Russia tested new nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile
“For Trump, who has cast Russia as a “paper tiger” for failing to swiftly subdue Ukraine, the message is that Russia remains a global military competitor, especially on nuclear weapons, and that Moscow’s overtures on nuclear arms control should be acted on.”
By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia KellyTim Balk | October 26, 2025 reuters.com
U.S. Agency That Protects Nuclear Arsenal to Furlough Workers
Jay Coghlan, the executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a private group that monitors the agency, said it was unclear if the furloughs would have any immediate effect on nuclear safety. “As a baseline, the nuclear safety officers have always been understaffed. There is simply not enough federal oversight as is. And then you’re talking about furloughing more,” he added.
ByTim Balk | October 17, 2025 nytimes.com
The National Nuclear Security Administration said 1,400 workers would be affected by Monday.
Nuclear weapons safety oversight in decline with Trump, Biden inaction
The lone independent federal agency responsible for ensuring safety at U.S. nuclear weapons sites — including Hanford in Washington state — will lose its ability to issue recommendations for safer work by January if the Trump administration doesn’t replenish its board, which this month dwindles to one member.
By Patrick Malone | October 15, 2025 seattletimes.com
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board ensures adequate public health and worker safety by scrutinizing hazardous work conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors that produce and maintain the nuclear arsenal. If the Trump administration and Congress don’t move quickly to populate the board, it will be incapable of issuing formal safety recommendations to the Energy Department, according to a report last month from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm.
If the board is without a quorum of at least three members for a year, “the agency would essentially be able to offer only nonbinding advice to DOE,” according to the report.
“The whole idea of having the board in place is to provide the optics in addition to the substance,” Nathan Anderson, a Washington state-based director in the GAO’s natural resources division, told The Seattle Times.
The board does not have regulatory or enforcement authorities, but its advice carries significant weight and cannot be easily dismissed or disregarded, the GAO report states. The board’s recommendations to the U.S. secretary of energy are published for public comment, and the secretary must respond in writing. The board also reports each year to selected congressional committees on its recommendations to the Energy Department and any outstanding safety problems.
FULL ORIGINAL ARTICLE (SEATTLE TIMES)
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New Article about “Participatory Democracy in Action” Describes WIPP Permit Negotiations
Thanks to our friends at Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety for this article:
In an essay for NYU’s Democracy Project, David F. Levi, a former federal judge and director emeritus of the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law, reflected on the negotiations he facilitated in New Mexico about the renewal of the hazardous waste permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a deep geologic repository for plutonium-contaminated waste generated in the fabrication of nuclear weapons. Judge Levi’s essay is entitled “Participatory Democracy in Action.” He wrote:
“A couple of years ago, I was asked to mediate a dispute between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) concerning the renewal of a required state permit for DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the nation’s only deep underground nuclear waste storage facility, located outside of Carlsbad, New Mexico. I thought I could help the two government entities but quickly came to realize that under the mediation procedures followed by New Mexico, the mediation would also involve citizen groups whose ultimate concurrence was essential to any complete resolution. This was entirely new to me.
“In this case, there were seven such citizen groups entitled to participate and representing a variety of points of view. There was one group representing some of the government and business leaders of the town of Carlsbad who favored permit renewal on terms ensuring the continued long-term operation of WIPP. There were six groups expressing a variety of concerns about nuclear waste coming to New Mexico. They sought a more restrictive permit.
“To my astonishment, over the course of four full days, we worked through the multitude of issues and came to complete agreement. Something magical had happened. Thanks to the goodwill of the DOE and its contractor, the remarkable daily attendance and attentiveness of the NMED Secretary and the measured and well-informed way in which the various citizen groups made their points, we were able to find consensus and craft permit language that was acceptable to everyone.
“For me, as a former judge and mediator, the experience was thrilling. It was an experience of participatory democracy in action that made me proud of our fellow citizens and our government. Three aspects of the experience stand out. First, everyone in the room had taken responsibility for the way in which our nation’s only deep underground nuclear storage facility would be operated for the next 10 years. The citizen participants were not just making suggestions; they were assuming many of the attributes of decision makers. Second, all participants were advocating, compromising, and collaborating on behalf of what they saw as the public interest. These are the essential skills of democracy—the civic virtues so central to the Founders’ vision of what would make democracy work in America—and they require practice. Finally, over four days around a table, the citizens were able to take the measure of the DOE and NMED representatives. They came to realize, as I did, that these public servants, as well as the DOE contractor, were very well-informed, experienced, and intentioned. The government representatives had a similar experience of coming to appreciate the citizen questions and points of view. A government that relies on trust needs this kind of interaction to maintain that trust.
“It seems our democracy would be strengthened if we could extend the benefits of this kind of participatory structure to other areas of our legal and regulatory systems.”
“In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville made some of these points in reference to the jury trial in civil cases. He emphasized the importance of the civil jury trial as a free “public school” [https://contextus.org/Tocqueville,_Democracy_in_America_(1835),_Book_I,_Chapter_XVI_Causes_Mitigating_Tyranny_In_The_United_States_(Part_II).13?ven=Gutenberg&lang=en] 
educating jurors in the democratic virtues and skills and teaching them to assume responsibility. In the same vein, every trial judge I know would attest to the importance of the jury experience for building confidence in the courts. After a trial, judges often hear words of gratitude from jurors who are deeply impressed by the legal process and are honored to have participated despite their initial dismay at being called to jury service. Sadly, the number of jury trials has diminished, particularly in federal court. Reversing that trend is a worthy goal, particularly for a branch of government that depends so heavily on public confidence.
“As a final reflection: any persons involved as litigants will have an experience of the legal system. The experience can advance their sense of agency and participation, their ability to disagree civilly, and their trust in the courts. But how can these objectives be obtained when so many Americans cannot afford a lawyer? We can do so much better to provide understanding of and access to our justice system.”
The six New Mexico based non-governmental organizations were Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping (CARD), Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS), Conservation Voters New Mexico (CVNM), Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Southwest Alliance for a Safe Future (SAFE), and Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC). The individual was Steve Zappe, a grandfather and former NMED WIPP Program Manager.
“A House of Dynamite” New Netflix Nuclear Catastrophe Film: Fiction, for Now
The reviews are rolling in for “A House of Dynamite,” which premiered in Europe earlier this month before coming to the U.S. on October 10th, with a full Netflix release scheduled for the 24th. Here’s the trailer, and see the schedule for Santa Fe theater showings here:
This Week! Santa Fe Theater Screenings for the Film “A House of Dynamite”
I attended one of these screenings last night, and I’ll let the professional critic reviews give the gist:
The Kathryn Bigelow thriller looks at what might happen if a ballistic missile were headed to the U.S. The director hopes the movie will start a conversation. New York Times: At Venice, ‘A House of Dynamite’ Is Scarier Than Most Horror Films
“The Netflix thriller captures from multiple perspectives the White House response to an unattributed missile launch headed for a major U.S. city in the harrowing 20 minutes until projected impact…”An unrelenting chokehold thriller so controlled, kinetic and unsettlingly immersive that you stagger out at the end of it wondering if the world will still be intact.” ‘A House of Dynamite’ Review: Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson in Kathryn Bigelow’s Precision-Tooled, Viscerally Unsettling Nail-Biter
“Told from the perspective of soldiers at a remote Alaskan missile base, staffers in the White House situation room, military officials at US Central Command (CENTCOM), and the president of the United States, the film weaves an overlapping timeline to show how the United States would respond to a missile attack…The film doesn’t want viewers to ask themselves how to thwart a nuclear attack on the United States. Rather, it wants the viewer to question the value of having nuclear weapons at all. ‘None of this makes sense,’ the President (Idris Elba) bemoans, ‘Making all these bombs and all these plans.'”
“A House of Dynamite is a terrifying examination of how terribly wrong things can go even with highly competent people in charge…But that’s also not necessarily the world we’re living in…The film shows why the worst can happen, even when competent, well-meaning people are trying to do the right thing.
But what if competence and decency are in short supply?” A House of Dynamite: Bigelow’s latest thriller shows why nuclear bombs are only part of the danger
This film left me reeling with tension and anxiety and exactly as the Times article titles it, is scarier than most horror films. Unlike ‘Oppenheimer,’ which largely glorified the invention of the atomic weapon, ‘A House of Dynamite’ makes it impossible to ignore the threat that nuclear weapons pose to our world. Working backwards from perspectives, and focused on how we can actually improve our odds of keeping this story a fictional one, here is what struck me most about this film:
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Only one person decides what happens. But the real threat isn’t one reckless leader — it’s a reckless system. The final segment of the film features the “nuclear football” heavily, a briefcase containing launch procedures and options. In the United States, the president holds the sole and absolute authority to order the use of nuclear weapons. In the film, there are many voices in the President’s ear, but two primary perspectives quickly emerge after the defense fails and the ICBM remains inbound to its U.S. target: “One side advocates a retaliatory strike; the other, nothing. ‘It’s surrender or suicide,’ one adviser tells the President,” – thebulletin.org. The military aide carrying the nuclear football is tasked with providing the President the list of options if retaliation is chosen. An absolute must-read, Daniel Ellsberg’s book “The Doomsday Machine” breaks down many of the themes in the film with pure and terrifyingly honest account of Cold War-era nuclear strategy. In terms of launch authority, he describes how the inherent instability of the delegated command structure of the nuclear apparatus makes accidental or unwanted war an ever-present danger.
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LANL tritium containers to head to Texas after last treatment
Four flanged tritium waste containers have been depressurized and transported to Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility, where they will be treated further before heading out-of-state for disposal.
| October 15, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
The containers’ final destination is Waste Control Specialists, a West Texas facility that handles the storage and disposal of radioactive waste.
The more than 1,300-acre facility in Andrews County is located on an approximately 14,000 acre property, which is sited on a thick clay formation which the company describes as “nearly impermeable.”
New documents have been added to the Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract Electronic Public Reading Room.
All legacy cleanup documents required to be posted after April 30, 2018, are available on the site linked above.
For legacy cleanup documents that were posted prior to April 30, 2018, please visit the LANL electronic public reading room.
- Review, Notice of Completion of Off-Site Waste Shipments for Final Disposal, Activities 3.1.5, 3.1.8, and 3.3.4, Compliance Plan, Site Treatment Plan, Federal Facility Compliance Order Los Alamos National Laboratory [July 31, Aug. 21, 2025]
https://ext.em-la.doe.gov/GovFTPFiles/api/GetFiles/GetFile?fileName=EMID-703933_NMED_Review_STP_Shpmt_Jul_31_Aug_21_101525.pdf
Strong Political and Public Opposition Means Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF) in NM “Impossible in the Near Future”
NEW UPDATE OCTOBER 10, 2025:
Holtec abandons plan to build New Mexico storage facility for spent nuclear fuel
This is excellent news. The Governor and state legislature (specifically Senator Jeff Steinborn and Representative McQueen) are to be commended for not allowing New Mexico to become the nation’s dumping ground for highly radioactive commercial spent fuel rods, especially when the Land of Enchantment has never had its own nuclear energy plant. Hard work from many New Mexicans made this happen.
So-called “interim” storage would never be interim when the federal government has failed for more than four decades to find a permanent repository for these lethal wastes. This also shows how hollow all the hype is about the claimed renaissance of nuclear power, when on the front end the industry can’t survive without taxpayer handouts, and on the back end can’t solve its radioactive waste problem.
Holtec’s quote that “New Mexico’s acquiescence is necessary” for interim storage to go forward is interesting, implying that we have to surrender as the nuclear colony that we are. Well, guess what, we didn’t surrender, and I predict you’ll see more of this. Moreover, whether you’re pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear, Holtec is an ethically questionable company, which is why the attorneys general of New Jersey and Massachusetts have sued it.
Adiós and good riddance, Holtec!
New York Times: Tax Break Scandal Leads to $5 Million Fine for N.J. Energy Company
SEE MORE:
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: September 2025
Nuclear Weapons Update:
Putin has offered Trump a one-year extension of the numerical cap on strategic nuclear weapons in the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty which is 1,550 warheads (however, B52s are counted as one warhead while they can carry a dozen). New START expires in February 2026, which will be the first time the world will be without any nuclear arms control treaties since the mid-1970s. Trump has said it sounded like a good idea.
Note: New START ratification in 2010 provided the opportunity for Republicans in the Senate to attach the condition of $88 billion for nuclear weapons “modernization” that has since metastasized to ~$2 trillion. Nuclear disarmament must be prioritized as the ultimate goal over simply continued arms control.
A mere extension of the numerical cap would not involve Congressional ratification. The extension of New START’s numerical cap is in part to allow for a year in which to begin negotiations for a treaty replacement.
Plutonium Pit Production:
A draft plutonium pit production programmatic environmental impact statement is expected to be released next year in early 2026.
Accelerating Arms Race:
Is North Korea set to become world’s ‘fourth ICBM power’ after missile breakthrough? | Park Chan-kyong | South China Morning Post | September 11, 2025
A new era in North Korea’s missile programme may be dawning, as analysts warn of an imminent test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple warheads to the US mainland. Fresh from his appearance at China’s Victory Day parade in Beijing last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un personally oversaw the trial of a lighter, more robust solid-fuel ICBM engine, state media reported on Tuesday, touting the achievement as a “strategic” breakthrough.
Saudi Arabia signs a mutual defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan after Israel’s attack on Qatar | MUNIR AHMED & JON GAMBRELL | AP NEWS | September 18, 2025
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Pakistan’s defense minister says his nation’s nuclear program “will be made available” to Saudi Arabia if needed under the countries’ new defense pact, marking the first specific acknowledgment that Islamabad had put the kingdom under its nuclear umbrella.
Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif’s comments underline the importance of the pact struck this week between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which have had military ties for decades.
The move is seen by analysts as a signal to Israel, long believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed nation. It comes after Israel’s attack targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar last week killed six people and sparked new concerns among Gulf Arab nations about their safety as the Israel-Hamas war devastated the Gaza Strip and set the region on edge.
Russia suspected of helping North Korea build nuclear submarines, Seoul investigating | Park Chan-kyong | South China Morning Post | September 18, 2025
South Korea is investigating reports that Russia has supplied North Korea with nuclear submarine reactor modules, a move analysts see as highly plausible and one that could mark a breakthrough in Pyongyang’s decades-long push for a nuclear-powered navy… At the 8th Party Congress in January 2021, North Korea declared five core defence goals, including the development of nuclear-powered submarines and submarine-launched strategic nuclear weapons.
China Hardens Military Stance Against U.S. With Nuclear Weapons and Tough Talk | Brian Spegele | The Wall Street Journal| September 18, 2025
China played down its rapidly rising military might for years. In the past few weeks, Beijing has broadcast a steady drumbeat of firepower displays and muscular rhetoric, carrying an unmistakable warning for the U.S… Part of China’s confidence stems from the rapid growth of its firepower. The Pentagon estimates that China’s stockpile of nuclear warheads has more than doubled since 2020, alongside a growing array of options to launch those weapons, from mobile ground-launch systems to increasingly stealthy submarines.
Holtec Pulls Out of New Mexico Spent Nuclear Fuel Interim Storage Project
Holtec International has confirmed it is canceling plans to build a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico.
Radwaste Solutions | October 9, 2025 ans.org
Named the HI-STORE CISF, the facility would have stored up to 10,000 canisters of commercial SNF on land owned by the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance (ELEA) near the towns of Carlsbad and Hobbs.
“After discussions with our longtime partner in the HI-STORE project, the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, and due to the untenable path forward for used fuel storage in New Mexico, we mutually agreed upon canceling the agreement. This allows for ELEA to work to redevelop the property in a manner that fits their needs and allows Holtec to work with other states who are amenable to used fuel storage based on the recent DOE work on public education and outreach,” Holtec said in a statement (emphasis added).
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling in NRC v. Texas, which found that petitioners did not have standing to challenge the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing of Interim Storage Partners’ CISF in Texas, Holtec said it expected to have its HI-STORE CISF license reinstated, allowing the company to move forward with the project. Holtec and ISP’s NRC licenses were vacated by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2023 ruling.
Despite the court’s decision, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she remained committed to preventing the HI-STORE CISF from being built. In 2023, New Mexico passed a bill barring the storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste in New Mexico without the state’s explicit consent.
The AI Doomsday Machine Is Closer to Reality Than You Think
“Most troubling to experts on AI and nuclear weapons is that it’s getting harder and harder to keep decisions about targeting and escalation for nuclear weapons separate from decisions about conventional weapons.”
“There is no standing guidance, as far as we can tell, inside the Pentagon on whether and how AI should or should not be integrated into nuclear command and control and communications,” says Jon Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists.
By Michael Hirsh | September 2, 2025 politico.com
Jacquelyn Schneider saw a disturbing pattern, and she didn’t know what to make of it.
Last year Schneider, director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative at Stanford University, began experimenting with war games that gave the latest generation of artificial intelligence the role of strategic decision-makers. In the games, five off-the-shelf large language models or LLMs — OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and GPT-4-Base; Anthropic’s Claude 2; and Meta’s Llama-2 Chat — were confronted with fictional crisis situations that resembled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s threat to Taiwan.
Director Kathryn Bigelow is Sounding the Nuclear Alarm – Washington Post New Review
“A House of Dynamite” asks: How would the White House respond in the face of a nuclear attack?
Max Boot | October 2, 2025 washingtonpost.com
VIEW MORE: “A House Of Dynamite” Q&A w/ Director Kathryn Bigelow, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, And More At New York Film Fest —
80th Commemorations of Ban the Bomb – Trinity, Hiroshima & Nagasaki Remembrances in New Mexico
Exchange Monitor: DNFSB makes agency fixes, but needs members, GAO finds
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has tackled all but a few third-party recommendations to improve its culture over the past decade but suffers from a depleted board, according to a new report.
| September 5, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
Progress is tough with the five-person board probably…
China Hardens Military Stance Against U.S. With Nuclear Weapons and Tough Talk
Xi positions Beijing as powerful center of new global order as security forum convenes in capital
BEIJING—China played down its rapidly rising military might for years. In the past few weeks, Beijing has broadcast a steady drumbeat of firepower displays and muscular rhetoric, carrying an unmistakable warning for the U.S….
Saudi Arabia signs a mutual defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan after Israel’s attack on Qatar
While not specifically discussing the bomb, the agreement states “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both,” according to statements issued by both Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry and the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
| September 18, 2025 apnews.com
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan have signed a mutual defense pact that defines any attack on either nation as an attack on both — a key accord in the wake of Israel’s strike on Qatar last week.
The kingdom has long had close economic, religious and security ties to Pakistan, including reportedly providing funding for Islamabad’s nuclear weapons program as it developed. Analysts — and Pakistani diplomats in at least one case — have suggested over the years that Saudi Arabia could be included under Islamabad’s nuclear umbrella, particularly as tensions have risen over Iran’s atomic program.
COMMUNITIES FOR CLEAN WATER: LANL Radioactive Tritium Venting Fails to Provide Transparency, Assurance, and Respect for Local Communities
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 18, 2025
Santa Fe, NM — As NNSA and LANL continue operations to depressurize Flanged Tritium Waste Containers, Communities for Clean Water (CCW) calls out federal agencies for issuing vague assurances instead of transparent, verifiable data — and for dismissing community concerns with contradictory and incomplete statements that disregard what independent experts have found, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) own legal obligations, and the New Mexico Environment Department’s (NMED) acknowledgment that LANL has a long record of compliance failures.
“How can our communities be expected to trust LANL when they won’t give us access to the raw, real-time monitoring data – independently verified by the EPA,” asks Joni Arends with Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. “Without this transparency, LANL is continuing a legacy of empty assurances, not accountability.”
Key Concerns:
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Lack of real-time transparency – Since Friday (Sept. 12), the public has been forced to rely on NMED’s Facebook page for piecemeal updates. While LANL’s website provides very brief daily summaries, no near-real-time monitoring dashboard from DOE, NNSA, or LANL has been made available.
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Vague assurances, not real information – NNSA’s updates claim “no tritium was released” while simultaneously telling the public to expect “very low levels of tritium” for subsequent venting. Without numbers, monitoring data, or detection thresholds, these phrases do not provide reassurance.
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Weather risks – LANL has not disclosed thresholds for wind, rain, or humidity that would postpone venting. Communities watch weather shifts in real time but are left in the dark about how safety decisions are being made.
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Dismissal of public health concerns – When asked for plain-language guidance that NMED stated LANL would provide, LANL responded only with “no offsite impact anticipated.” This is not meaningful and reassuring guidance, it’s a blanket dismissal that disregards independent expert findings and fails to meet DOE’s obligations to protect vulnerable populations.
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Ignoring daily lifeways – Avoiding Pueblo Feast Days is not enough. This is harvest season, when outdoor cultural events, youth programs, and farming are in full swing. LANL’s scheduling continues to disregard these realities.
Unanswered Questions
Independent experts and community advocates have raised critical unanswered questions:
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Unclear “depressurization” – LANL said “no internal pressure was found” in a container, but also claimed it was “depressurized.” If no pressure existed, what was released?
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Unanswered helium questions – NMED stated helium was released, but LANL has not explained its origin. Was it introduced at sealing of the outer container, or a decay product of tritium?
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Monitoring limits undisclosed – LANL has not disclosed the detection limits of its monitoring equipment. Readings “indistinguishable from zero” could still mask releases.
DOE NNSA Gives Misleading Statements on Native America Calling
On a recent Native America Calling program, DOE NNSA’s Los Alamos Field Office Deputy Director Pat Moss compared LANL venting to global natural tritium stocks. Independent expert Dr. Arjun Makhijani pointed out this comparison as misleading: “The problem is not global background, but local contamination. If venting occurs in rain and calm winds, local rainfall could exceed U.S. drinking water standards by hundreds to thousands of times.”
In their most recent public meeting, LANL admitted that infants could receive three times the radiation dose as adults. During the interview, Dr. Makhijani pressed this point – if adults are modeled at 6 mrem, that means infants could be at 18 mrem, nearly double the EPA’s 10 mrem compliance limit. Instead of addressing this directly, Mr. Moss provided a stock line, “We will be compliant with the regulatorily imposed release threshold and will be doing the calculations per the regulation.”
That is exactly the problem – hiding behind regulatory caps while ignoring clear evidence that infants, our most vulnerable, face exposures above legal limits.
DOE NNSA also pointed to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) – an independent federal oversight body created by Congress – as if it had declared the tritium venting operation as “fully protective of the public”. That is misleading. First, the DNFSB has been operating without a quorum for months, limiting its ability to issue independent recommendations. Second, what the Board staff said in its July 2025 presentation was that the overall nuclear safety risk to the public is low if DOE’s proposed controls are followed. The DNFSB has also flagged ongoing safety concerns at LANL including deficiencies in Area G’s safety analysis and risk to workers.
First of four containers of tritium waste at LANL has been vented
The first of four flanged tritium waste containers awaiting removal from Los Alamos National Laboratory has been vented, the New Mexico Environment Department announced Tuesday afternoon.
| September 16, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
The container can now be moved for treatment at LANL and then, eventually, to an off-site disposal area.
No internal pressure was found in the first container, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration, suggesting the inner containers in the flanged tritium waste container hadn’t leaked. Air monitoring did not show an increase of tritium beyond background levels, the federal agency wrote.
No tritium emissions were released, the Environment Department wrote in its Tuesday post on X, formerly Twitter. Both the state agency and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are monitoring the process.
The depressurization of the containers is set to continue at 7 a.m. Wednesday, although the NNSA noted the schedule is subject to change due to weather. The four containers will be vented one at a time over an estimated two-week period.
*The featured image differs from the article photo due to usage rights.
New Mexicans Can Save the DNFSB; Contact Our Senators Today
From our friends at Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety:
The independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has been dwindling from a five-member board to one member and may disappear if we, the People, do not raise our voices to support its essential nuclear safety work. The Safety Board needs at least two new members. And that needs to get done by Saturday, October 18th. https://www.dnfsb.gov/about
New Mexico U.S. Senators Heinrich and Lujan have key roles to play to ensure the Safety Board’s work continues unimpeded. https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/ and https://www.lujan.senate.gov/ Our voices of support are essential to ensure communities continue to receive the essential services of the Safety Board and its staff.
Right now members of the Safety Board’s staff are monitoring the venting of radioactive tritium from Area G at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Their expertise in the field of nuclear safety and their demonstrated competence and knowledge relevant to their independent investigative and oversight functions are an essential part of the process. They will be part of the follow-up once the venting of the four flanged tritium waste containers is completed. https://tewawomenunited.org/?s=tritium, https://www.ccwnewmexico.org/tritium, https://nuclearactive.org/
Not only does the Safety Board have staff at LANL, but also at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the burial site for plutonium contaminated nuclear weapons waste, near Carlsbad. https://ananuclear.org/facilities/
Russia suspected of helping North Korea build nuclear submarines, Seoul investigating
Analysts said such a technology transfer was plausible given Pyongyang’s support for Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine
South Korea is investigating reports that Russia has supplied North Korea with nuclear submarine reactor modules, a move analysts see as highly plausible and one that could mark a breakthrough in Pyongyang’s decades-long push for a nuclear powered navy…
Holy See tells nations at UN to end threat of nuclear weapons, even as deterrence
Amid a global arms race, ending the threat of nuclear war — and even the testing of nuclear weapons — is imperative, said the Holy See’s diplomat to the United Nations.
By OSV News | September 8, 2025 catholicreview.org
Archbishop Gabriele G. Caccia, the Holy See’s U.N. permanent observer, shared his thoughts in a statement he delivered Sept. 4 at U.N. headquarters in New York, during the General Assembly High-level Plenary Meeting to Commemorate and Promote the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, observed that same day.
“The pursuit of a world free of nuclear weapons is not only a matter of strategic and vital necessity, but also a profound moral responsibility,” Archbishop Caccia in his remarks.
He pointed to the introduction of nuclear weapons — first detonated by the U.S. in 1945 over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people, during World War II — as unveiling to the world “an unprecedented destructive force.”
Historic peace vigil partially dismantled after Trump orders: ‘Take it down’
Law enforcement officials on Sunday removed parts of the White House Peace Vigil, which has sat just outside the White House for decades.
By Marissa J. Lang, The Washington Post | September 8, 2025 washingtonpost.com
But over the past week, it faced a new threat as Trump turned his attention to the vigil and federal officers picked apart the structure that shields protesters and their signs from the elements. The vigil is maintained by a rotating cast of volunteers who keep the protest going 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
On Friday, Brian Glenn, a correspondent for the conservative network Real America’s Voice, told the president during a gathering with reporters that there was “a blue tent” in front of the White House that was “an eyesore.” Trump initially said he was unaware of it, but he then quickly ordered its removal.
Photo by Sig. Chiocciola, Creative Commons: The White House Peace Vigil on March 30, 2025 staffed by volunteers, Philipos Melaku-Bello (left) and Joe Brown (right).
For 80 years, nuclear weapons have been the unused threat
Amid a global arms race, ending the threat of nuclear war — and even the testing of nuclear weapons — is imperative, said the Holy See’s diplomat to the United Nations.
By Matt Kelly, mkelly@virginia.edu, September 3, 2025 news.virginia.edu
In the 80 years since World War II, which ended with the use of two atomic bombs, the world has maintained a tenuous relationship with nuclear weapons.
Philip Potter, professor of public policy at the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and director of the National Security Data and Policy Institute, said he worries about the current delicate nuclear balance.
“Eighty years of non-use is the product of both good diplomacy and a recognition of the potential consequences,” Potter said. “The fearsome power of nuclear weapons causes countries pause before they use them, but a great deal of work has also gone into nonproliferation and the management of crises to keep them away from the nuclear brink. In some ways the dynamics of the Cold War made managing the potential for nuclear confrontation easier.”
It’s a very different strategic scenario now, where there are nine nuclear powers and less capacity to manage them.
A House of Dynamite review – Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear endgame thriller is a terrifying, white-knuckle comeback
★★★★★: Amid a global arms race, ending the threat of nuclear war — and even the testing of nuclear weapons — is imperative, said the Holy See’s diplomat to the United Nations.
By Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian | September 2, 2025 theguardian.com
Kathryn Bigelow has reopened the subject that we all tacitly agree not to discuss or imagine, in the movies or anywhere else: the subject of an actual nuclear strike. It’s the subject which tests narrative forms and thinkability levels.
Maybe this is why we prefer to see it as something for absurdism and satire – a way of not staring into the sun – to remember Kubrick’s (brilliant) black comedy Dr Strangelove, with no fighting in the war room etc, rather than Lumet’s deadly serious Fail Safe.
NEW UPDATED INFORMATION: MUST READ!!! PROVIDED BY: THE TULAROSA BASIN DOWNWINDERS CONSORTIUM — WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE COMPENSATION AVAILABLE THROUGH THE RECA PROGRAM
SEEKING JUSTICE FOR THE UNKNOWING, UNWILLING, AND UNCOMPENSATED INNOCENT VICTIMS OF THE JULY 16, 1945 TRINITY BOMB
A Message From Tina
The DOJ is now accepting claims and has provided guidance on the claims process. They will only accept mail in claims at this time. They have indicated that an electronic process will be implemented by the end of the year. For more information you can go to the DOJ website at: https://www.justice.gov/civil/reca
Please be careful when supplying documentation via the regular mail. If you decide to file this way you may want to send the documents via certified mail. Once the electronic process begins it will be easier to assure that your documents are safe and being handled properly with little to no risk.
There are organizations/attorneys who are soliciting people to file claims with them. They use all sorts of tactics to get people to believe their services are necessary and often guarantee results. Please be aware that if an entity files a RECA claim on your behalf they will charge a fee. They receive the check, deduct their fee, and then pay you.
There will be Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP) clinics in our State that will assist people with claims. The claims process is not necessarily difficult and we’ll be training people to assist with the application process when needed. We’ll also be looking to government agencies to cooperate in locating necessary documentation for the application process. PLEASE DO NOT TURN OVER YOUR RECORDS TO ANYONE THAT YOU ARE NOT SURE ABOUT. You can remain updated about the application process, the training we’re going to organize or other questions you might have by going to our website at: www.trinitydownwinders.com
What does the expansion of RECA do?
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act program has been re-authorized and extended through Dec 31, 2028 but the application deadline is Dec 31, 2027.
Downwinders who lived in New Mexico for one year from 1944 through Nov. 1962 will be eligible and family members can apply on behalf of a deceased loved one.
There are 19 cancers that are covered by the expansion.
The cancers covered are:
Leukemia (except chronic lymphocytic Leukemia); Lymphoma (other than Hodgkins); Primary cancers of the Thyroid, Breast, Esophagus, Stomach, Pharynx, Small Intestine, Pancreas, Bile Duct, Gall Bladder, Salivary Gland, Urinary, Bladder, Brain, Colon, Ovary, Liver (unless cirrhosis/Hepatitis B present), and Lung.
Compensation for downwinders will be increased to $100,000 and Downwind coverage is expanded to cover the entire state of New Mexico
Coverage for uranium miners and workers would be expanded:
To workers through Dec 31, 1990
To core drillers and remediation workers
To cover additional kidney disease for uranium miners
To allow for combined work histories
What does this mean?
This is the biggest expansion of RECA in the history of the program and it wouldn’t have happened without the tireless advocacy of Senator Lujan, Representative Leger Fernandez, Senator Heinrich, Representative Stansbury and Representative Vasquez.
While it is a significant win, it still leaves out many impacted communities, including the parts of Nevada and Arizona not previously covered, along with Montana, Colorado, and Guam.
The 2-year extension will likely not be adequate time to get all the people in New Mexico who qualify enrolled and this bill does not have health care benefits for Downwinders. We will continue to fight for a longer extension and the addition of healthcare benefits. This is an important first step because it reinstates the program keeping it operational so people can continue to apply for benefits and get the help they need, and it shows that expansion is possible and provides an opportunity to address concerns raised about the cost of expansion.
We are grateful for the win and consider this a big step in the right direction. We look forward to the day that claims are successfully filed and the people of New Mexico begin to see the benefit of the expansion of RECA. Stay tuned for updates and many thanks to all of you who have stood together with us in this fight!Continue reading
Threads cast and crew suffered ‘trauma’ after film
The creators of a documentary about the making of nuclear apocalypse film Threads say many of the cast and crew had “suffered with the trauma of being involved”.
By Chloe Aslett, BBC News | August 29, 2025 bbc.com
Threads, which tracks the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Sheffield, was first screened on the BBC on 23 September 1984 and fast became a cult classic.
Now filmmakers Craig Ian Mann and Rob Nevitt have spoken to more than 50 people involved in the making of the film for their documentary Survivors: The Spectre of Threads.
Mr Mann said: “[Threads] is a film that more than any I can think of everybody who worked on it it has impacted their lives in some way or another. Sometimes very positively and sometimes somewhat negatively.”
“There are people who have suffered the trauma of having been in and seen Threads,” he told BBC Radio Sheffield.
“There’s one participant in the documentary who has become a Doomsday prepper.
“He lives in America and has a bunker and canned food and weapons and he is prepared for the end of the world at any moment and that’s because he was in and saw Threads.”
Trump wants to stop nuclear proliferation. STRATCOM could play a major role.
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, argues that the US needs to carry a new “big stick.”
By Henry Sokolski, Breaking Defense | August 29, 2025 breakingdefense.com
Last Monday, President Donald Trump pronounced, “We can’t let nuclear weapons proliferate.” Two days later, Secretary of State Rubio met with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi and recommitted the United States to preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
After America’s bombing of Iran’s suspect nuclear sites, there’s cause to take these commitments seriously, but only if it’s more than a one off.
Emphasizing consistency is essential. Historically, America has backed nonproliferation in fits and starts. Under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, the United States opposed the recycling of plutonium for commercial use because it was too close to bombmaking. It blocked reprocessing activities in South Korea, Taiwan, and Brazil.
Full Event Recording: Press Conference & Commemoration – Hiroshima Atomic Bombing 80th Anniversary Event (August 6, 2025)
DOE and LANL Silence Public and Tribal Community Member Voices While Pushing Radioactive Tritium Venting
For Immediate Release: August 22, 2025
Contact: Kalyn Mae Finnell, Coordinator, Communities for Clean Water
Los Alamos, NM — This week’s so-called “public meeting” regarding Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) proposal to vent radioactive tritium emphasized the persistence of the Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and LANL to disregard communities concerns while prioritizing nuclear weapons projects.
In-person attendees were allotted three minutes to make statements about their concerns. Over 100 online participants—including many Pueblo community members who could not attend the meeting in Los Alamos in-person due to health, distance, or work commitments—were surprised to find that they were not permitted to provide verbal comments and restricted to submitting only one emailed question. DOE/NNSA and LANL gave no prior notice of this change. “This is not meaningful participation. It is exclusion,” said Marissa Naranjo with Honor Our Pueblo Existence.
The stakes are at an all time high. Tritium — produced in the development of nuclear weapons as triated water — is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that travels quickly through air, water, soil, and food. When exposed to the human body, it can cause cancer, genetic damage, cross the placental barrier, and cause health impacts across generations. DOE/NNSA insists venting is the sole safe option moving forward—however, their own “independent” technical review revealed significant issues with this assertion. The review acknowledged significant deficiencies: the absence of real-time monitoring, a lack of container-specific risk analysis, and insufficient examination of safer alternatives such as filtration or storage until decay occurs. Community members are also asking: How can a review be independent when DOE managed the process, designated the reviewer, and defined the scope? This does not represent independence—it signifies a conflict of interest.
“This is the same broken pattern we’ve seen for decades,” said Joni Arends with Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. “LANL creates the danger, then tells us radioactive releases are our only option. They force the public and Pueblo communities into what NMED itself has called ‘untenable situations.'”
Local community leaders also noted that DOE has consistently overlooked reports by Tewa Women United, Communities for Clean Water, and scientific experts regarding the risks associated with tritium. These technical reports documented exposure pathways unique to Pueblo communities, including impacts on women, children, and traditional farming lifeways. By sidelining this research, DOE has once again dismissed Indigenous voices and lived experiences—further diminishing trust and perpetuating environmental racism.
“If our gathering here today is to mean anything, it must mean that in fidelity to all those whose lives were destroyed or savagely damaged on August 6, 80 years ago, we refuse to live in such a world of nuclear proliferation and risk-taking. We will resist, we will organize, we will pray, we will not cease, until the world’s nuclear arsenals have been destroyed.”
— Cardinal Bob McElroy of Washington, DC, August 5, 2025, at the World Peace Memorial Cathedral in Hiroshima, Japan.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: August 2025
Nuclear Weapons Budget:
• NNSA’s detailed budget was finally released, the latest ever. $2.8 billion is for “plutonium modernization” (i.e., pit production) projects, of which $1.8 billion for LANL. The Lab’s nuclear weapons programs are having a full billion dollars added to them for FY 2026 (which begins this October 1) on top of the $4 billion they already have. The Lab’s $6 billion FY 2026 budget is now 84% nuclear weapons. Meanwhile cleanup and nonproliferation programs are being cut by 5% and renewable energy research completely eliminated.
• Over for the next four years the “reconciliation” bill adds another $750 million for plutonium modernization (mostly at SRS) and $1 billion “to accelerate the construction of National Nuclear Security Administration facilities.”Continue reading
August 6th U.S. Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Commemoration in Santa Fe
Nobel Peace Conference: A Message to Humanity – Featuring a Video with Nuclear Watch New Mexico on Our Plutonium Pit Federal Lawsuit to Show What Citizen Action on the Legal Front Can Accomplish for Nuclear Disarmament
The video above shows the entire conference (but begins playing at our portion); to view our video alone on YouTube CLICK HERE or watch below!
Santa Fe New Mexican MY VIEW – 80 years on: The immorality of nuclear weapons
By John C. Wester, SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN | August 5, 2024 santafenewmexican.com
Greetings New Mexicans. The lord’s blessings upon you. I am writing to you from Hiroshima, Japan, on the 80th anniversary of its horrific atomic bombing. All wars are against Christ’s teachings. Two wrongs (including Japanese atrocities in World War II) never make a right.
I am here with Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle and our brother Japanese bishops to commemorate the dead and to honor the living Hibakusha (the aging atomic survivors). We especially congratulate the Hibakusha organization, Nihon Hidankyo, for winning the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.Continue reading
‘End the nuclear cycle’: Antinuclear New Mexicans speak out 80 years after Hiroshima bombing
Organized by Nuclear Watch New Mexico, the event featured speakers from the international campaign — which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 — the Back from the Brink New Mexico Hub and the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, a group that advocates for “downwinders” in New Mexico who say they were sickened by fallout from the 1945 Trinity Test southeast of Socorro.
By Cormac Dodd cdodd@sfnewmexican.com, The Santa Fe New Mexican | August 6, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
The face of Archbishop John C. Wester played over the screen as the Catholic leader, on the same day surreal moments of horror unfolded during the bombing of Hiroshima 80 years ago, pleaded for nuclear disarmament.
“Do we pull back from the brink and choose life, or do we continue to play with fire, hoping our luck will hold out?” the leader of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe said in a video, recently recorded before he traveled to Japan with a delegation of U.S. bishops.
Wester has made antinuclear advocacy a central part of his tenure since he was appointed to the post in 2015. A group of about 50 people entered the Center for Progress and Justice on Cerrillos Road on Wednesday evening to commemorate the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of World War II.
New Mexico reckons with its role in Japan’s atomic devastation on 80th anniversary of Hiroshima
At a Wednesday evening event organized by Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Archbishop John C. Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, long an outspoken advocate of nuclear disarmament, is set to celebrate Mass in Japan for victims with some other U.S. Catholic bishops and will participate in commemoration services. The event will be played by video at an event in Santa Fe.
By Cormac Dodd cdodd@sfnewmexican.com, The Santa Fe New Mexican | August 5, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
Wesley Burris remembers waking to a morning of potent, white light and panic as the planet’s first atomic bomb went off in a test in the Jornada del Muerto desert near his family’s Southern New Mexico home in July 1945.
He does not recall, however, hearing the news from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan over the radio just weeks later. In fact, because the U.S. government did not tell his family what it was they saw that July, it was years before Burris realized how the Trinity Test he witnessed as a child served as a prelude to the world-altering bombings of Japan on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945.
Eighty years ago, the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima near the end of World War II, unleashing immediate death on a sweeping scale and rendering vast corridors in the southwestern Japanese city charred and fragmented, with buildings reduced to rubble with harrowing speed.
Santa Fe Archbishop Wester on RECA, Nuclear Weapons
80 years after nuclear bomb tested in N.M., victims will get reparations
NBC News NOW, July 16, 2025, nbcnewsnow.com
Trinity “downwinders” of New Mexico exposed to the first ever nuclear explosion are receiving recognition and compensation 80 years after the bomb was tested. NBC News’ Aaron Gilchrest spoke with several people who shared their sacrifice and suffering over the years.
An appreciation of Bob Alvarez, a fearless advocate for those harmed by the US nuclear weapons complex
By Michael Slater – The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists| July 10, 2025, thebulletin.org
SEE ALSO: THIS WONDERFUL TRIBUTE TO BOB ALVAREZ FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR & OTHERS: https://beyondnuclear.org/bob-alvarez-presente/
And view the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s Lifetime Achievement Awared given to Bob in 2022: https://ananuclear.org/bob-alvarez/
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: June/July 2025
Nuclear Weapons Budget:
• The just passed “reconciliation” bill and Trump’s proposed FY 2026 budget are reverse Robin Hood iniatives, robbing from the poor to give to the rich. While Medicaid is gutted, there are huge tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and a big bump up for nuclear weapons.
• The following is from the DC-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (https://armscontrolcenter.org/fiscal-year-2026-defense-budget-request-briefing-book/):
Note: the + or – signs result from the “reconciliation” bill.
• Radiation Exposure Compensation Act: Sen. Josh Hawley of MO got RECA extension and expansion attached to the bill, which is really something. Tina Cordova of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium has acknowledged that many deserving people have still been left out. See more: https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/new-mexico-downwinders-celebrate-bittersweet-victory-in-trumps-big-beautiful-bill/article_9dc4ae5e-d4d0-4689-a255-a83576076963.html Finally, it is good for only two years because it was part of budget “reconciliation” that is supposed to deal only with funding matters (hence is limited to this 2-year term of Congress). We will continue to fight to get RECA permanently extended and expanded.
Nuclear Weapons Update:
The manufacture of new pits has more to do, as per the last Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), with preserving and “modernizing” the infrastructure than it does with the warheads themselves. This is in essence a huge continuing program of institutional preservation that guarantees large inflows of taxpayer dollars and corporate profits.
Further, we are talking about W87-1 pits for the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, which is already 80% over budget before the Air Force admitted it had to build new silos. Moreover, the reported production of ~800 plutonium pits when there are only to be 400 fielded Sentinels may lead to the uploading of multiple warheads per missile (AKA MIRVing for Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles). This is regarded as deeply destabilizing since land-based ICBMs are known fixed targets which encourage pre-emptive strikes and/or use them or lose them scenarios.
Accelerating Arms Race
• The U.S. bombed Iranian hardened, deeply buried uranium enrichment sites with B2s carrying 30,000 lb. conventional bunker busters (32 hours roundtrip from Whiteman AFB in Missouri). The U.S. has rushed produced nuclear B61-13s for this kind of job.
Planned Nuclear Weapons Activities Increase to 84% of Lab’s Budget; All Other Programs Cut
The Department of Energy and Los Alamos National Laboratory have released the LANL congressional budget request for the upcoming fiscal year, 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025. The request shows a continued major increase and expansion of the plutonium pit production program (plutonium pits are the triggers of nuclear weapons). LANL is frantically trying to increase its capabilities to begin making 30 pits per year by 2028.
NukeWatch created the attached chart to give a visual of how taxpayer dollars are annually spent at the Lab. LANL’s FY 2026 total budget request is $6 billion, which is a 17% increase over the FY 2025 $5.2 billion total budget. This includes a 24% increase in the nuclear weapons budget over FY 2025.
Nuclear Weapons Activities represent 84% of LANL’s total budget.
Under the headline of “Unleashing a Golden Era of Energy Dominance and Energy Innovation and Protecting the Nation,” the nuclear weapons budget is increasing dramatically. As a baseline, 65% of the Department’s proposed $46 billion budget is earmarked for its semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). In turn, more than 80% of NNSA’s proposed FY 2026 funding is for its nuclear weapons research and production programs, with a 25% funding increase over FY 2025.
Due to so-called “reconciliation” funding, “Total Weapons Activities” increase to just under $30 billion. This adds up to a 53% increase above FY 2025 for the nuclear weapons research and production programs across the country. To help pay for this, national nonproliferation and cleanup programs are being cut by 5%, science by 14%, cybersecurity and emergency response by 25%, and energy efficiency and renewable energy programs by 74%.
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
A US Navy aircraft flies over Incirlik airbase in Turkey.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 first atomic bomb test was conducted at Alamogordo, New Mexico, July 16, 1945. (AP / US Army)“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
© Getty ImagesBehind 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
Leslie Begay, left, speaks with U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, D-New Mexico, Monday outside a congressional field hearing in Albuquerque, N.M., highlighting the atomic age’s impact on Native American communities. Begay, a former uranium miner on the Navajo Nation with lung problems, says there are lingering injustices and health problems on his reservation decades after mines closed. An Indian Health Service official cited federal research at the hearing that she says showed some Navajo women, males and babies who were part of the study had high levels of uranium in their systems.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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