the storage plan. See https://beyondnuclear.org/is-holtec-pulling-out-of-new-mexico/ for more! Our colleague organization Beyond Nuclear and other environmental groups continue to argue against Holtec’s New Mexico CISF scheme, which has obtained an NRC license that, thus far anyway, has been upheld by the federal courts.
“We hope to nonetheless stop the Holtec CISF, as well as the Interim Storage Partners CISF, 40-some miles to the east of Holtec’s site, in Andrews County, Texas, despite court-backed NRC license approval.”
The June Supreme Court ruling reinstated Holtec’s license by deciding that outside groups (states, NGOs, industry challengers) lacked proper standing to block it. But the Court did not rule on the merits of whether NRC has the statutory authority under the NWPA to issue such a license in the first place. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 gives the Department of Energy (DOE) the job of managing the nation’s high-level radioactive waste. The NWPA does not authorize the NRC to license private, away-from-reactor “interim” storage sites like Holtec’s. This leaves the door open to future challenges, either in court or in Congress, about the legality of private CISFs.
The public and NM and TX state officials continue to decry the risks of these CISFs, including the real possibility of the “interim” site becoming effectively permanent, the increase in radioactive waste transport, and the broader impacts on communities near the oil-producing Permian Basin in west Texas and the already oversubscribed transuranic waste dump in southeastern New Mexico, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
NEW UPDATED INFORMATION: MUST READ!!! PROVIDED BY: THE TULAROSA BASIN DOWNWINDERS CONSORTIUM — WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE COMPENSATION AVAILABLE THROUGH THE RECA PROGRAM
SEEKING JUSTICE FOR THE UNKNOWING, UNWILLING, AND UNCOMPENSATED INNOCENT VICTIMS OF THE JULY 16, 1945 TRINITY BOMB
A Message From Tina
The DOJ is now accepting claims and has provided guidance on the claims process. They will only accept mail in claims at this time. They have indicated that an electronic process will be implemented by the end of the year. For more information you can go to the DOJ website at: https://www.justice.gov/civil/reca
Please be careful when supplying documentation via the regular mail. If you decide to file this way you may want to send the documents via certified mail. Once the electronic process begins it will be easier to assure that your documents are safe and being handled properly with little to no risk.
There are organizations/attorneys who are soliciting people to file claims with them. They use all sorts of tactics to get people to believe their services are necessary and often guarantee results. Please be aware that if an entity files a RECA claim on your behalf they will charge a fee. They receive the check, deduct their fee, and then pay you.
There will be Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP) clinics in our State that will assist people with claims. The claims process is not necessarily difficult and we’ll be training people to assist with the application process when needed. We’ll also be looking to government agencies to cooperate in locating necessary documentation for the application process. PLEASE DO NOT TURN OVER YOUR RECORDS TO ANYONE THAT YOU ARE NOT SURE ABOUT. You can remain updated about the application process, the training we’re going to organize or other questions you might have by going to our website at: www.trinitydownwinders.com
What does the expansion of RECA do?
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act program has been re-authorized and extended through Dec 31, 2028 but the application deadline is Dec 31, 2027.
Downwinders who lived in New Mexico for one year from 1944 through Nov. 1962 will be eligible and family members can apply on behalf of a deceased loved one.
There are 19 cancers that are covered by the expansion.
The cancers covered are:
Leukemia (except chronic lymphocytic Leukemia); Lymphoma (other than Hodgkins); Primary cancers of the Thyroid, Breast, Esophagus, Stomach, Pharynx, Small Intestine, Pancreas, Bile Duct, Gall Bladder, Salivary Gland, Urinary, Bladder, Brain, Colon, Ovary, Liver (unless cirrhosis/Hepatitis B present), and Lung.
Compensation for downwinders will be increased to $100,000 and Downwind coverage is expanded to cover the entire state of New Mexico
Coverage for uranium miners and workers would be expanded:
To workers through Dec 31, 1990
To core drillers and remediation workers
To cover additional kidney disease for uranium miners
To allow for combined work histories
What does this mean?
This is the biggest expansion of RECA in the history of the program and it wouldn’t have happened without the tireless advocacy of Senator Lujan, Representative Leger Fernandez, Senator Heinrich, Representative Stansbury and Representative Vasquez.
While it is a significant win, it still leaves out many impacted communities, including the parts of Nevada and Arizona not previously covered, along with Montana, Colorado, and Guam.
The 2-year extension will likely not be adequate time to get all the people in New Mexico who qualify enrolled and this bill does not have health care benefits for Downwinders. We will continue to fight for a longer extension and the addition of healthcare benefits. This is an important first step because it reinstates the program keeping it operational so people can continue to apply for benefits and get the help they need, and it shows that expansion is possible and provides an opportunity to address concerns raised about the cost of expansion.
We are grateful for the win and consider this a big step in the right direction. We look forward to the day that claims are successfully filed and the people of New Mexico begin to see the benefit of the expansion of RECA. Stay tuned for updates and many thanks to all of you who have stood together with us in this fight!Continue reading
Threads cast and crew suffered ‘trauma’ after film
The creators of a documentary about the making of nuclear apocalypse film Threads say many of the cast and crew had “suffered with the trauma of being involved”.
By Chloe Aslett, BBC News | August 29, 2025 bbc.com
Threads, which tracks the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Sheffield, was first screened on the BBC on 23 September 1984 and fast became a cult classic.
Now filmmakers Craig Ian Mann and Rob Nevitt have spoken to more than 50 people involved in the making of the film for their documentary Survivors: The Spectre of Threads.
Mr Mann said: “[Threads] is a film that more than any I can think of everybody who worked on it it has impacted their lives in some way or another. Sometimes very positively and sometimes somewhat negatively.”
“There are people who have suffered the trauma of having been in and seen Threads,” he told BBC Radio Sheffield.
“There’s one participant in the documentary who has become a Doomsday prepper.
“He lives in America and has a bunker and canned food and weapons and he is prepared for the end of the world at any moment and that’s because he was in and saw Threads.”
Trump wants to stop nuclear proliferation. STRATCOM could play a major role.
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, argues that the US needs to carry a new “big stick.”
By Henry Sokolski, Breaking Defense | August 29, 2025 breakingdefense.com
Last Monday, President Donald Trump pronounced, “We can’t let nuclear weapons proliferate.” Two days later, Secretary of State Rubio met with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi and recommitted the United States to preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
After America’s bombing of Iran’s suspect nuclear sites, there’s cause to take these commitments seriously, but only if it’s more than a one off.
Emphasizing consistency is essential. Historically, America has backed nonproliferation in fits and starts. Under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, the United States opposed the recycling of plutonium for commercial use because it was too close to bombmaking. It blocked reprocessing activities in South Korea, Taiwan, and Brazil.
Full Event Recording: Press Conference & Commemoration – Hiroshima Atomic Bombing 80th Anniversary Event (August 6, 2025)
DOE and LANL Silence Public and Tribal Community Member Voices While Pushing Radioactive Tritium Venting
For Immediate Release: August 22, 2025
Contact: Kalyn Mae Finnell, Coordinator, Communities for Clean Water
Los Alamos, NM — This week’s so-called “public meeting” regarding Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) proposal to vent radioactive tritium emphasized the persistence of the Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and LANL to disregard communities concerns while prioritizing nuclear weapons projects.
In-person attendees were allotted three minutes to make statements about their concerns. Over 100 online participants—including many Pueblo community members who could not attend the meeting in Los Alamos in-person due to health, distance, or work commitments—were surprised to find that they were not permitted to provide verbal comments and restricted to submitting only one emailed question. DOE/NNSA and LANL gave no prior notice of this change. “This is not meaningful participation. It is exclusion,” said Marissa Naranjo with Honor Our Pueblo Existence.
The stakes are at an all time high. Tritium — produced in the development of nuclear weapons as triated water — is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that travels quickly through air, water, soil, and food. When exposed to the human body, it can cause cancer, genetic damage, cross the placental barrier, and cause health impacts across generations. DOE/NNSA insists venting is the sole safe option moving forward—however, their own “independent” technical review revealed significant issues with this assertion. The review acknowledged significant deficiencies: the absence of real-time monitoring, a lack of container-specific risk analysis, and insufficient examination of safer alternatives such as filtration or storage until decay occurs. Community members are also asking: How can a review be independent when DOE managed the process, designated the reviewer, and defined the scope? This does not represent independence—it signifies a conflict of interest.
“This is the same broken pattern we’ve seen for decades,” said Joni Arends with Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. “LANL creates the danger, then tells us radioactive releases are our only option. They force the public and Pueblo communities into what NMED itself has called ‘untenable situations.'”
Local community leaders also noted that DOE has consistently overlooked reports by Tewa Women United, Communities for Clean Water, and scientific experts regarding the risks associated with tritium. These technical reports documented exposure pathways unique to Pueblo communities, including impacts on women, children, and traditional farming lifeways. By sidelining this research, DOE has once again dismissed Indigenous voices and lived experiences—further diminishing trust and perpetuating environmental racism.
“If our gathering here today is to mean anything, it must mean that in fidelity to all those whose lives were destroyed or savagely damaged on August 6, 80 years ago, we refuse to live in such a world of nuclear proliferation and risk-taking. We will resist, we will organize, we will pray, we will not cease, until the world’s nuclear arsenals have been destroyed.”
— Cardinal Bob McElroy of Washington, DC, August 5, 2025, at the World Peace Memorial Cathedral in Hiroshima, Japan.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: August 2025
Nuclear Weapons Budget:
• NNSA’s detailed budget was finally released, the latest ever. $2.8 billion is for “plutonium modernization” (i.e., pit production) projects, of which $1.8 billion for LANL. The Lab’s nuclear weapons programs are having a full billion dollars added to them for FY 2026 (which begins this October 1) on top of the $4 billion they already have. The Lab’s $6 billion FY 2026 budget is now 84% nuclear weapons. Meanwhile cleanup and nonproliferation programs are being cut by 5% and renewable energy research completely eliminated.
• Over for the next four years the “reconciliation” bill adds another $750 million for plutonium modernization (mostly at SRS) and $1 billion “to accelerate the construction of National Nuclear Security Administration facilities.”Continue reading
August 6th U.S. Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Commemoration in Santa Fe
Nobel Peace Conference: A Message to Humanity – Featuring a Video with Nuclear Watch New Mexico on Our Plutonium Pit Federal Lawsuit to Show What Citizen Action on the Legal Front Can Accomplish for Nuclear Disarmament
The video above shows the entire conference (but begins playing at our portion); to view our video alone on YouTube CLICK HERE or watch below!
Santa Fe New Mexican MY VIEW – 80 years on: The immorality of nuclear weapons
By John C. Wester, SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN | August 5, 2024 santafenewmexican.com
Greetings New Mexicans. The lord’s blessings upon you. I am writing to you from Hiroshima, Japan, on the 80th anniversary of its horrific atomic bombing. All wars are against Christ’s teachings. Two wrongs (including Japanese atrocities in World War II) never make a right.
I am here with Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle and our brother Japanese bishops to commemorate the dead and to honor the living Hibakusha (the aging atomic survivors). We especially congratulate the Hibakusha organization, Nihon Hidankyo, for winning the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.Continue reading
‘End the nuclear cycle’: Antinuclear New Mexicans speak out 80 years after Hiroshima bombing
Organized by Nuclear Watch New Mexico, the event featured speakers from the international campaign — which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 — the Back from the Brink New Mexico Hub and the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, a group that advocates for “downwinders” in New Mexico who say they were sickened by fallout from the 1945 Trinity Test southeast of Socorro.
By Cormac Dodd cdodd@sfnewmexican.com, The Santa Fe New Mexican | August 6, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
The face of Archbishop John C. Wester played over the screen as the Catholic leader, on the same day surreal moments of horror unfolded during the bombing of Hiroshima 80 years ago, pleaded for nuclear disarmament.
“Do we pull back from the brink and choose life, or do we continue to play with fire, hoping our luck will hold out?” the leader of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe said in a video, recently recorded before he traveled to Japan with a delegation of U.S. bishops.
Wester has made antinuclear advocacy a central part of his tenure since he was appointed to the post in 2015. A group of about 50 people entered the Center for Progress and Justice on Cerrillos Road on Wednesday evening to commemorate the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of World War II.
New Mexico reckons with its role in Japan’s atomic devastation on 80th anniversary of Hiroshima
At a Wednesday evening event organized by Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Archbishop John C. Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, long an outspoken advocate of nuclear disarmament, is set to celebrate Mass in Japan for victims with some other U.S. Catholic bishops and will participate in commemoration services. The event will be played by video at an event in Santa Fe.
By Cormac Dodd cdodd@sfnewmexican.com, The Santa Fe New Mexican | August 5, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
Wesley Burris remembers waking to a morning of potent, white light and panic as the planet’s first atomic bomb went off in a test in the Jornada del Muerto desert near his family’s Southern New Mexico home in July 1945.
He does not recall, however, hearing the news from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan over the radio just weeks later. In fact, because the U.S. government did not tell his family what it was they saw that July, it was years before Burris realized how the Trinity Test he witnessed as a child served as a prelude to the world-altering bombings of Japan on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945.
Eighty years ago, the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima near the end of World War II, unleashing immediate death on a sweeping scale and rendering vast corridors in the southwestern Japanese city charred and fragmented, with buildings reduced to rubble with harrowing speed.
Santa Fe Archbishop Wester on RECA, Nuclear Weapons
80 years after nuclear bomb tested in N.M., victims will get reparations
NBC News NOW, July 16, 2025, nbcnewsnow.com
Trinity “downwinders” of New Mexico exposed to the first ever nuclear explosion are receiving recognition and compensation 80 years after the bomb was tested. NBC News’ Aaron Gilchrest spoke with several people who shared their sacrifice and suffering over the years.
An appreciation of Bob Alvarez, a fearless advocate for those harmed by the US nuclear weapons complex
By Michael Slater – The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists| July 10, 2025, thebulletin.org
SEE ALSO: THIS WONDERFUL TRIBUTE TO BOB ALVAREZ FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR & OTHERS: https://beyondnuclear.org/bob-alvarez-presente/
And view the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s Lifetime Achievement Awared given to Bob in 2022: https://ananuclear.org/bob-alvarez/
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: June/July 2025
Nuclear Weapons Budget:
• The just passed “reconciliation” bill and Trump’s proposed FY 2026 budget are reverse Robin Hood iniatives, robbing from the poor to give to the rich. While Medicaid is gutted, there are huge tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and a big bump up for nuclear weapons.
• The following is from the DC-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (https://armscontrolcenter.org/fiscal-year-2026-defense-budget-request-briefing-book/):
Note: the + or – signs result from the “reconciliation” bill.
• Radiation Exposure Compensation Act: Sen. Josh Hawley of MO got RECA extension and expansion attached to the bill, which is really something. Tina Cordova of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium has acknowledged that many deserving people have still been left out. See more: https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/new-mexico-downwinders-celebrate-bittersweet-victory-in-trumps-big-beautiful-bill/article_9dc4ae5e-d4d0-4689-a255-a83576076963.html Finally, it is good for only two years because it was part of budget “reconciliation” that is supposed to deal only with funding matters (hence is limited to this 2-year term of Congress). We will continue to fight to get RECA permanently extended and expanded.
Nuclear Weapons Update:
The manufacture of new pits has more to do, as per the last Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), with preserving and “modernizing” the infrastructure than it does with the warheads themselves. This is in essence a huge continuing program of institutional preservation that guarantees large inflows of taxpayer dollars and corporate profits.
Further, we are talking about W87-1 pits for the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, which is already 80% over budget before the Air Force admitted it had to build new silos. Moreover, the reported production of ~800 plutonium pits when there are only to be 400 fielded Sentinels may lead to the uploading of multiple warheads per missile (AKA MIRVing for Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles). This is regarded as deeply destabilizing since land-based ICBMs are known fixed targets which encourage pre-emptive strikes and/or use them or lose them scenarios.
Accelerating Arms Race
• The U.S. bombed Iranian hardened, deeply buried uranium enrichment sites with B2s carrying 30,000 lb. conventional bunker busters (32 hours roundtrip from Whiteman AFB in Missouri). The U.S. has rushed produced nuclear B61-13s for this kind of job.
Planned Nuclear Weapons Activities Increase to 84% of Lab’s Budget; All Other Programs Cut
The Department of Energy and Los Alamos National Laboratory have released the LANL congressional budget request for the upcoming fiscal year, 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025. The request shows a continued major increase and expansion of the plutonium pit production program (plutonium pits are the triggers of nuclear weapons). LANL is frantically trying to increase its capabilities to begin making 30 pits per year by 2028.
NukeWatch created the attached chart to give a visual of how taxpayer dollars are annually spent at the Lab. LANL’s FY 2026 total budget request is $6 billion, which is a 17% increase over the FY 2025 $5.2 billion total budget. This includes a 24% increase in the nuclear weapons budget over FY 2025.
Nuclear Weapons Activities represent 84% of LANL’s total budget.
Under the headline of “Unleashing a Golden Era of Energy Dominance and Energy Innovation and Protecting the Nation,” the nuclear weapons budget is increasing dramatically. As a baseline, 65% of the Department’s proposed $46 billion budget is earmarked for its semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). In turn, more than 80% of NNSA’s proposed FY 2026 funding is for its nuclear weapons research and production programs, with a 25% funding increase over FY 2025.
Due to so-called “reconciliation” funding, “Total Weapons Activities” increase to just under $30 billion. This adds up to a 53% increase above FY 2025 for the nuclear weapons research and production programs across the country. To help pay for this, national nonproliferation and cleanup programs are being cut by 5%, science by 14%, cybersecurity and emergency response by 25%, and energy efficiency and renewable energy programs by 74%.
NukeWatch in DC Lobbying for Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation
Your Nuclear Watch New Mexico team has just returned from a weeklong trip to Washington D.C. (we went so you don’t have to!). The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) hosts an annual “DC Days” conference and following Spring Meeting, and we proudly joined as part of a record number of groups this year. Over 60 individuals from 30+ organizations journeyed to DC to lobby congress on nuclear weapons, energy, and waste policy on behalf of the frontline nuclear communities we represent. Members were present from groups representing the entire U.S. nuclear complex, including sites in Georgia, New Mexico, Tennessee, California, Missouri, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and beyond. NukeWatch NM brought all three staff members—Jay Coghlan, Scott Kovac, and Sophia Stroud (whose participation was made possible by a youth scholarship from ANA)—to participate in DC Days and the subsequent two-day spring meeting. The ANA DC Days schedule included over 70 meetings with senators, representatives, and other relevant agencies, such as the Department of Energy, the Government Accountability Office, and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Our NukeWatch team attended nearly 30 of these meetings. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability put together a new report to present our “asks” to congress as a coalition, including analysis and recommendations for nuclear weapons, nuclear waste, and nuclear energy policy and funding. Please click HERE for the full report, and HERE for a short summary.
I was glad to see increased representation from Nevada this year, and especially Indigenous representation. In light of the current administration’s attacks on Environmental Justice, it is more important than ever that ANA as a whole, as well as individual member groups, continue to prioritize uplifting Native American voices, not only because of their deep cultural, spiritual, and social connections to the land, including sacred sites and traditional knowledge essential to religious freedom and access, but also because of the violent legacy and ongoing reality of nuclear colonialism, in which Indigenous lands and peoples have been deliberately and disproportionately targeted in the nuclear industry with uranium mining, nuclear weapons testing and production, and the disposal of radioactive waste. To learn more about Nuclear Colonialism, see: www.networkadvocates.org/downwinders and read Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos by Myrriah Gómez.
THE ATOMIC BOWL: Football at Ground Zero —and Nuclear Peril Today
First prize, Best Documentary Feature, International Uranium Film Festival, Rio de Janiero
Coming to PBS in July 2025. (53-minute and 27-minute versions).
There have been numerous films on The Bomb, even one or two about Nagasaki, but “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero — and Nuclear Peril Today” is unique, and with many lessons and warnings for today–as nuclear dangers proliferate and civilian casualties in wars climb even higher.
This football showdown featured college and pro stars, on January 1, 1946, and in (of all places) Nagasaki, near ground zero for the second atomic bomb, which killed over 80,000 just a few weeks earlier. The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, is not only the first full first-hand account of the game, but a provocative and disturbing story of the decision to drop a second atomic bomb just three days after Hiroshima–and the dangerous message to today’s leaders. Nearly all of the victims of the “forgotten bomb” were women and children and other civilians.
This important film, which includes rare footage and dozens of never published photographs, then offers a convincing argument about the relevance of Nagasaki today as mass civilian casualties in wars surge and nuclear dangers by all estimates grow every year.
Its writer and director Greg Mitchell has been one of the world’s leading authorities on the atomic bombings for several decades, and his recent film, “Atomic Cover-up,” won several awards, including the top prize from the Organization of American Historians and was aired via PBS. His two other recent films, “The First Attack Ads” and the award-winning “Memorial Day Massacre,” also earned PBS distribution (as well as Emmy nods), and like “The Atomic Bowl” were produced by Academy Award nominee Lyn Goldfarb.
Victory! Proposed Tritium Venting by LANL Halted for Now Due to Community Pressure
Proposed Tritium Venting by Los Alamos National Lab Postponed Indefinitely after Community Pressure
THANK YOU to the over 2,500 of you who signed our Petition to Deny LANL’s Request to Release Radioactive Tritium into the Air!
A massive thank you as well to our fellow campaigners we worked alongside on this issue, Tewa Women United and Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, and of course thank you as well to NMED Secretary Kenney for listening to our community.
From Tewa Women United:
Beloved Community, we have some really good news!
Our Environmental Justice team has finally received the response from the New Mexico Environmental Department regarding the LANL/DOE/NNSA request for temporary authorization to begin venting tritium this summer. The short story: **Secretary Kenney (NMED) says that NMED will not act on the temporary authorization request** until the following criteria is met:
1. independent technical review
2. public meeting
3. tribal consultation (in addition to NMED tribal consultation)
4. compliance audit
These criteria must be met and LANL/DOE/NNSA must submit an updated request before NMED will revisit and make a decision.
TELEVISION EVENT Trailer
Television Event is a documentary that follows the dramatic (and sometimes humorous) making and impact of the film The Day After. The 1983 film played a pivotal role in shifting public consciousness around nuclear weapons and, ultimately, President Reagan’s policies. It’s a reminder on the power of art and storytelling to create meaningful change.
The documentary was also reviewed in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/movies/the-day-after-documentary-television-event.html
More:
In 2023 a book was publishedd about the making of “The Day After”, read the review in Arms Control Today: https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-03/book-reviews/apocalypse-television-how-day-after-helped-end-cold-war
As well as: “‘The Day After’: The Arms Control Association’s Forgotten Role.” <https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-03/features/day-after-arms-control-associations-forgotten-role> It is a reminder that a few people can, with some luck and good timing, put big things into motion.
Full Recording: Second Scoping Hearing for NNSA’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on Plutonium Pit Production
Operation Crossroads: “The World’s First Nuclear Disaster”
“With Trump back in office, the recurring question of the need for nuclear weapons testing has resurfaced in the national security debate. Project 2025’s directive that the US return to ‘immediate test readiness’ raises further alarm, given the primacy of that document in Trump’s circle. The general uncertainty around current U.S. nuclear posture gives added weight to the historical importance of the atmospheric and underwater nuclear weapons tests conducted on the Bikini Atoll, recounted here by one of the leading advocates for public safety in the nuclear age. —Ed.”
By Robert Alvarez | Washington Spectator, National Security | May 29, 2025, washingtonspectator.com
Beginning in the late 1970’s, I was working for the Environmental Policy Institute around the time when atomic veterans started to descend on the nation’s capital. I would arrange meetings with Congressional offices, and the offices of both the Defense Nuclear Agency and Veterans Affairs, to enable the veterans to share their experiences and seek justice for being sent in harm’s way. About 250,000 soldiers, sailors, Marines, Coast Guard men, and airmen took part in atmospheric nuclear weapons tests from 1945 to 1963.
John Smitherman and Anthony Guarisco were 17- and 18-year-old sailors, respectively, in July of 1946, when they took part in “Operation Crossroads”—the first two nuclear weapons tests following World War II. These tests were conducted on the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands and codenamed “Able” and “Baker.”
As a result of this extraordinary indifference to lethal danger, some 200 U.S. Navy ships were contaminated, and ships carrying radioactive fallout subsequently sailed to home ports in California. These ports are still being cleaned up today, nearly 80 years later. Glenn Seaborg, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1961 to 1971, described the Baker test as “the world’s first nuclear disaster.”
Anthony and John were part of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet involving 40,000 service men and 2,000 civilians. They along with others swam in the heavily contaminated Bikini Lagoon. When I met them in 1980, John was suffering from lymphatic cancer and Anthony from a severe form of spinal arthritis.
In March 1983, Anthony and his wife Mary showed up at my cluttered office and ceremoniously handed me a large stack of documents. They had just visited the UCLA library in Los Angeles and found boxes of forgotten, declassified documents belonging to Dr. Stafford Warren, the chief safety officer during both the Manhattan Project and the 1946 Crossroads tests.
Full Recording: First Scoping Hearing for NNSA’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on Plutonium Pit Production
NEW Report on Plutonium Pit Production from the Union of Concerned Scientists
Today, UCS is releasing a comprehensive report on plutonium pit production. It includes a technical assessment of plutonium aging, a critical look at the weapons programs that new pits are slated for, and suggestions for alternatives, including pit re-use.
The final chapter of the study is on the human and environmental impacts of pit production and is intended as a tool for local advocacy groups to deepen their own work around issues such as the programmatic environmental impact survey that has just kicked off.
Links to the report:
https://www.ucs.org/resources/plutonium-pit-production
Spanish language executive summary:
https://es.ucs.org/recursos/la-produccion-de-nucleos-de-plutonio
Plutonium Pit PEIS Scoping Hearing Presentation: Slides and Recording
Get Prepared: A coalition of advocacy groups, including Union of Concerned Scientists, Tri-Valley CAREs, and NukeWatch New Mexico recently held a training to help participants prepare effective comments.
Watch the recording here
Password: gP=&0LYZ
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: May 2025
Nuclear Weapons Budget:
• Republicans are pushing for $1 trillion per year for military spending. The fiscal 2026 budget request calls for $892.6 billion in discretionary defense funding — same as FY 2025 (and a cut given inflation). But they are also seeking $119.3 billion through budget “reconciliation.”
• Congressional Budget Office “Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2025 to 2034,” April 2025:
“Costs of Current Plans: If carried out, DoD’s and DOE’s plans to operate, sustain, and modernize current nuclear forces and purchase new forces would cost a total of $946 billion over the 2025–2034 period, or an average of about $95 billion a year, CBO estimates… CBO’s current estimate of costs for the 2025–2034 period is 25 percent (or $190 billion) larger than its 2023 estimate of $756 billion, which covered the 2023–2032 period.” https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-04/61224-NuclearForces.pdf
Separately it was reported that the twelve new Columbia class submarines will cost $12 billion each, three times more than their projected cost in 2010 and is years behind schedule.
Nuclear Weapons Update:
Nuclear weapons and delivery systems would get an added $12.9 billion in the new reconciliation proposal. This includes $2 billion for sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles and $400 million for their warhead.
Accelerating Arms Race
• The current conflict between India and Pakistan is dangerous.
• 4-4-25 ExchangeMonitor: https://www.exchangemonitor.com/wrap-up-russias-modern-arsenal-and-nukes-in-ukraine-deputy-secretary-of-energy-hearing-rubio-japan-and-rok-in-brussels-more/
“Russia’s top commander in Ukraine Gen. Sergei Surovikin discussed using nuclear weapons to prevent Ukraine from advancing into Crimea in the fall of 2022, the New York Times said March 29. The Times cited U.S. intelligence reports…”
Lawsuit Compels Nationwide Public Review of Plutonium Bomb Core Production
AIKEN, S.C. — Today the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within the Department of Energy, published a formal Notice of Intent in the Federal Register to complete a nationwide “programmatic environmental impact statement” on the expanded production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores. Pits are the essential radioactive triggers of modern nuclear weapons. The NNSA is aggressively seeking their expanded production for new-design nuclear weapons for the new nuclear arms race.
The South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) successfully represented the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition and Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment in a legal challenge to NNSA’s attempt to improperly jump start dual site pit production. On September 30, 2024, United States District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled that the NNSA had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with its plan to produce at least 30 pits per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and at least 50 pits per year at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
NNSA issues plans to assess pits environmental impact
“This programmatic environmental impact statement that we fought long and hard for empowers citizens to tell policy makers what they think about decisions being made in their name,” Jay Coghlan, from environmentalist group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said Thursday in a press release by the plaintiffs of the case. “Let them know what you think about the $2 trillion ‘modernization’ program to keep nuclear weapons forever while domestic programs are gutted to pay for tax cuts for the rich.”
By ExchangeMonitor | May 9, 2025 exchangemonitor.com
On the heels of a federal judge’s ruling last fall, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration formally announced plans Friday for a detailed review of environmental impacts of planned plutonium pit production.
DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced in the Federal Register it is kicking off a programmatic environmental impact statement EIS to ensure that large-scale pit production will comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
According to the Federal Register notice, NNSA will hold public meetings and public hearings as part of the process.
Two online public scoping meetings are now scheduled for May 27 and May 28. The May 27 session would commence at 5 p.m. Eastern Time while the May 28 one is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. Eastern. Both can be accessed online or by phone. Details can be found in the Federal Register notice.
A federal district judge ruled last September that DOE and NNSA did not adequately analyze the environmental effects of producing the radioactive cores that trigger nuclear weapons in two different states, but declined to put the pit program, including construction of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility at Aiken, S.C.’s Savannah River Site on hold as a result. In January, the federal government and the plaintiffs, consisting of environmentalists, settled the lawsuit and agreed to leave Los Alamos National Laboratory as the sole pit factory until NNSA completes a nationwide, NEPA-compliant programmatic EIS.Continue reading
US nuclear firm ‘utterly crucial’ to national security expands East Tennessee operations
“Which company produces uranium fuel for U.S. Navy nuclear reactors and manages the only plant where the government disassembles atomic warheads? What about the company helping NASA to develop a nuclear rocket, all while building small modular reactors and developing a pilot plant to restart uranium enrichment for the military?”
By Daniel Dassow, Knoxville News Sentinel | May 5, 2025 newsbreak.com
It’s all the same answer: BWX Technologies , the $2.7 billion juggernaut better known as BWXT has embedded itself in every kind of nuclear project imaginable with a strong and growing presence in East Tennessee, where 1,100 employees at its Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin “downblend” bomb-grade uranium. The facility also creates fuel for the nuclear reactors aboard U.S. Navy submarines and aircraft carriers.
The region is even more important to BWXT after it bought a specialized facility in Jonesborough and 97 acres in Oak Ridge for a centrifuge enrichment project the company says will create hundreds of jobs through millions of dollars in investments.
“We have availed ourselves as a key player in just about every interesting nuclear opportunity that you can think of,” BWXT President and CEO Rex Geveden told Knox News. “We’re all over it.”
BWXT is part of the team led by the Tennessee Valley Authority to build the first small modular nuclear reactors in the U.S. at the federal utility’s Clinch River Nuclear Site in Oak Ridge .
It will manufacture the reactor pressure vessel, the largest component of the 300-megawatt reactor designed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy , for small modular reactors in the U.S. and Canada.
Curb the Skyrocketing Cost of U.S. Nuclear Modernization
“Since Russia and the United States agreed 15 years ago to modest nuclear reductions under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), they also have embarked on extraordinarily expensive campaigns to replace and modernize every component of their respective nuclear arsenals to maintain force levels and provide the option to build up.”
By Daryl G. Kimball, Arms Control Today | May 1, 2025 newsbreak.com
At the same time, their leaders have failed to resolve disputes about existing treaties or launch new negotiations to limit or further cut their deadly arsenals below the New START ceiling of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 strategic missiles and bombers each.
In 2018, shortly after he withdrew the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, U.S. President Donald Trump foolishly bragged about the nuclear stockpile that “until people come to their senses, we will build it up. It’s a threat to whoever you want, and it includes China, and it includes Russia, and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game.”
China has responded to U.S. nuclear and conventional military plans by pursuing a buildup of its historically “minimal” nuclear force to ensure that it retains an assured “second strike” capability. Russia has continued to develop new types of intermediate range missiles, as well as some new and exotic strategic systems designed to bypass U.S. missile defense capabilities.
Successive presidential administrations and congresses have failed to seriously consider alternatives that would have reduced costs and still maintained a devastating nuclear force.
Now, the cost of the U.S. nuclear modernization program is skyrocketing even further, siphoning resources from other more pressing human needs and national security priorities.
In April, the Congressional Budget Office issued its latest 10-year cost projection of the departments of Defense and Energy plans to operate, sustain, and modernize existing U.S. nuclear forces and purchase new forces: a total of $946 billion in the 2025-2034 period, or about $95 billion per year.
This new estimate is 25 percent, or $190 billion, greater than the last CBO estimate of $756 billion, which covered the 2023-2032 period. Incredibly, the $946 billion estimate does not include all of the likely cost growth of the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, which the Pentagon acknowledged in July 2024 would cost 81 percent, or $63 billion, more than the program’s baseline estimate of $78 billion, generated in 2020.
Find Out the Facts & Sign the Petition: Why NMED Should Deny LANL’s Request for Tritium Releases
Why NMED Should Deny LANL’s Request for Tritium Releases
The Los Alamos National Laboratory plans to begin large releases of radioactive tritium gas any time after June 2, 2025. The only roadblock to the Lab’s plans is that it needs a “Temporary Authorization” from the New Mexico Environment Department to do so.
Reasons why NMED should deny LANL’s request are:
- The state Environment Department has a duty to protect the New Mexican As it states, “Our mission is to protect and restore the environment and to foster a healthy and prosperous New Mexico for present and future generations.” 1
- Why the rush? LANL explicitly admits there is no urgency. According to the Lab’s publicly-released “Questions and Answers” in response to “What is the urgency for this project?”
“There is no urgency for this project beyond the broader mission goals to reduce onsite waste liabilities.” 2
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- In addition, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) admits that the end time frame for action is 2028, not 2025.3 Therefore, there is time for deliberate consideration.
- Contrary to NMED’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permit for LANL, the Lab has not fulfilled its duty to inform the public via NMED of possible alternatives to its planned tritium releases.4 According to Tewa Women United, “LANL has told EPA there are 53 alternatives; that list of alternatives, initially requested in 2022, has not yet been Tewa Women United has repeatedly asked LANL to provide the public with that list.” 5
University of New Mexico to host exhibit on nuclear history, technology, weapons
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) — A provocative international exhibit will open soon at the University of New Mexico. “the bomb” is an immersive, multi-media installation exploring the history, technology, and threat of nuclear weapons.
By Nicole Sanders, KRQE | April 22, 2025 krqe.com
The installation includes an hour-long film projected on 45 screens conveying the hidden chaos and danger of the nuclear age. The experience is coming to UNM from April 30 to May 30. The full schedule at Zimmerman Library is available below:
- Wednesday, April 30
- Friday, May 2, 2025
- Friday, May 9, 2025
- Friday, May 16, 2025
- Friday, May 23, 2025
- Friday, May 30, 2025
Nuclear News Archive – 2022
‘Nuclear accident’ warnings amid Russia missile strikes
By Paraic O’Brien | October 6, 2022 channel4news.com
Russia has faced weeks of military defeats in Ukraine, but today brought a reminder its military is still able to cause substantial destruction.
Overnight, and again this morning, the city of Zaporizhzhia suffered a series of missile attacks, including a direct strike on a residential apartment building.
The strikes raised concerns for the nearby nuclear power plant, leading to a warning from the International Atomic Energy Agency that an accident there is “a very clear possibility”.
NY TIMES: I’ve Studied 13 Days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This Is What I See When I Look at Putin.
By Michael Dobbs, The New York Times | October 5, 2022 nytimes.com
Two nuclear-armed states on a collision course with no obvious exit ramp. An erratic Russian leader using apocalyptic language — “if you want us to all meet in hell, it’s up to you.” Showdowns at the United Nations, with each side accusing the other of essentially gambling with Armageddon. For six …
Los Alamos National Laboratory’s pit production a year behind schedule
“Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said the lab has a history of delays and cost overruns that predates the pandemic.
“I suspect LANL and [the federal government] are using COVID as a convenient excuse for what’s going to happen anyway,” Coghlan said. “I’m certainly not saying there was no delay for COVID, but I doubt this much.”
Coghlan said the revelation is significant because it’s the first official confirmation the Los Alamos lab is running behind schedule with its planned pit production.”
BY SCOTT WYLAND, THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN | October 5, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
(Tribune News Service) — Los Alamos National Laboratory’s effort to produce 30 nuclear bomb cores a year by 2026 was stalled for 13 months because of the coronavirus pandemic, calling into question whether it can make the much-touted target.
An anti-nuclear activist obtained a redacted management plan for the lab’s plutonium operations through a Freedom of Information Act Request, which describes how the production deadline is more likely to be missed because of preparatory work being delayed during a hard-hitting stretch of the pandemic.
STATEMENT: Archbishop Wester on Feast Day of St. Francis, Pray for Peace in Ukraine, Abolition of Nuclear Weapons
Today, October 4 is the feast day of St. Francis, the tireless promoter of peace and patron saint of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
Pope Francis chose his name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, and three days ago, he declared:
“The course of the war in Ukraine has become so serious, devastating, and threatening as to cause great concern… [W]hat about the fact that humanity is once again faced with the atomic threat? It is absurd… It increases the risk of nuclear escalation, giving rise to fears of uncontrollable and catastrophic consequences worldwide.”
This October is the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, about which then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said humanity survived only by luck. Sixty years later, we are facing the most serious nuclear threats since then.
Pope Francis has called for the abolition of nuclear weapons, declaring they can no longer be justified even by the deterrence strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Biden Thinks Non-Nuclear Threats Will Stop Putin. His Military Doesn’t
“We’re in uncharted territory,” says a senior intelligence officer. “Threatening to respond forcefully and creating catastrophic consequences for Russia [without] suggesting nuclear war: Is that strong enough to deter Putin? And is it really clear? I’m not so sure.”
BY | September 30, 2022 newsweek.com
The United States would “respond forcefully” to any Russian nuclear strike, President Biden said—but there’s a divide between his administration and some of his military advisers over the role of American nuclear weapons and the most effective way to deter Vladimir Putin, knowledgeable sources tell Newsweek.
“It’s the closest we’ve been to the use of nuclear weapons in over 50 years,” says one civilian working at the Omaha, Nebraska-based Strategic Command. “But I’m not so sure that we are communicating the right thing to deter Putin.”
The Age of Predatory Nuclear-Weapon States Has Arrived
Putin’s nuclear threat marks the start of a new era.
POLITICO | Opinion by Stephen Young, Union of Concerned Scientists | September 30, 2022 politico.com
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes at least one thing clear: It’s time for us to update how we think about nuclear weapons. For the first time in the nuclear era, one country used loudly issued nuclear threats — repeated just last week — to deter other countries from intervening in a large-scale conventional war of aggression. We have entered the age of “predatory nuclear-weapon states.”
For political analysts and military officials, this is not an unexpected phenomenon. On the contrary, the concept falls under the so-called stability-instability paradox. Because the threat of nuclear war is so terrifying and the risk of annihilation so real, lower-level conflict actually becomes more feasible. One nuclear-armed country can undertake major conventional military action, expecting that its nuclear capability will prevent outside intervention. That is what’s happening in Ukraine.
BREAKING: Putin illegally annexes 4 occupied regions, escalating war as Ukraine applies to join NATO
“Kyiv has vowed to keep fighting to retake its occupied land, and on Friday appeared on the verge of handing Russia’s military another significant setback.”
NBC NEWS | September 30, 2022 nbcnews.com
The Russian leader repeated his threats of nuclear war to defend his fragile hold over the annexed territory, a dramatic escalation of the seven-month conflict that has seen Moscow respond to heavy losses by calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists and intensifying its confrontation with the West.
The speech was met with an immediate response by Kyiv and its allies.
As well as announcing the annexation, Putin has partially mobilized his military — prompting domestic blowback and an exodus of Russians fleeing the draft — and ramped up his nuclear threats against Ukraine and the West. The moves are seen as a wider escalation after a series of punishing battlefield defeats at the hands of a lightning counteroffensive by Kyiv.
UN chief calls for end to ‘era of nuclear blackmail’
Guterres renews call for the abolition of nuclear weapons as concerns grow over Russia’s threat to use them in Ukraine.
ALJAZEERA | September 26, 2022 aljazeera.com
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has renewed his call for the global abolition of nuclear weapons as concerns grow over Russia’s threat to use them in the Ukraine war.
“Decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we can hear once again the rattling of nuclear sabres,” Guterres told a special UN General Assembly session on nuclear disarmament on Monday.
Nuke waste managers work to improve safety after incidents at repository near Carlsbad
Crews at Idaho National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad met last week to improve safety standards shared between the two facilities after a string of problematic waste shipments from the lab triggered a state investigation.
Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus | September 22, 2022 yahoo.com
So far this year, WIPP personnel were alerted to issues with three shipments of transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste from the Idaho lab, leading to suspensions of waste shipments from the biggest shipper of waste to WIPP.
The first incident was reported on April 9, per a letter from the New Mexico Environment Department which regulates the U.S. Department of Energy’s permit to operate WIPP, and involved a liquid substance found on a waste drum that initially tested positive for radioactivity.
This led to an evacuation of the waste handling building, and a temporary halt on shipments of that kind from Idaho National Laboratory while the waste was sent back to Idaho.
Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection
“Atmospheric soot loadings from nuclear weapon detonation would cause disruptions to the Earth’s climate, limiting terrestrial and aquatic food production. Here, we use climate, crop and fishery models to estimate the impacts arising from six scenarios of stratospheric soot injection, predicting the total food calories available in each nation post-war after stored food is consumed. In quantifying impacts away from target areas, we demonstrate that soot injections larger than 5 Tg would lead to mass food shortages, and livestock and aquatic food production would be unable to compensate for reduced crop output, in almost all countries. Adaptation measures such as food waste reduction would have limited impact on increasing available calories.
We estimate more than 2 billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia—underlining the importance of global cooperation in preventing nuclear war.”
NATURE | August 2022 nature.com
FULL ARTICLE – NATURE
Watchdog sues nuclear agency over LANL evaluations
“Coghlan said an example of why the full assessment is necessary is a note on last year’s report for the Los Alamos lab saying it had struggled with some production activities and experienced several challenges carrying out the plutonium mission, and “mission execution was impacted by lapses in safety performance.”
By Scott Wyland swyland@sfnewmexican.com The Santa Fe New Mexican | September 17, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
A New Mexico watchdog group is suing the federal agency that oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons programs for issuing only summaries of its yearly report cards on national laboratories and withholding what the group contends is vital information on deficiencies.
The lawsuit seeks to compel the National Nuclear Security Administration to post in its public reading room the complete report cards for the eight national laboratories involved in nuclear weapons — ones it has withheld in the past and all future assessments.
Allowing the public to see, in particular, the full report on Los Alamos National Laboratory’s shortcomings is increasingly important as the lab gears up to make 30 plutonium bomb cores a year with an escalating federal budget, Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said in a statement.
The National Nuclear Security Administration’s yearly report cards assess the performances of contracted lab operators and award bonuses to the organizations based on their grades in a process that is not classified, Coghlan argued.
Continue reading
Archbishop Wester Pleas For Nuclear Disarmament At Annual United Nations Evening Prayer Service
The Los Alamos Reporter | September 15, 2022 losalamosreporter.com
The following is a link to the homily delivered Monday by Most Rev. John C. Wester at the Annual United Nations Evening Prayer Service at Holy Family Catholic Church in New York:
Exchange Monitor Round-Up: Anti-nukers sue for full performance evals
By Exchange Monitor | September 15, 2022 exchangemonitor.com
In a new lawsuit, the anti-nuclear group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Santa Fe, demanded that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) turn over “full and complete Performance Evaluation Reports” for the contractors managing the agency’s nuclear-weapon…
‘Scoping’ The New LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement
BY JAY COGHLAN
Executive Director, Nuclear Watch New Mexico
‘Scoping’ The New LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement
“Scoping” means determining the issues that should be included in public analyses required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of proposed major actions by the federal government. According to the Department of Energy ‘s own NEPA implementation regulations, DOE must prepare a new or supplemental site-wide environmental impact statement (SWEIS) for its major sites when there are “significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns.” The last site-wide EIS for the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was completed in 2008 and is badly outdated. Moreover, since 2018 the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), DOE’s semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, has been aggressively expanding the production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores for nuclear weapons at the Lab.
Lawmakers demand reparations for New Mexicans imperiled by nuclear bomb testing
“It’s very emotional to reflect on all we’ve lost as a result of being exposed to radiation,” said consortium founder Tina Cordova, herself a survivor of thyroid cancer who said members of her family also suffered from myriad forms of the disease.
By Adrian Hedden Carlsbad Current-Argus | September 10, 2022 currentargus.com
When the U.S.’ first nuclear bomb was detonated in south-central New Mexico, it was believed to set off a chain of cancers and health problems suffered by the surrounding communities for generations.
People who grew up near the Trinity Test Site, near the remote communities of Carrizozo or Tularosa, were denied federal relief dollars afforded to other “downwinders” impacted by nuclear testing around the country.
Both towns were within 50 miles of the blast site, and advocates say they were exposed to radiation from the bomb testing.
Agency to hold public comment on Los Alamos National Lab sitewide review
“Los Alamos lab’s plutonium modernization funding would climb to $1.56 billion from this year’s $1 billion, a more than 50 percent increase.
Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, expressed concerns about the agency indicating it saw no need to assess expanded pit production itself in the review.
“NNSA’s dubious argument is that it performed the legally required NEPA analysis for expanded plutonium pit production” in past assessments, Coghlan wrote.”
By Scott Wyland, The Santa Fe New Mexican | September 12, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
The federal agency that oversees nuclear weapons will hold two hearings this week to give the public a chance to comment about the first full sitewide environmental review of Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2008.
The National Nuclear Security Administration is conducting the sitewide review of the lab under the National Environmental Protection Act — breaking from its past resistance to doing fresh analysis of possible impacts as the lab gears up to annually produce 30 plutonium bomb pits by 2026.
Fighting rages near Russian-held nuclear plant in Ukraine
An official says the besieged Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility may be closed as residents near the plant are urged to evacuate for their own safety.
ALJAZEERA | September 9, 2022 aljazeera.com
Heavy fighting erupted in areas near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine after Kyiv warned it might have to shut down the plant to avoid a radiation disaster.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in its daily update on Thursday that some villages near the plant were bombed over the past 24 hours by “tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery”.
Overnight, Russian forces fired rockets and heavy artillery into the nearby town of Nikopol four times, the area’s regional governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, wrote on Telegram, damaging at least 11 houses and other buildings.
On Wednesday, an official said the nuclear plant may have to be shut down and called on residents in areas near the embattled facility to evacuate for their own safety.
SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN, MY VIEW JAY COGHLAN: LANL growth fueling new nuclear arms race
“Locally, while the lab grabs tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars for new, counterproductive nuclear weapons production, it plans to “cap and cover” and leave buried some 200,000 cubic yards of toxic and radioactive wastes that will permanently threaten our precious water resources.”
My View Jay Coghlan – The Santa Fe New Mexican | September 10, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
The New Mexican‘s recent editorial on Los Alamos National Laboratory noted “LANL’s astounding growth” (“LANL’s growth creates pressure on safety,” Our View, Aug. 31). Cancer is defined as uncontrollable cellular growth invading other parts of the body. That is fitting here as the lab metastasizes into the city of Santa Fe (in English, “Holy Faith”). The potentially terminal disease is a second nuclear arms race. Ex-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said we survived the first arms race only by luck.
Where is the leadership, where is the vision? While busy legislating short-term nuclear pork benefiting the already privileged, our congressional delegation leads us toward Armageddon. This second arms race is more dangerous than the first because of multiple nuclear adversaries, new cyber and hypersonic weapons, and artificial intelligence. All of this destabilizes the old Cold War architecture of mutually assured destruction (which never really went away). But “MAD” is truly insane to begin with, involving total, civilization-destroying war.
“Details of foreign country’s nuclear capabilities among documents FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago: report” “Nuclear secrets reportedly found at Mar-a-Lago are ‘gamechanger’, experts say – as it happened”
THE GUARDIAN: Report appears to confirm security officials’ worst fears about the nature of the material Trump refused to hand back
THE GUARDIAN, FOX NEWS | September 7, 2022 theguardian.com, foxnews.com
Federal agents seized the document during their search of Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Palm Beach mansion in Florida, last month, the Washington Post reported. It appears to confirm officials’ worst fears about the nature of the intelligence he should have returned to the National Archives.
Shelling at Ukrainian nuclear plant highlights danger ahead of UN report – Reuters
U.N. seeks security zone near damaged Zaporozhzhia nuclear plant
By Pavel Polityuk and Francois Murphy, Reuters | September 6, 2022 reuters.com
Federal agents seized the document during their search of Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Palm Beach mansion in Florida, last
KYIV/VIENNA, Sept 6 (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces shot down five Russian cruise missiles on Tuesday, most of them in the south, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, but he made no mention of a new military success in the east hinted at by officials earlier.
“This morning alone, five of six Russian X-101 missiles were downed,” Zelenskiy said in an evening address. “This is a costly loss for Russia, and it saves many Ukrainian lives. Four of these missiles were downed by the “South” district of the air command.”
Reuters was not able to independently verify Zelenskiy’s statement and there was no immediate response from Russia.
Though Ukrainian officials did not give specific details, several posts on social media from military bloggers and witnesses reported fighting around Balakliia, an eastern town of 27,000 people that lies between Kharkiv and Russian-held Izyum, a city with a major railway hub used by Moscow to supply its forces. One tweet by a Zelenskiy adviser spoke of “great news” coming from the president on the operation in Kharkiv region.
One Hundred and Fifteen NGOs and Individuals Ask for LANL SWEIS Comment Extension; LANL Virtual Scoping Meetings on September 13th and 14
August 31, 2022
This week 63 non-governmental organizations and 52 individuals requested that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant a two-month extension of time to provide informed public comments about the scope of the Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for Continued Operations of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL SWEIS). On August 19th, DOE announced in its Notice of Intent to Prepare a Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory a 45-day comment period. Currently, comments are due on Monday, October 3rd, 2022. https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/nnsa-nepa-reading-room
In their August 30th letter, the groups and individuals asked that the DOE Secretary Granholm and her staff extend the comment period to Monday, December 5, 2022. No response has yet been received. LANL SWEIS 2022 Scoping Extension Request 8-25-22
The NGOs and individuals justified their extension request by noting, among other items, that the last LANL SWEIS was finalized in 2008 – 14 years ago. Generally DOE conducts a SWEIS every 10 years. DOE proposes that this LANL SWEIS will cover “approximately the next 15 years” of operations, or to approximately 2038 and beyond.
Extension Requested For Scoping Comments Deadline For LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement
Dozens of environmental groups, non-government organizations and individuals have signed a request to the Department of Energy for a two-month extension of the Oct. 3 comment deadline for scoping comments on a Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for continued operations of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
BY MAIRE O’NEILL, Los Alamos Reporter | August 31, 2022 losalamosreporter.com
A letter sent Tuesday states that the current comment period is simply not enough time for the public to make meaningful comments on the scope of a proposal as large, complex and technical as the LANL SWEIS. It is addressed to Sec. of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Under Secretary for Nuclear Security Jill Hruby, DOE/NNSA Los Alamos Field Office Manager Ted Wyka and NNSA’s NEPA Compliance Officer at LANL Kristen Dors. The top two signatories are Joni Arends of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety and Scott Kovac of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
“The scope of the LANL SWEIS is of great national importance because it examines the environmental impacts associated with expanded plutonium pit production and cleanup at LANL,” the letter reads. “The 2008 LANL SWEIS is a formidable document, with 1942 pages, not counting the 144-page Summary and the 1207-page Comment Response Document. That’s a total of 3293 pages. This gives an idea of the amount of information analyses that are involved in preparing informed public scoping comments and why more time is needed.”
‘We’re losing our people’: COVID ravaged Indigenous tribes in New Mexico. Did uranium mining set the stage?
Today, hundreds of mines lie abandoned across New Mexico’s Indigenous lands. So do scores of eroding radioactive landfills meant to bury uranium mine waste.
By Eli Cahan, Capital & Main | August 26, 2022 usatoday.com
As a young girl, Arlene Juanico would rush to gather the laundry before the explosions started.
When the alarms sounded, Juanico would hustle to grab the clean garments off the clothesline before she was enveloped by dust clouds. But Juanico’s little legs usually couldn’t get her back to shelter in time.
That’s when the yellow-flecked dust – emerging from detonations in the sacred mesa the Laguna tribe knows as Squirrel Mountain – would catch up to her. That’s when it would enter Juanico’s throat, burrowing deep into her lungs.
It’s the same dust she would confront when, as an adult, she worked for the Anaconda Copper Co.
And it’s the dust that would persist in her lungs, kidneys and bones. There, hidden in the dark recesses of her chest, the particles lay until one day decades later a CT scan would show Juanico and people like her why they hadn’t been able to take a full breath in decades. They’d get a similar diagnosis – idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis – one mangled lung at a time.
As such, the dangers of one of the largest uranium mines in American history didn’t abate when the dust clouds dissipated.
NPT Review Conference fails to address current security environment
“In a year when a nuclear-armed state invaded a non-nuclear armed state, a meeting of nearly all countries in the world failed to condemn Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in the context of its invasion, and failed to take any steps that would advance nuclear disarmament.”
After four weeks of meetings, the 10th Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference has failed. Despite the final draft outcome document being significantly weakened throughout the negotiations, Russia refused to accept the final version and the conference ended without an agreement.
ICAN (The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) | August 27, 2022 icanw.org
The Bizarre Mystery of the Only Armed Nuke America Ever Lost
The lost nuke has never been found—only the pilot’s helmet was recovered, and the government kept it secret for years.
BY MATTHEW GAULT | VICE NEWS | August 29, 2022 vice.com
…On December 5, 1965, U.S. Navy Lt. Douglas Webster was supposed take an A-4E Skyhawk loaded with a nuclear bomb into the sky. On the USS Ticonderoga aircraft carrier, stationed in the Philippine Sea about 70 miles from Okinawa, Japan, the crew loaded the weapon onto the vehicle and Webster got into the cockpit. The crew then pushed the plane to an elevator that would bring it up to the flight deck.
The plan was for Webster to fly around, then land back on the aircraft carrier where the crew would unload the weapon. Webster never made it into the air. The Skyhawk rolled out of the elevator and the crew began to frantically wave at Webster, calling on him to hit the breaks. “According to testimony during the post-incident Board of Inquiry investigation, the pilot seemed oblivious to the whistles and was looking down,” Chief Petty Officer Delbert Mitchell, who was on the crew that loaded the bomb onto the Skyhawk, told the U.S. Naval Institute in 2019.
Navy crew desperately tried to stop the Skyhawk, but they only managed to pivot it in place as it rolled inevitably to the side of the carrier. It hit the netting on the side of the elevator, broke through it, and fell into the ocean. The nuke was armed. “We never saw Lieutenant Webster after he climbed into the cockpit or knew what efforts he might have attempted to get out of the Skyhawk, but we were stunned to witness a plane, pilot, and nuclear weapon fall into the ocean,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell and the rest of the ship looked into the ocean and watched as the Skyhawk sank into the ocean, its landing gear sticking straight up into the air. Efforts to save Webster and recover the nuclear bomb started immediately. The Navy called in other ships to aid with the search but discovered no sign of the missing nuke or plane—they only ever found Webster’s helmet.
The Navy did not talk about the incident for decades. It reported the incident to Congress a year later when the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy was studying the shocking number of Broken Arrows, but the general public wouldn’t learn that America had lost an active nuke off the coast of Japan until 1989.
The US military is still missing 6 nuclear weapons that were lost decades ago
“After Robert McNamara took the post of Secretary of Defense later that year, he pointed to that incident and another nuke loss over Texas as evidence of how close the U.S. has come to accidental detonations, despite “spending millions of dollars to reduce this problem to a minimum.”
“By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted,” McNamara was quoted as saying in an article by The Guardian.”
The U.S. military had 32 nuclear accidents during the Cold War, and several nuclear weapons remain unaccounted for.
BY DAVID ROZA | TASK AND PURPOSE | August 25, 2022 taskandpurpose.com
From car keys to glasses to rifles, everyone misplaces something important from time to time. But when you’re the U.S. government, sometimes that important thing is a superweapon that is designed to destroy cities and kill millions of people.
Over the decades, the U.S. military has had 32 nuclear accidents, also called “Broken Arrow” incidents. These incidents include accidental launches, radioactive contamination, loss of a nuclear weapon or other unexpected events involving nuclear weapons. Luckily, of those 32 accidents, there were only six U.S. nuclear weapons that could not be located or recovered, and of those six weapons, only one was capable of a nuclear detonation when it was lost.
While even one missing nuclear weapon sounds scary, it’s worth noting that the Soviet Union lost far more during the Cold War, often due to submarines sinking with a dozen or more nuclear missiles on board.
“Compared to the Soviet Union, the U.S. record is pretty impressive, given how many nuclear weapons it has operated and transported everywhere over the years,” Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists, told Task & Purpose.
In fact, U.S. government agencies often go to great lengths to secure lost weapons. One such incident occurred on Jan. 17, 1966, when a B-52 and a KC-135 refueling tanker collided over southern Spain and scattered four B-28 thermonuclear bombs around the fishing village of Palomares. The conventional explosives for two of the bombs exploded, but the nuclear components did not detonate because they were not armed. The U.S. military sent troops to pick up the undetonated one that fell on land, clean up the radioactive pieces scattered by the two which detonated, and find the fourth which landed in the sea. The U.S. government even dispatched a submarine to find the one in the Mediterranean Sea. Called ‘Alvin,’ the small deep-ocean sub was high-tech for its time, but the crew nearly died when the sub was almost entangled in the parachute that was still attached to the bomb on the ocean floor. Meanwhile, the service members who helped find the landward bombs and clean up the wreckage also developed cancers which they say are linked to that mission 56 years ago.
Considering the extent to which the U.S. looks for lost nukes like it did in Palomares, the stories behind the five instances where recovery crews could not locate or recover weapons are extraordinary. Below is a list of those five accidents, one of which resulted in two missing nuclear weapons. Keep in mind that in all but one, the lost nuclear weapons did not include the pit or capsule that contains the components for triggering a nuclear detonation. That means we can all sleep a little easier knowing those weapons cannot blow up a city. However, the U.S. government still classifies those pit-less devices as nuclear weapons: sophisticated, expensive machines that at the time were closely-guarded tools of mass destruction. And there are many more out there from other governments like the Soviet Union which may never be found.
Nuclear waste shipments to repository near Carlsbad lagging behind goals for 2022
“So far in FY 2022, most of WIPP’s shipments came from Idaho National Laboratory to fulfill statutory agreements between the DOE and the State of Idaho.”
By Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus | August 26, 2022 currentargus.com
Nuclear waste managers in New Mexico are about 90 shipments of waste short of their goal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for fiscal year 2022 which ends in about a month.
Records show WIPP accepted 206 shipments so far for FY 2022, which runs from Oct. 1, 2021 to Sept. 30, 2022.
During an Aug. 4 meeting before lawmakers, WIPP officials said the facility was targeting 299 shipments this year.
Transuranic (TRU) waste is shipped to WIPP near Carlsbad for permanent disposal in an underground salt deposit about 2,000 feet below the surface.
It comes from U.S. Department of Energy facilities throughout the nation, and is made up of clothing materials and equipment irradiated during nuclear activities.
Watchdog groups call review at US nuclear lab ‘sham’ process
“This is too little too late, a sham process designed to circumvent citizen enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “The key sentence in NNSA’s announcement is that absent any new decisions in the site-wide environmental impact statement, the agency will continue to implement decisions it previously made behind closed doors.”
By | August 19, 2022 apnews.com
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The U.S. government is planning to review the environmental effects of operations at one of the nation’s prominent nuclear weapons laboratories, but its notice issued Friday leaves out federal goals to ramp up production of plutonium cores used in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
The National Nuclear Security Administration said the review — being done to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act — will look at the potential environmental effects of alternatives for operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory for the next 15 years.
That work includes preventing the spread and use of nuclear weapons worldwide and other projects related to national security and global stability, the notice said.
Watchdog groups contend that regardless of the review, the NNSA will march ahead with its production plans for plutonium cores at Los Alamos.
Federal agency to conduct sitewide review of Los Alamos National Laboratory
“This is in direct contradiction to the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirement that federal agencies take a ‘hard look’ at proposed actions before implementation,” Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said in a statement.
So much happened after 2008 that called for a new, thorough impact study years ago, including the plutonium facility’s “checkered nuclear safety history” that led to its major operations shutting down for more than three years, Coghlan said.
A new sitewide analysis now, Coghlan said, will merely “rubber stamp the billions of taxpayers’ dollars being sunk into a predetermined decision to expand plutonium pit production at LANL.”
By Scott Wyland swyland@sfnewmexican.com The Santa Fe New Mexican | August 19, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
The federal agency that oversees nuclear weapons will conduct a sitewide environmental review at Los Alamos National Laboratory, breaking from its past resistance to performing fresh analysis of potential impacts as the lab gears up to make 30 nuclear warhead triggers a year.
The National Nuclear Security Administration announced in the Federal Register on Friday it would do a sitewide analysis of the lab under the National Environmental Protection Act and would take public comment until Oct. 3.
It’s the first time the agency, a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy, has done a new sitewide environmental impact statement in 14 years.
ATOMIC MASS In Santa Fe, an Archbishop calls for nuclear disarmament through faith alone.
“Jay [Coghlan] of Nukewatch, invited by Wester to answer an audience question about Ukraine having lost deterrence when it returned Soviet nuclear weapons to Moscow, emphasized that Ukraine never had the controls to actually detonate nuclear weapons stored on its territory. Coughlin then echoed Beamont’s statement, saying ‘we can flip the argument, say that Russia is shielded from consequences because it has nuclear weapons. Deterrence has been flipped on its head.’”
BY: KELSEY D. ATHERTON, INK STICK MEDIA | August 10, 2022 inkstickmedia.com
At least 100 parishioners must have been in attendance at the special mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi on Aug. 9, 2022. The Tuesday afternoon service at the historically significant church did not fall under the usual schedule. Following an afternoon rich in monsoon thunderstorms, the clouds cleared, allowing regulars and visitors alike to file in to hear what, exactly, the Archbishop of the Santa Fe Archdiocese had to say about the work of peace.
“In the way that 109 East Palace was the gateway to nuclear oblivion, I hope that the Basilica of St. Francis can be the gateway to global nuclear disarmament,” John C. Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe, told the assembled crowd.
The address is instantly familiar to those fluent in nuclear history and opaque outside of it. During the Manhattan Project, the US effort to develop and build an Atomic Bomb in Los Alamos, 109 East Palace was the place to arrive before being covertly whisked away to the lab.
WHEN IT COMES TO SALVATION FROM NUCLEAR OBLIVION, FAITH IN THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE TASK ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH. THERE MUST BE WORK THAT MAKES IT REAL.
It was the work of Los Alamos that made Aug. 9 the occasion for a mass dedicated to nuclear disarmament. On Aug. 9, 1945, the US dropped Fat Man, the second and so far last nuclear weapon used in war. The bomb fell on Nagasaki, a Japanese city hastily added to the targeting list. While the bombardier claims the clouds parted for visual confirmation of the target, it is at least equally plausible the crew decided to drop the bomb by radar targeting and fly back to base, instead of ditching it in the ocean or crashing on the way back.
Archbishop Wester apologizes for harms caused by nuclear weapons industry
“I challenge us at the most personal level to ask ourselves, ‘How do we live each day? Do we live each day consistent with the core values of faith, love and compassion … for one another?” – Archbishop Wester
Catholic News Service | August 10, 2022 catholicnews.com
New Mexico archbishop whose archdiocese is home to two major federal nuclear weapons research facilities and an Air Force base apologized for the atomic bombings of Japan and to Indigenous New Mexicans, uranium miners and scientists suffering from ill health related to the nuclear weapons industry.
Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe said the time has come for the world to fervently work to undertake the long process to achieve nuclear disarmament.
He made the comments in a homily during a Mass Aug. 9 marking the 77th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan.Continue reading
On this solemn anniversary, another look at a nuclear future
“Continuing to develop weapons that don’t just kill but have the potential to decimate the planet is a seemingly accepted part of modern life.
Yet on this anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, it is useful to consider whether humanity can find a different path forward.”
OUR VIEW | The Santa Fe New Mexican | August 8, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
August is a particularly dark month in human history.
On Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, humanity revealed it had the ability to destroy itself; the United States chose to drop atomic bombs first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki to force Japan to surrender and end World War II. The destruction was horrific, with tens of thousands of people killed, buildings leveled and thousands more dying of lingering radiation sickness in the years that followed.
New Mexico played an outsized role in the bomb’s deployment. It was developed by the Manhattan Project scientists in the then-secret city of Los Alamos and tested at White Sands. Today, Los Alamos National Laboratory continues its mission of solving national security challenges, with the current emphasis gearing up to manufacture the plutonium pits at the core of nuclear weapons.
By 2026, LANL is supposed to be ready to make 30 pits a year, with another 50 pits annually coming from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina by 2030.
The weight of a butterfly
“Of the 64 kilograms of uranium in the Hiroshima bomb, less than one kilogram underwent fission, and the entire energy of the explosion came from just over half a gram of matter that was converted to energy.
That is about the weight of a butterfly.”
By Emily Strasser, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | August 6, 2022 thebulletin.org
The design for the first atomic bomb was frighteningly simple: One lump of a special kind of uranium, the projectile, was fired at a very high speed into another lump of that same rare uranium, the target. When the two collided, they began a nuclear chain reaction, and it was only a tiny fraction of a second before the bomb exploded, forever splitting history between the time before the atomic bomb and the time after.
At 17 seconds past 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay released the bomb from a height of 31,600 feet above the target, a T-shaped bridge in the center of Hiroshima, Japan.
The morning was cloudless, as the weather plane sent to scout for the Enola Gay had reported in the hour before. If the weather had been poor, the plane would have set its course to one of the two alternate targets. As the bomb fell, a schoolboy closed his eyes and began to count as his friends hid along the way to school.
Nuclear threat higher now than in Cold War, British official warns
“’We are entering a dangerous new age,’ [Lovegrove] added, citing the spread of advanced weapons and cyberwarfare.”
BY Ellen Francis © WASHINGTON POST | July 28, 2022 washingtonpost.com
Britain’s national security adviser has warned that a breakdown in dialogue among rival powers is raising the risk of nuclear war, with fewer safeguards now than during the Cold War.
As such, he said, Britain strongly supports President Biden’s talking with Beijing.
The Economist on “The NPT at 50+”: Will the Ukraine war ring the knell for nuclear arms control?
“America offers to resume nuclear talks with Russia, and calls for China to join. But the outlook is dark”
© THE ECONOMIST | July 31, 2022 economist.com
Editor’s note (August 1st 2022): President Joe Biden today offered to “expeditiously negotiate” a new nuclear arms-control deal with Russia to replace the New START treaty, which expires in 2026. Mr Biden also put pressure on China to discuss limits on its growing nuclear arsenal. It is not clear whether either power will take up his call, but it allows America to cast itself as a responsible power at the start of a big nuclear conference in New York.
In the sea of hostility between America and Russia, an island of co-operation endures: the rival powers routinely share information about their long-range nuclear weapons, from the movement of warheads in and out of maintenance to telemetry from ballistic-missile launches. This is both striking and reassuring in the sixth month of war in Ukraine, as Russia periodically threatens to use nuclear weapons and America warns of “severe consequences” if it does.
Environment Department Unhappy With Pace Of DOE Characterization, Cleanup Of LANL Chromium Plume
“’We felt that the cleanup was not moving as quickly as it should be moving and then we entered into litigation with DOE. It was moved from state court to federal court. The current LANL cleanup end date for DOE is 2036, which is in the Consent Order, and we don’t feel that they’re going to be able to make that timeline based on the progress they’re making at this time,’ Catechis said.”
BY MAIRE O’NEILL | July 27, 2022 losalamosreporter.com
New Mexico Environment Department Resource Protection Division Director Chris Catechis is not mincing his words when he discusses NMED’s position on the hexavalent chromium plume discovered in 2005 which is part of the legacy waste clean-up mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
At a recent meeting of the Legislative Interim Committee on Radioactive & Hazardous Waste, both Catechis and Rep. Christine Chandler of Los Alamos raised concerns that Department of Energy Environmental Management program at LANL is not taking an aggressive enough approach to characterization of the chromium plume.
Catechis explained the 2016 Consent Order between DOE and NMED dealing with legacy waste from LANL left since the Manhattan Project era. The 2016 Consent Order, which is an update from the original 2005 Consent Order, NMED and DOE officials meet each year to set up a series of milestones, campaigns and targets for the coming federal fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Catechis said an example of those is the Chromium Interim Measure that deals with the characterization of the chromium plume.
From Russia to Ohio…to the Cancer Ward
“According to the Departments of State and Energy, there was a deliberate decision by the U.S. government that U.S. interests would be served by allowing a portion of the highly enriched uranium to be blended into low enriched uranium and to be rapidly removed from Russia while the details of the transparency measures were being worked out,” the GAO report states.”
BY Ken Silva | July 12, 2022 libertarianinstitute.com
Residents of Piketon, Ohio have long suspected that the area’s sky-high cancer rate stems from the nearby Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS), which served as a uranium enrichment facility for nuclear bombs throughout the Cold War.
Recent reporting from Local 12 WKRC-TV anchor Duane Pohlman sheds light on why the area’s cancer epidemic—more than 500 cases per 100,000, or about 10 percent above state average, according to the Ohio Cancer Atlas—has persisted decades after PORTS stopped helping Uncle Sam build nukes.
Pohlman revealed in May that the PORTS may have been the recipient of polluted uranium from Russia in the 1990s due to a Bill Clinton-era program called “Swords to Ploughshares,” which entailed the United States converting Soviet Union nuclear warheads to uranium that could be used to power U.S. nuclear reactors. Pohlman’s reporting suggests that some of that material was laced with plutonium.
MORE LAB EXPANSION: MAKING WAY FOR NEW PLUTONIUM PIT PRODUCTION ACTIVITY? NNSA/DOE Update: “Los Alamos Field Office Clears Way to Lease Warehouse, Storage Space within 150 miles of Laboratory”
“Multiple properties could be needed to meet LANL needs…Items that would be warehoused or stored include items that are needed for LANL operations,”
BY Carol A. Clark , Los Alamos Daily Post | July 22, 2022 ladailypost.com
The Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Field Office (DOE/NNSA) has issued a Categorical Exclusion to lease properties to provide warehouse and storage space for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) equipment within a 150-mile radius of LANL, which could include properties in several locations of northern New Mexico and southern portions of Colorado.
Nuclear strategy and ending the war in Ukraine
“Removing U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe and Turkey would not weaken NATO militarily, since nuclear weapons have little or no actual usefulness on the battlefield. If they are truly weapons of last resort, there is no need to deploy them so close to Russia’s border. ”
A bold idea: NATO offers to withdraw nukes from Europe (militarily useless, ineffective deterrents as we’ve just seen, & recklessly dangerous) in return for ending the invasion. Putin gets a “win” which costs us nothing worth having. https://t.co/P5txyLEcMs
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) July 25, 2022
BY OSCAR ARIAS AND JONATHAN GRANOFF, The Hill | July 25, 2022 thehill.com
It is time for bolder efforts to make peace in Ukraine.
War, like fire, can spread out of control, and as President Putin keeps reminding us, this particular conflagration has the potential to start a nuclear war.
At a recent joint news conference with the President of Belarus, Putin announced that Russia would transfer Iskander M missiles to Belarus. Those missiles can carry nuclear warheads, and the move is apparently intended to mirror nuclear sharing arrangements the United States has with five NATO allies — Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey.
U.S. nuclear weapons were introduced into Europe in the 1950s as a stopgap measure to defend NATO democracies whose conventional forces were weak. The number of nuclear weapons in those five countries peaked around 7,300 warheads in the 1960s, then dwindled to about 150 today, reflecting NATO’s growing conventional strength and its diminishing estimation of the military usefulness of nuclear weapons. But even 150 nuclear weapons could be more than sufficient to touch off a dangerous confrontation with Russia.
Nuclear News Archives – 2021
To Avoid Armageddon, Don’t Modernize Missiles—Eliminate Them
Land-based nuclear weapons are world-ending accident waiting to happen, and completely superfluous to a reliable deterrent.
“Getting trapped in an argument about the cheapest way to keep ICBMs operational in their silos is ultimately no-win. The history of nuclear weapons in this country tells us that people will spare no expense if they believe that spending the money will really make them and their loved ones safer—we must show them that ICBMs actually do the opposite.“
By Daniel Ellsberg and Norman Solomon thenation.com October 22, 2021
The single best option for reducing the risk of nuclear war is hidden in plain sight. News outlets don’t mention it. Pundits ignore it. Even progressive and peace-oriented members of Congress tiptoe around it. And yet, for many years, experts have been calling for this act of sanity that could save humanity: Shutting down all of the nation’s intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Four hundred ICBMs dot the rural landscapes of Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Loaded in silos, these missiles are uniquely—and dangerously—on hair-trigger alert. Unlike the nuclear weapons on submarines or bombers, the land-based missiles are vulnerable to attack and could present the commander in chief with a sudden use-them-or-lose-them choice. “If our sensors indicate that enemy missiles are en route to the United States, the president would have to consider launching ICBMs before the enemy missiles could destroy them. Once they are launched, they cannot be recalled,” former Defense Secretary William Perry warns. “The president would have less than 30 minutes to make that terrible decision.”
The danger that a false alarm on either side—of the sort that has occurred repeatedly on both sides—would lead to a preemptive attack derives almost entirely from the existence on both sides of land-based missile forces, each vulnerable to attack by the other; each, therefore, is kept on a high state of alert, ready to launch within minutes of warning. The easiest and fastest way for the US to reduce that risk—and, indeed, the overall danger of nuclear war—is to dismantle entirely its Minuteman III missile force. Gen.
James E. Cartwright, a former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had been commander of the Strategic Command, teamed up with former Minuteman launch officer Bruce G. Blair to write in a 2016 op-ed piece: “By scrapping the vulnerable land-based missile force, any need for launching on warning disappears.”
Continue reading
Activists in Santa Fe concerned about plutonium shipping plan
“Santa Fe residents would see shipments of plutonium trucked through the city’s southern edge if federal agencies carry out plans announced nearly a year ago.”
By Scott Wyland The Santa Fe New Mexican santafenewmexican.com
Santa Fe residents would see shipments of plutonium trucked through the city’s southern edge if federal agencies carry out plans announced nearly a year ago.
The prospect worries activists, local officials and some residents because plutonium is far more radioactive than the waste — contaminated gloves, equipment, clothing, soil and other materials — shipped from Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an underground disposal site near Carlsbad.
The U.S. Department of Energy issued a notice of intent in December to begin the process for an environmental impact statement as one of the first steps toward diluting and disposing of plutonium left from the Cold War.
The notice hints that “downblending” the plutonium would be necessary to reduce radioactivity enough for the waste to be accepted at WIPP, which only takes low-level nuclear waste.
When the US Air Force Accidentally Dropped an Atomic Bomb on South Carolina
On March 11, 1958, the Gregg family was going about their business when a malfunction in a B-47 flying overhead caused the atomic bomb on board to drop on to their S.C. backyard.
By Allison McNearney | thedailybeast.com
Given the history of nuclear proliferation throughout the 20th century, it seems like a miracle that only two atomic bombs were ever deployed against the human population. And, it turns out, it really was a very lucky break.
There is one part of atomic history that hasn’t made the history books. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. dropped several atomic bombs on unsuspecting people below, bombs that were multiple times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Rather than being acts of extreme aggression, these “broken arrows” as they became known, were pure accidents, explosive “oopsies” committed by the U.S. military against mostly U.S. citizens. In what has been hailed as either luck or very proficient engineering of safety devices, none of the nuclear components on the falling bombs actually detonated.
Santa Fe County Nuclear Waste Emergency Response Town Hall October 19th
In response to community concerns about the proposed increased shipments of more dangerous forms of plutonium along New Mexico State Road 599, Santa Fe County District 2 Commissioner Anna Hansen will host a Nuclear Waste Emergency Response Town Hall on Tuesday, October 19th from 6 to 7:30 pm. Town Hall Nuclear Waste Flyer 10-19-21 The Department of Energy (DOE) has made elaborate plans to transport plutonium nuclear weapons triggers to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for processing. 
The triggers are currently stored at the Pantex facility, north of Amarillo, Texas. Questions and comments from the public are encouraged during the Town Hall. Town Hall Nuclear Waste Meeting Agenda 10-19-21
The proposed route is approximately 3,300 miles. Interstate 40 at Clines Corners would be the primary route to U.S. Route 285. The shipments would then head north to Interstate 25, past the Eldorado communities, before connecting with the 599 Bypass around Santa Fe. Much of the bypass is located within Commissioner Hansen’s district. From the bypass, the shipments would travel north on 285 to Pojoaque, then west on 502 to LANL. After processing, the shipments would follow the reverse route to Interstate 40 and east to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for further processing. The shipments would once more head west to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Up to 47 metric tons of what is called “surplus” plutonium could be shipped, processed and disposed at WIPP.
In response to constituent concerns, Santa Fe County Commissioners Hank Hughes and Anna Hamilton held a similar Town Hall at the Arroyo Hondo Fire Station in August. https://www.sfreporter.com/news/2021/08/10/waste-on-wheels/
During the October 19th Town Hall, Cynthia Weehler, citizen activist and former chemistry teacher, will present highlights of the DOE’s proposal to expand the WIPP repository, including the transportation of additional weapons-grade plutonium throughout Santa Fe County. www.kob.com/new-mexico-news , www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/my_view/speak-out-on-the-future-of-wipp/
Santa Fe County Fire Chief Jackie L. Lindsey will give a presentation about Santa Fe County’s emergency preparedness and response in the unlikely event of a toxic and radioactive waste incident. https://www.santafecountynm.gov/fire/fire_chief_and_command_staff
New Mexico State Representative Tara Lujan will also be in attendance. https://nmlegis.gov/Members/Legislator?SponCode=HLUTA
The Town Hall is being held at the Nancy Rodriguez Community Center, at One Prairie Dog Loop, in Santa Fe, which is off County Road 62 between the Agua Fria Fire Station and La Familia Medical Center.
For more information, please contact Anna Hansen, Santa Fe County Commissioner, at 505-986-6329, or ahansen@santafecountynm.gov. https://www.santafecountynm.gov/county_commissioners/anna_hansen
Radioactive Waste Fell On Some LA-Area Neighborhoods During 2018 Woolsey Fire, New Study Shows
The majority of samples found just “background” or normally occurring levels of radioactivity. But 11 samples showed significantly elevated levels of radioactive materials.
ByJoel Grover and Josh Davis abclosangeles.com
High levels of radioactive particles landed in neighborhoods from Thousand Oaks to Simi Valley during the massive 2018 Woolsey fire, which started at the contaminated Santa Susana Field Lab, according to a peer-reviewed study just published by a team of scientists known for studying environmental disasters.
What’s stunning about the findings is that they run contrary to what California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) said to calm public fears in the hours after the Woolsey Fire, “We do not believe the fire has caused any releases of hazardous materials… associated with contamination at the [SSFL] site.”
“The DTSC lied. They said that contamination from hadn’t migrated away from Santa Susana and the study proves that it has,” said Jeni Knack, part of a group of volunteers who helped collect samples analyzed in the study.
Knack participated in the sample collection because she had a background doing data collection on archaeological sites, and because she’s the mom of a 6-year old who lives in Simi Valley, just five miles from Santa Susana.
“I was afraid that radioactive and chemical contamination were being carried by wind and smoke during the fire,” Knack told NBC4.
Radioactive Waste Could Be Killing Residents in Missouri Community, Say Federal Scientists
For decades, North St. Louis residents have lived in fallout from the Manhattan Project. Now, federal scientists are finally linking today’s cancers to the nation’s nuclear warfare legacy.
n Bridgeton, on the northern edge of St. Louis County, Missouri, a fire burns underground in a vast landfill, creeping closer and closer to a pile of radioactive waste from the World War II era that was dumped there back in the 1970s. This “subsurface smoldering event,” as these odorous, high-temperature chemical reactions are called, at the West Lake Landfill has burned continuously for almost a decade now, keeping nearby residents all too aware of the Superfund site in their backyard.
For years, many of these residents have filed lawsuits against Cotter Corporation and Mallinckrodt, the companies responsible for dumping the radioactive nuclear waste in the unlined landfill (a former limestone quarry) as well as in open piles on a field near what’s now the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. These residents say that this waste has contaminated their homes. Many have sparred in open forums with officials from the Environmental Protection Agency. Others have met personally with EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. All want answers to an unending list of questions.
As Dawn Chapman, co-founder of the grassroots advocacy group Just Moms STL and a mother of three who lives 2 miles from landfill, told me, “The battles at this site never end.”
Meanwhile, the fire burns. Closer and closer to the radioactive waste, like a ticking time bomb. But for many North County residents, that bomb has already gone off, and it’s fallen to members of the community to pressure local and federal officials to help pick up the pieces. Now, federal scientists at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry are finally starting to admit the mistakes of the nation’s toxic past.
Navy nuclear engineer and his wife charged with trying to share submarine secrets with a foreign country
By Devlin Barrett and Martin Weil | washingtonpost.com
The court papers say that in December 2020, an FBI official received a package that had been sent to the foreign country containing U.S. Navy documents, a letter and instructions for how to conduct encrypted communications with the person offering the information.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, Father of Pakistan’s Nuclear Program, Dies at 85
Starting from scratch in 1976, he acquired the technology and knowledge that allowed Pakistan to detonate its first nuclear device in 1998.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, a metallurgist who became known to Western intelligence services as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb and a worldwide dealer in weapons technology, died Sunday at a hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan. He was believed to be 85 years old.
Dr. Khan’s death was reported by Pakistan’s interior minister, Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad. The apparent cause was complications from Covid-19, he said.
Dr. Khan was the man who made Pakistan a nuclear power. For at least 25 years, starting from scratch in 1976, he built, bought, bartered and stole the makings of weapons of mass destruction.
To millions of Pakistanis, he was a national hero, the man who developed a nuclear program to match the country’s rival, India. To the C.I.A., he was one of the more dangerous men on earth.
Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, on Sunday said that he was “deeply saddened” by Dr. Khan’s death, praising him for “his critical contribution in making us a nuclear weapon state.”
“This has provided us security against an aggressive, much larger nuclear neighbor,” Mr. Khan tweeted, referring to India. “For the people of Pakistan he was a national icon.”
International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons at Ghedi Base in Italy
View photos below of the initiative near the Italian base of Ghedi, which hosts US nuclear warheads, on the occasion of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
How do humans make sense of the bomb?
This stunning photo essay by Robert Del Tredici details the history of the atomic bomb through portraits of monuments, culture, and humans who co-exist with the bomb, from survivors to activists to nuclear scientists in At Work in the Fields of the Bomb.
Photography and introduction by Robert Del Tredici. Captions by Robert Del Tredici and Gordon Edwards. | October 9, 2021
From the moment the atomic bomb was invented, humanity has struggled to make sense of it. It is a weapon of war, an enforcer of peace, a talisman of sovereignty, a fountainhead of undying radioactivity, and a fateful burden for humans into the far future. Yet the bomb’s physical presence—its deep grit and material magnitude of its mass production—has remained culturally invisible.
I wanted to take on this invisibility. I found out that the American bomb’s home ground had 12 factories, each making different materials and parts. I learned that each factory had a public relations officer. And I found out that the airspace above each plant was unrestricted.
But before engaging with the US nuclear weapons complex, I went to Hiroshima. I needed to find the human meaning of the bomb. One Hiroshima survivor told me, “If you weren’t there when it happened, you can have no idea what it was like.” Another told me, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.” I told them I wanted to photograph all of the American bomb-factories. An elderly survivor came over to me, put her hand on my arm and said, “Yes, you must do this.” Five years later, I completed my book of photographs and field notes, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb.
Model of the Uranium Atom
American Museum of Science and Energy, Los Alamos, New Mexico
June 11, 1982
Of all the naturally occurring materials found on Earth, uranium is the only element whose atoms can be split in a process that releases energy and neutrons in a chain reaction. The neutrons go on to split more atoms, which release more energy and more neutrons, until an exponential increase in energy ignites an atomic fireball. In the photo, two boys play at shouldering the model of the atom, which is too big for them to handle.
The atomic bomb was conceived within living memory, and unless abolition ends it, the bomb will be passed on to our grandchildren’s grandchildren—a burden weightier than Atlas could have imagined.
Nuclear talks with US to resume ‘soon,’ Iranian foreign minister says
The US left the JCPOA in 2018, citing continued malign behavior by Iran in the region, and implementing a “maximum pressure” sanctions regime, but Biden seeks a return to the policy.
“Until Iran returns to the negotiating table, the other parties must also make new decisions and show their will and intention for the success of the talks and fulfilling their commitments,” he added.
Ex-CEO who oversaw doomed nuclear project sentenced
An executive who lied to regulators about two South Carolina nuclear plants that never generated a watt of power has been sentenced to two years in prison
By abcnews.go.com October 7, 2021
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A utility executive who repeatedly lied to keep investors pumping money into South Carolina’s $9 billion nuclear reactor debacle will spend two years in prison for fraud, a federal judge decided on Thursday.
Former SCANA Corp. CEO Kevin Marsh agreed with prosecutors that he should serve the sentence and the judge approved the deal, making him the first executive put behind bars for misleading the public on the project, which failed without ever generating a watt of power.
Biden administration reveals number of nuclear weapons in US stockpile
“The Biden administration’s decision to declassify updated information on the number of nuclear warheads in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal is a welcome step that reverses an unwise decision by the Trump administration to classify this information,” the Arms Control Association said in a statement Wednesday.
“It also puts pressure on other nuclear armed states that maintain excessive secrecy about their arsenals.”
By Chandelis Duster and Nicole Gaouette, CNN, benningtonbanner.com October 7, 2021
(CNN) In a reversal from the Trump administration, the State Department revealed the number of nuclear weapons in the US stockpile for the first time in four years on Tuesday.
“Increasing the transparency of states’ nuclear stockpiles is important to nonproliferation and disarmament efforts, including commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and efforts to address all types of nuclear weapons, including deployed and non-deployed, and strategic and non-strategic,” the State Department said.
Nuclear submarines will not deter China from conflict with Taiwan, but Australia has an alternative arsenal
As a committed supporter of international institutions and the world’s 13th largest economy, Australia has real clout
“As the gap between China’s military and Australia’s widens, it is unlikely that Australia’s capability – even with a fleet of nuclear submarines, supplied by its Aukus partners – will determine the balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific.”
By Jonathan Pearlman October 6, 2021 The Guardian theguardian.com
For an emerging superpower prone to petulant outbursts and coercive retaliation, China’s initial response to the recent announcement of the new three-way security pact between Australia, the United States and Britain seemed surprisingly tepid.
Hours after the trio unveiled their “forever partnership”, known as Aukus, China formally requested that it be allowed to join an 11-member Asia-Pacific trade grouping, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
This was an odd move by China, whose application requires the consent of the grouping’s members, which include Australia. In recent years, China has responded to previous perceived slights from Canberra by imposing economic sanctions worth $20bn and freezing ministerial contacts.
Nuclear-Weapon-Free States Demand Immediate End to Deterrence Policies, Start of Dismantling Atomic Arsenals, as First Committee Continues General Debate
Calling for swift remedies to mend a fractured non-proliferation landscape, nuclear-weapon-free States demanded an immediate end to deterrence policies and the start of dismantling atomic arsenals, as the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) moved into the third day of its general debate.
UNITED NATIONS MEETINGS COVERAGE GENERAL ASSEMBLY FIRST COMMITTEE SEVENTY-SIXTH SESSION, 4TH MEETING (PM)
As thousands of atomic bombs located around the world pose grave risks to humanity, delegates implored nuclear-weapon States to steer the planet onto a path of peace. Some suggested such ways to do so, with delegates agreeing that dismantling nuclear arsenals must start now, in line with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and under safeguards established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Many urged all nations with atomic arsenals to sign, ratify and fully implement existing conventions, including the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in January, and some decried the quarter of a century delay in entering into force the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. To rectify this, many called for nuclear-weapon States to sign and ratify it so that atomic bomb testing can become part of the past.
One Man Shouldn’t Control the Nuclear Button
Congress should require consultation, so generals wouldn’t have to break the rules to save the world.
The critics are missing the point. The overriding issue is not whether Gen. Milley was correct in his assessment, or whether he was authorized to take the reported actions, but what the consequences could have been if his concern had been warranted. It is not hyperbole to say that the consequences could have been a profound tragedy and, in the worst case, the end of civilization.
The Stealthy F-35 Fighter Jet Is One Step Closer to Carrying Nuclear Weapons
“A pair of F-35s from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada released dummy nuclear bombs at a nearby test range this month, moving the advanced stealth fighter closer to carrying the world’s most powerful weapons into combat, the Air Force said.”
The flights on Sept. 21 marked the “graduation” test exercise necessary for the Air Force variant of the F-35 to move ahead with what’s called the nuclear design certification process, according to the service’s press release.
It’s still not clear when the F-35A will receive its full nuclear certification allowing it to move from training ranges and dummy bombs to real-world battlefields. But when that happens, the Air Force will have a second stealth aircraft in its fleet that can carry nukes.
“The B-2 [Spirit] bomber was the prominent nuclear-capable stealth aircraft,” Lt. Col. Daniel Jackson, division chief for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration at Air Combat Command, said in the press release.
F-15E Strike Eagle and F-16C and D Fighting Falcon fighters do not have stealth capability but can carry nuclear weapons. The B-21 Raider heavy bomber will also have the capability and is expected to join the Air Force’s fleet in the mid-2020s, according to the latest estimates.
Opinion: Too many ‘downwinders’ are still suffering
“We are sponsoring a bill that would make sure the government’s responsibility to those who were harmed by nuclear testing does not get swept under the rug.”
By deseret.com
Any objective study of American history brings us to the realization that there are many Americans who quietly made, and continue to make, great sacrifices for our national security. Many of these women and men willingly give of themselves to ensure that our country remains free.
Tragically, under the banner of national security the United States government exposed Americans to radioactive uranium ore and radioactive dust — subjecting them to lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses.
On July 16, we marked the 76th anniversary of the detonation of the first nuclear weapon — code-named Trinity — in the desert of New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin. Three weeks after the Trinity detonation, the United States exploded the Little Boy bomb over Hiroshima and, three days later, the Fat Man bomb over Nagasaki. Six days later, Japan surrendered. In the aftermath of World War II, a nuclear arms race began that reached its zenith with over 60,000 nuclear weapons worldwide in 1986.
Many lives were lost or severely altered by the nuclear weapons program. Thankfully, the world stockpile of nuclear weapons has steadily declined since 1986 and will, hopefully, continue to do so in the future. Yet, the effects of detonating over 1,100 nuclear weapons since the Trinity test in 1945 continue to mar the lives of Americans to this day.
Through atmospheric weapons tests, as well as mining, transporting and milling of uranium ore, many Americans have been slowly killed by radiation exposure. Thousands of Utahns were infected by radiation exposure simply by living “downwind” of the federal government’s nuclear weapons testing sites. Additional Utahn miners were affected as they worked the uranium necessary for these weapons. These “downwinders” and miners and their families friends, and communities often suffered excruciating illness, loss and devastation.
In response to this malfeasance, Congress rightly enacted (and later amended in 2000) the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) in 1990. This legislation was a good first step in making recompense to those who mined and hauled uranium ore and those who processed the ore at a mill. The RECA legislation also addresses those exposed to radiation downwind from nuclear test sites.
It has been more than 20 years since any meaningful reform to RECA has been made for those whose lives have been taken or irreversibly altered by our foray into the arms race. Several classifications of workers such as core drillers and ground workers have been denied justice by being excluded completely from the process.
Some diseases that should have been compensable have been excluded. Numerous geographical locations exposed to downwind radiation have been left out. Uranium miners continued to mine after the United States stopped buying uranium for its nuclear weapons programs in 1971. These so-called post-1971 workers were excluded from accessing benefits since the original RECA legislation had an arbitrary cutoff date of Dec. 31, 1971 — even though the federal government continued to regulate uranium mines long after 1971. To make matters worse, RECA is scheduled to sunset in July 2022 — potentially leaving all classifications of exposure victims without redress.
We are honored to represent some of these “downwinders” and their family members and want them to know their suffering — and the sacrifices they made for our nation — are not forgotten.
That is why we are pleased to be the lead Republican members of the House of Representatives on the “RECA Amendments Act of 2021,” legislation that will reauthorize RECA for those still suffering the consequences of nuclear testing.
The tragic consequences of the nuclear arms race cannot be swept under the rug of history. We urge our colleagues in Congress to support the “RECA Amendments Act of 2021.” Our country must act now to address the injustices of those who have been forgotten by their own government.
Rep. Burgess Owens represents Utah’s 4th Congressional District. Rep. Chris Stewart represents Utah’s 2nd Congressional District.
Four Takeaways from the 2021 World Nuclear Industry Status Report
“Although net nuclear capacity rose last year, the 0.4-gigawatt increase was minuscule in comparison with the gains made by renewable energy. ‘Nuclear is irrelevant in today’s electricity capacity newbuild market,’ the industry report concludes.”
By Dawn Stover | October 1, 2021 The Bulletin thebulletin.org
Although there are 23 fewer nuclear reactors in the world today than at the 2002 peak of 438, the past year saw a small uptick in the number of reactors operating worldwide and a corresponding increase in the global fleet’s net operating capacity.
That’s one data point in the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2021, the latest in a series of annual industry reports compiled by an international team of independent experts led by Mycle Schneider, a consultant based in Paris. The 409-page report, released this week, is packed with information about global and country-specific trends, but several findings stand out, and they don’t bode well for the nuclear energy industry.
First, although nuclear capacity is up, nuclear electricity production is down.
As of mid-2021, there were 415 nuclear reactors operating in 33 countries, seven reactors more than a year earlier. Their total capacity was 1.9 percent higher than a year earlier. But in 2020, the worldwide nuclear fleet generated 3.9 percent less electricity than in the previous year. That was the first decrease in output since 2012, when many reactors remained shut down in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Without China, where most of the new construction is happening, the decrease in production would look even bigger. In 2020, China for the first time produced more nuclear electricity than France, which relies heavily on nuclear energy. Only the United States produced more.
NRDC: Legislation Offers Path Forward on Nuclear Waste
“This legislation could end years of debate and acrimony and help determine a path forward for disposing of nuclear waste. Placing nuclear waste under bedrock environmental laws could ensure strong repository standards, while giving states the power to approve what is sequestered within their borders.”
– Kit Kennedy, managing director for the Climate and Clean Energy program at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)
WASHINGTON – Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) introduced legislation today that could end a 60-year impasse over our nation’s nuclear waste.
The bill would establish a task force to consider removing exemptions for radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from our bedrock environmental laws. Doing so would allow for geologic repositories for nuclear waste that have strong environmental protections and the consent of state leaders and local residents.
Senator Markey and Rep Levin Introduce Legislation to Determine a Viable Consent Based Path Forward for Nuclear Waste
Currently, the United States has no permanent geologic repository for disposal of high-level nuclear waste
“The current system of spent nuclear fuel storage is not sustainable, particularly for sites that no longer have operating reactors and could be redeveloped for other beneficial uses, such as the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station,” said Representative Levin.
PRESS RELEASE September 28, 2021 markey.senate.gov
Washington (September 28, 2021) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Chair of the Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Congressman Mike Levin (CA-49) today introduced the Nuclear Waste Task Force Act, legislation to establish a new task force to consider the implications of amending the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to remove exemptions from environmental laws for nuclear waste. Eliminating this loophole could help enable consent-based siting of long-term storage solutions for nuclear waste. The task force would also be responsible for providing a clear explanation of what constitutes “consent-based siting.”
“Enabling consent-based storage is the key to developing real, practical solutions for the long-term storage of nuclear waste. This nuclear waste task force will play a critical role in determining how to make that happen.”
Survivors Of The Trinity Nuclear Test Weren’t Warned — Then Were Lied To After
NPR’s Leila Fadel talks with Lesley Blume about the struggle of the survivors of the Trinity nuclear test in 1945 — one locals didn’t know was coming and caused serious health issues.
“The compensation act – RECA as it’s called – is about to expire next July…What’s happening right now is that several members of Congress from New Mexico and from other Western states are trying to extend RECA, and they’re making a bid to have the Trinity downwinders included under this legislation at last, among other exposed communities.”
Heard on All Things Considered
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
This was most of America’s introduction to nuclear power.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HARRY TRUMAN: A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.
FADEL: President Harry Truman’s announcement in August of 1945 heralded a terrifying new weapon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMAN: It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
FADEL: But the Atomic Age actually began the month before At the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. The first nuclear test, codenamed Trinity, was a closely guarded secret. Locals, some as close as 12 miles away, had no idea it was coming. Lesley Blume wrote about them for National Geographic.
Welcome back.
LESLEY BLUME: Thank you so much.
FADEL: So, first, tell us what happened during that first test, codenamed Trinity.
BLUME: It was a huge success, but it also – the bomb was a lot more powerful than they had expected, three to five times as powerful. And, you know, initially they thought that the cloud was only going to go up about 12,000 or 13,000 feet. Well, guess what. It went up between 50,000 and 70,000 feet. It created sort of an estimated fallout zone about 100 miles long and 30 miles wide…
“Now is the time to eliminate nuclear weapons from our world, and usher in a new era of dialogue, trust and peace”, declared UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday, marking the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
Addressing the threat of nuclear weapons, said Mr, Guterres, has been central to the work of the United Nations since its inception; the first General Assembly resolution in 1946 sought “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”
The UN chief pointed out that, although the total number of nuclear weapons has been decreasing for decades, some 14,000 are stockpiled around the world, which is facing the highest level of nuclear risk in almost four decades: “States are qualitatively improving their arsenals, and we are seeing worrying signs of a new arms race.” Humanity, continued the UN chief, remains unacceptably close to nuclear annihilation.
Veterans Group Urges President Biden to Adopt No First Use Policy
To mark the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, September 26, Veterans For Peace is publishing an Open Letter to President Biden: Just Say NO to Nuclear War!
ST. LOUIS, MO –
Veterans For Peace, with over 140 chapters in the United States and affiliates abroad, is calling on President Biden to step back from the brink of nuclear war by declaring and implementing a policy of No First Use and by taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert. The full letter will be published on the VFP website and offered to mainstream newspapers and alternative news sites: Click here to view.
While timed to coincide with the UN-declared International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a major motivation for the letter is the Nuclear Posture Review, currently underway.
The letter therefore states, “As veterans who have fought in multiple U.S. wars, we are concerned about the very real danger of a nuclear war that would kill millions of people and could possibly even destroy human civilization. Therefore we are asking to have input into the Nuclear Posture Review that your administration has recently initiated.”
A Little Radiation Is Not Good For You
“…between 1977 and 1990, scientists tripled their estimate of the damage inflicted by a given dose of radiation. A 1992 study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine found that nuclear weapons production workers exposed to small doses were four to eight times more likely to contract cancer than previously estimated…even the very lowest background levels of radiation exposure are harmful to health and have statistically significant negative effects on DNA.”
In a rare pushback against the radioactive pollution industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — well known as a rubber stamp for the nuclear lobby — has flatly rejected an attempt to further weaken the agency’s radiation exposure regulations.
After six years of deliberation, the NRC’s three commissioners, two Democrats and one Republican, voted unanimously to reject formal petitions submitted in February 2015 urging the agency to adopt a cost-cutting scheme known as “hormesis” which claims that “a little radiation is good for you.” The September 16 decision by the NRC says this “threshold theory posits that “there is some threshold dose below which there is either no radiation-related health detriment or a radiation-related health benefit that outweighs any detriment.”
The order then rebukes this concept, finding the petitioners “fail to present an adequate basis supporting the request,” and “Convincing evidence has not yet demonstrated the existence of a threshold below which there would be no … effects from exposure to low radiation doses.”
The basis for hormesis had been explicitly rejected ten years earlier, the NRC pointed out, by the National Academy of Sciences in its 2005 report “Biologic Effects of Ionizing Radiation, 7th Ed” or BEIR-VII. The National Research Council summed up its book-length BEIR-7 report saying, “the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.”
Biden’s nuclear agenda in trouble as Pentagon hawks attack
“The decision to fire Leonor suggests to me that the first draft of NPR is going to be a continuation of the line of thinking we saw in the Trump administration’s NPR…They have put themselves on the course that is a first draft that is 180 degrees to what Biden said on the campaign trail.” – Jeffrey Lewis, a professor and nuclear weapons expert at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies and host of the podcast Arms Control Wonk.
By BRYAN BENDER and LARA SELIGMAN | September 23, 2021 politico.com
One of President Joe Biden’s leading allies in his decadeslong attempt to reduce nuclear weapons has lost a battle with the Pentagon’s hawks.
The ouster of Leonor Tomero, who questioned the status quo on nuclear weapons, signals the Biden administration’s ambitious agenda to overhaul America’s nuclear policy might be in trouble.
Early in his administration, Biden installed national security officials intent on negotiating new arms control treaties and curtailing nuclear weapons spending. One of them was Tomero, a leading voice for nuclear restraint on Capitol Hill and in the think tank community, who was appointed to oversee the Nuclear Posture Review that will set the administration’s atomic weapons policy and strategy.
But officials with more traditional views on nuclear weapons, who promote a status quo agenda to include modernizing the land, sea and airborne legs of America’s nuclear arsenal, did not take kindly to Tomero’s progressive ideology, according to 11 current and former defense officials, as well as others with insight into the debate.
New push on to expand nuclear radiation compensation in US
“There is always money when there’s political will. This is a social, environmental and restorative justice issue that we, as a nation, can no longer look away from.” — Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor and co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium
Corbin Harney, an elder with the Western Shoshone Tribe, beats a drum during a May 2002 tribal protest near the planned Yucca Mountain national nuclear waste dump.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers is renewing a push to expand a U.S. compensation program for people who were exposed to radiation following uranium mining and nuclear testing carried out during the Cold War.
Advocates have been trying for years to bring awareness to the lingering effects of nuclear fallout surrounding the Trinity Site in southern New Mexico, where the U.S. military detonated the first atomic bomb, and on the Navajo Nation, where more than 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities.
Under legislation introduced Wednesday by U.S. Sens. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat from New Mexico, and Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho, other sites across the American West would be added to the list of places affected by fallout and radiation exposure. Eligibility also would be expanded to include certain workers in the industry after 1971, such as miners.
The legislation also would increase the amount of compensation someone can receive to $150,000 and provide coverage for additional forms of cancer.
Op-Ed: Gen. Milley did the wrong thing for honorable reasons. We need new rules for starting nuclear war
“But let’s be clear about where the problem lies: It’s with the existing U.S. system for controlling the use of nuclear weapons… If the United States is intent on maintaining at the ready a large nuclear strike force, as is apparently the case, the nation needs comprehensive safeguards to prevent reckless and ill-considered decisions regarding their use.”
September 16, 2021
A new book by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa contains a singularly startling allegation. In the waning weeks of the Trump administration, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, twice called his counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng, of the People’s Liberation Army, offering assurances that the United States was not about to launch an attack against China.
“If we’re going to attack,” Milley told Li, according to Woodward and Costa, “I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
The surprise turns out to be the revelation of Milley’s actions. Some in the Defense Department may have known about the calls, but one thing seems clear: President Trump, the U.S. commander in chief, did not. Milley acted of his own volition, without prior presidential approval. On that point, Christopher Miller, then serving as acting Defense secretary, is emphatic, describing Milley’s actions to Fox News as a “disgraceful and unprecedented act of insubordination.”
Providing adversaries with advance notice of U.S. military actions does not number among the prescribed duties of the chairman of the joint chiefs. Arguably, the Woodward-Costa allegations, if accurately reported, qualify as treasonous. At the very least, they raise serious doubts about Milley’s respect for the bedrock principle of civilian control of the military. To state the matter bluntly, when adherence to that principle raised the possibility of an outcome not to Milley’s liking, he seemingly granted himself an exemption.
Of course, all of this happened in a specific context: Woodward and Costa’s chilling account is only the latest to depict the unraveling Trump presidency following the November election. Unwilling to accept defeat, the incumbent all but ceased to govern and instead devoted himself to overturning the election’s results by any means necessary, violating the rule of law and waiving the Constitution.
Kildee Introduces Bipartisan Resolution Opposing Proposed Canadian Permanent Nuclear Storage Site Near Great Lakes
By Devlin Barrett and Martin Weil | September 16, 2021 Press Release dankildee.house.gov
Woodward/Costa book: Worried Trump could ‘go rogue,’ Milley took secret action to protect nuclear weapons
“Woodward and Costa write that after January 6, Milley ‘felt no absolute certainty that the military could control or trust Trump and believed it was his job as the senior military officer to think the unthinkable and take any and all necessary precautions.’
Milley called it the ‘absolute darkest moment of theoretical possibility,‘ the authors write.”
September 14, 2021
Washington (CNN) Two days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, President Donald Trump’s top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, single-handedly took secret action to limit Trump from potentially ordering a dangerous military strike or launching nuclear weapons, according to “Peril,” a new book by legendary journalist Bob Woodward and veteran Washington Post reporter Robert Costa.
Woodward and Costa write that Milley, deeply shaken by the assault, ‘was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.’
“You never know what a president’s trigger point is,” Milley told his senior staff, according to the book.
A private company got federal approval to store nuclear waste in Texas. The state is fighting back.
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval of the planned facility opens a new front in a decades-long battle to find a home for the country’s nuclear waste.”
By: Douglas MacMillan and Aaron Gregg | THE WASHINGTON POST September 12, 2021 washingtonpost.com
A private company has won federal approval to build an expansive nuclear waste site in Texas, even as residents, state lawmakers, environmentalists and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) rail against it.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Monday issued a license for Andrews, Tex.-based Interim Storage Partners to store as much as 5,000 metric tons of radioactive waste. It’s one of two proposed storage sites — the other is in southeastern New Mexico — that has been under agency review for several years.
Nuclear waste facility near Carlsbad sees COVID-19 surge as infections rise in New Mexico
COVID-19 infections resurged at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in recent weeks as cases of the virus climbed in the communities surrounding the nuclear waste repository in southeast New Mexico.
There were 14 positive cases among workers at the site or associated with the facility reported between Aug. 17 and 31, per the latest report from Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) – WIPP’s primary operations contractor.
In total, WIPP reported as of Aug. 31, there were 25 active cases.
WIPP officials did not report the identities of patients or companies where the infected workers were employed.
All employees at WIPP were encouraged to receive a COVID-19 vaccination, per an NWP news release, and required to wear protective face masks when indoors, vaccinated or not, and social distance when possible.
U.S. still prepared to engage with North Korea after missile test
“North Korea’s cruise missiles usually generate less interest than ballistic missiles because they are not explicitly banned under United Nations Security Council resolutions. However, analysts said calling it “strategic” could mean it was a nuclear-capable system.”
Reuters reuters.com September 13, 2021
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, Sept 13 (Reuters) – The United States remains prepared to engage with North Korea, a White House spokeswoman said on Monday, despite Pyongyang’s announcement that it had tested a new long-range cruise missile over the weekend.
“Our position has not changed when it comes to North Korea, we remain prepared to engage,” principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
North Korea’s state media announced on Monday what it said were successful tests of a new long-range cruise missile that analysts said could be the country’s first such weapon with a nuclear capability. read more
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said initial indications were that North Korea had carried out such a test.
Biden blasted for ‘wishful thinking’ as new ‘potential nuclear crisis’ looms
“Iran deserves a measure of the blame for resurrecting a matter that diplomats spent more than a dozen years putting to rest…It is the US that is overwhelmingly responsible for the current crisis.”
The US President promised throughout the 2020 election campaign he would restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, which Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018. However, his administration are reportedly getting “closer” to giving up on the deal.
Since Mr Biden took office on January 20, Iran elected hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi as their new President.
While talks have been held between Washington and Tehran on renewing the JCPOA, no new agreement has been struck.
Borzou Daragahi, senior non-resident fellow at Washington think tank the Atlantic Council, said Mr Biden’s administration “still needs to figure out what it wants in Iran”.
Why China’s attack on Nato ‘double standards’ suggests it will continue to build up nuclear arsenal
“The alliance’s head Jens Stoltenberg accused Beijing of increasing its firepower ‘without constraint’ and urged it to sign up to international arms controls – But Beijing hit back by criticising Nato’s nuclear sharing arrangements and said the US and Russia should lead the way by disarming”
scmp.com September 12, 2021
China is expected to continue building up its arsenal of nuclear weapons despite Nato’s appeal for it to sign up to international arms controls. Last week Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg criticised China’s efforts to develop its nuclear capacity – by building more warheads, delivery systems and silos – “without any limitation or constraint”.
He told Nato’s annual arms control conference in Brussels that this was making the world “more unpredictable, more competitive and more dangerous”.
Jay Coghlan on the Richard Eeds Show – September 12, 2021
Jay Coghlan, Director @ Nuclear Watch New Mexico, on public hearings and the comment period on the expansion of the “Pit” building program at LANL.
20 years after 9/11, Yankee’s nuclear fuel still poses security risk
“Deb Katz, the executive director of Citizens Awareness Network, a New England-wide anti-nuclear group, said her group supports ambitious improvements to the storage facilities.
“We support hardening the waste on site. This includes double walling the casks, increasing the distance between the casks, if possible, berming them in to protect them from acts of malice,” she said.
“The waste must stay on site until there is a scientifically sound and environmentally just solution,” she said, referring to a nuclear industry move toward building interim nuclear waste storage facilities. One is proposed for west Texas, the other in New Mexico.”
By Susan Smallheer, Brattleboro Reformer benningtonbanner.com September 11, 2021
VERNON — The Vermont Department of Health is still planning for the worst at the Vermont Yankee site in Vernon.
But the worst, thanks to the active decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee site currently underway, is not as bad as it could have been six years ago, when Vermont Yankee shut down and its nuclear fuel was moved out of the reactor core and put into storage in giant steel and concrete casks.
“The Health Department’s Radiological and Nuclear Emergency Response Plan originally had a heavy emphasis on releases from Vermont Yankee, which could impact large areas and populations while it operated. Even with the shutdown of Vermont Yankee, we continue to maintain many of our resources for radiological emergency response,” said William Irwin, the state’s radiological health chief.
Texas bans storage of highly radioactive waste, but a West Texas facility may get a license from the feds anyway
Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday night signed a bill into law that attempts to block a plan to store highly radioactive nuclear waste at a site in West Texas.
House Bill 7 effectively bans highly radioactive materials from coming to Texas, targeting one company’s plan to build such a facility near the New Mexico border in Andrews County.
But, the new state law may soon be in conflict with federal regulators. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is advancing the company’s application for a license to allow the high-level nuclear waste to Texas, and a decision from the federal agency could come as early as Monday, a spokesperson with the commission said.
For years, environmental and consumer advocates have protested a proposal by a West Texas company, Waste Control Specialists, to build with a partner an interim storage site for high-level nuclear waste, which is mostly spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants. Waste Control Specialists has been disposing of the nation’s low-level nuclear waste, including tools, building materials and protective clothing exposed to radioactivity, for a decade in Andrews County.
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Lawmakers set for battle over next-gen nuclear missile
“For the W87-1, whose plutonium cores, or pits, are to be produced in part by the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility in South Carolina, at stake are jobs and billions of federal dollars to upgrade buildings or construct new factories. It’s all intertwined with shaky plans launched by the Trump administration to have Savannah River and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico produce a combined 80 pits per year by 2030.”
defensenews.com September 9, 2021
WASHINGTON ― Nuclear modernization opponents and defenders are gearing up to fight again over the next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile and other efforts.
Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., and a skeptic of nuclear spending on the House Armed Services Committee, confirmed he plans to offer nuclear-themed amendments when the annual defense bill receives House floor consideration later this month. One aims to pause the Air Force’s nascent Ground Based Strategic Deterrent in favor of maintaining the missile it would replace, the Minuteman III; another would zero out funds for the GBSD’s warhead, the W87-1.
“The bottom line is that we could pause the entire GBSD program and push forward into the future a $100 billion expense,” Garamendi, who chairs the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee, told Defense News.
With the Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review due early next year, Garamendi said the amendments are part of his “strategy to raise the issues, to gather the data, test the arguments against the opposition … and create an occasional success.”
More nuclear waste may be heading to WIPP on US 285
[WIPP is the world’s only operating underground nuclear waste dump. It is limited to nuclear weapons waste, but the federal government is trying to expand WIPP and break its promises and social contract with New Mexicans.
Help Us STOP FOREVER WIPP-Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The nuclear waste dump is permitted to operate until 2024, but the Federal government wants to expand the amount and types of waste allowed with NO end date.
We need your help to protect New Mexico!]
“At a recent Santa Fe County Town Hall, activist Cindy Weehler of 285 ALL said the U.S. Department of Energy made it clear that it’s going to expand its nuclear waste program, she said. She said she’s concerned about the new type of radioactive waste that would be traveling through the county, which would be diluted plutonium, instead of contaminated items.”
Copyright © 2021 Albuquerque Journal
Spanning the length of the state, U.S. Highway 285 is a major thoroughfare for truck transports and other traffic. This busy highway, nicknamed “Death Highway” due to the number of fatal accidents on it, may get busier.
Concerned citizens in Santa Fe County recently called out the U.S. Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for expanding its mission in a permit renewal application to include more nuclear waste being shipped along the 285 corridor.
Part of Highway 285 goes along the southern edge of the city of Santa Fe, and local activists are calling on local and federal leaders to halt this increase in nuclear waste transportation.
The permit application is requesting to add two nuclear waste storage panels to WIPP that would increase the waste volume in these areas.
Montco offering potassium iodide tablets in the event of a nuclear emergency
Radioactive iodine, a contaminant that could be released in the event of a nuclear accident, can increase the risk of thyroid cancer. Potassium iodide (KI) can help protect the thyroid gland against radioactive iodine.
If you live, work, or attend school within a 10-mile radius of the Limerick nuclear power plant, local health officials have a freebie for you — albeit not a sexy one.
Montgomery County’s Office of Public Health will be handing out potassium iodide tablets to those in close proximity to the Limerick Generating Station.
The distribution is part of a statewide emergency preparedness effort — the Limerick site is one of Pennsylvania’s four active nuclear power plants.
General Assembly President calls for halt to nuclear tests
The President of the UN General Assembly, Volkan Bozkir, on Wednesday called for an end to nuclear tests, as ambassadors gathered to commemorate the International Day against Nuclear Tests, observed annually on 29 August.
news.un.org September 8, 2021
Despite recent developments in advancing nuclear disarmament, more remains to be done, said Mr. Bozkir, urging countries which have yet to sign or ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) to do so without delay.
“More than 2,000 nuclear tests have been conducted since the advent of nuclear weapons. While the rate of testing has declined, they have not stopped,” he said.
“These tests have long lasting health and environmental consequences. They devastate the communities they impact. They displace families from their homelands.”
Progress on disarmament
Underlining the General Assembly’s commitment to nuclear disarmament, Mr. Bozkir welcomed progress achieved over the past year amid the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
US attorney details illegal acts in construction projects, sealing the fate of the “nuclear renaissance”
“The indictment reveals important new information about how Benjamin and Westinghouse conspired to hide crucial information about reactor completion dates from the owners…It states that the defendant made “false and misleading statements” and “knowingly devised a scheme” to continue the project based on misrepresentations.”
By Tom Clements | thebulletin.org
The ill-fated construction of new nuclear reactors in South Carolina—one of two such troubled Westinghouse reactor construction projects in the United States—was abruptly terminated on July 31, 2017, but the effort to determine legal accountability for the project’s colossal failure is only now hitting its stride.
The South Carolina legislature conducted hearings about the project’s collapse. But it has fallen to the United States Attorney for South Carolina to outline internal decisions that led to project abandonment—via court filings, plea agreements, and indictments. These filings are proving to be the best documentation so far of criminal behavior related to projects that were part of a much-hyped “nuclear renaissance” that began in the early-2000s but has since petered out in the United States.
On August 18, 2021, a second Westinghouse official was charged in a federal grand jury indictment filed with the court in Columbia, South Carolina. The charges outline “the scheme” to cover up key details about the problem-plagued project to construct two 1,100 megawatt (MW) Westinghouse AP1000 light-water reactors at the VC Summer site north of Columbia.
The project was initiated in May 2008 and gained final approval in February 2009.
According to the 18-page indictment, former Senior Vice President of New Plants and Major Projects Jeffrey Benjamin “had first-line responsibility for Westinghouse’s nuclear reactors worldwide.” He was charged, according to a news release, “with sixteen felony counts including conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, and causing a publicly-traded company to keep a false record.” On August 30, the US attorney’s office announced that Benjamin would be arraigned on August 31.
In order for SCANA, parent of utility South Carolina Electric and Gas, to gain a federal production tax credit of $1.4 billion, essential to the financial viability of the project, both units had to be finished by December 31, 2020.
Benjamin and Westinghouse knew that the dates would never be met, but SCANA doggedly stuck with them given production-tax-credit pressure.The indictment reveals important new information about how Benjamin and Westinghouse conspired to hide crucial information about reactor completion dates from the owners, the publicly held utility SCANA, now defunct, and its junior partner, the state-owned South Carolina Public Service Authority (known as Santee Cooper). It states that the defendant made “false and misleading statements” and “knowingly devised a scheme” to continue the project based on misrepresentations via Westinghouse to the owners, state regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission, investors, and ratepayers. Nervous SCANA officials played along with the inept cover-up efforts and passed on false and inaccurate information to regulators.
Benjamin, the fourth official to be charged, faces 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine. Issuance of the indictment suggests he intends to face trial rather than plead guilty—a risky proposition given the waste of $9 billion on construction of a project that delivered nothing to consumers (and potential jury members) but a series of nine rate hikes. While those hikes were eventually eliminated and further rate hikes were avoided, a small nuclear construction charge in current bills stands as an enduring reminder of the debacle.
On May 21, 2021, Carl Churchman, Westinghouse Electric Corporation vice president and project director, was indicted on the felony charge of making false statements to the FBI about the status of the project. He pleaded guilty on June 10.
In February, Kevin Marsh, former SCANA CEO, also entered a guilty plea in federal court for conspiracy to commit felony fraud. And Stephen Byrne, former SCANA chief operating officer and executive vice president, pleaded guilty in July 2020 to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Both gave false testimony numerous times to regulators.
The August 18, 2021 news release from the South Carolina US Attorney’s Office made clear that the investigation continues: “`This indictment with its attendant allegations and charges is another step toward justice for all those responsible for the VC Summer nuclear plant fiasco,’ said FBI Special Agent in Charge Susan Ferensic.”The two SCANA officials and Westinghouse’s Churchman are subject to five-year prison sentences and stiff fines but will likely face reduced sentences in exchange for fully cooperating with investigators, something required in their plea agreements.
Both Westinghouse and SCANA were eventually forced into bankruptcy. Westinghouse was acquired by Brookfield Business Partners, and SCANA vanished after an easy takeover by Dominion Energy, approved in December 2018. The fate of the debt-strapped, state-owned partner Santee Cooper rages on in the South Carolina Legislature.
One entity that will likely never be held responsible for the disastrous project that it authorized is the South Carolina Public Service Commission. Members of this body unanimously voted in favor of anything SCANA requested during the entire course of the project and balked at providing oversight as it fell apart. All were replaced by the Legislature at the end of their terms with new members, who have been less accommodating to utility requests.
Public interest intervenors were prescient in their early assessments of the project. Friends of the Earth, which intervened before the Public Service Commission against the project in August 2008, noted SCANA’s disregard for energy efficiency and alternative forms of energy. That organization predicted that the project’s fate would be what the US Attorney’s Office affirmed in the August 18, 2021 indictment: “from the outset, the Project was characterized by cost overruns and significant delays.” Likewise, toward the end of the project in June 2017, just after Westinghouse declared bankruptcy, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club filed a formal complaint detailing why the project must be canceled. As money hemorrhaged, the owners made that earth-shaking decision a month later. And the mighty crash still reverberates.
In Georgia, construction of the other AP1000 project, located at Plant Vogtle, stumbles along to massive cost overruns and significant schedule delays. A main difference between the projects: Georgia Power has a large enough customer base to absorb the financial blow of its struggling project. With cost projections for the two Vogtle units nearing a stunning $30 billion, finishing dates presented to the Georgia Public Service Commission remain open to question.
The Carolina and Georgia reactor projects went forward under laws related to “construction work in progress” that allowed financing charges to be billed to the ratepayers from the start of construction, long before the reactors were online. Both the South Carolina law, the Baseload Review Act, and Georgia’s Nuclear Energy Financing Act have been repealed.
The fault for the shocking AP1000 misadventure falls squarely on the shoulders of Westinghouse and the involved utilities. They all fell victim to their own reactor-promotion propaganda but lacked the technical and management competence to pull off the projects as envisaged. With pursuit of large light-water reactors in the United States all but dead, the nuclear industry is now endlessly touting an array of “small modular reactors” and a dizzying menu of so-called “advanced reactors,” all of which exist only on paper. It’s unclear if there’s a path forward for this nuclear renaissance redux, and if there is, whether taxpayers will be put on the hook for financing some of it.
Germany Calls on Iran to Resume Nuclear Talks
Informal negotiations stalled after Iran’s new hardline president was elected in June. Tehran has caused an international outcry in recent months over the broadening scope of its nuclear program.
“US President Joe Biden has signaled his eagerness to resume direct talks, but Iranian officials have yet to do the same.”
The German Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said it “vehemently” urged Iran to restart negotiations aimed at reviving a defunct nuclear deal.
“We are ready to do so, but the time window won’t be open indefinitely,” a ministry spokesman said.
The French foreign ministry made a similar statement later on Wednesday.
In 2015, Iran, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, China, plus EU representatives, worked out a deal to place curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) sought to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons by restricting the extent to which it could enrich uranium, install nuclear centrifuges, and stockpile radioactive material. In exchange, the other signatories agreed to drop certain sanctions against Tehran.
‘A combination of failures:’ why 3.6m pounds of nuclear waste is buried on a popular California beach
The San Onofre nuclear power plant shut down years ago – but residents and experts worry what will happen with the waste left behind
More than 2 million visitors flock each year to California’s San Onofre state beach, a dreamy slice of coastline just north of San Diego. The beach is popular with surfers, lies across one of the largest Marine Corps bases in the Unites States and has a 10,000-year-old sacred Native American site nearby. It even landed a shout-out in the Beach Boys’ 1963 classic Surfin’ USA.
But for all the good vibes and stellar sunsets, beneath the surface hides a potential threat: 3.6m lb of nuclear waste from a group of nuclear reactors shut down nearly a decade ago. Decades of political gridlock have left it indefinitely stranded, susceptible to threats including corrosion, earthquakes and sea level rise.
The San Onofre reactors are among dozens across the United States phasing out, but experts say they best represent the uncertain future of nuclear energy.
“It’s a combination of failures, really,” said Gregory Jaczko, who chaired the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the top federal enforcer, between 2009 and 2012, of the situation at San Onofre.
‘Star Wars’ no longer fiction
ABQ at center of research for tomorrow’s weapons
“Albuquerque, New Mexico, is the epicenter of directed energy research in the United States…If the arms race for directed energy indeed takes off, much of the action could take place in Albuquerque.”
BY RYAN BOETEL / JOURNAL STAFF WRITER Copyright © 2021 Albuquerque Journal August 20, 2021 abqjournal.com
Force fields protecting us from drones and missiles.
Guns that shoot lasers instead of firing bullets.
Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots zapping at each other on the battlefield.
A new report by the Air Force Research Laboratory titled Directed Energy Futures 2060 describes the sorts of “directed energy” weapons that may come to exist in the next 40 years. And the expected technology – much of which may be researched and developed in Albuquerque – is like something out of a science fiction movie.
Officials from multiple Department of Defense entities, partners with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other experts came together to write the report, which says the world is at a “tipping point.”
MOX failed. But plutonium pit production is different, argues NNSA exec.
“Even with a potential surge in production at Los Alamos, there remains uncertainty about that capability, especially with their history of outages,” U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson
By Colin Demarest cdemarest@aikenstandard.com postandcourier.com August 21, 2021
We could all learn a lesson on disarmament from Archbishop Hunthausen
“I am grateful for having been invited to speak to you on disarmament because it forces me to a kind of personal disarmament. This is a subject I have thought about and prayed over for many years. I can recall vividly hearing the news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. I was deeply shocked. I could not then put into words the shock I felt from the news that a city of hundreds of thousands of people had been devastated by a single bomb. Hiroshima challenged my faith as a Christian in a way I am only now beginning to understand. That awful event and its successor at Nagasaki sank into my soul, as they have in fact sunk into the souls of all of us, whether we recognize it or not.”
Those are the opening lines of the “Faith and Disarmament” speech Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen delivered on June 12, 1981. Hunthausen had become active in resistance to the U.S. stockpiling of nuclear weapons and the new Trident submarine-based nuclear weapons system, which included the Bangor Trident submarine base in Puget Sound just 20 miles west of Seattle.
In that 1981 speech, Hunthausen referred to the Trident submarines based there as “the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.” In context, it was both a profound and prophetic statement of fact.
As Hunthausen said, “Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound because of the massive cooperation required in our area — the enormous sinful complicity that is necessary — for the eventual incineration of millions of our brother and sister human beings.”