It is now 85 seconds to midnight.
On January 27, 2026, the Doomsday Clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB), which sets the Clock, called for urgent action to limit nuclear arsenals, create international guidelines on the use of AI, and form multilateral agreements to address global biological threats.
Partnership for a World without Nuclear Weapons: Statement on the Fifth Anniversary of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
ALBUQUERQUE—Wednesday, January 21, 2026—The Partnership for a World without Nuclear Weapons released a statement in recognition of the fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons:
We hope for its further expansion through additional ratifications, now that a majority of the world’s countries have signed the Treaty. In July 2017, the Vatican was the first nation-state to sign and ratify the Treaty as part of its “unwavering commitment to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
We condemn the fact that the nuclear weapons powers have never honored their long-held obligations under the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty to enter serious negotiations leading to global nuclear disarmament.
In contrast, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was a great step toward the light of peace. The nuclear-armed states have a moral obligation to hear the voices of the majority of the world, and to listen to those who face the threat of annihilation due to the reckless decisions of any one of their nine leaders. Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling over Ukraine makes this clear, while ongoing crises in the Middle East further escalate the risks. Meanwhile, the nuclear weapons powers are engaged in massive “modernization” programs, designed to keep nuclear weapons forever.
The international legal force of the nuclear weapons ban treaty is limited to those states that have formally ratified it. But its moral power does not recognize boundaries between nations, nor lines on a map. The moral power of this Treaty is global and universal. We hope and pray that it will exert moral pressure on the nuclear weapons states to finally honor their disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
On the fifth anniversary of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, we specifically call upon world leaders to demonstrate measurable progress toward nuclear disarmament. Eight decades of nuclear threats are far too long, as evidenced by the horrors documented by the atomic bombing museums in Japan. It is long past time for the nuclear weapons powers to begin to make tangible progress toward that end.
As our close colleague Robert McElroy, Cardinal of Washington, DC, declared last August in Hiroshima on the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing:
“We refuse to live in 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.”
A Grave Problem with South Carolina’s New Nuclear Warhead
In South Carolina, contractors say new plutonium pit warhead waste will be shipped to New Mexico. Is it true?
“The coming showdown over SRNS’s TRU waste underscores what has long been a truism of the US nuclear weapons complex: that the government’s urgency to produce new weapons outstrips its commitment to plan and fund the cleanup of the sites across the American landscape that are contaminated while doing so.”
| January 22, 2026 inkstickmedia.com
On a crisp evening last October, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), a federal contractor that hopes to manufacture thousands of cores for new nuclear warheads at a Cold War-era weapons plant in rural South Carolina, put on a public information session at a library in the town of North Augusta. The purpose of the event was to address any concern from locals that its plan to produce 50 plutonium pits per year for 50 years would leave toxic waste, including radioactive refuse known as TRU waste, in and around the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site (SRS) that people in towns like Allendale and Aiken find themselves neighboring.
The session included about 30 presenters whom SRNS employs. They handed out Halloween candy while standing beside posterboards laying out what they described as a “cradle-to-grave” process for TRU waste generated by producing those pits. They described a plan to store batches of radioactive waste for only one year in both existing and to-be-constructed buildings around an abandoned nuclear fuel plant at the SRS. The waste, according to contractor employees and a map they displayed, would then be transported in trucks along Interstate 20 through Atlanta, Birmingham, and Fort Worth before reaching southern New Mexico, where it would be buried in an 2,150-foot-deep salt mine called the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP). The 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act requires the company to detail those steps, including, crucially, the final “disposition of such wastes,” in order to apply for a local permit to build and operate what SRNS says will be just temporary waste storage buildings at the plant site. An information sheet from SRNS said the company plans for the permit application to be submitted in January and for the new storage buildings to begin construction a year later.
Trump offers states a deal to take nuclear waste
“Governors would effectively be invited to compete for what the administration believes is a once-in-a-generation economic development prize in exchange for hosting the nation’s most politically and environmentally toxic byproduct.”
The Trump administration wants to quadruple America’s production of nuclear power over the next 25 years and is hoping to entice states to take the nuclear waste those plants produce by dangling the promise of steering massive investments their way.
President Donald Trump’s big bet on amping up nuclear production is not an easy feat, fraught with NIMBY concerns about safety and waste byproducts. The administration hopes to solve at least one of those issues — what to do with toxic nuclear waste — with a program they plan to roll out this week.
Governors would effectively be invited to compete for what the administration believes is a once-in-a-generation economic development prize in exchange for hosting the nation’s most politically and environmentally toxic byproduct.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has already begun laying groundwork with governors. Over the last two weeks, Wright has met with at least two governors who have expressed interest, according to two officials familiar with the private meetings granted anonymity to discuss them.
Americans Across Party Lines Want the U.S. to Keep Nuclear Limits with Russia, New Poll Finds
YouGov poll commissioned by ReThink Media and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
“As the last remaining U.S.-Russia nuclear limitations treaty expires on Feb. 5, an overwhelming majority of Americans (91 percent) say the United States should negotiate a new agreement with Russia to either maintain current limits on nuclear weapons or further reduce both countries’ arsenals.”
The poll of 1,000 registered voters also finds that the vast majority of Americans—including 85 percent of those who voted for President Trump—believe the president should agree to Russia’s proposal to continue abiding by the limits imposed by the New START treaty for at least another year after the treaty expires. In addition, 72 percent of registered voters believe that removing all nuclear limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals would make the United States less secure.
When New START expires, it will be the first time in decades that there are no limits capping the number of nuclear weapons for the world’s two largest arsenals. Together, the U.S. and Russia own almost 90 percent of all nuclear weapons in the world.
President Trump recently said he intends to negotiate a better agreement with Russia after New START expires. Previously, he warned that “when you take off nuclear restrictions – that’s a big problem” and made favorable comments about Russia’s one-year offer to voluntarily maintain the treaty’s limits. He repeatedly has warned of the threat posed by nuclear weapons. However, his administration has not yet taken concrete actions to secure a new nuclear limitations agreement with Russia.
Palomares: Reflections of an American, sixty years later
This past Saturday marked 60 years since the 1966 Palomares mid-air crash that left plutonium contamination scattered around the Spanish village. Dr. Michael E. Ketterer, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ, has authored “Palomares: Reflections of an American, sixty years later.” See his English language version here and below and the Spanish version here.
| January 17, 2026 eldiario.es
By U.S. Navy, Courtesy of the Natural Resources Defense Council – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by EH101 using CommonsHelper., The original uploader was Asterion at English Wikipedia., 31 May 2007 (original upload date), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2630293
During the early morning hours of January 17, 1966, the six-year-old author was in his bed, asleep in the Buffalo, New York suburb of North Tonawanda. During those very same moments, a crash took place between two US planes: a B-52 bomber and a fully loaded KC-135, which were in the midst of refueling the bomber in-flight. The B-52 was crossing the Iberian Peninsula that morning as part of US Air Force’s Strategic Air Command’s daily routes, performing vigilance on the Soviet Union. Three thermonuclear bombs fell to the land, and a fourth fell into the sea, after the collision in the skies over Palomares, a small village located about two kilometers from the Mediterranean, in the province of Almeria, Andalucía in southeastern Spain.
All of that happened before I got out of bed that day.
Two of the bombs were destroyed upon impact, although neither produced a nuclear explosion. Instead, several kilograms of plutonium (Pu) were dispersed on a windy day, onto several square kilometers of the tomato fields and residential zones of Palomares. An additional bomb was found by a local resident; fortunately, it wasn’t significantly damaged since its parachute had opened. On the other hand, the fourth bomb appeared to have been lost in the Mediterranean, and very soon, that was obviously true. The US Air Force’s top priority quickly became to use whatever resources and heroes that were available, for an urgent mission: find the lost bomb before the Soviets could do so. The search and recovery of the bomb became the success story, and the history that was told. That was the lesson learned from Palomares, among the two governments, their military forces, and in the press. The photos of the military commanders from both countries posing with the recovered bomb aboard the USS Petrel are some of the most famous Internet images of Palomares.
Watch BOMBSHELL on PBS American Experience — streaming across all PBS-branded platforms, including YouTube, PBS.org and the PBS App!
The wait is over! BOMBSHELL is available NOW on PBS American Experience — and will be streaming simultaneously across all PBS-branded platforms, including YouTube, PBS.org and the PBS App.
BOMBSHELL examines how the U.S. government manipulated public opinion through propaganda and censorship to justify the use of nuclear weapons and to minimize the human toll. Against this powerful machinery, a small group of journalists—including a Black pool reporter, a Japanese American staffer, a Japanese photographer, and a freelance magazine writer—identified gaps in the official narrative and courageously reported on the human consequences of the atomic bombings.
The Wall Street Journal described BOMBSHELL as offering “lessons for our own age of ascendant AI,” while Foreign Policy called it “provocative history that brings to life the dangers that arise when government secrecy and control overwhelm press freedom.”
New Mexico, Department of Energy at odds over cleanup halt at LANL waste site
In a December public meeting, the field office’s manager indicated approval from the Environment Department likely wasn’t needed to defer the study and cleanup of Area C. According to the compliance decree, “NMED approval is not required” in several cases to change the status of an area to deferred, as long as the Department of Energy complied with other requirements.
Environment Department spokesperson Drew Goretzka wrote in an email to The New Mexican a site can be deferred in one of four cases, including if it is involved in active operations and if the amount of time needed for deferment is assessed.
The department doesn’t agree those requirements have been met, Goretzka wrote, “resulting in a breach of the Consent Order.”
| January 9, 2026 santafenewmexican.com
The U.S. Department of Energy has put cleanup of a hazardous waste disposal site at Los Alamos National Laboratory on hold, a decision that seems to have drawn the ire of the New Mexico Environment Department.
The state last year was planning to hold a public hearing in early 2026 on how to handle legacy waste left behind at Material Disposal Area C, according to a letter from an official in the Hazardous Waste Bureau.
The Department of Energy, however, had already made up its mind: Any corrective actions at the site would have to wait due to ramped-up operations near Area C. The public hearing is now on hold until the conflict over the deferment of corrective actions is settled, according to an Environment Department spokesperson.
The 11-acre waste site, in use from 1948 to 1974, is located within Technical Area 50 along Pajarito Road. Its six disposal pits were used for various types of waste, including radioactive materials and heavy metals.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: January 2026
American imperialism:
On the U.S. raid on Venezuela to oust Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president:
Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday January 5, 2026:
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world—in the real world, Jake—that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
The “Donroe Doctrine” is a more aggressive Trumpian take on the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy approach focused on unilateral U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere. How far does this administration intend to force this new doctrine?
DOE now department of nuclear weapons and Venezuelan oil: The Trump administration engaged the Department of Energy (DOE) and Secretary Chris Wright to oversee the seizure and marketing of Venezuelan oil following the capture of Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. intends to control Venezuelan oil, aiming to sell 30–50 million barrels of accumulated, sanctioned crude to the American people.
Greenland:
Trump describes Greenland as an “absolute necessity” for national security and the defense of the Arctic.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that the president believes Greenland is “essential for the Golden Dome missile shield.” https://www.wcvb.com/article/greenland-trump-explainer/70097863
Chicago Tribune Editorial: Tick, tick goes the Doomsday Clock
“It would be madness to resume nuclear testing, let treaties lapse and expand arsenals that already could wipe out the planet. Diplomacy worked for decades, mainly because of an understanding that avoiding nuclear war was essential to humanity’s future. Today’s global leaders need to start acting accordingly.”
By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune – January 6, 2026 chicagotribune.com
This month, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago is scheduled to announce whether the hands of its famous Doomsday Clock will move closer to midnight. It feels like a safe bet that Armageddon is drawing nearer today than it has in a long, long time.
The Doomsday Clock started almost 80 years ago, when physicists who developed the Bomb grew alarmed at its use against Japan to end World War II.
Between the late 1940s and the early 1990s, nuclear war wasn’t a remote possibility: It almost happened, repeatedly, as America and the Soviet Union fought the Cold War. Chicago’s atomic scientists moved the hands of their clock from seven minutes to midnight at its start in 1947 to just two minutes to midnight as of 1953, when the U.S. and Soviets started testing enormously powerful hydrogen bombs.
*The image above differs from the article photo due to usage rights.
NEW INTERACTIVE PIECE from USA TODAY: THE NUCLEAR SPONGE — & Much More!
Screenshot from USA Today article January 5, 2026 usatoday.com/graphics/interactives/us-nuclear-weapons-expansion-fallout-map/
THE NUCLEAR SPONGE
Fallout maps show what could happen if America’s nuclear missile silos were attacked
By Davis Winkie, Ramon Padilla, Stephen Beard, Karina Zaiets and Carlie Procell, USA TODAY | usatoday.com
U.S. nuclear strategy revolves around the idea of the “triad.” Each of the military’s methods for delivering a nuclear strike represents a leg – the air leg (bomber planes), the sea leg (missile submarines) and the land leg (silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles).
In recent years, arms control advocates have argued that the land leg of the triad is useless compared with its peers and makes the world a more dangerous place. The root of the debate is the vulnerability of the underground silos: An enemy can – and probably would – destroy them in a first strike against the United States.
Those opposed to land-based nuclear missiles, such as Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association, say that this vulnerability would push the president into a “use-or-lose logic” if he or she believed the United States were under nuclear attack. If the president launched a nuclear missile counterattack under a false warning, the results would be catastrophic.
The naysayers also highlight the cost of replacing the existing 1970s-vintage fleet of 400 Minuteman III missiles with the under-development Sentinel missiles, which the Air Force estimated will cost $140 billion (an increase from a 2020 estimate of $78 billion).
Warren, Garamendi Press Energy Secretary on Mismanagement and Taxpayer Waste in Plutonium Pit Production Program
Without transparency, accountability, and action around the pit program, the Department of Energy may be enabling the waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.
“In rushing to production, NNSA has developed an excessively risky program structure, with management concerns around fundamental aspects such as the cost and schedule.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. John Garamendi | warren.senate.gov – garamendi.house.gov
Washington, D.C. — In a new letter, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative John Garamendi (D-Calif.), both members of their respective Armed Services Committees and of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, are urging Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright to review the scope of and the need for the nuclear weapon plutonium pit production program, and pause the program’s Savannah River site until the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has established guardrails to prevent additional waste of taxpayer funds.
In August, the Department of Energy (DOE) launched a special study into NSSA’s leadership and management of the plutonium pit production mission. The lawmakers believe that, if properly conducted, the study will find that years of mismanagement have put billions of taxpayer dollars at risk with an unrealistic pit production schedule and goals.
“The Trump administration is blindly spending tens of billions of dollars to produce plutonium pits for nuclear weapons without a real budget or plan,” said Senator Warren. “This program is already years behind schedule and over budget, and Congressman Garamendi and I are urging the Secretary of Energy to conduct a vigorous review to rein in years of waste and mismanagement.”
“For years I have called for Congress to take action to fix the failing plutonium modernization effort. Congress has continued to pour billions of dollars into efforts to restart production with arbitrary targets,” said Congressman Garamendi. “This letter cuts to the core of the matter and asks necessary questions of NNSA, including about the questionable management and faulty assumptions underlying the program. I eagerly await their response, along with the results of the Department of Energy’s 120-day special investigation.”
The lawmakers raise concerns about how, years into this program, it is still unclear what the pit production program’s schedule and full cost will be. The Government Accountability Office recommended NNSA create a master schedule to comply with its best practices, but the agency has yet to produce one…
Livermore Lab Uses Trump Executive Order Gutting Environmental Laws to Push Through Enhanced Plutonium Utilization without Public Input
A November notice from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) erases the previously announced public involvement requirement and thereby fast-tracks increased plutonium use at its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory after decades of limits protected the public from potential risks.
News from our friends at Tri-Valley CAREs | trivalleycares.org
First announced In January 2025, the NNSA proposal for “Enhanced Plutonium Facility Utilization” at the Livermore Lab was to include a “Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement” (SEIS) according to its Federal Register Notice. It specifically stated that, “NNSA will prepare a Draft SEIS. NNSA will announce the availability of the Draft SEIS in the Federal Register and local media outlets. NNSA will hold one or more public hearings for the Draft SEIS. Any comments received on the Draft SEIS will be considered and addressed in the Final SEIS.”
Now the agency has reneged on this promise, instead fast-tracking directly to a Final SEIS and a Record of Decision without any further opportunity for public input!
DOE using its own land to help pair AI centers, nuclear reactors
The Energy Department wants to build nuclear-powered artificial intelligence data centers on federal land using new public-private partnerships.
By Kelly Livingston and Allison Mollenkamp | rollcall.com
Co-locating advanced nuclear reactors with data centers on DOE sites is part of the Trump administration’s bid to accelerate the development of both technologies, sources say, as research efforts tease out their “symbiotic relationship.” But questions remain about how these projects could affect local communities and the actual timeline for bringing more nuclear power online.
DOE first announced its intention to use federal land for data center development and co-location in early April with a request for information to gauge industry interest. According to the RFI, the department intends to begin construction at the selected DOE sites by the end of the year, with operations beginning by the end of 2027.
Lawmakers introduce bill to cancel $100 million University of Michigan data center grant
The University of Michigan has failed to act transparently or coordinate with local officials on data center project, says state Rep. Jimmie Wilson Jr.
“Eighty-four percent of the lab’s 2026 budget request is for nuclear weapons work, according to the nonprofit Nuclear Watch New Mexico.”
By Brian Allnutt | planetdetroit.org
Michigan State Rep. Jimmie Wilson Jr. (D-Ypsilanti) introduced legislation Thursday to rescind a $100 million state grant for the University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory’s data center project in Ypsilanti Township.
The university has been unwilling to offer community benefits or consider another site for the data centers, Wilson said.
“The University of Michigan has not been fully transparent with this project and has refused to collaborate with the Ypsilanti Township officials throughout this planning process,” Wilson said in a statement to Planet Detroit.
Ypsilanti Township officials say the university misled state officials about the size of the project when applying for the $100 million grant, and passed a resolution earlier this month seeking to unwind the funding.
…
Petition highlights Los Alamos’ nuclear weapons work
A petition signed by over 700 University of Michigan employees, faculty, and students urges the school to cancel the $1.2 billion project and halt its partnership with Los Alamos, arguing the project will harm the environment, negatively impact low-income communities, and help advance harmful nuclear weapon and artificial intelligence technologies.
Catholic bishops remind political leaders that nuclear weapons are immoral
On August 5, the two American Cardinals present in Japan delivered stirring words from the Hiroshima World Peace Memorial Cathedral, whose bricks contain ashes from the atomic bomb…
“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,” said Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington. “We will resist, we will organize, we will pray, we will not cease, until the world’s nuclear arsenals have been destroyed.”
By John Wester | thebulletin.org
In August, a group of American Catholic Church leaders—including Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, DC, Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle, and me, the Archbishop of Santa Fe—traveled to Japan to mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There, we joined our Japanese counterparts—Bishop Mitsuru Shirahama of Hiroshima, Archbishop Emeritus Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki, and Archbishop Michiaki Nakamura of Nagasaki—in commemorating the destruction of their cities. Takami is a hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor); he was in his mother’s womb on August 9, 1945, when his city of Nagasaki was bombed. His maternal aunt and grandmother were both killed in the blast.
Eighty years have passed. But the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons is still with us—and it is growing worse every day. In 2019, Pope Francis elevated the Catholic Church beyond conditional acceptance of so-called deterrence. He declared that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is immoral. Nevertheless, the nuclear powers are now spending enormous sums of money on “modernization” that will keep nuclear weapons virtually forever. Meanwhile, in the United States, taxes are being cut to benefit the rich, and economic inequality and homelessness are exploding. This situation is deeply immoral and counter to the Catholic Church’s teachings on social justice.
SEE MORE ON SANTA FE ARCHBISHOP JOHN WESTER’S MONUMENTAL WORK ON NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT HERE:
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: December 2025
Nuclear weapons:
The government is running on a Continuing Resolution (CR) until the end of January. It’s possible to have another shutdown depending on how tough the Dems want to be. The legislative process is starting to move again, with the annual Defense Authorization Act up first and then appropriations. Both give funding increases to nuclear weapons programs, delivery systems and Trump’s “Golden Dome.”
Cost overruns in nearly all things remains the rule. Golden Dome could cost up to $4 trillion, be destabilizing and never be 100% effective. Putin has already taken steps to circumvent it and China may well be doing the same, particularly with hypersonic delivery systems. The arms race continues, likely to be accelerated by artificial intelligence as well.
Nuclear weapons testing: No specific new developments but this article by ex-LANL Director Sig Hecker is good:
| Lessons From Los Alamos |
| Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump rekindled a decades-old debate about nuclear testing. “Because of other countries testing programs,” he wrote on social media, “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis…” A return to testing at this time would likely benefit U.S. adversaries more than it would the United States. Worse still, it might rekindle an even greater and broader arms race than in the first few decades of the Cold War. |
| Siegfried Hecker | Foreign Affairs |
| Read More |
Article continued:
“My greatest concern about resuming full-scale nuclear testing is that it will fuel another dangerous arms race at a time when global tensions among the great powers are high. Engaging in another arms race is contrary to Trump’s comment that “it would be great if we could all denuclearize, because the power of nuclear weapons is crazy.”
Instead of suggesting an immediate return to nuclear testing, then, Trump should focus on returning to arms control measures to ensure strategic stability with Russia and with China. Hopefully, these measures would lead to a reduction in U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and reduce incentives for China to increase its arsenal. For nuclear testing, he should help erect the highest possible barriers for any country to test by leading an effort to ratify the CTBT. To settle the question of evasion of low-yield tests or hydronuclear experiments, the president and his counterparts in Beijing and Moscow would need to show the political will to agree on a verifiable low-yield limit. That will almost surely require onsite inspections, which were demonstrated to be possible in 1988.
The bottom line is that even though the United States could derive important benefits from resumed nuclear testing, it would lose more than it stands to gain.”
MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIV FOR THE LIX WORLD DAY OF PEACE
“The idea of the deterrent power of military might, especially nuclear deterrence, is based on the irrationality of relations between nations, built not on law, justice and trust, but on fear and domination by force.”
From the Vatican, 8 December 2025, vatican.va
“In the relations between citizens and rulers, it could even be considered a fault not to be sufficiently prepared for war, not to react to attacks, and not to return violence for violence. Far beyond the principle of legitimate defense, such confrontational logic now dominates global politics, deepening instability and unpredictability day by day. It is no coincidence that repeated calls to increase military spending, and the choices that follow, are presented by many government leaders as a justified response to external threats. The idea of the deterrent power of military might, especially nuclear deterrence, is based on the irrationality of relations between nations, built not on law, justice and trust, but on fear and domination by force. “Consequently,” as Saint John XXIII had already written in his day, “people are living in the grip of constant fear. They are afraid that at any moment the impending storm may break upon them with horrific violence. And they have good reasons for their fear, for there is certainly no lack of such weapons. While it is difficult to believe that anyone would dare to assume responsibility for initiating the appalling slaughter and destruction that war would bring in its wake, there is no denying that the conflagration could be started by some chance and unforeseen circumstance.”
Federal official says further testing needed to determine LANL’s chromium plume migration
“Asked about the difference in opinion between the federal and state agency regarding the sampling, Kunkle said, ‘I can’t answer why we have the disconnect,’ adding that the only sampling done at that monitoring location, called zonal sampling, ‘is really not intended to predict the long term environment or trends in the regional aquifer. That really should be done only with monthly monitoring.’”
By Clara Bates cbates@sfnewmexican.com | santafenewmexican.com
A federal official says more testing is needed to determine whether a toxic chromium plume has seeped into San Ildefonso Pueblo’s groundwater, after the state called groundwater testing “conclusive evidence” the U.S. Department of Energy’s efforts at containment have been “inadequate.”
New Mexico’s Environment Department announced last month hexavalent chromium from Los Alamos National Laboratory had migrated to Pueblo de San Ildefonso land for the first time.
But Jessica Kunkle — the Los Alamos Field Office manager with the U.S. Department of Energy — told state lawmakers on the Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee on Monday afternoon the type of groundwater sampling conducted may not have told the whole story. The agency is working with partners to get a monitoring well installed “as quickly as possible,” she said, to get better data.
12/8/25 Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup & Hexavalent Chromium Plume Update
New Air Force Chief Boosts Nuclear Buildup, Moving Away From Deterrence, Experts Warn
“Gen. Ken Wilsbach promotes nuclear “recapitalization” in his first memo to the Air Force — fueling fear of a radical shift away from nukes acting solely as deterrence.”
By: Austin Campbell, The Intercept | theintercept.com
“We will advocate relentlessly for programs like the F-47, Collaborative Combat Aircraft as well as nuclear force recapitalization through the Sentinel program and the B-21,” Wilsbach wrote in a memo dated November 3, referring to planned upgrades to nuclear missiles and stealth bombers.
Experts who spoke to The Intercept said the language signals a doctrinal pivot, prioritizing displays of strength and the buildup of nuclear weaponry over internal repair — an approach that may appeal politically to the Trump administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but does little to ease the fatigue and distrust spreading among airmen.
…
The Sentinel program Wilsbach referenced is intended to modernize the land-based leg of the nuclear triad, with new missiles, hardened silos, and updated command-and-control infrastructure across missile fields in Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. It’s the Air Force’s planned replacement for aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile systems. The B-21 Raider is the next-generation stealth bomber designed to replace older strategic bombers like the B-2 and B-1, delivering both conventional and nuclear payloads.
Critics say framing these nuclear modernization efforts as “recapitalization” obscures the ethical and strategic implications of expanding U.S. nuclear capabilities amid declining morale and retention.
“You don’t ‘recapitalize’ genocidal weaponry.”
“The chief of staff’s emphasis on weaponry is disheartening. His description of nuclear weapon ‘recapitalization’ is an abomination of the English language. You don’t ‘recapitalize’ genocidal weaponry. Both the Sentinel missile program and the B-21 bomber are unnecessary systems that could cost as much as $500 billion over the next 20 years,” said William Astore, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and military historian.
Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) Town Hall December 3rd, 2025 – Thoughts from Nuclear Watch New Mexico:
The LANL Director mentioned Non-proliferation is a big part of their work. However, the Nuclear Nonproliferation program budget is a mere 6.5% of the total Lab budget (Nuclear Weapons is 84%, with a Billion dollar increase for FY26). https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/FY26-Lab-Table-spreadsheets-Chart-1.pdf Nuclear Nonproliferation is a valuable program that LANL does well, and its funding should not be cut to provide more money for nuclear weapons production (literally the opposite of nonproliferation). The Nuclear Nonproliferation budget should be increased, especially if the Lab director agrees on its importance. NukeWatch NM is entirely supportive of LANL’s Sealed Sources program, which serves as the nation’s lead for collecting potentially dangerous radioactive materials that are no longer needed, securing them, and ensuring they don’t fall into the wrong hands, protecting communities and enhancing security.
On the discussion of AI missions at the lab:
The lab is partnering with NVIDIA for their hardware and ChatGPT/Open AI for their models. “The goal is to harness the power of the next evolution of high performance computing and apply it to our national security science and technology. Big development on this front is the “genesis” mission…” and in an answer to a question, want to “use artificial intelligence to [for example] help us develop the molecules that could deliver a therapeutic isotope to a cancer cell with high specificity so that when that undergoes radioactive decay the decay products basically kill the cancer cell but no surrounding tissue”
Again, the lab’s nuclear weapons budget ate up almost all else this year – how does the lab propose to work on this kind of work when its’ science budget is less than 1%? How will this advancement of AI be applied to our national security science and technology in terms of nuclear weapons? NukeWatch has serious concerns and questions regarding the tangible risks associated with integrating commercial AI infrastructure to be with active national security and nuclear defense programs. Beyond this, a $1.25 billion advanced computing campus is planned in Michigan to support far-away Los Alamos Lab in high-performance computing and AI research.
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Nuclear Watch New Mexico Attends the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability Fall Meeting Nov. 21-23 in Las Vegas, Protesting Nuclear Testing in Nevada & Much More!
What might Project 2025 mean for N.M.? Non-nuclear cuts at national labs (Updated Dec 1, 2025)
“[The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025] contemplates pulling funding from any work unrelated to nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and sister facility Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California…in New Mexico, some say cutting the labs’ other scientific work would have a devastating economic effect on the state and could ultimately weaken the institutions as a whole.”
“It doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to realize that there could be massive layoffs if this proposal or these ideas were to reach fruition,” said Chandler, who worked in the employment arena for much of her time at the facility. “Now, that might expand the nuclear weapons program to some degree, but it’s not going to absorb the entire workforce.”
“Under the Biden administration, LANL has seen a massive growth in employment as the laboratory ramps up for its production of plutonium pits, the cores of nuclear bombs.”
By Gabrielle Porter and Alaina Mencinger gporter@sfnewmexican.com amencinger@sfnewmexican.com | Updated santafenewmexican.com
Project 2025 — the now-infamous blueprint for a conservative presidency that’s still publicly being held at arm’s length by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — proposes all sorts of sweeping policy recommendations, from promoting capital punishment to embracing mass deportations.
But tucked in the 922 pages of its report, “Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise,” is one recommendation that centers squarely on New Mexico.
Trump talk on nuke testing turns focus to New Mexico’s role in decades of blasts
Jay Coghlan, executive director of the nuclear watchdog group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said Wright’s comments “somewhat” quelled his initial concerns about a renewed explosive nuclear testing program.
But he said claims Russia and China may be conducting small-scale tests known as hydronuclear tests — banned by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, of which the United States, Russia and China are all signatories — continue to give him pause. He fears rumors about the low-yield tests in other nations could be used to justify a domestic return to testing.
“That, in effect, would give permission to the U.S. [to resume testing],” Coghlan said. “But that would be in violation of the norm of the CTBT.”
Three decades removed from the United States’ last nuclear test, a testing regimen would likely be expensive and time-consuming to start up, Coghlan argued, and could prompt other nuclear powers to follow suit.
It seems likely Russia, at least, would: Following Trump’s post, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced if the United States resumed explosive nuclear testing, the Eastern European nation would follow.
“Then everybody else is going to do it, or virtually everybody else will do it, every other nuclear weapons power,” Coghlan said. “I could just see India and Pakistan champing at the bit to test. And then, of course, there’s North Korea and China.”
| November 30, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
It might not have as reverent a name as the Trinity Test or a litany of films made about it. But Project Gnome, a 1961 explosive nuclear test conducted near Carlsbad, is a relic of a bygone era in New Mexico and beyond.
In the 47 years between the Trinity Test and the end of the United States’ explosive nuclear testing in 1992, the nation would perform more than 1,000 such tests — more than any other nuclear nation — with most conducted in Nevada.
New Mexico might not have been the center of the nation’s testing efforts post-Trinity, which marked its 80th anniversary this year, but the state still played a role: Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory helped design and conduct testing elsewhere, including at the Nevada Test Site and in the Marshall Islands.
Most Democrats and one-third of Republicans think it’s likely the U.S. will get into a nuclear war in the next decade
A new YouGov poll on nuclear weapons finds that nearly half of Americans believe it’s likely the U.S. will get into a nuclear war in the coming decade, and most are worried about personally experiencing a nuclear war. A majority believe nuclear weapons are making the world less safe, but opinions are mixed on whether the U.S. should dismantle all of its nuclear weapons.
By: Jamie Ballard| November 26, 2025 today.yougov.com
46% of Americans think it’s likely the U.S. will get into a nuclear war within the next 10 years; 37% think this is not very or not at all likely. 57% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans think this is likely.
Department of Energy Seeks to Eliminate Radiation Protections Requiring Controls “As Low As Reasonably Achievable”
An internal Department of Energy (DOE) memorandum eliminates worker and public radiation protection rules known “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA). This fundamental departure from decades of accepted health physics practices is being promoted by senior DOE political appointees with little background in health or radiation control. It is marked as “URGENCY: High” under the auspices of the DOE Deputy Secretary, the Under Secretary for Science, and the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The memorandum awaits the final signature of DOE Secretary Chris Wright.
The memo’s stated goal is to:
“…remove the ALARA principle from all DOE directives and regulations, including DOE Order 458.1, Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment, NE [Office of Nuclear Energy] Order 458.1, Radiation Protection of the Public, and, upon completion of the rulemaking process, 10 CFR [Code of Federal Regulations] 835, Occupational Radiation Protection.” [1]
It follows the playbook of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which called for:
“Set[ting] clear radiation exposure and protection standards by eliminating ALARA (“as low as reasonably achievable”) as a regulatory principle and setting clear standards according to radiological risk and dose rather than arbitrary objectives.” [2]
Lab Chromium Contamination Confirmed on San Ildefonso Pueblo Land
Comprehensive Cleanup Needed Instead of More Nuclear Weapons
The New Mexico Environment Department has announced:
“A toxic chromium plume from Los Alamos National Laboratory has spread beyond Lab boundaries onto Pueblo de San Ildefonso land for the first time, with contamination exceeding state groundwater standards… These new results are conclusive evidence that the U.S. Department of Energy’s efforts to contain the chromium plume have been inadequate.”
In reality, chromium groundwater contamination probably migrated beyond the LANL/San Ildefonso Pueblo boundary long ago, with past Lab maps of the plume “magically’ stopping at the border. In the past, tribal leadership has commented that it was fortunate that the contamination stopped there, but that any future indications of groundwater contamination on Pueblo land could have serious consequences. The San Ildefonso Pueblo is a sovereign Native American tribal government.
As late as the late 1990s the Lab was falsely claiming that groundwater contamination was impossible because underlying volcanic tuff is “impermeable.” [1] This ignored the obvious fact that the Parajito Plateau is heavily seismically fractured, providing ready pathways for contaminant migration to deep groundwater. By 2005 even LANL acknowledged that continuing increasing contamination of the regional aquifer is inevitable.[2] Some 300,000 northern New Mexicans rely upon the aquifer for safe drinking water. The potential serious human health effects (including cancer) caused by chromium contamination was the subject of the popular movie Erin Brockovich.
LANL chromium plume spreads onto San Ildefonso Pueblo land, NMED says
Nuclear Watch New Mexico executive direcor Jay Coghlan sees PF-4 as being a bigger scale — and having bigger risks — than the other aging buildings.
“PF-4 is not unique in being old,” Coghlan said. “However, PF-4 is totally unique in currently being the only facility that can process large amounts of plutonium … particularly including plutonium pit production. I think, in part, that’s why the Safety Board focuses more on PF-4 than, to my knowledge, than any other single individual facility.”
| November 13, 2025 sourcenm.com
An underground plume of toxic chromium has spread from Los Alamos National Laboratory to Pueblo de San Ildefonso land, state Environment Department officials announced Thursday.
The discovery marks the first time the plume has been detected within the pueblo boundaries, officials said in a news release, though they added the plume’s spread does not pose imminent threats to drinking water in the pueblo or in Los Alamos County. That’s because the plume is not near any known private or public wells, officials said.
Long-term ingestion of hexavalant chromium can cause serious health problems or increase risk of certain cancers.
US Stands Alone Defying UN Vote on Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Could the LDS Church end an ongoing nuclear weapons project? These veteran activists think so.
By Thalif Deen, Inter Press Sevice | November 12, 2025 ipsnews.net
– The US took another step backward –to break ranks with the United Nations– when it voted against a draft resolution calling for the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
The negative vote followed an announcement by President Trump last month that the US plans to resume nuclear testing after a 33-year hiatus. The US stood alone on the UN vote, which was supported by almost all member States in the General Assembly’s First Committee.
The resolution was adopted by an overwhelming majority: with 168 votes in favor, with one against (United States) and 3 abstentions (India, Mauritius, Syria).
During Trump’s first term, the US abstained on the vote. And in other years they had been voting in favour.
Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation, which monitors and analyzes U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies, told IPS the chaos and uncertainty arose from Trump’s factually-challenged social media post that “because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”
The U.S. government’s first ever “No” vote, on the annual UN resolution in support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), raises further troubling questions about U.S. intentions.
A Small Town Is Fighting a $1.2 Billion AI Datacenter for America’s Nuclear Weapon Scientists
“Ypsilanti, Michigan resident KJ Pedri doesn’t want her town to be the site of a new $1.2 billion data center, a massive collaborative project between the University of Michigan and America’s nuclear weapons scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) in New Mexico.”
Matthew Gault| November 10, 2025 404media.co
“My grandfather was a rocket scientist who worked on Trinity,” Pedri said at a recent Ypsilanti city council meeting, referring to the first successful detonation of a nuclear bomb. “He died a violent, lonely, alcoholic. So when I think about the jobs the data center will bring to our area, I think about the impact of introducing nuclear technology to the world and deploying it on civilians. And the impact that that had on my family, the impact on the health and well-being of my family from living next to a nuclear test site and the spiritual impact that it had on my family for generations. This project is furthering inhumanity, this project is furthering destruction, and we don’t need more nuclear weapons built by our citizens.”
At the Ypsilanti city council meeting where Pedri spoke, the town voted to officially fight against the construction of the data center. The University of Michigan says the project is not a data center, but a “high-performance computing facility” and it promises it won’t be used to “manufacture nuclear weapons.” The distinction and assertion are ringing hollow for Ypsilanti residents who oppose construction of the data center, have questions about what it would mean for the environment and the power grid, and want to know why a nuclear weapons lab 24 hours away by car wants to build an AI facility in their small town.
“What I think galls me the most is that this major institution in our community, which has done numerous wonderful things, is making decisions with—as I can tell—no consideration for its host community and no consideration for its neighboring jurisdictions,” Ypsilanti councilman Patrick McLean said during a recent council meeting. “I think the process of siting this facility stinks.”
Harking to the MX, Utahns call on LDS Church President Oaks to speak out against nuclear missile being developed in Utah
Could the LDS Church end an ongoing nuclear weapons project? These veteran activists think so.
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE | November 9, 2025 sltrib.com
Decades ago, peace activists helped keep a major nuclear weapons system out of Utah with help from key figures, chiefly Spencer W. Kimball, then the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Now some of those same individuals are calling on the church’s newly ascended president, Dallin H. Oaks, to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps and speak out against the federal government’s development of a new generation of nuclear missile, known as Sentinel, partly in the Beehive State.
“The arms race continues,” the group of 12 Utahns and one former resident write in a letter mailed to church headquarters in early October, “and a new moral challenge faces” the leaders of the Utah-based faith.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: November 2025
Nuclear weapons:
The government shutdown has impact:
National Nuclear Security Agency confirms 152 furloughed at offices in Albuquerque, Los Alamos
Only 14 employees remain at the two sites By: Danielle Prokop-October 22, 2025
The NNSA confirmed 152 New Mexico employees charged with overseeing national laboratories’ nuclear weapons work were furloughed on Oct. 20, 2025. (Courtesy of NNSA)
The federal government this week sent home more than 150 federal New Mexico employees charged with overseeing national laboratories’ nuclear weapons work, with only 14 employees across two sites remaining at work, the National Nuclear Security Agency confirmed to Source NM.
The furloughs include 71 employees at NNSA’s Los Alamos field office and 81 at the Sandia National Laboratories location, NNSA Deputy Director of Communications Laynee Buckels told Source NM in an email. Seven employees remain at each site, working without pay, she said.
The field offices are responsible for “ensuring compliance with federal contracts to manage and operate the national security assets,” according to the NNSA website
To date there doesn’t appear to be furloughs at LANL, whose employees technically work for a contractor rather than the federal government. Congress is not furloughed, but Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the House out of session. As a result, legislation has come to a screeching halt.
Los Alamos’ plutonium facility safety systems need improvement, oversight board says
Nuclear Watch New Mexico executive direcor Jay Coghlan sees PF-4 as being a bigger scale — and having bigger risks — than the other aging buildings.
“PF-4 is not unique in being old,” Coghlan said. “However, PF-4 is totally unique in currently being the only facility that can process large amounts of plutonium … particularly including plutonium pit production. I think, in part, that’s why the Safety Board focuses more on PF-4 than, to my knowledge, than any other single individual facility.”
| November 7, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
An independent oversight agency wants to see improved safety systems at the facility at the heart of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium pit mission: PF-4.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board reported what it believes to be gaps in a safety analysis drafted for PF-4 and delays in upgrades to safety systems in a letter last month to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
“Maintaining momentum for these safety infrastructure projects is more important in light of the issues with the safety analysis,” the board wrote in the letter dated Oct. 10. It was signed by former acting chairman Thomas Summers.
LANL Prioritizes Plutonium “Pit” Bomb Core Production Over Safety
The independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recently released its Review of the Los Alamos Plutonium Facility Documented Safety Analysis. It concluded that:
“While LANL facility personnel continue to make important upgrades to the Plutonium Facility’s safety systems, many of those projects have encountered delays due to inconsistent funding and other reasons. DOE and LANL should consider prioritizing safety-related infrastructure projects to ensure that the Plutonium Facility safety strategy adequately protects the public, as the facility takes on new and expansive national security missions.” (Page 24)
In early October 2024, the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced with great fanfare that the Los Alamos Lab had produced its first “diamond stamped” plutonium pit for the nuclear weapons stockpile. Tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been sunk into LANL’s long delayed and over budget pit production program. Given no further announcements, it is not currently known whether or not the Lab is meeting its congressionally required production goals. Endemic nuclear safety problems have long been an intractable issue, at one point even forcing a three-year halt to plutonium operations at LANL’s Plutonium Facility-4 (“PF-4”).
In its recent Review, the Safety Board reported:
“The [2009] Plutonium Facility safety basis described very large potential [radioactive] dose consequences to the public following seismic events…. DOE committed to upgrade and seismically qualify the ventilation system, with a particular focus on a specific ventilation subsystem…”
“As the only facility in the DOE complex that can process large quantities of plutonium in many forms, [PF-4] represents a unique capability for the nation’s nuclear deterrent. The Board has long advocated for the use of safety-related active confinement systems in nuclear facilities for the purposes of confining radioactive materials…Passive confinement systems are not necessarily capable of containing hazardous materials with confidence because they allow a quantity of unfiltered air contaminated with radioactive material to be released from an operating nuclear facility following certain accident scenarios. Safety related active confinement ventilation systems will continue to function during an accident, thereby ensuring that radioactive material is captured by filters before it can be released into the environment… (Page 2, bolded emphases added)
AP: Trump appears to suggest the US will resume testing nuclear weapons for first time in 30 years
“For Trump, who has cast Russia as a “paper tiger” for failing to swiftly subdue Ukraine, the message is that Russia remains a global military competitor, especially on nuclear weapons, and that Moscow’s overtures on nuclear arms control should be acted on.”
By MICHELLE L. PRICE and CHRIS MEGERIAN | October 30, 2025 apnews.com
REUTERS: Trump tells Pentagon to immediately resume testing US nuclear weapons
“Russia – which tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile on October 21, held nuclear readiness drills on October 22 and tested a new nuclear-powered autonomous torpedo on October 28 – said it hoped Trump had been properly informed that Moscow had not tested a nuclear weapon itself.”
By Trevor Hunnicutt, Ismail Shakil and Kanishka Singh | October 30, 2025 reuters.com
VIEW THE RECORDING: Santa Fe Ecumenical Conversations Towards Nuclear Disarmament at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community – Monday, October 27
Archbishop John C. Wester and NukeWatch New Mexico presented a special evening at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community on Monday, October 27, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. MT. Following a presentation from NukeWatch executive director Jay Coghlan on U.S. nuclear weapons “modernization,” the Archbishop shared reflections from his pastoral letter, Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace, and speak about the importance of dialogue and hope in working toward nuclear disarmament.
View the recording at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LFmQzMoJds&t=1s
Trump Orders Nuclear Weapons Testing for New Nuclear Arms Race
New Plutonium “Pit” Bomb Cores at Los Alamos Lab Could Make It Real
Just minutes before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump posted on his Truth Social media platform that “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.” House Speaker Mike Johnson soon followed on CNN saying, “I think it is an obvious and logical thing to ensure that our weapons systems work.”
No other countries are currently testing nuclear weapons (the last was by North Korea in 2017). Further, any nuclear weapons tests by the U.S. would be performed by the Department of Energy (whose last test was in 1992), not the Department of War (until recently the Department of Defense). Trump was likely referring to Vladimir Putin’s recent claims of a new nuclear powered cruise missile and a tsunami-causing nuclear-armed torpedo that could threaten America’s coastal cities. In addition, China is dramatically expanding its own fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But central to all this is the U.S.’ own $2 trillion “modernization” program that will rebuild every nuclear warhead in the planned stockpile with new military capabilities and produce new-design nuclear weapons as well. This so-called modernization program will also build new nuclear weapons production facilities expected to be operational until ~2080, and buy new missiles, subs, and bombers from the usual rich defense contractors, all to keep nuclear weapons forever.
‘Nuclear weapons are blasphemous’: Archbishop Wester continues disarmament push with talk
This event was organized by the “Santa Fe Ecumenical Conversations Towards Nuclear Disarmament” group at the Santa Maria de la Paz parish near the Santa Fe Community College. They kindly invited NukeWatch to speak before Archbishop Wester for what turned out to be a wonderful event. The full recording can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/@SMDLP/streams
| October 28, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
In a Looming Nuclear Arms Race, Aging Los Alamos Faces a Major Test
The lab where Oppenheimer developed the atomic bomb is the linchpin in the United States’ effort to modernize its nuclear weapons. Yet the site has contended with contamination incidents, work disruptions and old infrastructure.
Alicia Inez Guzmán | October 28, 2025 The New York Times nytimes.com
In a sprawling building atop a mesa in New Mexico, workers labor around the clock to fulfill a vital mission: producing America’s nuclear bomb cores.
The effort is uniquely challenging. Technicians at Los Alamos National Laboratory must handle hazardous plutonium to create the grapefruit-size cores, known as pits. They do so in a nearly 50-year-old building under renovation to address aging infrastructure and equipment breakdowns that have at times disrupted operations or spread radioactive contamination, The New York Times found.
Now, the laboratory is under increasing pressure to meet the federal government’s ambitions to upgrade the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The $1.7 trillion project includes everything from revitalizing missile silos burrowed deep in five states, to producing new warheads that contain the pits, to arming new land-based missiles, bomber jets and submarines.
But the overall modernization effort is years behind schedule, with costs ballooning by the billions, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In 2018, Congress charged Los Alamos with making an annual quota of 30 pits by 2026, but by last year it had produced just one approved for the nuclear stockpile. (Officials have not disclosed whether more have been made since then.)
*The featured image differs from the article photo due to usage rights.
Why Putin’s ‘invincible’ nuclear-powered missile is more likely to become a disastrous ‘flying Chernobyl’ for Russia
The US abandoned efforts to build nuclear-powered missile weapons during the 1950s arms race with the Soviet Union as a nuclear-powered missile would effectively be a huge radiation risk.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at Middlebury College, described it as a “tiny flying Chernobyl,” referencing the Soviet power plant that melted down and covered a 1,600-mile area with toxic radiation…While Lewis believes the Burevestnik is only capable of subsonic speed and easy to intercept, he warned that Russia’s ambition poses a return to the Cold War era.
“NATO aircraft could intercept it. The problem is that Burevestnik is yet another step in an arms race that offers no victory for either side,” he wrote on X.
By Ronny Reyes | October 28, 2025 nypost.com
Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s latest threats that Moscow is preparing to deploy its new “invincible” nuclear-powered cruise missile has drawn a rebuke from President Trump and a reminder of America’s own nuclear might.
But experts say the Burevestnik missile could end up being more like a disastrous “flying Chernobyl” for Russia — and proves Putin is actually nervous about the possibility of the US giving Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.
George Barros, of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, described Putin’s ominous Sunday announcement as a form of fear mongering from a Kremlin afraid that the US could give Kyiv a much more conventional weapon — the tried and true Tomahawk.
Nuclear News Archive – 2022
With a New Weapon in Donald Trump’s Hands, the Iran Crisis Risks Going Nuclear
“Regardless of presidencies, nuclear planning tends to have a life of its own…Iran is very much in the crosshair.” – Hans Kristensen
Nuclear planners operate from “relatively vague presidential guidance,” writing scenarios, conducting war games, and adjusting plans, weapons and the posture of forces to anticipate countless possible scenarios.
BY: WILLIAM ARKIN | newsweek.com
Ten days before Donald J. Trump was elected president in 2016, the United States nuked Iran. The occasion: a nuclear war exercise held every year in late October. In the war game, after Iran sank an American aircraft carrier and employed chemical weapons against a Marine Corps force, the Middle East commander requested a nuclear strike, and a pair of B-2 stealth bombers, each loaded with a single nuclear bomb, stood by while the president deliberated.
“Testing our forces through a range of challenging scenarios validates the safety, security, effectiveness and readiness of the strategic deterrent,” Adm. Cecil D. Haney, then the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said as the exercise got underway.
DOE’s Nuclear Agency Moving to Manufacture New Plutonium Bomb Cores in Violation of Environmental Law and Court Order
Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, SRS Watch, Tri-Valley CAREs Assert “Pit” Pursuit Violates National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
COLUMBIA, SC, USA, January 9, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ — The Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has announced that it is proceeding with aggressive plans to expand the production of plutonium pits without required nation-wide “programmatic” public review. The Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch and Tri-Valley CAREs assert this is in violation of the legal requirements of both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and a 1998 court order that stipulates that DOE must prepare a “programmatic environmental impact statement” (PEIS) when it plans to produce more than 80 pits per year. Plutonium pits are the radioactive cores of nuclear weapons.
Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico concluded, “We need to find smart ways to face the world’s renewed nuclear arms race. Unnecessary expanded production of questionable plutonium bomb cores is not the way to do it. Instead of aggressively modifying nuclear weapons the U.S. should carefully preserve its existing, reliable, extensively tested nuclear weapons stockpile while working toward a future world free of them. It’s that kind of analysis and consideration of credible alternatives that the National Environmental Policy Act should give Americans instead of the nuclear weaponeers rubber stamping their self-interested agenda of nukes forever at the taxpayer’s expense.”
U.S. plutonium bomb core production ended in 1989 when the FBI raided the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver while investigating environmental crimes. In 1997, DOE relocated pit production to the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico after completing the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. Production was capped at 20 pits per year.
LANL waste cleanup agreement gets chilly reception
“The 2016 consent order should be jettisoned in its entirety,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “And the fundamental principle is the state should be in the driver’s seat and not DOE.”
To back up his argument, Coghlan read some of the order’s guidelines, such as letting the federal agency set its own cleanup targets according to its budgetary constraints.
BY: SCOTT WYLAND | santafenewmexican.com
LOS ALAMOS — While some people coolly suggested a list of procedural changes, others vented Thursday about a waste cleanup agreement they say cuts out the public and gives the U.S. Energy Department too much power to call the shots.
US plutonium production plan likely to spur legal challenge
Nuclear watchdogs, government accountability advocates and other critics argue that the decision skirts requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and a decades-old court order that included a mandate for an environmental review when the federal government embarked on plans to boost production to more than 80 of the nuclear cores a year.
BY: SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN | apnews.com – washingtonpost.com Copyright 2020 The Associated Press
FILE – This undated file aerial view shows the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. The agency that oversees the United States’ nuclear arsenal says it doesn’t need to do any broad environmental reviews of a proposal that calls for ramping up production of plutonium triggers at federal installations in New Mexico and South Carolina. The National Nuclear Security Administration on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, released a supplemental analysis related to the project, saying the determination was made after reviewing extensive documentation and public comments that were received last year. (The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File)ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The agency that oversees the United States’ nuclear arsenal says it doesn’t need to do any broad environmental reviews of a proposal that calls for ramping up production of plutonium triggers at federal installations in New Mexico and South Carolina.
The National Nuclear Security Administration on Wednesday released a supplemental analysis related to the project, saying the determination was made after reviewing extensive documentation and public comments that were received last year.
A key component of every nuclear weapon, most of the plutonium cores in the stockpile were produced in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the nuclear agency.
Nuclear watchdogs, government accountability advocates and other critics argue that the decision skirts requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and a decades-old court order that included a mandate for an environmental review when the federal government embarked on plans to boost production to more than 80 of the nuclear cores a year.
NNSA: No new programmatic environment study needed for plutonium pit production at LANL
“NNSA’s refusal to complete programmatic environmental review before plunging ahead with plans to more than quadruple the production authorization for plutonium bomb cores flies in the face of our country’s foundational environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, and a standing federal court order mandating that the government conduct such a review,” – Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CARES
BY: KENDRA CHAMBERLAIN | nmpoliticalreport.com
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will not complete a programmatic study for environmental impacts of increased plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) and one other lab located in South Carolina. The decision to not do so drew criticism from Nuclear Watch NM and other groups, who argue such assessments are required by law under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and an existing court order.
Plutonium pits are the radioactive cores of nuclear warheads where the chemical reactions occur that cause the warhead to detonate. The U.S. made thousands of cores during the Cold War, but pit production has all but stopped in the last thirty years.
Now, the federal government is getting ready to ramp up pit production in order to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal and “assure the nation has a safe, secure and credible deterrent,” said Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, the Department of Energy Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and the NNSA Administrator, in a statement. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review calls for at least 80 plutonium pits to be produced per year by 2030, with a target of 30 pits produced annually at LANL and 50 pits produced annually at Savannah River Site.
The Dubious Moral Justification for a Nuclear Second Strike
The aim of presenting the case for the continued possession of these terrifying weapons that hold the potential to destroy all life on earth this way seems to be to convince citizens that nuclear weapons are morally justifiable and thus somehow ‘acceptable.’
ARTICLE BY GERARD BOYCE | commondreams.org
Poised as the nuclear powers appear to be to resume the nuclear arms race, leaders of these countries have been at pains to assure their countrymen and the rest of the world that, though determined to maintain and even expand their nuclear arsenals, they will only use them for the purposes of a second strike i.e. in retaliation to a nuclear first strike by a nuclear-armed belligerent. Their pledges are meant to reassure us that nuclear weapons are for defensive rather than offensive purposes. The aim of presenting the case for the continued possession of these terrifying weapons that hold the potential to destroy all life on earth this way seems to be to convince citizens that nuclear weapons are morally justifiable and thus somehow ‘acceptable’. For a number of reasons, however, a second strike may not be as morally defensible as leaders would have us believe.
Trump budget coming Feb. 10 — here’s what you can expect
BY: | defensenews.com
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plans to submit its fiscal 2021 budget request to Congress Feb. 10, with defense spending expected to be essentially flat compared to the previous year.A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget confirmed to Defense News that the date for the budget submission has been locked in. The date was first reported by Politico.
President Donald Trump signed off on the FY20 budget, including $738 billion for defense, on Dec. 20, following almost three months of the government running under a continuing resolution.
The two-year budget deal from last summer called for $740 billion in defense spending for FY21, essentially flat. The budget is expected to continue the department’s focus on implementing the National Defense Strategy, which prioritizes challenging China and Russia.
New Mexico reconsidering 2016 waste agreement with LANL
The state of New Mexico is reconsidering its 2016 pact with the U.S. Department of Energy on how to regulate the cleanup of decades-old hazardous waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Ryan Flynn, who became the state’s environment secretary in 2013, granted the lab 150 deadline extensions during his tenure, said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
Shortly after Flynn announced in 2016 that the consent order was being revised, the Energy Department reduced its top-range estimate for the long-term cleanup to $3.8 billion and said it would need at least 20 years to complete it, Coghlan said.
That reduced the yearly cleanup projection to $150 million from the earlier $250 million estimate, Coghlan said.
“It’s no coincidence that a mere few months after the 2016 consent order came out, DOE low-balled its life-cycle estimate,” he said.
BY: SCOTT WYLAND | santafenewmexican.com
The administration of Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wants to revisit the agreement — known as a consent order — that the state Environment Department crafted under Republican Gov. Susana Martinez to replace a more stringent 2005 version that expired at the end of 2015.
The public will have a chance to air views about the current consent order and suggest changes at a meeting Thursday at the University of New Mexico’s Los Alamos campus. The meeting is being held in response to people expressing concerns about the consent order to state regulators and legislative leaders, said Maddy Hayden, a spokeswoman for the Environment Department.
January 9th: New Mexico Environment Department to Host Los Alamos Public Meeting
Why the new US ICBMs would be too expensive even if they were free
“Experts estimate that it would take two Russian warheads to destroy with high confidence one of the 400 active US ICBMs, each armed with a single warhead. This might seem like a good deal, until you ask what the impact of 800 Russian warheads exploding on US territory would be…The long-term contamination would be about ten times greater than that from the Chernobyl accident, rendering a large swath of the Midwest uninhabitable for generations.”
BY: ROBERT J. GOLDSTON | thebulletin.org
The proposed US nuclear modernization program includes replacing the 400 existing Minuteman III missiles with a new set of “Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent” missiles and their associated facilities. The cost for this modernization is very large, with an advertised price tag of $85 billion, and if history is any guide, a substantial cost escalation is likely. On the one hand, if these silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) deter attacks that would cost tens of millions of lives, then they are worth this much many times over. On the other hand, if they are more likely to cause massive numbers of human deaths, then they are immensely expensive even if they cost nothing.
The primary argument for silo-based ICBMs is that they would “sponge up” a large number of Russian warheads if the United States were attacked.
Final Supplement Analysis (SA) and Determination on Complex Transformation Supplement Environmental Impact Statement (SPEIS) for Expanded Pit Production to be Released Later This Week
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) has approved a final Supplement Analysis (SA) and determination on the Complex Transformation Supplement Environmental Impact Statement (SPEIS) which evaluated whether increasing capabilities to produce a minimum of 50 pits per year at a re-purposed Mixed-oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site (SRS) and a minimum of 30 pits per year at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), with additional surge capacity at each site if needed, would require the preparation of a new or supplement EIS. This SA is the programmatic, complex-wide analysis mentioned in the Notice of Intent for the site-specific SRS EIS that was published in the Federal Register (FR) on June 10, 2019, and the final of the draft SA that was released for an approximately 45-day public comment period on June 28, 2019.
It’s Been 32 Years since the Conclusion of the INF Treaty Yet Arms Control Is Still Vital
ARTICLE BY STEPHAN KIENINGER | historynewsnetwork.org
Gorbachev and Reagan sign the INF TreatyIn August, the United States withdrew from the landmark INF Treaty of 1987 due to the Russian Federation’s continuing violation of the treaty and Vladimir Putin’s reckless deployment of the Russian 9M729 cruise missile. Another crucial arms control treaty, the New START agreement, is set to expire in early 2021. Recently, George Shultz and Mikhail Gorbachev called American and Russian decision makers to preserve the INF Treaty. (1)
More than thirty years ago, Shultz and Gorbachev stepped forward with President Reagan to change history’s direction. Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty on the occasion of their historic Washington Summit on December 8, 1987. The unprecedented agreement eliminated all US and Russian missiles between the ranges of 500 to 5500 kilometers. The two countries destroyed a total of 2,692 ballistic and cruise missiles by the treaty’s deadline of June 1, 1991, with verification measures that were previously unimaginable.
If the Trump plan survives legal challenges, polluters would no longer need a permit to release contaminated water into ephemeral streams and wetlands that aren’t immediately adjacent to protected waters. This would, according to New Mexico’s Environment Department, eliminate about 40% of the state’s water pollution permits, including those held by wastewater treatment plants, hard-rock mines and coal mines.
The effect this could have on the state’s drinking water is illustrated most starkly at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the former Manhattan Project site that serves as a center of the country’s nuclear research and development.
Trump’s Plans to Strip Clean Water Protections Leave New Mexico Fearing Pollution and Health Risks
The effect this could have on the state’s drinking water is illustrated most starkly at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the former Manhattan Project site that serves as a center of the country’s nuclear research and development.
The 40-square-mile site where scientists built the first atomic bomb remains contaminated from that era.
BY: Anna M. Phillips, The Los Angeles Times latimes.com Jan. 3, 2020
Twice a day, every day, Vicente Fernandez walks along the banks of the Rio Fernando, inspecting the river that has shaped his valley’s fortunes for generations.
Like his father and his grandfather before him, Fernandez is a mayordomo — the manager of a centuries-old network of irrigation ditches called acequias that divert water from the river into nearby fields. Hundreds of families in the Taos Valley rely on it to nourish their gardens and fruit trees and to replenish the aquifer they depend on for drinking water.
But the future of the Rio Fernando and its acequias is murky.
Early in the coming year, President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency plans to roll back clean water rules, abolishing limits on how much pollution can be dumped into small streams and wetlands.
Federal data suggest 81% of streams in the Southwest would lose protections. A large share of streams in California and other Western states will be hard hit.
Nowhere are the stakes as high as in New Mexico. Environmental regulators in the state estimate that the new rule could leave 96% of the state’s waterways and wetlands unprotected from pollution from coal mines, factory waste, pesticide runoff and other sources.
And New Mexico does not have its own regulations to fill the void, which makes its waterways particularly vulnerable.
EPA: Permit will regulate polluted stormwater in Los Alamos County
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will require a federal pollution permit be used to regulate Los Alamos County’s contaminated stormwater, which for years has flowed into streams and the Rio Grande, a primary source of drinking water.
BY: SCOTT WYLAND | santafenewmexican.com
Attorneys representing the Taos-based advocacy group Amigos Bravos said their client’s September lawsuit against the EPA pushed the agency to require the permitting under the Clean Water Act.
The EPA issued preliminary findings in 2015 that showed pollutants in some parts of Los Alamos National Laboratory property and other areas of Los Alamos County far exceeded state health and water quality standards, yet the agency failed to take action, according to the Oregon-based Western Environmental Law Center.
“The EPA finally took a hard look at where these pollutants are coming from,” said Andrew Hawley, a law center attorney, in an interview. “The pollutants of concern were showing up in the tributaries going into the Rio Grande.”
EPA representatives at the regional office in Dallas couldn’t be reached Tuesday to comment on the agency’s decision or discuss the timeline for implementing the permit.
NUCLEAR WASTE: Why the drive to fund interim storage unraveled
Efforts to break through the nation’s nuclear waste logjam in the fiscal 2020 spending package fell to familiar congressional infighting despite an apparent alignment in the push for interim storage, House lawmakers said yesterday.
This is a Nuclear Weapons Offer Trump ought not to refuse
It is not very often that the Kremlin issues a transcript of remarks by President Vladimir Putin with a sentence marked in highlighter, but that’s what happened Dec. 5 when Mr. Putin met with leaders of Russia’s defense industry.
Courting Disaster: How Not to Manage Existential Threats to National Security
Washington’s pursuit of national ballistic missile defense for the last twenty years has, as much as anything else, driven Russian and Chinese strategic nuclear weapons acquisition decisions.
BY: ROBERT GALLUCCI | nationalinterest.org
Photo: National InterestThere are a small number of threats to our nation’s security, involving truly catastrophic consequences, which may be managed by good public policy. Some of these involve uncertainties over scientific or technological developments that could lead to good, as well as very bad outcomes. Think designer biology, quantum computing and artificial intelligence. But two stand out both for the certainty and magnitude of their destructive impact: climate change and nuclear weapons.
What does good public policy look like when dealing with nuclear weapons? It looks like actions that reduce uncertainty, increase transparency and security, and decrease numbers. It is called “arms control.”
NEPA transformed federal land management — and has fallen short
A look back at the ground-breaking legislation on its 50th anniversary.
BY: ADAM M. SOWARDS | defenseone.com
In late January 1969, a blowout on Unocal’s Platform A leaked 3 million gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean, just 6 miles from Santa Barbara, California. The spill — at the time, the largest in U.S. history — spread over 800 square miles, coated 8 miles of beaches and killed thousands of animals. Images of the devastation shocked a public increasingly worried about the environment and helped spur Congress to pass a sweeping law aimed at preventing similar disasters in the future — the National Environmental Policy Act.
President Richard Nixon signed NEPA into law on Jan. 1, 1970, from his home office on the Pacific Coast. The signing was a fitting launch for the environmental decade of the 1970s — a time when “America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment,” as Nixon said in his signing statement. “It is literally now or never.”
Reckoning with History is an ongoing series that seeks to understand the legacies of the past and to put the West’s present moment in perspective.
Sanders Calls Out ‘Deficit Hawks’ in Both Parties Who Support $738 Billion Pentagon Budget But Claim US Can’t Afford Medicare for All
“When it comes to giving the Pentagon $738 billion—even more money than it requested—there is a deafening silence within Congress and the ruling elites about what our nation can and cannot afford.”
ARTICLE BY JAKE JOHNSON | commondreams.org
In a scathing op-ed for the Washington Post Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders took aim at Republican and Democratic “deficit hawks” who claim the U.S. cannot afford to guarantee healthcare to all, make higher education tuition-free, or fund other crucial domestic priorities but have no issue with voting to hand the Pentagon $738 billion.
“When it comes to giving the Pentagon $738 billion—even more money than it requested—there is a deafening silence within Congress and the ruling elites about what our nation can and cannot afford.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders
A Gateway to Nuclear Catastrophe: Democrats Retreat on Nuclear Policy
The 2020 authorization bill fails to check Trump’s worst impulses. Over 30 progressive national security organizations sent a letter to Congress opposing the final bill as doing “almost nothing to constrain the Trump administration’s erratic and reckless foreign policy.” Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren said she would oppose the bill, calling it a “$738 billion Christmas present to giant defense contractors.”
BY: TOM Z. COLLINA | defenseone.com
Question: How do you go from a National Defense Authorization Act that in July was opposed by every House Republican to one that was approved by more GOP votes than Democratic ones and that President Donald Trump called a huge win that he cannot wait to sign?
Answer: Add Space Force and parental family leave and take out all of the progressive national security provisions.
AP / ALEX BRANDON – In this 2018 photo, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., left, stands as Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, second from left, speaks, accompanied by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.The House passed the compromise NDAA last night; President Trump has said he will sign it. This final bill is a world apart from the version passed by House Democrats in July. The House version, ably led by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Washington, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, prohibited deployment of Trump’s new “low-yield” nuclear weapon for Trident submarines, which defense experts called “a gateway to nuclear catastrophe.”
Watch the Pentagon test a previously banned ballistic missile
ARTICLE BY: AARON MEHTA | defensenews.com
WASHINGTON — The U.S. has tested a ground-launched, intermediate-range ballistic missile with a range of more than 500 kilometers, the first such test since the country withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty this year.
The test, which occurred Thursday at 8:30 a.m. PST, was configured to represent a conventional warhead. The test was anticipated for months, with Defense Department officials previously indicating they hoped to have it happen before the end of the year.
This Simulator Shows the Devastating Consequences of Global Nuclear War
Nuclear War Simulator, launching in 2020, lets the user design a plausible doomsday scenario and study the humanitarian impact. Just don’t call it a “game.”
ARTICLE BY: MATTHEW GAULT | vice.com
Full scale global nuclear war is hard to fathom. One nuclear launch could set off a chain of events that would radically alter life on the planet. Millions would die in the initial blasts and millions more would starve as the climate changed and our way of life withered. Just how are we supposed to reckon with the possibility of such wide-scale destruction?
Programs like NUKEMAP let you plot individual bombs and video games like Defcon simulate the war, but neither comes close to rendering the devastation a doomsday scenario would bring. That’s what Nuclear War Simulator (NWS) is for.
Uranium contaminated property collapsing into Detroit River
Controversy continues to brew following revelations of repeated shoreline collapses into the Detroit River of a property contaminated with uranium, PCBs and other dangerous chemicals from an abandoned Manhattan Project contract facility in Detroit, Michigan.
The most recent collapse into the river occurred on November 26 or 27, 2019 but was not reported until a week later with a tip off to the Windsor Star newspaper just across the river in Canada. A previous collapse into the river occurred in October 2011 did not apparently result in remediations. The old Revere Copper and Brass site, now known as Detroit Bulk Storage, was used in the 1940s to process more than a thousand tons of uranium that was rolled into fuel rods to make the fissionable material for the first atomic bombs at the end of World War II. The facility continued to operate as part of the nation’s atomic bomb assembly line well into the 1950s before winding down and eventually abandoned in 1984. It is considered just one of hundreds of nuclear weapons contractor sites that make up America’s forgotten nuclear “waste land.”
Here’s how Trump can get a win with Russia — and actually help all Americans
Extension of the New START Treaty would offer Trump an easy diplomatic win.
ARTICLE & ANALYSIS BY: MICHAEL MCFAUL | washingtonpost.com
This image, provided by the U.S. Air Force, shows an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile test launch on Oct. 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The image was taken with a slow shutter speed. (J.T. Armstrong/U.S. Air Force via AP)President Trump received Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the White House this week — a meeting that prompted considerable controversy, given the fraught backdrop of U.S.-Russia relations. Yet the coverage — additionally complicated by the impeachment proceedings taking place on Capitol Hill — almost entirely overlooked a crucial topic of the negotiations: the urgent need to keep alive a vital nuclear arms agreement.
Readouts and media reports reveal that Lavrov discussed the extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), set to expire in February 2021, with his American interlocutors. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both suggested that China must be included in a future strategic nuclear arms deal, hinting that they may not extend the New START Treaty without Chinese involvement.
That would be a major mistake. The United States and Russia should extend the New START Treaty, an outcome that clearly would serve U.S. national security interests. At the same time, U.S. arms control negotiators could begin discussions with their Chinese counterparts about a new, future multilateral treaty to limit the deployments of nuclear weapons. While doing so, they should recognize that China is already well below the limits on nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles specified by New START and thus need not be a party to this agreement.
But these two negotiations should be sequenced, not linked. Extend the New START Treaty with Russia first; begin strategy stability talks with Russia and China second.
Pentagon: Nuke official sexually harassed 3 women on his staff, resigns during probe
ARTICLE BY: TOM VANDEN BROOK | usatoday.com
WASHINGTON – A top Pentagon official for nuclear defense sexually harassed three women on his staff and resigned as an investigation substantiated the charges against him, the Defense Department inspector general reported Thursday.
Guy Roberts, who had served as the assistant Defense secretary for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs, resigned on April 2 amid a probe into allegations from three women on his staff that he had forced hugs and kisses on them and told inappropriate jokes. The inspector general’s investigation began Feb. 22.
The New START Treaty Keeps Nuclear Arsenals In Check And President Trump Must Act To Preserve It
Are the stars finally aligning for Washington and Moscow to extend the New START treaty?
ARTICLE & ANALYSIS BY: HANS KRISTENSEN & MATT KORDA | forbes.com
Nuclear arms control is reportedly on the agenda for a rush-meeting between Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today. Over the past weeks, Russia had softened its preconditions for extending the New START Treaty––the only strategic arms control agreement still in place between the two nuclear superpower––while
President Donald Trump last week said that he had spoken with President Vladimir Putin and “we are – he very much wants to, and so do we, work out a treaty of some kind on nuclear weapons…”
The New START treaty limits US and Russian deployed strategic nuclear forces, and additionally facilitates inspections and exchanges of information on the status and movements of their intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. Signed in 2010, the treaty expires in February 2021 but can be extended for another five years.There is nothing other than personalities and bad advice that is preventing Moscow and Washington from extending New START. Retaining the treaty is clearly in the interest of both countries, particularly as other arms control agreements have been abandoned and military tensions are steadily increasing.
Win Without War + 37 Orgs: NDAA a Blank Check for Trump’s Reckless Foreign Policy
WASHINGTON — 30 organizations representing a diverse set of issue areas — strengthening diplomacy, protecting migrants and refugees, preventing wars of choice, reducing the risk of nuclear catastrophe, combating corruption, promoting human rights and sound environmental policies, and standing up for democratic values — released the following statement regarding the fiscal year (FY) 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) conference report:
“Despite the fact that we do not all advocate on the same issues, we are compelled to state clearly in one voice: The results of negotiations for the final text of the NDAA are disastrous. The FY2020 NDAA conference report has been so severely stripped of vital House-passed provisions essential to keeping the current administration in check that it no longer represents a compromise, but a near complete capitulation.
Win Without War + 37 Orgs: NDAA a Blank Check for Trump’s Reckless Foreign Policy
The results of negotiations for the final text of the #ndaa2020 are disastrous and far removed from our vision for a just, peaceful, and democratic foreign policy. Read our statement in partnership with 30 other organizations here: https://t.co/AiO3aMlA4X
— Win Without War (@WinWithoutWar) December 10, 2019
Defense Authorization Act 2020 – Out Now
The 3488-page Conference Report is at:
https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20191209/CRPT-116hrpt333.pdf
The 741-page Joint Explanatory Statement is at:
https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20191209/116hrpt333-JointExplanatoryStatement.pdf
The 19-page bill summary is at:
https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/CRPT-116hrpt333-summary.pdf
On Plutonium Pit Production:
Nuclear Forces have been the cornerstone of our national defense and the conference agreement funds the President’s budget request for Nuclear National Security Administration programs, including nuclear weapons and nuclear non-proliferation activities. In addition, the FY20 NDAA supports the U.S. Strategic Command requirement to produce 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030 and doesn’t prohibit the Department from deploying low-yield nuclear weapons. It also clarifies nuclear safety authorities.
1. Page 1907 of the report defines a requirement to submit the costs of complying with cleanup agreements:
SEC. 4409. ESTIMATION OF COSTS OF MEETING DEFENSE ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP MILESTONES REQUIRED BY CONSENT ORDERS.
”The Secretary of Energy shall include in the budget justification materials submitted to Congress in support of the Department of Energy budget for each fiscal year (as submitted with the budget of the President under section 1105(a) of title 31, United States Code) a report on the cost, for that fiscal year and the four fiscal years following that fiscal year, of meeting milestones required by a consent order at each defense nuclear facility at which defense environmental cleanup activities are occurring. The report shall include, for each such facility—”(1) a specification of the cost of meeting such milestones during that fiscal year; and ”(2) an estimate of the cost of meeting such milestones during the four fiscal years following that fiscal year.”.
2. On page 1914 of the report: Prohibiting the DOE high-level waste interpretation from being applied (only) to Hanford.
However, the Joint Explanatory Statement (p. 492 of PDF) states: “The conferees note that the inclusion of the provision does not prejudice how to process high-level waste nor does it discourage the use of the Department of Energy’s interpretation of high-level waste in future years or at other locations.”
3. On pages 1942-51 of the report: Changes to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
Among those changes is trying to ensure DNFSB access to DOE sites. One example is that DNFSB has access to nuclear facilities “without regard to the hazard or risk category assigned to a facility by the Secretary.”
Don’t Let START Stop
Drawing upon six decades of constructive contacts between American and Russian citizens, we the participants in the latest Dartmouth Conference have decided to issue this urgent appeal to our governments, warning of the dangers of a new nuclear arms race and strongly urging both governments to act immediately to extend the New START Treaty beyond its February 2021 expiration.
ARTICLE & ANALYSIS BY: James F. Collins, David Mathews, Vitaliy Naumkin & Yury Shafranik | russiamatters.org
State report: LANL lost track of 250 barrels of nuke waste
The contractor that’s been in charge of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s operations for the past year lost track of 250 barrels of waste, while the company heading the legacy cleanup mislabeled and improperly stored waste containers and took months to remedy some infractions, according to the state’s yearly report on hazardous waste permit violations.
BY: SCOTT WYLAND | santafenewmexican.com
Triad National Security LLC, a consortium of nonprofits that runs the lab’s daily operations, had 19 violations of its permit from the New Mexico Environment Department. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos, also known as N3B, which is managing a 10-year cleanup of waste generated at the lab, was cited 29 times. Triad’s most notable violation was shipping 250 barrels of mostly mixed waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad without tracking them. Mixed waste contains low-level radioactive waste and other hazardous materials. Inspectors found records still listed the waste at the national lab.
Mislabeled containers should be taken seriously because they can cause incidents if the contents aren’t identified, said Scott Kovac, research and operations director for Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
Lab personnel didn’t update the shipping data because they were waiting for WIPP to acknowledge it had received the waste, lab spokesman Matt Nerzig said in an emailed statement. “There was no risk to public health or safety and the inventory is now correct,” Nerzig said, adding that shipping updates now will be done when waste leaves the lab. But a watchdog group said failing to track such a high volume of waste is an egregious error that falls in line with the lab’s long history of serious missteps.
“The fact that LANL has mischaracterized, misplaced, mis-inventoried — or whatever — 250 barrels of waste is pretty astounding,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “We see mistakes being made by a new contractor. So definitely, all of this is cause for concern.”
Flammable hazard stalls LANL’s plutonium operations, waste shipments
Concerns that a calcium residue might be flammable prompted officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory to curtail plutonium operations and suspend waste shipments in early November, according to a federal report.
BY: SCOTT WYLAND | santafenewmexican.com
The lab suspended most waste generation and certification at its plutonium facility and halted all waste shipments after officials questioned the accuracy of documentation, particularly on how much calcium-and-salt residue remained in transuranic waste after processing, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent oversight panel, said in a Nov. 15 report that was publicly released Friday.
Calcium is used to help reduce oxidation in plutonium. Traces of the substance typically linger after processing, and if they are too high, they can ignite when exposed to open air, the report says.
The report didn’t say how long the operations and waste shipments were suspended. A lab spokesman could not comment Monday.
Officials from multiple agencies met in Carlsbad on Nov. 5 and 6 to discuss the hazard, including the National Nuclear Security Administration, Triad National Security LLC — the consortium that operates the lab — and N3B, a cleanup contractor. They concluded there wasn’t enough evidence of a flammable calcium level to keep operations suspended, the report said.
However, they decided to withhold shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant until further testing could be conducted, the report said.
The underground storage facility near Carlsbad forbids waste that has volatile chemicals mixed in.
WIPP became more vigilant about testing for flammable mixtures after a waste container was packaged in 2014 with a volatile blend of wheat-based kitty litter and nitrate salts, which caused it to explode and leak radiation. WIPP shut down for almost three years while it underwent a $2 billion cleanup.
Hazardous Waste Permit Renewal Begins for LANL
“If DOE and LANL continue to treat the public with disdain, it is going to be a long and difficult permitting process. All in all, this first meeting was disappointing and unproductive.” — Joni Arends, of CCNS
This week the renewal of the New Mexico Environment Department hazardous waste permit for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) began in a very controlled public meeting at the Cities of Gold in Pojoaque. There was no presentation by the Department of Energy (DOE) or its contractor, Triad National Security, LLC, about their plans to renew the application. If the public had questions, they were instructed to write them on a half-sheet comment and question card. There was no explanation about if and how those comments and questions would be answered.
Listen to the full story:
CCNS has prepared a pre-emptive sample public comment letter you can use to express what needs to be included in LANL’s permit application, including proposals to install confined burn and detonation facilities, and coming into compliance with the federal and state hazardous waste laws and regulations dealing with tank systems (that are used to treat liquid hazardous and radioactive waste) and seismic requirements. The last surface rupture on the Pajarito Plateau fault system was 1,400 years ago – thus requiring additional LANL submittals and NMED review. LANL_Permit_Renewal_App_public_comment_120519 The current ten-year LANL permit expires in late December 2020. Under the regulations, the permit application is due to the Environment Department 180 days before the permit expires, or in late June 2020. https://www.env.nm.gov/hazardous-waste/lanl-permit/ The hazardous waste permit renewal application for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is on the same timeline. https://www.env.nm.gov/hazardous-waste/wipp-permit-page/ CCNS and others have made numerous requests to both LANL and WIPP management to submit their applications in the spring of 2020 to give additional opportunity for the public to review both. At the meeting, CCNS asked when LANL would submit its application. A LANL staff member said they could not disclose the date.
Defense policy deal creates Space Force, sidesteps border wall controversy
ARTICLE BY JOE GOULD | defensenews.com
WASHINGTON ― Lawmakers involved in annual defense authorization negotiations finalized a sweeping deal late Monday that creates a new Space Force among other policies, but it dropped contentious border wall restrictions and several other provisions favored by progressives.
The 3,488-page compromise bill, which supports $738 billion in defense spending for 2020, left out limits on the border wall, low-yield nuclear weapons and the president’s authorization to wage war on Iran. However, Democratic leaders did win ― in exchange for the Space Force ― an agreement for 12 weeks of paid parental leave to millions of federal workers, which could give some House Democrats otherwise opposed to the large defense bill a reason to vote for it.
The agreement caps months of negotiations made unusually complex because Democrats control the House and Republicans the Senate. The House is expected to vote as soon as Wednesday, as Congress has only a few days to pass the bill before the House’s Christmas recess begins Thursday afternoon. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into law.
CLW’s Analysis of FY Defense Authorization Conference Agreement
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SSFL stalemate
An informational meeting on Nov. 20 turned confrontational
ARTICLE BY MELISSA SIMON | simivalleyacorn.com
A public meeting regarding the long-delayed cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Lab last week got heated when police were called in to remove one of the activists waiting to give feedback on a recently released environmental impact study.
Dan Hirsch, president of the nonprofit nuclear policy organization Committee to Bridge the Gap, had planned to present a slideshow while giving his three minutes of testimony during a Nov. 20 event held by NASA at Best Western Posada Royale Hotel in Simi Valley. The three-minute time was allotted to anyone who chose to share comments related to the field lab.
But the longtime site cleanup activist said he was met with opposition from NASA officials, who physically tried to block the setup of a projector that he brought with him and then later called police to have him removed from the venue.
The confrontation lasted about 15 minutes, he said. And while he was waiting quietly in line to give his comments, Hirsch said police showed up and asked him to leave voluntarily or he would be charged with trespassing.
Fireworks at NASA meeting for cleaning up nuke meltdown at Santa Susana Field Lab
The 2,850-acre field lab in unincorporated hills just southeast of Simi Valley experienced the partial nuclear meltdown in 1959 when it was the Rocketdyne/Atomics International rocket engine test and nuclear facility. The site also experienced other chemical and radioactive contamination over the years.
ARTICLE BY MIKE HARRIS | vcstar.com
Fireworks erupted this week at a NASA public meeting on the much-delayed cleanup of a 1959 partial nuclear meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory outside Simi Valley.
Longtime cleanup activist Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit nuclear policy organization, said he was asked by Simi Valley police to leave Wednesday night’s meeting at the Best Western Posada Royale after trying unsuccessfully to present a slide show.
The meeting was held to allow the public to comment on NASA’s recently released Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement regarding cleaning up its portion of the field lab site.
Sandia Labs Appoints Director
The next director of Sandia National Laboratories has ties to both national laboratories in New Mexico.
ARTICLE BY: SCOTT TURNER
abqjournal.com © 2019 Albuquerque Journal
James S. Peery will succeed Stephen Younger who is retiring at the end of the year. He will become the 16th laboratories director in Sandia’s 70-year history and will officially lead the labs beginning Jan. 1.
Peery, 57, worked at Sandia from 1990 to 2002 and then again from 2007 to 2015. He has served in multiple leadership capacities at Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories during his career. He currently serves as Associate Laboratory Director of National Security Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Peery’s appointment was announced Monday afternoon