Full Event Recording: Press Conference & Commemoration – Hiroshima Atomic Bombing 80th Anniversary Event (August 6, 2025)
DOE and LANL Silence Public and Tribal Community Member Voices While Pushing Radioactive Tritium Venting
For Immediate Release: August 22, 2025
Contact: Kalyn Mae Finnell, Coordinator, Communities for Clean Water
Los Alamos, NM — This week’s so-called “public meeting” regarding Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) proposal to vent radioactive tritium emphasized the persistence of the Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and LANL to disregard communities concerns while prioritizing nuclear weapons projects.
In-person attendees were allotted three minutes to make statements about their concerns. Over 100 online participants—including many Pueblo community members who could not attend the meeting in Los Alamos in-person due to health, distance, or work commitments—were surprised to find that they were not permitted to provide verbal comments and restricted to submitting only one emailed question. DOE/NNSA and LANL gave no prior notice of this change. “This is not meaningful participation. It is exclusion,” said Marissa Naranjo with Honor Our Pueblo Existence.
The stakes are at an all time high. Tritium — produced in the development of nuclear weapons as triated water — is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that travels quickly through air, water, soil, and food. When exposed to the human body, it can cause cancer, genetic damage, cross the placental barrier, and cause health impacts across generations. DOE/NNSA insists venting is the sole safe option moving forward—however, their own “independent” technical review revealed significant issues with this assertion. The review acknowledged significant deficiencies: the absence of real-time monitoring, a lack of container-specific risk analysis, and insufficient examination of safer alternatives such as filtration or storage until decay occurs. Community members are also asking: How can a review be independent when DOE managed the process, designated the reviewer, and defined the scope? This does not represent independence—it signifies a conflict of interest.
“This is the same broken pattern we’ve seen for decades,” said Joni Arends with Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. “LANL creates the danger, then tells us radioactive releases are our only option. They force the public and Pueblo communities into what NMED itself has called ‘untenable situations.'”
Local community leaders also noted that DOE has consistently overlooked reports by Tewa Women United, Communities for Clean Water, and scientific experts regarding the risks associated with tritium. These technical reports documented exposure pathways unique to Pueblo communities, including impacts on women, children, and traditional farming lifeways. By sidelining this research, DOE has once again dismissed Indigenous voices and lived experiences—further diminishing trust and perpetuating environmental racism.
“If our gathering here today is to mean anything, it must mean that in fidelity to all those whose lives were destroyed or savagely damaged on August 6, 80 years ago, we refuse to live in such a world of nuclear proliferation and risk-taking. We will resist, we will organize, we will pray, we will not cease, until the world’s nuclear arsenals have been destroyed.”
— Cardinal Bob McElroy of Washington, DC, August 5, 2025, at the World Peace Memorial Cathedral in Hiroshima, Japan.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: August 2025
Nuclear Weapons Budget:
• NNSA’s detailed budget was finally released, the latest ever. $2.8 billion is for “plutonium modernization” (i.e., pit production) projects, of which $1.8 billion for LANL. The Lab’s nuclear weapons programs are having a full billion dollars added to them for FY 2026 (which begins this October 1) on top of the $4 billion they already have. The Lab’s $6 billion FY 2026 budget is now 84% nuclear weapons. Meanwhile cleanup and nonproliferation programs are being cut by 5% and renewable energy research completely eliminated.
• Over for the next four years the “reconciliation” bill adds another $750 million for plutonium modernization (mostly at SRS) and $1 billion “to accelerate the construction of National Nuclear Security Administration facilities.”Continue reading
August 6th U.S. Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Commemoration in Santa Fe
Nobel Peace Conference: A Message to Humanity – Featuring a Video with Nuclear Watch New Mexico on Our Plutonium Pit Federal Lawsuit to Show What Citizen Action on the Legal Front Can Accomplish for Nuclear Disarmament
The video above shows the entire conference (but begins playing at our portion); to view our video alone on YouTube CLICK HERE or watch below!
Santa Fe New Mexican MY VIEW – 80 years on: The immorality of nuclear weapons
By John C. Wester, SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN | August 5, 2024 santafenewmexican.com
Greetings New Mexicans. The lord’s blessings upon you. I am writing to you from Hiroshima, Japan, on the 80th anniversary of its horrific atomic bombing. All wars are against Christ’s teachings. Two wrongs (including Japanese atrocities in World War II) never make a right.
I am here with Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle and our brother Japanese bishops to commemorate the dead and to honor the living Hibakusha (the aging atomic survivors). We especially congratulate the Hibakusha organization, Nihon Hidankyo, for winning the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.Continue reading
‘End the nuclear cycle’: Antinuclear New Mexicans speak out 80 years after Hiroshima bombing
Organized by Nuclear Watch New Mexico, the event featured speakers from the international campaign — which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 — the Back from the Brink New Mexico Hub and the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, a group that advocates for “downwinders” in New Mexico who say they were sickened by fallout from the 1945 Trinity Test southeast of Socorro.
By Cormac Dodd cdodd@sfnewmexican.com, The Santa Fe New Mexican | August 6, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
The face of Archbishop John C. Wester played over the screen as the Catholic leader, on the same day surreal moments of horror unfolded during the bombing of Hiroshima 80 years ago, pleaded for nuclear disarmament.
“Do we pull back from the brink and choose life, or do we continue to play with fire, hoping our luck will hold out?” the leader of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe said in a video, recently recorded before he traveled to Japan with a delegation of U.S. bishops.
Wester has made antinuclear advocacy a central part of his tenure since he was appointed to the post in 2015. A group of about 50 people entered the Center for Progress and Justice on Cerrillos Road on Wednesday evening to commemorate the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of World War II.
New Mexico reckons with its role in Japan’s atomic devastation on 80th anniversary of Hiroshima
At a Wednesday evening event organized by Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Archbishop John C. Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, long an outspoken advocate of nuclear disarmament, is set to celebrate Mass in Japan for victims with some other U.S. Catholic bishops and will participate in commemoration services. The event will be played by video at an event in Santa Fe.
By Cormac Dodd cdodd@sfnewmexican.com, The Santa Fe New Mexican | August 5, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
Wesley Burris remembers waking to a morning of potent, white light and panic as the planet’s first atomic bomb went off in a test in the Jornada del Muerto desert near his family’s Southern New Mexico home in July 1945.
He does not recall, however, hearing the news from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan over the radio just weeks later. In fact, because the U.S. government did not tell his family what it was they saw that July, it was years before Burris realized how the Trinity Test he witnessed as a child served as a prelude to the world-altering bombings of Japan on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945.
Eighty years ago, the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima near the end of World War II, unleashing immediate death on a sweeping scale and rendering vast corridors in the southwestern Japanese city charred and fragmented, with buildings reduced to rubble with harrowing speed.
Santa Fe Archbishop Wester on RECA, Nuclear Weapons
80 years after nuclear bomb tested in N.M., victims will get reparations
NBC News NOW, July 16, 2025, nbcnewsnow.com
Trinity “downwinders” of New Mexico exposed to the first ever nuclear explosion are receiving recognition and compensation 80 years after the bomb was tested. NBC News’ Aaron Gilchrest spoke with several people who shared their sacrifice and suffering over the years.
An appreciation of Bob Alvarez, a fearless advocate for those harmed by the US nuclear weapons complex
By Michael Slater – The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists| July 10, 2025, thebulletin.org
SEE ALSO: THIS WONDERFUL TRIBUTE TO BOB ALVAREZ FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR & OTHERS: https://beyondnuclear.org/bob-alvarez-presente/
And view the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s Lifetime Achievement Awared given to Bob in 2022: https://ananuclear.org/bob-alvarez/
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: June/July 2025
Nuclear Weapons Budget:
• The just passed “reconciliation” bill and Trump’s proposed FY 2026 budget are reverse Robin Hood iniatives, robbing from the poor to give to the rich. While Medicaid is gutted, there are huge tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and a big bump up for nuclear weapons.
• The following is from the DC-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (https://armscontrolcenter.org/fiscal-year-2026-defense-budget-request-briefing-book/):
Note: the + or – signs result from the “reconciliation” bill.
• Radiation Exposure Compensation Act: Sen. Josh Hawley of MO got RECA extension and expansion attached to the bill, which is really something. Tina Cordova of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium has acknowledged that many deserving people have still been left out. See more: https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/new-mexico-downwinders-celebrate-bittersweet-victory-in-trumps-big-beautiful-bill/article_9dc4ae5e-d4d0-4689-a255-a83576076963.html Finally, it is good for only two years because it was part of budget “reconciliation” that is supposed to deal only with funding matters (hence is limited to this 2-year term of Congress). We will continue to fight to get RECA permanently extended and expanded.
Nuclear Weapons Update:
The manufacture of new pits has more to do, as per the last Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), with preserving and “modernizing” the infrastructure than it does with the warheads themselves. This is in essence a huge continuing program of institutional preservation that guarantees large inflows of taxpayer dollars and corporate profits.
Further, we are talking about W87-1 pits for the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, which is already 80% over budget before the Air Force admitted it had to build new silos. Moreover, the reported production of ~800 plutonium pits when there are only to be 400 fielded Sentinels may lead to the uploading of multiple warheads per missile (AKA MIRVing for Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles). This is regarded as deeply destabilizing since land-based ICBMs are known fixed targets which encourage pre-emptive strikes and/or use them or lose them scenarios.
Accelerating Arms Race
• The U.S. bombed Iranian hardened, deeply buried uranium enrichment sites with B2s carrying 30,000 lb. conventional bunker busters (32 hours roundtrip from Whiteman AFB in Missouri). The U.S. has rushed produced nuclear B61-13s for this kind of job.
Planned Nuclear Weapons Activities Increase to 84% of Lab’s Budget; All Other Programs Cut
The Department of Energy and Los Alamos National Laboratory have released the LANL congressional budget request for the upcoming fiscal year, 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025. The request shows a continued major increase and expansion of the plutonium pit production program (plutonium pits are the triggers of nuclear weapons). LANL is frantically trying to increase its capabilities to begin making 30 pits per year by 2028.
NukeWatch created the attached chart to give a visual of how taxpayer dollars are annually spent at the Lab. LANL’s FY 2026 total budget request is $6 billion, which is a 17% increase over the FY 2025 $5.2 billion total budget. This includes a 24% increase in the nuclear weapons budget over FY 2025.
Nuclear Weapons Activities represent 84% of LANL’s total budget.
Under the headline of “Unleashing a Golden Era of Energy Dominance and Energy Innovation and Protecting the Nation,” the nuclear weapons budget is increasing dramatically. As a baseline, 65% of the Department’s proposed $46 billion budget is earmarked for its semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). In turn, more than 80% of NNSA’s proposed FY 2026 funding is for its nuclear weapons research and production programs, with a 25% funding increase over FY 2025.
Due to so-called “reconciliation” funding, “Total Weapons Activities” increase to just under $30 billion. This adds up to a 53% increase above FY 2025 for the nuclear weapons research and production programs across the country. To help pay for this, national nonproliferation and cleanup programs are being cut by 5%, science by 14%, cybersecurity and emergency response by 25%, and energy efficiency and renewable energy programs by 74%.
NukeWatch in DC Lobbying for Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation
Your Nuclear Watch New Mexico team has just returned from a weeklong trip to Washington D.C. (we went so you don’t have to!). The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) hosts an annual “DC Days” conference and following Spring Meeting, and we proudly joined as part of a record number of groups this year. Over 60 individuals from 30+ organizations journeyed to DC to lobby congress on nuclear weapons, energy, and waste policy on behalf of the frontline nuclear communities we represent. Members were present from groups representing the entire U.S. nuclear complex, including sites in Georgia, New Mexico, Tennessee, California, Missouri, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and beyond. NukeWatch NM brought all three staff members—Jay Coghlan, Scott Kovac, and Sophia Stroud (whose participation was made possible by a youth scholarship from ANA)—to participate in DC Days and the subsequent two-day spring meeting. The ANA DC Days schedule included over 70 meetings with senators, representatives, and other relevant agencies, such as the Department of Energy, the Government Accountability Office, and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Our NukeWatch team attended nearly 30 of these meetings. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability put together a new report to present our “asks” to congress as a coalition, including analysis and recommendations for nuclear weapons, nuclear waste, and nuclear energy policy and funding. Please click HERE for the full report, and HERE for a short summary.
I was glad to see increased representation from Nevada this year, and especially Indigenous representation. In light of the current administration’s attacks on Environmental Justice, it is more important than ever that ANA as a whole, as well as individual member groups, continue to prioritize uplifting Native American voices, not only because of their deep cultural, spiritual, and social connections to the land, including sacred sites and traditional knowledge essential to religious freedom and access, but also because of the violent legacy and ongoing reality of nuclear colonialism, in which Indigenous lands and peoples have been deliberately and disproportionately targeted in the nuclear industry with uranium mining, nuclear weapons testing and production, and the disposal of radioactive waste. To learn more about Nuclear Colonialism, see: www.networkadvocates.org/downwinders and read Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos by Myrriah Gómez.
THE ATOMIC BOWL: Football at Ground Zero —and Nuclear Peril Today
First prize, Best Documentary Feature, International Uranium Film Festival, Rio de Janiero
Coming to PBS in July 2025. (53-minute and 27-minute versions).
There have been numerous films on The Bomb, even one or two about Nagasaki, but “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero — and Nuclear Peril Today” is unique, and with many lessons and warnings for today–as nuclear dangers proliferate and civilian casualties in wars climb even higher.
This football showdown featured college and pro stars, on January 1, 1946, and in (of all places) Nagasaki, near ground zero for the second atomic bomb, which killed over 80,000 just a few weeks earlier. The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, is not only the first full first-hand account of the game, but a provocative and disturbing story of the decision to drop a second atomic bomb just three days after Hiroshima–and the dangerous message to today’s leaders. Nearly all of the victims of the “forgotten bomb” were women and children and other civilians.
This important film, which includes rare footage and dozens of never published photographs, then offers a convincing argument about the relevance of Nagasaki today as mass civilian casualties in wars surge and nuclear dangers by all estimates grow every year.
Its writer and director Greg Mitchell has been one of the world’s leading authorities on the atomic bombings for several decades, and his recent film, “Atomic Cover-up,” won several awards, including the top prize from the Organization of American Historians and was aired via PBS. His two other recent films, “The First Attack Ads” and the award-winning “Memorial Day Massacre,” also earned PBS distribution (as well as Emmy nods), and like “The Atomic Bowl” were produced by Academy Award nominee Lyn Goldfarb.
Victory! Proposed Tritium Venting by LANL Halted for Now Due to Community Pressure
Proposed Tritium Venting by Los Alamos National Lab Postponed Indefinitely after Community Pressure
THANK YOU to the over 2,500 of you who signed our Petition to Deny LANL’s Request to Release Radioactive Tritium into the Air!
A massive thank you as well to our fellow campaigners we worked alongside on this issue, Tewa Women United and Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, and of course thank you as well to NMED Secretary Kenney for listening to our community.
From Tewa Women United:
Beloved Community, we have some really good news!
Our Environmental Justice team has finally received the response from the New Mexico Environmental Department regarding the LANL/DOE/NNSA request for temporary authorization to begin venting tritium this summer. The short story: **Secretary Kenney (NMED) says that NMED will not act on the temporary authorization request** until the following criteria is met:
1. independent technical review
2. public meeting
3. tribal consultation (in addition to NMED tribal consultation)
4. compliance audit
These criteria must be met and LANL/DOE/NNSA must submit an updated request before NMED will revisit and make a decision.
TELEVISION EVENT Trailer
Television Event is a documentary that follows the dramatic (and sometimes humorous) making and impact of the film The Day After. The 1983 film played a pivotal role in shifting public consciousness around nuclear weapons and, ultimately, President Reagan’s policies. It’s a reminder on the power of art and storytelling to create meaningful change.
The documentary was also reviewed in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/movies/the-day-after-documentary-television-event.html
More:
In 2023 a book was publishedd about the making of “The Day After”, read the review in Arms Control Today: https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-03/book-reviews/apocalypse-television-how-day-after-helped-end-cold-war
As well as: “‘The Day After’: The Arms Control Association’s Forgotten Role.” <https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-03/features/day-after-arms-control-associations-forgotten-role> It is a reminder that a few people can, with some luck and good timing, put big things into motion.
Full Recording: Second Scoping Hearing for NNSA’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on Plutonium Pit Production
Operation Crossroads: “The World’s First Nuclear Disaster”
“With Trump back in office, the recurring question of the need for nuclear weapons testing has resurfaced in the national security debate. Project 2025’s directive that the US return to ‘immediate test readiness’ raises further alarm, given the primacy of that document in Trump’s circle. The general uncertainty around current U.S. nuclear posture gives added weight to the historical importance of the atmospheric and underwater nuclear weapons tests conducted on the Bikini Atoll, recounted here by one of the leading advocates for public safety in the nuclear age. —Ed.”
By Robert Alvarez | Washington Spectator, National Security | May 29, 2025, washingtonspectator.com
Beginning in the late 1970’s, I was working for the Environmental Policy Institute around the time when atomic veterans started to descend on the nation’s capital. I would arrange meetings with Congressional offices, and the offices of both the Defense Nuclear Agency and Veterans Affairs, to enable the veterans to share their experiences and seek justice for being sent in harm’s way. About 250,000 soldiers, sailors, Marines, Coast Guard men, and airmen took part in atmospheric nuclear weapons tests from 1945 to 1963.
John Smitherman and Anthony Guarisco were 17- and 18-year-old sailors, respectively, in July of 1946, when they took part in “Operation Crossroads”—the first two nuclear weapons tests following World War II. These tests were conducted on the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands and codenamed “Able” and “Baker.”
As a result of this extraordinary indifference to lethal danger, some 200 U.S. Navy ships were contaminated, and ships carrying radioactive fallout subsequently sailed to home ports in California. These ports are still being cleaned up today, nearly 80 years later. Glenn Seaborg, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1961 to 1971, described the Baker test as “the world’s first nuclear disaster.”
Anthony and John were part of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet involving 40,000 service men and 2,000 civilians. They along with others swam in the heavily contaminated Bikini Lagoon. When I met them in 1980, John was suffering from lymphatic cancer and Anthony from a severe form of spinal arthritis.
In March 1983, Anthony and his wife Mary showed up at my cluttered office and ceremoniously handed me a large stack of documents. They had just visited the UCLA library in Los Angeles and found boxes of forgotten, declassified documents belonging to Dr. Stafford Warren, the chief safety officer during both the Manhattan Project and the 1946 Crossroads tests.
Full Recording: First Scoping Hearing for NNSA’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on Plutonium Pit Production
NEW Report on Plutonium Pit Production from the Union of Concerned Scientists
Today, UCS is releasing a comprehensive report on plutonium pit production. It includes a technical assessment of plutonium aging, a critical look at the weapons programs that new pits are slated for, and suggestions for alternatives, including pit re-use.
The final chapter of the study is on the human and environmental impacts of pit production and is intended as a tool for local advocacy groups to deepen their own work around issues such as the programmatic environmental impact survey that has just kicked off.
Links to the report:
https://www.ucs.org/resources/plutonium-pit-production
Spanish language executive summary:
https://es.ucs.org/recursos/la-produccion-de-nucleos-de-plutonio
Plutonium Pit PEIS Scoping Hearing Presentation: Slides and Recording
Get Prepared: A coalition of advocacy groups, including Union of Concerned Scientists, Tri-Valley CAREs, and NukeWatch New Mexico recently held a training to help participants prepare effective comments.
Watch the recording here
Password: gP=&0LYZ
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: May 2025
Nuclear Weapons Budget:
• Republicans are pushing for $1 trillion per year for military spending. The fiscal 2026 budget request calls for $892.6 billion in discretionary defense funding — same as FY 2025 (and a cut given inflation). But they are also seeking $119.3 billion through budget “reconciliation.”
• Congressional Budget Office “Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2025 to 2034,” April 2025:
“Costs of Current Plans: If carried out, DoD’s and DOE’s plans to operate, sustain, and modernize current nuclear forces and purchase new forces would cost a total of $946 billion over the 2025–2034 period, or an average of about $95 billion a year, CBO estimates… CBO’s current estimate of costs for the 2025–2034 period is 25 percent (or $190 billion) larger than its 2023 estimate of $756 billion, which covered the 2023–2032 period.” https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-04/61224-NuclearForces.pdf
Separately it was reported that the twelve new Columbia class submarines will cost $12 billion each, three times more than their projected cost in 2010 and is years behind schedule.
Nuclear Weapons Update:
Nuclear weapons and delivery systems would get an added $12.9 billion in the new reconciliation proposal. This includes $2 billion for sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles and $400 million for their warhead.
Accelerating Arms Race
• The current conflict between India and Pakistan is dangerous.
• 4-4-25 ExchangeMonitor: https://www.exchangemonitor.com/wrap-up-russias-modern-arsenal-and-nukes-in-ukraine-deputy-secretary-of-energy-hearing-rubio-japan-and-rok-in-brussels-more/
“Russia’s top commander in Ukraine Gen. Sergei Surovikin discussed using nuclear weapons to prevent Ukraine from advancing into Crimea in the fall of 2022, the New York Times said March 29. The Times cited U.S. intelligence reports…”
Lawsuit Compels Nationwide Public Review of Plutonium Bomb Core Production
AIKEN, S.C. — Today the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within the Department of Energy, published a formal Notice of Intent in the Federal Register to complete a nationwide “programmatic environmental impact statement” on the expanded production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores. Pits are the essential radioactive triggers of modern nuclear weapons. The NNSA is aggressively seeking their expanded production for new-design nuclear weapons for the new nuclear arms race.
The South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) successfully represented the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition and Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment in a legal challenge to NNSA’s attempt to improperly jump start dual site pit production. On September 30, 2024, United States District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled that the NNSA had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with its plan to produce at least 30 pits per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and at least 50 pits per year at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
NNSA issues plans to assess pits environmental impact
“This programmatic environmental impact statement that we fought long and hard for empowers citizens to tell policy makers what they think about decisions being made in their name,” Jay Coghlan, from environmentalist group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said Thursday in a press release by the plaintiffs of the case. “Let them know what you think about the $2 trillion ‘modernization’ program to keep nuclear weapons forever while domestic programs are gutted to pay for tax cuts for the rich.”
By ExchangeMonitor | May 9, 2025 exchangemonitor.com
On the heels of a federal judge’s ruling last fall, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration formally announced plans Friday for a detailed review of environmental impacts of planned plutonium pit production.
DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced in the Federal Register it is kicking off a programmatic environmental impact statement EIS to ensure that large-scale pit production will comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
According to the Federal Register notice, NNSA will hold public meetings and public hearings as part of the process.
Two online public scoping meetings are now scheduled for May 27 and May 28. The May 27 session would commence at 5 p.m. Eastern Time while the May 28 one is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. Eastern. Both can be accessed online or by phone. Details can be found in the Federal Register notice.
A federal district judge ruled last September that DOE and NNSA did not adequately analyze the environmental effects of producing the radioactive cores that trigger nuclear weapons in two different states, but declined to put the pit program, including construction of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility at Aiken, S.C.’s Savannah River Site on hold as a result. In January, the federal government and the plaintiffs, consisting of environmentalists, settled the lawsuit and agreed to leave Los Alamos National Laboratory as the sole pit factory until NNSA completes a nationwide, NEPA-compliant programmatic EIS.Continue reading
US nuclear firm ‘utterly crucial’ to national security expands East Tennessee operations
“Which company produces uranium fuel for U.S. Navy nuclear reactors and manages the only plant where the government disassembles atomic warheads? What about the company helping NASA to develop a nuclear rocket, all while building small modular reactors and developing a pilot plant to restart uranium enrichment for the military?”
By Daniel Dassow, Knoxville News Sentinel | May 5, 2025 newsbreak.com
It’s all the same answer: BWX Technologies , the $2.7 billion juggernaut better known as BWXT has embedded itself in every kind of nuclear project imaginable with a strong and growing presence in East Tennessee, where 1,100 employees at its Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin “downblend” bomb-grade uranium. The facility also creates fuel for the nuclear reactors aboard U.S. Navy submarines and aircraft carriers.
The region is even more important to BWXT after it bought a specialized facility in Jonesborough and 97 acres in Oak Ridge for a centrifuge enrichment project the company says will create hundreds of jobs through millions of dollars in investments.
“We have availed ourselves as a key player in just about every interesting nuclear opportunity that you can think of,” BWXT President and CEO Rex Geveden told Knox News. “We’re all over it.”
BWXT is part of the team led by the Tennessee Valley Authority to build the first small modular nuclear reactors in the U.S. at the federal utility’s Clinch River Nuclear Site in Oak Ridge .
It will manufacture the reactor pressure vessel, the largest component of the 300-megawatt reactor designed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy , for small modular reactors in the U.S. and Canada.
Curb the Skyrocketing Cost of U.S. Nuclear Modernization
“Since Russia and the United States agreed 15 years ago to modest nuclear reductions under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), they also have embarked on extraordinarily expensive campaigns to replace and modernize every component of their respective nuclear arsenals to maintain force levels and provide the option to build up.”
By Daryl G. Kimball, Arms Control Today | May 1, 2025 newsbreak.com
At the same time, their leaders have failed to resolve disputes about existing treaties or launch new negotiations to limit or further cut their deadly arsenals below the New START ceiling of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 strategic missiles and bombers each.
In 2018, shortly after he withdrew the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, U.S. President Donald Trump foolishly bragged about the nuclear stockpile that “until people come to their senses, we will build it up. It’s a threat to whoever you want, and it includes China, and it includes Russia, and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game.”
China has responded to U.S. nuclear and conventional military plans by pursuing a buildup of its historically “minimal” nuclear force to ensure that it retains an assured “second strike” capability. Russia has continued to develop new types of intermediate range missiles, as well as some new and exotic strategic systems designed to bypass U.S. missile defense capabilities.
Successive presidential administrations and congresses have failed to seriously consider alternatives that would have reduced costs and still maintained a devastating nuclear force.
Now, the cost of the U.S. nuclear modernization program is skyrocketing even further, siphoning resources from other more pressing human needs and national security priorities.
In April, the Congressional Budget Office issued its latest 10-year cost projection of the departments of Defense and Energy plans to operate, sustain, and modernize existing U.S. nuclear forces and purchase new forces: a total of $946 billion in the 2025-2034 period, or about $95 billion per year.
This new estimate is 25 percent, or $190 billion, greater than the last CBO estimate of $756 billion, which covered the 2023-2032 period. Incredibly, the $946 billion estimate does not include all of the likely cost growth of the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, which the Pentagon acknowledged in July 2024 would cost 81 percent, or $63 billion, more than the program’s baseline estimate of $78 billion, generated in 2020.
Find Out the Facts & Sign the Petition: Why NMED Should Deny LANL’s Request for Tritium Releases
Why NMED Should Deny LANL’s Request for Tritium Releases
The Los Alamos National Laboratory plans to begin large releases of radioactive tritium gas any time after June 2, 2025. The only roadblock to the Lab’s plans is that it needs a “Temporary Authorization” from the New Mexico Environment Department to do so.
Reasons why NMED should deny LANL’s request are:
- The state Environment Department has a duty to protect the New Mexican As it states, “Our mission is to protect and restore the environment and to foster a healthy and prosperous New Mexico for present and future generations.” 1
- Why the rush? LANL explicitly admits there is no urgency. According to the Lab’s publicly-released “Questions and Answers” in response to “What is the urgency for this project?”
“There is no urgency for this project beyond the broader mission goals to reduce onsite waste liabilities.” 2
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- In addition, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) admits that the end time frame for action is 2028, not 2025.3 Therefore, there is time for deliberate consideration.
- Contrary to NMED’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permit for LANL, the Lab has not fulfilled its duty to inform the public via NMED of possible alternatives to its planned tritium releases.4 According to Tewa Women United, “LANL has told EPA there are 53 alternatives; that list of alternatives, initially requested in 2022, has not yet been Tewa Women United has repeatedly asked LANL to provide the public with that list.” 5
University of New Mexico to host exhibit on nuclear history, technology, weapons
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) — A provocative international exhibit will open soon at the University of New Mexico. “the bomb” is an immersive, multi-media installation exploring the history, technology, and threat of nuclear weapons.
By Nicole Sanders, KRQE | April 22, 2025 krqe.com
The installation includes an hour-long film projected on 45 screens conveying the hidden chaos and danger of the nuclear age. The experience is coming to UNM from April 30 to May 30. The full schedule at Zimmerman Library is available below:
- Wednesday, April 30
- Friday, May 2, 2025
- Friday, May 9, 2025
- Friday, May 16, 2025
- Friday, May 23, 2025
- Friday, May 30, 2025
Formal Comments on the Draft Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for Continued Operation of the Los Alamos National Laboratory
The National Environmental Policy Act requires the Los Alamos National Laboratory to periodically prepare a new “Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for Continued Operations.”
Please use NukeWatch NM’s recent extensive comments on the Lab’s new draft SWEIS as a resource and citizens’ guide to Lab issues.
Did you know, for example, that:
• LANL’s nuclear weapons production budget has doubled over the last decade?
• The Lab’s so-called cleanup plan is to “cap and cover” some 200,000 cubic yards of radioactive and toxic waste, leaving them permanently buried as a perpetual threat to groundwater?
• There is a planned intentional release of up to 30,000 curies of radioactive tritium gas, all without a public hearing?
Use our lengthy formal comments as a starting point, toolkit or resource for dissecting ongoing and future issues at LANL!
We encourage you to use our comments to ask for follow-up info, either from us here at NukeWatch or from the Lab, and to demand better accountability and transparency! Use as background or briefing material for local and congressional advocacy.
For example:
- Cite or excerpt our comments in future public processes under the National Environmental Policy Act. For example, we are expecting that a nationwide programmatic environmental impact statement for plutonium “pit” bomb core production will be announced soon, the result of a lawsuit in which NukeWatch led.
- Share with those organizing around stopping expanded plutonium pit production and advocating for genuine radioactive and toxic wastes cleanup.
- Learn about LANL’s proposed electrical transmission line across the environmentally and culturally sensitive Caja del Rio and alternatives that were not considered.
- The National Environmental Policy Act itself is under assault by the Trump Administration. We expect environmental justice and climate change issues to be stripped from LANL’s final Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement. This needs to be resisted!
NukeWatch NM argued that the draft SWEIS should be withdrawn and a new one issued because:
• The NNSA has rigged the draft LANL Site-Wide EIS with three self-serving scenarios:
– Expanded nuclear weapons programs (contradictorily called the “No Action Alternative”).
– Yet more expanded nuclear weapons programs (“Modernized Operations Alternative”).
– Yet far more expanded nuclear weapons programs (“Expanded Operations Alternative”).
• A Reduced Operations Alternative must be included.
• The SWEIS’ fundamental justification for expanded nuclear weapons programs is “deterrence.” But “deterrence” has always included nuclear warfighting capabilities that could end human civilization overnight.
• The SWEIS purports to align with U.S. obligations under the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty. That is demonstrably false.
• Future plutonium pit production is NOT to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, it is for new-design nuclear weapons that could lower confidence in stockpile reliability and/or prompt a return to testing.
• The SWEIS’ No-Action Alternative violates the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
• The legally required programmatic environmental impact statement on pit production should be completed first, followed by the LANL SWEIS.
• Plutonium pit reuse should be analyzed as a credible alternative to pit production.
• A recent proposal for a data center at LANL is not in the SWEIS. It raises huge issues of future water and electrical use, the appropriateness of commercial interests at a federal lab, and the possible fusion of artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons command and control.
• Recent Executive Orders could strip the final SWEIS of environmental justice and climate change analyses. This must have clarification.
• Planned tritium releases should be fully analyzed.
• The Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade should be analyzed will all credible alternatives.
• The proposed BioSafety Level-3 facility must have its own standalone EIS.
• All Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board concerns should be addressed and resolved.
• Genuine comprehensive cleanup should be a preferred alternative.
• A new SWEIS should follow a new overdue Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: April 2025
Nuclear weapons
Air Force Weighs Keeping 1970s-Era Missiles Until 2050
The US Air Force is considering contingency plans that would extend the life of 1970s-era intercontinental ballistic missiles by 11 more years to 2050 if delays continue to plague the new Sentinel models intended to replace them. The current plan is to remove all 400 Minuteman III ICBMs made by Boeing Co. from silos by 2039… The Sentinel was projected last year to be deployed starting in May 2029. The first test flight was once projected for December 2023, but fiscal 2025 budget documents indicated a slip to February 2026.
The estimated cost of the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), originally at ~$110 billion, is now north of $180 billion. And this is before recognition of the immensity of supplying new command and control communications and recent consideration that its hardened silos may have to be replaced. IMHO it’s a propitious time to argue again for eliminating the land-based ICBM leg of the Triad. After all, one of its stated purposes is to act as a “nuclear sponge” for incoming Russian warheads. The odds of that are not zero and may increase if ICBMs are uploaded with multiple warheads after the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires in February 2026. More temptation for a preemptive first strike.
Deterrence is the Threat: NukeWatch Presentation for Western New Mexico University – April 1, 2025
Calls to restart nuclear weapons tests stir dismay and debate among scientists
By , Science News | March 27, 2025 sciencenews.org
When the countdown hit zero on September 23, 1992, the desert surface puffed up into the air, as if a giant balloon had inflated it from below.
It wasn’t a balloon. Scientists had exploded a nuclear device hundreds of meters below the Nevada desert, equivalent to thousands of tons of TNT. The ensuing fireball reached pressures and temperatures well beyond those in Earth’s core. Within milliseconds of the detonation, shock waves rammed outward. The rock melted, vaporized and fractured, leaving behind a cavity oozing with liquid radioactive rock that puddled on the cavity’s floor.
As the temperature and pressure abated, rocks collapsed into the cavity. The desert surface slumped, forming a subsidence crater about 3 meters deep and wider than the length of a football field. Unknown to the scientists working on this test, named Divider, it would be the end of the line. Soon after, the United States halted nuclear testing.
Beginning with the first explosive test, known as Trinity, in 1945, more than 2,000 atomic blasts have rattled the globe. Today, that nuclear din has been largely silenced, thanks to the norms set by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, or CTBT, negotiated in the mid-1990s.
Only one nation — North Korea — has conducted a nuclear test this century. But researchers and policy makers are increasingly grappling with the possibility that the fragile quiet will soon be shattered.
Some in the United States have called for resuming testing, including a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump. Officials in the previous Trump administration considered testing, according to a 2020 Washington Post article. And there may be temptation in coming years. The United States is in the midst of a sweeping, decades-long overhaul of its aging nuclear arsenal…
Nuclear Nightmare: Meet America’s New B61-12 Gravity Bomb
What makes the B61-12 particularly impressive is the bomb’s ability to adjust its destructive yield depending on the operational conditions and demands.
By Stavros Atlamazoglou, National Interest | March 26, 2025 nationalinterest.org
Over the past months, the U.S. Air Force added another potent weapon to its arsenal: a new nuclear bomb, having recently completed production at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb achieved full system production recently and is now fully operational. The nuclear bomb is one of the most versatile munitions of its type in the world, and a useful addition to the U.S. military’s nuclear deterrent capabilities.
The B61-12’s Unique Variable Yield Design
Sandia, one of the three main research and development laboratories for nuclear munitions, completed the production of the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb. The nuclear munition is now fully operational.
What makes the B61-12 particularly impressive is the bomb’s ability to adjust its destructive yield depending on the operational conditions and demands. Put simply, the B61-12 is four bombs in one. The nuclear munition can be adjusted to four different yields—0.3, 1.5, 10, or 50 kilotons. The difference in yields means that the B61-12 has tactical, operational, and potentially even strategic utility.
Eight decades of nuclear threats are too much
Santa Fe New Mexican: My View John C. Wester
By, The Santa Fe New Mexican | March 15, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
I am John C. Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe. I’m speaking on behalf of my archdiocese, and the archbishop of Seattle, the bishop of Hiroshima, and the archbishop of Nagasaki. We take guidance from our Holy Father, Pope Francis, who has declared the very possession of nuclear weapons to be immoral. We pray for his health.
Two years ago, in Nagasaki, on the 78th anniversary of its atomic bombing, we Catholic leaders formally created the Partnership for a World without Nuclear Weapons. Our four dioceses include the birthplace of nuclear weapons, the most deployed weapons in the United States, and the only two cities that to date have suffered atomic bombings. We lend our voices in staunch support of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, at this Third Meeting of State Parties.
In July 2017, the Vatican was the first nation-state to sign and ratify the treaty. We note that the nuclear weapons powers have never honored their long-held obligations, under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enter into serious negotiations leading to global nuclear disarmament.
In contrast, the entry into force of the ban treaty 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 are threatened by annihilation, at the whim of any one of their nine leaders.
The New York Times: DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts
“Firings and buyouts hit the top-secret National Nuclear Security Administration amid a major effort to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal. Critics say it shows the consequences of heedlessly cutting the federal work force.”
“The department has said that most of the fired employees handled administrative and clerical tasks that were not critical to the agency’s operation. But an analysis of the internal documents by The Times, coupled with interviews with 18 current and former agency officials, shows that is not true for the bulk of people who took the buyout,”
BySharon LaFraniere, Minho Kim and Julie Tate, The New York Times | March 17, 2025 nytimes.com
…The Times reports that many had top-secret security clearance, giving them access to information on how nuclear weapons are made.
Nuclear News Archive – 2022
Trump administration talking tough about another government shutdown for border wall funding
On Thursday, the Senate failed a veto override on Donald Trump’s emergency declaration, which is being used to purloin funds appropriated for other programs and use them for his border wall. That sets up yet another budget fight that will simmer along between the House, Senate, and White House for the next month. It also sets up another fight over a Trump government shutdown.
ARTICLE BY JOAN MCCARTER | dailykos.com
Before the August recess, all parties agreed to a continuing resolution to fund the government until the week before Thanksgiving, in anticipation that all the individual spending bills for all the departments would be passed and signed by then. What it really set up was another fight with Trump. “Trump is not interested in signing other domestic spending bills until there is agreement on the border wall,” a senior administration official told The Washington Post.
Feds give Navajo uranium contract to firm with sketchy past
A High Country News investigation finds the EPA awarded Tetra Tech a contract despite knowing its subsidiary had likely engaged in data manipulation, false reporting and profiteering.
ARTICLE BY SUSIE NIELSEN | hcn.org
In September 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency received a troubling message from the Navy: Tetra Tech EC, the firm tasked with cleaning up the radioactive former naval shipyard Hunters Point in San Francisco, might have manipulated its data.
The past performance of Tetra Tech, even beyond its subsidiary at Hunters Point, has been marked by controversy. The parent company has been at the center of other lawsuits, including a consolidated case regarding its involvement in cleaning up after the North Bay Fires, a series of wildfires that devastated regions north of San Francisco in the fall of 2017.
“The Navajo Nation project is a bull’s-eye radioactive project with dangerous radioactivity. For Tetra Tech to get that project at all — to be even allowed to bid on it — is shocking.” – David Anton, attorney for the Tetra Tech EC whistleblowers
In 2008, the EPA and five other federal agencies, in consultation with Navajo Nation, developed the first comprehensive plan to address the legacy of uranium contamination in and around the Navajo Nation. As of 2014, of the 43 highest-priority Navajo Nation mines as designated by the EPA, only one of them — the Skyline Mine — had been mostly cleaned up.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry To Resign
NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED JEFF BRADY | npr.org Updated at 6:30 p.m. ET
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry plans to leave his position at the end of the year, President Trump confirmed to reporters Thursday in Fort Worth, Texas. Trump praised Perry and said he already has a replacement in mind.
“Rick has done a fantastic job,” Trump said. ” But it was time.”
Trump said that Perry’s resignation didn’t come as a surprise and that he has considered leaving for six months because “he’s got some very big plans.”
Perry, 69, is one of Trump’s original Cabinet members and recently has emerged as a central figure in the impeachment inquiry of Trump.
Urgent: Move US Nuclear Weapons Out Of Turkey
BLOG BY HANS M. KRISTENSEN | fas.org
Should the U.S. Air Force withdraw the roughly 50 B61 nuclear bombs it stores at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey? The question has come to a head after Turkey’s invasion of Syria, Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian leadership and deepening discord with NATO, Trump’s inability to manage U.S. security interests in Europe and the Middle East, and war-torn Syria only a few hundred miles from the largest U.S. nuclear weapons storage site in Europe.
The US is rethinking the 50-plus nuclear weapons it keeps in Turkey
“The US is storing perhaps 50 air-dropped thermonuclear bombs at its Incirlik Airbase in southern Turkey, less than 100 miles from the Syrian border where this conflict is taking place.”
BY: TIM FERNHOLZ | qz.com
Turkish forces are pushing into northern Syria, replacing and sometimes even firing on the US troops retreating at Donald Trump’s orders.
The question of whether Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is really a US ally was put to US defense secretary Mark Esper on Fox television this morning. “No, I think Turkey, the arc of their behavior over the past several years has been terrible,” he said.
The nuclear stockpile dates back to the Cold War, when the US sought to keep a sufficient supply of atomic weapons deployed in Europe to deter potential Soviet aggression. Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy also host similar arsenals, and the US trains the participating nations in the use of the doomsday devices.
Turkey Troubles
October 15 Heather Hurlburt, director of the New Models of Policy Change project at New America’s Political Reform program, joins Michelle Dover for a discussion on US national security and foreign policy under President Donald Trump. She is the co-author of The Consensual Straitjacket: Four Decades of Women in Nuclear Security.
News analysis with Michelle Dover, John Carl Baker and Geoff Wilson of Council for a Livable World focuses on the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw US troops from the Turkey-Syria border. Joe Cirincione answers a question from Johnny from Massachusetts.
Listen, Subscribe and Share on iTunes · Spotify · SoundCloud · YouTube · Google Play · Sticher
Also available on ploughshares.org/pressthebutton
Even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could induce nuclear winter, thereby potentially killing 100’s of millions beyond South Asia.
From study: “Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe”
What if We Nuke a City?
“The world has changed in the past few years with world leaders again explicitly and publicly threatening each other with nuclear weapons. Many experts think the danger of a nuclear strike is higher than it has been in decades.
Governments tell their citizens that it’s good that we have nuclear weapons, but bad when others have them; that it’s somehow necessary to threaten others with mass destruction to keep us safe. But does this make you feel you feel safe? It only takes a small group of people in power to go crazy or rouge, a small misstep or simple misunderstanding to release a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.”
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Video Description: “Until we did the research. It turned out we were a bit oblivious off the real impact of nuclear weapons in the real world, on a real city. And especially, how helpless even the most developed nations on earth would be if an attack occurred today. So hopefully this video demonstrates how extremely non fun a real world nuclear attack would be, without being too gruesome.”
DOE Order 140.1: DNFSB Response, Oct. 11
Chair Hamilton responds, “Pursuant to our enabling legislation, we have directed our staff to attend all phases of the NES study process. Should you wish to prohibit our access to a particular study, we respectfully request written communication to the Board.”
[NES = the nuclear explosive safety (NES) elements of DOE O 452.1E, Nuclear Explosive and Weapon Surety Program]
Oct. 11, 2019
The Honorable James Richard Perry Secretary of Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC 20585-1000
Dear Secretary Perry:
We have received NNSA’s response dated August 9, 2019, concerning Board access to all phases of the nuclear explosive safety study process. We respectfully disagree with the justification offered for continued exclusion of our staff from NES study deliberations. NNSA’s response notes deliberations as collaborative efforts where participants consider all sides of identified issues, requiring free and open communication. Our staff’s observation of this interaction provides them with an understanding of the bases of the safety decisions being taken.
Today is Indigenous People’s Day, a holiday to honor and celebrate Native American and Indigenous peoples.
Among the many injustices suffered by native communities in the centuries that have passed since Europeans arrived on North America’s shores and claimed it for their own is the dangerous and deadly exposure to the radioactive materials used to create nuclear weapons. The United States’ nuclear arsenal has taken an especially hard toll on the Navajo, who continue to live with the repercussions of nuclear mining even today.
BACKGROUND
EXCERPT FROM POST BY CASSANDRA VARAKA, POLICY DIRECTOR OF WAND |
The process of building nuclear weapons starts with mining. One of the main elements of a nuclear bomb is enriched uranium. Some of the world’s richest uranium deposits span across Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah — heavily overlapping with the Navajo Nation. These mines provided the uranium used in the Manhattan Project; the United States’ top-secret endeavor to build the first nuclear bombs. Between 1944 and 1986 mining companies blasted 4 million tons of uranium out of Navajo land. Until 1971, uranium from these mines was sold exclusively to the United States government. Many Navajo were employed in the uranium mines and exposed to unsafe conditions by the companies in employing them. The mining companies knew that mine workers were at heightened risk for developing lung cancer and other serious respiratory diseases in 15 or 20 years. Additionally, the mines operated in a way that contaminated the surrounding lands and water by leaving large piles of radioactive materials exposed.
Many Navajo continue to live in close proximity to contaminated uranium mines. Of the 523 abandoned mines, the Environmental Protection Agency has only successfully cleaned up nine. The legacy of these mines and the contamination they leached into the environment on the Navajo Nation has been devastating: the cancer rate on the reservation doubled from the early 1970’s to the late 1990’s, even as the cancer rate declined nationwide. Each and every day, minority populations like the Navajo continue to be unduly affected by the militaristic pursuits of our government. For the Navajo, that means generations of health problems in the name of our nuclear weapons. We owe it to them, and to all the marginalized communities harmed by our pursuit and maintenance of nuclear weapons, to highlight the price they have been forced to pay for our nuclear arsenal.
READ MORE
When Talking About the Climate Crisis, We Can’t Forget About Nuclear Weapons
Both are existential threats, but only one is getting the attention it deserves.
BY: MATT KORDA | thenation.com
“The current attention gap between the climate crisis and nuclear weapons is bizarre, given their common existential stakes and challenges. Climate change and nuclear weapons have a symbiotic relationship: Each threat exacerbates the other. Climate change is setting the stage for conflict between nuclear-armed states, and a recent study suggests that even a regional nuclear war would cool the planet by 2 to 5 degrees Celsius and cause mass starvation for over a decade. Not to mention the fact that even during peacetime, decades of uranium mining, nuclear testing, and nuclear waste dumping have contaminated some of our planet’s ecosystems beyond repair, displacing entire communities—often communities of color—in the process.
The flip side of this symbiosis, however, means that climate change and nuclear weapons also share a common solution. A progressive nuclear policy should be based upon four core principles of the Green New Deal—international cooperation, reductions, transparency, and justice. Only by challenging the nuclear-industrial complex in its entirety—in a way akin to how the Green New Deal challenges the carbon economy in its entirety—can a progressive nuclear policy pull us back from the brink of atomic and environmental catastrophe. Progressive climate change policies should include demilitarization and disarmament provisions, and progressive nuclear policies should address the climate and humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons. Similarly, nuclear activists and climate change activists are natural allies in the fight against existential risk, and both causes would benefit from a more robust partnership.
To that end, the significant attention imbalance between climate change and nuclear weapons must be urgently corrected; keeping them siloed reinforces an incomplete narrative about the nature of these existential threats.
US, critics split on whether tech made nuke shipments safer
“There’s enough high-level nuclear waste awaiting disposal in the U.S. to fill a football field 65 feet (20 meters) deep. Few states want to house it within their borders.”
“The public defines ‘safe’ as zero risk…the technical community defines ‘safe’ as complying with regulatory standards.” – Robert Halstead, head of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, is currently fighting plutonium shipments to Nevada and spent nuclear fuel transfers to the proposed Yucca Mountain dump.
BY: SCOTT SONNER | phys.org
The plutonium core for the first atomic weapon detonated in 1945 was taken from Los Alamos National Laboratory to a test site in the New Mexico desert in the backseat of a U.S. Army sedan.
Officials put other bomb parts inside a metal container, packed it into a wooden crate and secured it in the steel bed of a truck under a tarp, the U.S. Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration says in a historical account.
Grainy black-and-white photos show special agents and armed military police accompanying the shipment nearly 75 years ago.
“Nuclear materials transportation has evolved since then,” the department posted online last year.
Today, radioactive shipments are hauled in double-walled steel containers inside specialized trailers that undergo extensive testing and are tracked by GPS and real-time apps.
But whether shipping technology has evolved enough to be deemed safe depends on whom you ask.
New research: Regional nuclear war will cause catastrophic global consequences
Two scientific studies modelling the effects of nuclear war released in the past few weeks have revealed some terrifying figures:
- 91.5 million deaths in a matter of hours, if nuclear conflict breaks out between the United States and Russia,
- 125 million deaths in case of a week-long conflict between India and Pakistan using 100 kilotonne nuclear warheads,
- A 30% reduction in surface sunlight due to the 36 teragrams of black carbon released into the atmosphere after the India-Pakistan conflict,
- Two billion people at risk of famine.
The two studies, Princeton’s Science and Global Security programme “Plan A” [ 1] and Science Advances’ Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe [ 2], show that there is no such thing as a contained nuclear conflict.
These are not farfetched scenarios. This new research comes out as tensions are increasing between India and Pakistan, and four of the nine nuclear-armed states have tested nuclear missiles in just the past two weeks. [3, 4] You can read more about this new research here.
The science is clear: we need to eliminate nuclear weapons, before they are used again.
Feds move to demolish 13 structures at toxic Santa Susana site without state oversight
BY: MIKE HARRIS | vcstar.com
The U.S. Department of Energy announced this week it has decided to demolish and remove, without state oversight, 13 of 18 remaining structures from its portion of the contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory as part of the much-delayed cleanup of the site.
However, in a so-called record of decision it issued Monday, the federal agency said it recognizes that the demolition and removal of the other five structures must be “compliant” with state permits and state hazardous waste laws.
Expanding nuclear weapon production is reckless
“Placing a novel warhead design in the active nuclear weapons stockpile with a substantially untested pit is irresponsible. Rapidly increasing production at sites with spotty records compounds that error with added safety hazards. Increasing plutonium pit production to a rate of 80 or more annually is both reckless and unnecessary.”
BY: MARYLIA KELLEY & JOSEPH RODGERS | thehill.com
Behind closed doors, Congress is in the process of making a decision that will have a profound impact on nuclear risk levels and global security. Hanging in the balance is a decision to recklessly increase production of plutonium bomb cores or “pits.” The NDAA conference committee must not make that mistake.
Pits are the triggers for thermonuclear weapons. Currently, the United States does not manufacture plutonium pits on an industrial scale. In its fiscal 2020 budget request the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) seeks authorization to produce at least 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030 at two facilities separated by some 1,500 miles. The Senate NDAA fully funds the request. The House instead authorizes 30 pits per year, all at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in NM. Los Alamos is presently authorized to produce 20 pits annually.
WIPP: New Mexico nuclear waste site’s five-year plan deemed ‘insufficient’ by state leaders
A group of governors from western states voiced “disappointment” in a recently released five-year strategic plan for ongoing operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, contending they weren’t adequately consulted on the future of the nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad.
BY: ADRIAN HEDDEN | carlsbadcurrentargus.com
Don Hancock, director of the Nuclear Waste Program at the Southwest Research and Information Center said the plan was insufficient in that it did not detail plans and costs needed to keep WIPP open until 2050. He said the plan detailed projects intended to keep WIPP open beyond 2025, without adequately explaining the associated costs.
“It’s not a five-year plan,” Hancock said. “The centerpiece of the plan is WIPP being open until 2050. That’s 30-year plan. They’re saying WIPP’s timeline needs to be doubled. This should be saying how WIPP is transitioning from emplacement to closure, but it does the opposite.”
Hancock said the DOE must communicate with the public on either keeping WIPP, known as a pilot project, open indefinitely or developing other repositories to handle the low-level transuranic (TRU) waste disposed of at the site.
He said another alternative would be for the DOE to develop a plan to emplace the waste at the generator sites – multiple nuclear facilities across the country – themselves.
US official: Research finds uranium in Navajo women, babies
About a quarter of Navajo women and some infants who were part of a federally funded study on uranium exposure had high levels of the radioactive metal in their systems, decades after mining for Cold War weaponry ended on their reservation, a U.S. health official said. The early findings from the University of New Mexico study were shared Monday during a congressional field hearing in Albuquerque.
MARY HUDETZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS jhnewsandguide.com
Dr. Loretta Christensen — the chief medical officer on the Navajo Nation for Indian Health Service, a partner in the research — said 781 women were screened during an initial phase of the study that ended last year. Among them, 26% had concentrations of uranium that exceeded levels found in the highest 5% of the U.S. population, and newborns with equally high concentrations continued to be exposed to uranium during their first year, she said. The research is continuing as authorities work to clear uranium mining sites across the Navajo Nation.
“It forces us to own up to the known detriments associated with a nuclear-forward society,” said U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, who is an enrolled member of Laguna Pueblo, a tribe whose jurisdiction lies west of Albuquerque.
The hearing held in Albuquerque by U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, Haaland and U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, all Democrats from New Mexico, sought to underscore the atomic age’s impact on Native American communities. The three are pushing for legislation that would expand radiation compensation to residents in their state, including post-1971 uranium workers and residents who lived downwind from the Trinity Test site in southern New Mexico.
An evolving nuclear agenda spurs plutonium pit production at LANL
A ‘dirty, dirty process’
BY: KENDRA CHAMBERLAINE | nmpoliticalreport.com
Los Alamos has a starring role in a shift to U.S. nuclear policy that’s two presidential terms in the making. Nuclear watchdog groups in the state are concerned about the United States’ evolving nuclear agenda, which will see a sharp increase in plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
LANL recently released its $13 billion expansion proposal to accommodate increased pit production at the site. The expansion is part of a wider push across the country to ramp up the nuclear warhead manufacturing machine, according to Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group.
Plutonium pits are central to nuclear weaponry. They are the “radioactive cores of modern nuclear weapons,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. He added that the pits themselves are weapons. “It was essentially a plutonium pit that destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, 1945,”
The ramp-up is years in the making, as successive presidential administrations have struggled to address how to modernize the U.S. nuclear stockpile. But nuclear watchdog groups worry an increase in pit production at LANL would have negative repercussions for the region. While LANL has touted the proposed economic benefits of its proposal for the area, activists argue the dangers outweigh the benefits.
Trump’s rumored pullout from Open Skies Treaty would idle Offutt jets
BY: STEVE LIEWER | OMAHA WORLD HERALD omaha.com
The Trump administration is believed to be preparing to pull out of the 34-nation Open Skies Treaty, a plan that would idle two Offutt-based OC-135B reconnaissance jets and their crews.
The treaty, proposed by President George H.W. Bush following the Cold War, allows member nations to fly supervised photo-reconnaissance flights over one another’s countries. This week, the U.S. and Germany are partnering on an Open Skies mission over Russia.
The planes are crewed and maintained at Offutt by the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron, which is part of the 55th Wing. Several dozen Offutt airmen are involved in the program.
The Nuclear Philanthropist
October 8 The MacArthur Foundation Director of the Nuclear Challenges Program Emma Belcher comes on Press the Button to discuss the role of philanthropy in fighting the two existential threats to humanity – nuclear weapons and climate change. On the Early Warning news segment, Erica Fein from Win Without War joins Tom Collina and Akshai Vikram from Ploughshares Fund to discuss the impeachment inquiry and how it’s affecting the debate over the defense budget.
Also, an answer to the question: Do nuclear weapons work in space?
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There are about 26 nuclear weapons corporations earning nearly $100 billion per year amongst themselves. ‘They have vested financial interests in producing more and more nuclear weapons,’ says Dr Keith Suter (Australia), Economics Futurist and member of the Club of Rome, ‘and they exert intense political power on decision makers to protect these interests.‘
As the United Nations First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) starts its 2019 session in New York today, plans are progressing to publicise the colossal waste of money on nuclear weapons by physically ‘counting out’ the global nuclear weapons budget.
Over the next four weeks, governments meeting at the UN will debate and vote upon a number of nuclear disarmament resolutions. However, the impact of these resolutions is likely to be minimal as long as there continues to be strong financial interests in maintaining the nuclear arms race.
Count the Nuclear Weapons Money
The Count the Nuclear Weapons Money Action, which takes place during UN Disarmament Week (October 24-30), aims to raise media and public attention to this, and to publicise actions that indivduals and organisations can take to cut nuclear weapons budgets, end investments in nuclear weapons corporations, and shift these budgets and investments to better purposes.
The money counting will take place in a number of outside locations around Manhattan (as well as in New Jersey and Long Island) and at an interactive installation in an art gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Click here if you would like to join the counting.
Impeachment Slows All Hill Defense Biz; DoD Approps On Life Support
There’s not a lot of confidence out there about the prospects for a 2020 budget agreement. “A stripped down mini-NDAA may be all that could pass this year for defense,” says one long-time budget watcher.
BY COLIN CLARK | breakingdefense.com
WASHINGTON: As the House of Representatives gears up to impeach President Trump, it’s getting harder and harder for anyone involved in defense to get a hearing with leadership, and the chances for a defense appropriations bill appear to be getting smaller every day.
While the chances for a second year of regular order (actually passing spending and major policy bills) already seemed unlikely, impeachment is sucking the oxygen out of the room, leaving regular order gasping for air. President Trump’s decision to take $3.6 billion from military construction accounts to build the so-called wall along the border with Mexico probably killed the chances for a defense spending bill. Add impeachment and the experts say abandon hope, all ye who enter the Capitol.
We’re More at Risk of Nuclear War With Russia Than We Think
U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle need to start addressing the danger.
BY: GEORGE BEEBE | politico.com
In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans genuinely and rightly feared the prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Schoolchildren regularly participated in air raid drills. Federal, state and local governments prepared for operations in the event of a nuclear emergency. More than a few worried citizens built backyard bomb shelters and stockpiled provisions.
Today, that old dread of disaster has all but disappeared, as have the systems that helped preclude it. But the actual threat of nuclear catastrophe is much greater than we realize. Diplomacy and a desire for global peace have given way to complacency and a false sense of security that nuclear escalation is outside the realm of possibility. That leaves us unprepared for—and highly vulnerable to—a nuclear attack from Russia.
The most recent sign of American complacency was the death, a few weeks ago, of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty—a pivotal 1987 agreement that introduced intrusive on-site inspection provisions, destroyed an entire class of dangerous weaponry, and convinced both Washington and Moscow that the other wanted strategic stability more than strategic advantage.
Trump Claims Energy Secretary Rick Perry Is Behind Ukraine Call at Heart of Impeachment Inquiry: Report
President Trump told House Republicans that he made his now infamous phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the urging of Energy Secretary Rick Perry — a call Trump claimed he didn’t even want to make.
BY ANNA KAPLAN | thedailybeast.com Oct. 5, 2019
President Trump has reportedly tried to pin the explosive Ukraine call at the center of an impeachment inquiry on Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Axios reports that the president claimed Perry had asked him to make the July phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that sparked a whistleblower complaint. Trump reportedly claimed that he did not even want to call Zelensky, but said Perry had wanted him to inquire about a liquified natural gas plant. Trump is currently facing an impeachment inquiry for allegedly using that phone call to pressure Zelensky to pursue an investigation into former vice president Joe Biden and his son’s ties to a major Ukrainian gas company.
Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe
The title of a new study by Toon et al, published this week in Science Advances, speaks volumes: “Rapidly Expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe.”
advances.sciencemag.org | PSR’s press statement | usatoday.com | icanw.org
The study models the potential impacts of a regional nuclear conflict and found that, given the increased size and power of their respective nuclear arsenals, the effects of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan would have even more catastrophic impacts than previously thought.
Top Health Expert Warns of Drinking Water Risks in Piketon Radiation Case
“The source of the uranium and other poisonous substances found in the air and on school property — the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, Ohio, which made material for nuclear bombs throughout the Cold War — is owned by the federal government. Simply put, the feds aren’t working very hard to investigate themselves.”
BY STUART H. SMITH | stuarthsmith.com
One thing that I’ve found to be a constant in more than 25 years of working cases around pollution from radiation: A good outside expert will often tell citizens the things that government or big business simply can’t or won’t.
IG: Embattled coalition should return up to $300K to DOE
ARTICLE BY: T.S. LAST | abqjournal.com
SANTA FE – The U.S. Department of Energy’s inspector general is recommending that the department seek reimbursement of up to $300,000 in DOE grant money that a coalition of local governments in northern New Mexico didn’t properly account for.
“The Regional Coalition is not the effective lobbying voice for clean up at Los Alamos that it claims to be because it condones DOE’s plan for cleanup on the cheap that will leave the vast majority of radioactive and toxic wastes permanently buried above our groundwater,” Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico said in a statement Wednesday.
“The Coalition should pay the American taxpayer back whatever it improperly spent and be terminated. At a minimum, the City of Santa Fe should resign from this discredited Coalition right away.”
October 1 House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump last week. What does this mean for nuclear policy and national security? Ro Khanna, US Representative from California’s 17th congressional district, joins Joe Cirincione for a special interview on the explosive allegations against the US president and the need to prevent a new war of choice during this time. Rep. Khanna, with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), introduced a bipartisan amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act to prevent federal funds from being used for any military force against Iran without congressional authorization. “In the Silo” provides an exclusive look at the August 6 protest in front of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, featuring narration by Ploughshares Fund Development Associate Elissa Karim.
News summary with Mary Kaszynski, Joe Cirincione, and Abigail Stowe-Thurston of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Joe Cirincione answers a question from Susan in California.
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BY THAD MOORE tmoore@postandcourier.com
About this series
This article is the second part in “Lethal Legacy,” The Post and Courier’s investigation into the nation’s plans for disposing of plutonium, the dangerous metal that triggers nuclear weapons. This installment probes the Department of Energy’s failed MOX project, an ambitious but doomed effort to clean up the legacy of the Cold War.
Part I: Why South Carolina is likely stuck with a stockpile of the nation’s most dangerous nuclear materials
Dogged by faulty assumptions and lacking political will, the federal government squandered billions of dollars and an opportunity to dispose of the nation’s most dangerous nuclear material by chasing a massive construction project in South Carolina that was doomed from the start.
The MOX saga reveals an unsettling reality of the nuclear era after the Cold War. The U.S. and the world’s other nuclear powers have proven they are capable of pulling the explosive potential out of atoms, but they have proven unable to dispose of a creation that will retain immense power and be a danger for eternity.
What is MOX? MOX, short for mixed-oxide, is a type of fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. It gets its name from the combination of two oxidized nuclear metals: plutonium and uranium.The U.S. government and Russia agreed to make MOX fuel with highly enriched plutonium, which they made for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The idea was to make the plutonium less potent and generate electricity by reacting it in power plants; the project’s supporters described it as a way for the countries to turn their “swords into plowshares.”
Nuclear weapons: Explained in numbers
There are far fewer nuclear weapons now than at the height of the Cold War and the major nuclear powers have all signed up to the principle of disarmament. But there are other countries that possess nuclear weapons which have not signed up to any arms control treaties.
And with fears of a renewed nuclear arms race between the US, Russia and China, the topic is high on the agenda at this year’s UN General Assembly. Reality Check’s Jack Goodman takes a look at the facts and figures behind the world’s nuclear arsenals.
Motion graphics by Jacqueline Galvin. | 26 Sep 2019 © bbc.com
Is it time to ditch the NPT?
“Nuclear weapon states have used this treaty to argue that their nuclear weapons are legal and a sovereign right. As a result, the NPT became the cornerstone of a severely hypocritical nuclear order where a few states regard wielding their nuclear weapons as legitimate while proscribing this sovereign right to other states…nuclear weapon states have no intention to give up their nuclear weapons.”
BY JOELIEN PRETORIU & TOM SAUER | thebulletin.org 
In 2020, the participants in the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will congregate for the treaty’s 10th review conference. Which means that it may be a good time to re-examine the relevance of the NPT, and even consider the idea of dropping this treaty in its entirety, in favor of the new kid on the block: the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, also know as the Ban Treaty. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying, one treaty seeks to stop the further spread of nuclear weapons, while the other goes further and seeks to get rid of them entirely. This difference is reflected in their formal titles.
New Aerial Photos Released of Trifecta of U.S. Nuclear Construction Debacles
“We are pleased to facilitate distribution of the photos of the three failed nuclear projects in South Carolina and Georgia as close observation of them will reveal the status of the sites and where so much money has been needlessly wasted,” said Tom Clements, Director of Savannah River Site Watch (SRS Watch). “It is stunning to realize that perhaps $40 billion has been spent so far on the three sites, with the cost at all of them going up daily, money that should have been spent on projects of positive benefit to the public,” added Clements. “The photos commemorate the three largest, failed nuclear construction projects in the United States and will be of use when the proper investigations into the failed projects are conducted,” added Clements.
How a $5 part used to modernize nuclear warheads could cost $850 million to fix
World’s first nuclear smart bomb to become even more expensive..
BY AARON MEHTA | defensenews.com
WASHINGTON — Issues with commercial parts on two nuclear warhead modernization projects could cost up to $850 million to fix, but the agency in charge of America’s warheads believes it has a solution.
The issue, first revealed by Verdon during the Sept. 4 Defense News Conference, would put both warhead modernization programs at an 18- to 20-month delay of their first production units, although NNSA is hopeful there won’t be significant delays on the overall program timelines.
The parts in question are commercially available capacitors that, during stress testing, did not give NNSA confidence they could survive the 20-30 years needed for these designs. Verdon stressed that the parts were not at risk of failure under normal circumstances, but that the agency was acting out of an abundance of caution for the long-term life of the weapons.
That caution is pricey: the Original capacitors, Verdon said, ran about $5 per unit. The upgraded ones, built to a higher standard NNSA believes can survive the lifetime of the programs, come in at $75 per unit. All told, the B61-12 will cost an extra $600-700 million, and the W88 will cost about $120-$150 million because of the capacitor issue.
Federal Court Vacates former Y-12 Bomb Plant Ruling
ARTICLE FROM HUNGTINGTON NEWS huntingtonnews.net
“With this ruling,” said Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, “the NNSA no longer has any legal authority to continue construction of the Uranium Processing Facility bomb plant.” The decision may have ramifications for NNSA’s efforts to expand nuclear weapons production at other sites, too, including Los Alamos, NM and Savannah River, SC, where environmental scoping is underway for a new plutonium pit manufacturing facility.
Jay Coghlan, director of co-plaintiff Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said, “Uranium and plutonium components manufacturing are two sides of the same coin of expanding nuclear weapons production in an escalating arms race. The Department of Energy should take this court ruling against its Uranium Processing Facility as a warning that it must also comply with National Environmental Policy Act requirements while ill-advisably expanding the production of plutonium pits, the radioactive cores of nuclear weapons.”
The ruling also points out the crucial role the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board plays in monitoring safety issues at Y-12 and across the nuclear weapons complex. Since last year, the Department of Energy has worked to reduce the Safety Board’s access to some nuclear facilities, even issuing a revised Order to limit the information available to the Board and the restricting who the Board can and cannot speak to directly.
12 States join the Nuclear Ban Treaty on International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons 2019
On the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, 12 states took another significant step towards achieving this goal by signing or ratifying the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, during a special High-Level Ceremony at the UN Headquarters in New York.
The five nations that ratified during the ceremony are:
- Bangladesh
- Kiribati
- Laos
- Maldives
- Trinidad & Tobago
These states are also joined by Ecuador, which became the 27th state to ratify the Treaty on September 25th, one day before the ceremony.
The following states signed on to the Treaty: Botswana, Dominica, Grenada, Lesotho, St Kitts and Nevis, Tanzania and Zambia, as well as the Maldives and Trinidad and Tobago (as the latter two states both signed and ratified the Treaty during the ceremony).
The treaty now has 79 signatories and 32 States Parties. By signing, a State commits to not take any action that would undermine the treaty’s object and purpose. Upon depositing its instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession, a state becomes legally bound by the terms of the treaty. When the Treaty has 50 states Parties it will enter into force, making nuclear weapons illegal under international law.
The ceremony was hosted by long-time champions of the Treaty: Austria, Brazil, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa and Thailand and enabled presidents and foreign ministers to take this important step while they were gathered at the UNGA.
Newly-elected President of the UN General Assembly, Mr Tijjani Muhammad-Bande of Nigeria, opened the ceremony, and spoke passionately in support of the Treaty’s importance in ending nuclear weapons. “We commend states that have joined TPNW and urge those who have not done so to do join in this most vital action,“ he said during his address to the UNGA Plenary event earlier in the day.
Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of ICAN, celebrated the move by these 12 countries and the outspoken support for the Treaty around the world throughout the day. “Away from most cameras, we come together to do the actual work of nuclear disarmament. For the good of your people and the good of the world you propel the Treaty toward entry-into-force […] Today, in this room, I feel the scale tilting toward the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. This day of action gives us all hope at a bleak time.”
After today, the treaty is almost two-thirds of the way to its entry into force, and this momentum is expected to continue. Several countries have confirmed to ICAN that their ratifications are imminent, and campaigners around the world will not stop until every country is on board.
Join the movement to end nuclear weapons
The full ceremony can be viewed here:
Nuclear power is not the answer in a time of climate change
Wild weather, fires, rising sea levels, earthquakes and warming water temperatures all increase the risk of nuclear accidents, while the lack of safe, long-term storage for radioactive waste remains a persistent danger.
BY HEIDI HUTNER & ERICA CIRINO | aeon.co
Proponents of nuclear power say that the reactors’ relative reliability and capacity make this a much clearer choice than other non-fossil-fuel sources of energy, such as wind and solar, which are sometimes brought offline by fluctuations in natural resource availability. Yet no one denies that older nuclear plants, with an aged infrastructure often surpassing expected lifetimes, are extremely inefficient and run a higher risk of disaster.
‘The primary source of nuclear power going forward will be the current nuclear fleet of old plants,’ said Joseph Lassiter, an energy expert and nuclear proponent who is retired from Harvard University. But ‘even where public support exists for [building new] nuclear plants, it remains to be seen if these new-build nuclear plants will make a significant contribution to fossil-emissions reductions given the cost and schedule overruns that have plagued the industry.’
Nuclear Abolition: The Road from Armageddon to Transformation
Nuclear weapons pose a grave threat to the future of civilization. As long as we allow these weapons to exist, we flirt with the catastrophe that they will be used, whether intentionally or accidentally.
ESSAY BY DAVID KRIEGER
Great Transition Initiative (August 2018), http://www.greattransition.org/publication/nuclear-abolition.
Meanwhile, nuclear weapons skew social priorities, create imbalances of power, and heighten geopolitical tension. Diplomacy has brought some noteworthy steps in curbing risks and proliferation, but progress has been uneven and tenuous. The ultimate aim of abolishing these weapons from the face of the earth—the “zero option”—faces formidable challenges of ignorance, apathy, and fatigue.
Yet, the total abolition of nuclear weapons is essential for a Great Transition to a future rooted in respect for life, global solidarity, and ecological resilience.
Judge voids UPF decision, requires more seismic hazard analysis
A federal judge in Knoxville on Tuesday said a critical decision made in 2016 for enriched uranium operations at the Y-12 National Security Complex, including for the $6.5 billion Uranium Processing Facility, violated a national environmental law, and she ordered the decision vacated, or set aside.
The UPF is already under construction, and Wedenesday morning, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees work at Y-12, said construction will continue.
The 104-page opinion and order was filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday by Chief U.S. District Judge Pamela L. Reeves.
The lawsuit was initially filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, but it was later moved to the Eastern District of Tennessee. Besides OREPA, the plaintiffs included two other public interest organizations—Nuclear Watch of New Mexico and Natural Resources Defense Council of Washington, D.C.— and several individual plaintiffs.
DOE for First Time Rejects Safety Board Recommendation – SRS Watch
SRS Watch and Nuclear Watch New Mexico have been working hard together on pit production issues. SRS Watch and NukeWatch NM, alongside other groups in ANA, have requested that the DNFSB now get involve in issue related to conversion of the canceled plutonium fuel (MOX) plant at SRS into a Plutonium Bomb Plant (PBP) to produce plutonium “pits” for nuclear weapons.
“The safety board informed ANA that it is monitoring the situation with pit production but we think they should actively be involved as NNSA continues to push this risky new mission on SRS,” said Clements of SRS Watch.
September 23 John F. Tierney, former US Representative and current executive director of the Council for a Livable World and the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, joins Joe Cirincione to discuss his work on the National Defense Authorization Act, and challenges the idea that US national security depends on ever-increasing defense spending.
News summary with Mary Kaszynski, Joe Cirincione, and Michelle Dover. Joe Cirincione answers a question from Clair in Massachusetts.
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