Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: December 2025
Nuclear weapons:
The government is running on a Continuing Resolution (CR) until the end of January. It’s possible to have another shutdown depending on how tough the Dems want to be. The legislative process is starting to move again, with the annual Defense Authorization Act up first and then appropriations. Both give funding increases to nuclear weapons programs, delivery systems and Trump’s “Golden Dome.”
Cost overruns in nearly all things remains the rule. Golden Dome could cost up to $4 trillion, be destabilizing and never be 100% effective. Putin has already taken steps to circumvent it and China may well be doing the same, particularly with hypersonic delivery systems. The arms race continues, likely to be accelerated by artificial intelligence as well.
Nuclear weapons testing: No specific new developments but this article by ex-LANL Director Sig Hecker is good:
| Lessons From Los Alamos |
| Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump rekindled a decades-old debate about nuclear testing. “Because of other countries testing programs,” he wrote on social media, “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis…” A return to testing at this time would likely benefit U.S. adversaries more than it would the United States. Worse still, it might rekindle an even greater and broader arms race than in the first few decades of the Cold War. |
| Siegfried Hecker | Foreign Affairs |
| Read More |
Article continued:
“My greatest concern about resuming full-scale nuclear testing is that it will fuel another dangerous arms race at a time when global tensions among the great powers are high. Engaging in another arms race is contrary to Trump’s comment that “it would be great if we could all denuclearize, because the power of nuclear weapons is crazy.”
Instead of suggesting an immediate return to nuclear testing, then, Trump should focus on returning to arms control measures to ensure strategic stability with Russia and with China. Hopefully, these measures would lead to a reduction in U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and reduce incentives for China to increase its arsenal. For nuclear testing, he should help erect the highest possible barriers for any country to test by leading an effort to ratify the CTBT. To settle the question of evasion of low-yield tests or hydronuclear experiments, the president and his counterparts in Beijing and Moscow would need to show the political will to agree on a verifiable low-yield limit. That will almost surely require onsite inspections, which were demonstrated to be possible in 1988.
The bottom line is that even though the United States could derive important benefits from resumed nuclear testing, it would lose more than it stands to gain.”
MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIV FOR THE LIX WORLD DAY OF PEACE
“The idea of the deterrent power of military might, especially nuclear deterrence, is based on the irrationality of relations between nations, built not on law, justice and trust, but on fear and domination by force.”
From the Vatican, 8 December 2025, vatican.va
“In the relations between citizens and rulers, it could even be considered a fault not to be sufficiently prepared for war, not to react to attacks, and not to return violence for violence. Far beyond the principle of legitimate defense, such confrontational logic now dominates global politics, deepening instability and unpredictability day by day. It is no coincidence that repeated calls to increase military spending, and the choices that follow, are presented by many government leaders as a justified response to external threats. The idea of the deterrent power of military might, especially nuclear deterrence, is based on the irrationality of relations between nations, built not on law, justice and trust, but on fear and domination by force. “Consequently,” as Saint John XXIII had already written in his day, “people are living in the grip of constant fear. They are afraid that at any moment the impending storm may break upon them with horrific violence. And they have good reasons for their fear, for there is certainly no lack of such weapons. While it is difficult to believe that anyone would dare to assume responsibility for initiating the appalling slaughter and destruction that war would bring in its wake, there is no denying that the conflagration could be started by some chance and unforeseen circumstance.”
Federal official says further testing needed to determine LANL’s chromium plume migration
“Asked about the difference in opinion between the federal and state agency regarding the sampling, Kunkle said, ‘I can’t answer why we have the disconnect,’ adding that the only sampling done at that monitoring location, called zonal sampling, ‘is really not intended to predict the long term environment or trends in the regional aquifer. That really should be done only with monthly monitoring.’”
By Clara Bates cbates@sfnewmexican.com | santafenewmexican.com
A federal official says more testing is needed to determine whether a toxic chromium plume has seeped into San Ildefonso Pueblo’s groundwater, after the state called groundwater testing “conclusive evidence” the U.S. Department of Energy’s efforts at containment have been “inadequate.”
New Mexico’s Environment Department announced last month hexavalent chromium from Los Alamos National Laboratory had migrated to Pueblo de San Ildefonso land for the first time.
But Jessica Kunkle — the Los Alamos Field Office manager with the U.S. Department of Energy — told state lawmakers on the Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee on Monday afternoon the type of groundwater sampling conducted may not have told the whole story. The agency is working with partners to get a monitoring well installed “as quickly as possible,” she said, to get better data.
12/8/25 Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup & Hexavalent Chromium Plume Update
New Air Force Chief Boosts Nuclear Buildup, Moving Away From Deterrence, Experts Warn
“Gen. Ken Wilsbach promotes nuclear “recapitalization” in his first memo to the Air Force — fueling fear of a radical shift away from nukes acting solely as deterrence.”
By: Austin Campbell, The Intercept | theintercept.com
“We will advocate relentlessly for programs like the F-47, Collaborative Combat Aircraft as well as nuclear force recapitalization through the Sentinel program and the B-21,” Wilsbach wrote in a memo dated November 3, referring to planned upgrades to nuclear missiles and stealth bombers.
Experts who spoke to The Intercept said the language signals a doctrinal pivot, prioritizing displays of strength and the buildup of nuclear weaponry over internal repair — an approach that may appeal politically to the Trump administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but does little to ease the fatigue and distrust spreading among airmen.
…
The Sentinel program Wilsbach referenced is intended to modernize the land-based leg of the nuclear triad, with new missiles, hardened silos, and updated command-and-control infrastructure across missile fields in Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. It’s the Air Force’s planned replacement for aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile systems. The B-21 Raider is the next-generation stealth bomber designed to replace older strategic bombers like the B-2 and B-1, delivering both conventional and nuclear payloads.
Critics say framing these nuclear modernization efforts as “recapitalization” obscures the ethical and strategic implications of expanding U.S. nuclear capabilities amid declining morale and retention.
“You don’t ‘recapitalize’ genocidal weaponry.”
“The chief of staff’s emphasis on weaponry is disheartening. His description of nuclear weapon ‘recapitalization’ is an abomination of the English language. You don’t ‘recapitalize’ genocidal weaponry. Both the Sentinel missile program and the B-21 bomber are unnecessary systems that could cost as much as $500 billion over the next 20 years,” said William Astore, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and military historian.
Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) Town Hall December 3rd, 2025 – Thoughts from Nuclear Watch New Mexico:
The LANL Director mentioned Non-proliferation is a big part of their work. However, the Nuclear Nonproliferation program budget is a mere 6.5% of the total Lab budget (Nuclear Weapons is 84%, with a Billion dollar increase for FY26). https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/FY26-Lab-Table-spreadsheets-Chart-1.pdf Nuclear Nonproliferation is a valuable program that LANL does well, and its funding should not be cut to provide more money for nuclear weapons production (literally the opposite of nonproliferation). The Nuclear Nonproliferation budget should be increased, especially if the Lab director agrees on its importance. NukeWatch NM is entirely supportive of LANL’s Sealed Sources program, which serves as the nation’s lead for collecting potentially dangerous radioactive materials that are no longer needed, securing them, and ensuring they don’t fall into the wrong hands, protecting communities and enhancing security.
On the discussion of AI missions at the lab:
The lab is partnering with NVIDIA for their hardware and ChatGPT/Open AI for their models. “The goal is to harness the power of the next evolution of high performance computing and apply it to our national security science and technology. Big development on this front is the “genesis” mission…” and in an answer to a question, want to “use artificial intelligence to [for example] help us develop the molecules that could deliver a therapeutic isotope to a cancer cell with high specificity so that when that undergoes radioactive decay the decay products basically kill the cancer cell but no surrounding tissue”
Again, the lab’s nuclear weapons budget ate up almost all else this year – how does the lab propose to work on this kind of work when its’ science budget is less than 1%? How will this advancement of AI be applied to our national security science and technology in terms of nuclear weapons? NukeWatch has serious concerns and questions regarding the tangible risks associated with integrating commercial AI infrastructure to be with active national security and nuclear defense programs. Beyond this, a $1.25 billion advanced computing campus is planned in Michigan to support far-away Los Alamos Lab in high-performance computing and AI research.
Continue reading
Nuclear Watch New Mexico Attends the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability Fall Meeting Nov. 21-23 in Las Vegas, Protesting Nuclear Testing in Nevada & Much More!
What might Project 2025 mean for N.M.? Non-nuclear cuts at national labs (Updated Dec 1, 2025)
“[The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025] contemplates pulling funding from any work unrelated to nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and sister facility Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California…in New Mexico, some say cutting the labs’ other scientific work would have a devastating economic effect on the state and could ultimately weaken the institutions as a whole.”
“It doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to realize that there could be massive layoffs if this proposal or these ideas were to reach fruition,” said Chandler, who worked in the employment arena for much of her time at the facility. “Now, that might expand the nuclear weapons program to some degree, but it’s not going to absorb the entire workforce.”
“Under the Biden administration, LANL has seen a massive growth in employment as the laboratory ramps up for its production of plutonium pits, the cores of nuclear bombs.”
By Gabrielle Porter and Alaina Mencinger gporter@sfnewmexican.com amencinger@sfnewmexican.com | Updated santafenewmexican.com
Project 2025 — the now-infamous blueprint for a conservative presidency that’s still publicly being held at arm’s length by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — proposes all sorts of sweeping policy recommendations, from promoting capital punishment to embracing mass deportations.
But tucked in the 922 pages of its report, “Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise,” is one recommendation that centers squarely on New Mexico.
Trump talk on nuke testing turns focus to New Mexico’s role in decades of blasts
Jay Coghlan, executive director of the nuclear watchdog group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said Wright’s comments “somewhat” quelled his initial concerns about a renewed explosive nuclear testing program.
But he said claims Russia and China may be conducting small-scale tests known as hydronuclear tests — banned by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, of which the United States, Russia and China are all signatories — continue to give him pause. He fears rumors about the low-yield tests in other nations could be used to justify a domestic return to testing.
“That, in effect, would give permission to the U.S. [to resume testing],” Coghlan said. “But that would be in violation of the norm of the CTBT.”
Three decades removed from the United States’ last nuclear test, a testing regimen would likely be expensive and time-consuming to start up, Coghlan argued, and could prompt other nuclear powers to follow suit.
It seems likely Russia, at least, would: Following Trump’s post, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced if the United States resumed explosive nuclear testing, the Eastern European nation would follow.
“Then everybody else is going to do it, or virtually everybody else will do it, every other nuclear weapons power,” Coghlan said. “I could just see India and Pakistan champing at the bit to test. And then, of course, there’s North Korea and China.”
| November 30, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
It might not have as reverent a name as the Trinity Test or a litany of films made about it. But Project Gnome, a 1961 explosive nuclear test conducted near Carlsbad, is a relic of a bygone era in New Mexico and beyond.
In the 47 years between the Trinity Test and the end of the United States’ explosive nuclear testing in 1992, the nation would perform more than 1,000 such tests — more than any other nuclear nation — with most conducted in Nevada.
New Mexico might not have been the center of the nation’s testing efforts post-Trinity, which marked its 80th anniversary this year, but the state still played a role: Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory helped design and conduct testing elsewhere, including at the Nevada Test Site and in the Marshall Islands.
Most Democrats and one-third of Republicans think it’s likely the U.S. will get into a nuclear war in the next decade
A new YouGov poll on nuclear weapons finds that nearly half of Americans believe it’s likely the U.S. will get into a nuclear war in the coming decade, and most are worried about personally experiencing a nuclear war. A majority believe nuclear weapons are making the world less safe, but opinions are mixed on whether the U.S. should dismantle all of its nuclear weapons.
By: Jamie Ballard| November 26, 2025 today.yougov.com
46% of Americans think it’s likely the U.S. will get into a nuclear war within the next 10 years; 37% think this is not very or not at all likely. 57% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans think this is likely.
Department of Energy Seeks to Eliminate Radiation Protections Requiring Controls “As Low As Reasonably Achievable”
An internal Department of Energy (DOE) memorandum eliminates worker and public radiation protection rules known “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA). This fundamental departure from decades of accepted health physics practices is being promoted by senior DOE political appointees with little background in health or radiation control. It is marked as “URGENCY: High” under the auspices of the DOE Deputy Secretary, the Under Secretary for Science, and the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The memorandum awaits the final signature of DOE Secretary Chris Wright.
The memo’s stated goal is to:
“…remove the ALARA principle from all DOE directives and regulations, including DOE Order 458.1, Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment, NE [Office of Nuclear Energy] Order 458.1, Radiation Protection of the Public, and, upon completion of the rulemaking process, 10 CFR [Code of Federal Regulations] 835, Occupational Radiation Protection.” [1]
It follows the playbook of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which called for:
“Set[ting] clear radiation exposure and protection standards by eliminating ALARA (“as low as reasonably achievable”) as a regulatory principle and setting clear standards according to radiological risk and dose rather than arbitrary objectives.” [2]
Lab Chromium Contamination Confirmed on San Ildefonso Pueblo Land
Comprehensive Cleanup Needed Instead of More Nuclear Weapons
The New Mexico Environment Department has announced:
“A toxic chromium plume from Los Alamos National Laboratory has spread beyond Lab boundaries onto Pueblo de San Ildefonso land for the first time, with contamination exceeding state groundwater standards… These new results are conclusive evidence that the U.S. Department of Energy’s efforts to contain the chromium plume have been inadequate.”
In reality, chromium groundwater contamination probably migrated beyond the LANL/San Ildefonso Pueblo boundary long ago, with past Lab maps of the plume “magically’ stopping at the border. In the past, tribal leadership has commented that it was fortunate that the contamination stopped there, but that any future indications of groundwater contamination on Pueblo land could have serious consequences. The San Ildefonso Pueblo is a sovereign Native American tribal government.
As late as the late 1990s the Lab was falsely claiming that groundwater contamination was impossible because underlying volcanic tuff is “impermeable.” [1] This ignored the obvious fact that the Parajito Plateau is heavily seismically fractured, providing ready pathways for contaminant migration to deep groundwater. By 2005 even LANL acknowledged that continuing increasing contamination of the regional aquifer is inevitable.[2] Some 300,000 northern New Mexicans rely upon the aquifer for safe drinking water. The potential serious human health effects (including cancer) caused by chromium contamination was the subject of the popular movie Erin Brockovich.
LANL chromium plume spreads onto San Ildefonso Pueblo land, NMED says
Nuclear Watch New Mexico executive direcor Jay Coghlan sees PF-4 as being a bigger scale — and having bigger risks — than the other aging buildings.
“PF-4 is not unique in being old,” Coghlan said. “However, PF-4 is totally unique in currently being the only facility that can process large amounts of plutonium … particularly including plutonium pit production. I think, in part, that’s why the Safety Board focuses more on PF-4 than, to my knowledge, than any other single individual facility.”
| November 13, 2025 sourcenm.com
An underground plume of toxic chromium has spread from Los Alamos National Laboratory to Pueblo de San Ildefonso land, state Environment Department officials announced Thursday.
The discovery marks the first time the plume has been detected within the pueblo boundaries, officials said in a news release, though they added the plume’s spread does not pose imminent threats to drinking water in the pueblo or in Los Alamos County. That’s because the plume is not near any known private or public wells, officials said.
Long-term ingestion of hexavalant chromium can cause serious health problems or increase risk of certain cancers.
US Stands Alone Defying UN Vote on Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Could the LDS Church end an ongoing nuclear weapons project? These veteran activists think so.
By Thalif Deen, Inter Press Sevice | November 12, 2025 ipsnews.net
– The US took another step backward –to break ranks with the United Nations– when it voted against a draft resolution calling for the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
The negative vote followed an announcement by President Trump last month that the US plans to resume nuclear testing after a 33-year hiatus. The US stood alone on the UN vote, which was supported by almost all member States in the General Assembly’s First Committee.
The resolution was adopted by an overwhelming majority: with 168 votes in favor, with one against (United States) and 3 abstentions (India, Mauritius, Syria).
During Trump’s first term, the US abstained on the vote. And in other years they had been voting in favour.
Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation, which monitors and analyzes U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies, told IPS the chaos and uncertainty arose from Trump’s factually-challenged social media post that “because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”
The U.S. government’s first ever “No” vote, on the annual UN resolution in support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), raises further troubling questions about U.S. intentions.
A Small Town Is Fighting a $1.2 Billion AI Datacenter for America’s Nuclear Weapon Scientists
“Ypsilanti, Michigan resident KJ Pedri doesn’t want her town to be the site of a new $1.2 billion data center, a massive collaborative project between the University of Michigan and America’s nuclear weapons scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) in New Mexico.”
Matthew Gault| November 10, 2025 404media.co
“My grandfather was a rocket scientist who worked on Trinity,” Pedri said at a recent Ypsilanti city council meeting, referring to the first successful detonation of a nuclear bomb. “He died a violent, lonely, alcoholic. So when I think about the jobs the data center will bring to our area, I think about the impact of introducing nuclear technology to the world and deploying it on civilians. And the impact that that had on my family, the impact on the health and well-being of my family from living next to a nuclear test site and the spiritual impact that it had on my family for generations. This project is furthering inhumanity, this project is furthering destruction, and we don’t need more nuclear weapons built by our citizens.”
At the Ypsilanti city council meeting where Pedri spoke, the town voted to officially fight against the construction of the data center. The University of Michigan says the project is not a data center, but a “high-performance computing facility” and it promises it won’t be used to “manufacture nuclear weapons.” The distinction and assertion are ringing hollow for Ypsilanti residents who oppose construction of the data center, have questions about what it would mean for the environment and the power grid, and want to know why a nuclear weapons lab 24 hours away by car wants to build an AI facility in their small town.
“What I think galls me the most is that this major institution in our community, which has done numerous wonderful things, is making decisions with—as I can tell—no consideration for its host community and no consideration for its neighboring jurisdictions,” Ypsilanti councilman Patrick McLean said during a recent council meeting. “I think the process of siting this facility stinks.”
Harking to the MX, Utahns call on LDS Church President Oaks to speak out against nuclear missile being developed in Utah
Could the LDS Church end an ongoing nuclear weapons project? These veteran activists think so.
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE | November 9, 2025 sltrib.com
Decades ago, peace activists helped keep a major nuclear weapons system out of Utah with help from key figures, chiefly Spencer W. Kimball, then the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Now some of those same individuals are calling on the church’s newly ascended president, Dallin H. Oaks, to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps and speak out against the federal government’s development of a new generation of nuclear missile, known as Sentinel, partly in the Beehive State.
“The arms race continues,” the group of 12 Utahns and one former resident write in a letter mailed to church headquarters in early October, “and a new moral challenge faces” the leaders of the Utah-based faith.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: November 2025
Nuclear weapons:
The government shutdown has impact:
National Nuclear Security Agency confirms 152 furloughed at offices in Albuquerque, Los Alamos
Only 14 employees remain at the two sites By: Danielle Prokop-October 22, 2025
The NNSA confirmed 152 New Mexico employees charged with overseeing national laboratories’ nuclear weapons work were furloughed on Oct. 20, 2025. (Courtesy of NNSA)
The federal government this week sent home more than 150 federal New Mexico employees charged with overseeing national laboratories’ nuclear weapons work, with only 14 employees across two sites remaining at work, the National Nuclear Security Agency confirmed to Source NM.
The furloughs include 71 employees at NNSA’s Los Alamos field office and 81 at the Sandia National Laboratories location, NNSA Deputy Director of Communications Laynee Buckels told Source NM in an email. Seven employees remain at each site, working without pay, she said.
The field offices are responsible for “ensuring compliance with federal contracts to manage and operate the national security assets,” according to the NNSA website
To date there doesn’t appear to be furloughs at LANL, whose employees technically work for a contractor rather than the federal government. Congress is not furloughed, but Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the House out of session. As a result, legislation has come to a screeching halt.
Los Alamos’ plutonium facility safety systems need improvement, oversight board says
Nuclear Watch New Mexico executive direcor Jay Coghlan sees PF-4 as being a bigger scale — and having bigger risks — than the other aging buildings.
“PF-4 is not unique in being old,” Coghlan said. “However, PF-4 is totally unique in currently being the only facility that can process large amounts of plutonium … particularly including plutonium pit production. I think, in part, that’s why the Safety Board focuses more on PF-4 than, to my knowledge, than any other single individual facility.”
| November 7, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
An independent oversight agency wants to see improved safety systems at the facility at the heart of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium pit mission: PF-4.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board reported what it believes to be gaps in a safety analysis drafted for PF-4 and delays in upgrades to safety systems in a letter last month to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
“Maintaining momentum for these safety infrastructure projects is more important in light of the issues with the safety analysis,” the board wrote in the letter dated Oct. 10. It was signed by former acting chairman Thomas Summers.
LANL Prioritizes Plutonium “Pit” Bomb Core Production Over Safety
The independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recently released its Review of the Los Alamos Plutonium Facility Documented Safety Analysis. It concluded that:
“While LANL facility personnel continue to make important upgrades to the Plutonium Facility’s safety systems, many of those projects have encountered delays due to inconsistent funding and other reasons. DOE and LANL should consider prioritizing safety-related infrastructure projects to ensure that the Plutonium Facility safety strategy adequately protects the public, as the facility takes on new and expansive national security missions.” (Page 24)
In early October 2024, the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced with great fanfare that the Los Alamos Lab had produced its first “diamond stamped” plutonium pit for the nuclear weapons stockpile. Tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been sunk into LANL’s long delayed and over budget pit production program. Given no further announcements, it is not currently known whether or not the Lab is meeting its congressionally required production goals. Endemic nuclear safety problems have long been an intractable issue, at one point even forcing a three-year halt to plutonium operations at LANL’s Plutonium Facility-4 (“PF-4”).
In its recent Review, the Safety Board reported:
“The [2009] Plutonium Facility safety basis described very large potential [radioactive] dose consequences to the public following seismic events…. DOE committed to upgrade and seismically qualify the ventilation system, with a particular focus on a specific ventilation subsystem…”
“As the only facility in the DOE complex that can process large quantities of plutonium in many forms, [PF-4] represents a unique capability for the nation’s nuclear deterrent. The Board has long advocated for the use of safety-related active confinement systems in nuclear facilities for the purposes of confining radioactive materials…Passive confinement systems are not necessarily capable of containing hazardous materials with confidence because they allow a quantity of unfiltered air contaminated with radioactive material to be released from an operating nuclear facility following certain accident scenarios. Safety related active confinement ventilation systems will continue to function during an accident, thereby ensuring that radioactive material is captured by filters before it can be released into the environment… (Page 2, bolded emphases added)
AP: Trump appears to suggest the US will resume testing nuclear weapons for first time in 30 years
“For Trump, who has cast Russia as a “paper tiger” for failing to swiftly subdue Ukraine, the message is that Russia remains a global military competitor, especially on nuclear weapons, and that Moscow’s overtures on nuclear arms control should be acted on.”
By MICHELLE L. PRICE and CHRIS MEGERIAN | October 30, 2025 apnews.com
REUTERS: Trump tells Pentagon to immediately resume testing US nuclear weapons
“Russia – which tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile on October 21, held nuclear readiness drills on October 22 and tested a new nuclear-powered autonomous torpedo on October 28 – said it hoped Trump had been properly informed that Moscow had not tested a nuclear weapon itself.”
By Trevor Hunnicutt, Ismail Shakil and Kanishka Singh | October 30, 2025 reuters.com
VIEW THE RECORDING: Santa Fe Ecumenical Conversations Towards Nuclear Disarmament at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community – Monday, October 27
Archbishop John C. Wester and NukeWatch New Mexico presented a special evening at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community on Monday, October 27, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. MT. Following a presentation from NukeWatch executive director Jay Coghlan on U.S. nuclear weapons “modernization,” the Archbishop shared reflections from his pastoral letter, Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace, and speak about the importance of dialogue and hope in working toward nuclear disarmament.
View the recording at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LFmQzMoJds&t=1s
Trump Orders Nuclear Weapons Testing for New Nuclear Arms Race
New Plutonium “Pit” Bomb Cores at Los Alamos Lab Could Make It Real
Just minutes before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump posted on his Truth Social media platform that “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.” House Speaker Mike Johnson soon followed on CNN saying, “I think it is an obvious and logical thing to ensure that our weapons systems work.”
No other countries are currently testing nuclear weapons (the last was by North Korea in 2017). Further, any nuclear weapons tests by the U.S. would be performed by the Department of Energy (whose last test was in 1992), not the Department of War (until recently the Department of Defense). Trump was likely referring to Vladimir Putin’s recent claims of a new nuclear powered cruise missile and a tsunami-causing nuclear-armed torpedo that could threaten America’s coastal cities. In addition, China is dramatically expanding its own fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But central to all this is the U.S.’ own $2 trillion “modernization” program that will rebuild every nuclear warhead in the planned stockpile with new military capabilities and produce new-design nuclear weapons as well. This so-called modernization program will also build new nuclear weapons production facilities expected to be operational until ~2080, and buy new missiles, subs, and bombers from the usual rich defense contractors, all to keep nuclear weapons forever.
‘Nuclear weapons are blasphemous’: Archbishop Wester continues disarmament push with talk
This event was organized by the “Santa Fe Ecumenical Conversations Towards Nuclear Disarmament” group at the Santa Maria de la Paz parish near the Santa Fe Community College. They kindly invited NukeWatch to speak before Archbishop Wester for what turned out to be a wonderful event. The full recording can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/@SMDLP/streams
| October 28, 2025 santafenewmexican.com
In a Looming Nuclear Arms Race, Aging Los Alamos Faces a Major Test
The lab where Oppenheimer developed the atomic bomb is the linchpin in the United States’ effort to modernize its nuclear weapons. Yet the site has contended with contamination incidents, work disruptions and old infrastructure.
Alicia Inez Guzmán | October 28, 2025 The New York Times nytimes.com
In a sprawling building atop a mesa in New Mexico, workers labor around the clock to fulfill a vital mission: producing America’s nuclear bomb cores.
The effort is uniquely challenging. Technicians at Los Alamos National Laboratory must handle hazardous plutonium to create the grapefruit-size cores, known as pits. They do so in a nearly 50-year-old building under renovation to address aging infrastructure and equipment breakdowns that have at times disrupted operations or spread radioactive contamination, The New York Times found.
Now, the laboratory is under increasing pressure to meet the federal government’s ambitions to upgrade the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The $1.7 trillion project includes everything from revitalizing missile silos burrowed deep in five states, to producing new warheads that contain the pits, to arming new land-based missiles, bomber jets and submarines.
But the overall modernization effort is years behind schedule, with costs ballooning by the billions, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In 2018, Congress charged Los Alamos with making an annual quota of 30 pits by 2026, but by last year it had produced just one approved for the nuclear stockpile. (Officials have not disclosed whether more have been made since then.)
*The featured image differs from the article photo due to usage rights.
Why Putin’s ‘invincible’ nuclear-powered missile is more likely to become a disastrous ‘flying Chernobyl’ for Russia
The US abandoned efforts to build nuclear-powered missile weapons during the 1950s arms race with the Soviet Union as a nuclear-powered missile would effectively be a huge radiation risk.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at Middlebury College, described it as a “tiny flying Chernobyl,” referencing the Soviet power plant that melted down and covered a 1,600-mile area with toxic radiation…While Lewis believes the Burevestnik is only capable of subsonic speed and easy to intercept, he warned that Russia’s ambition poses a return to the Cold War era.
“NATO aircraft could intercept it. The problem is that Burevestnik is yet another step in an arms race that offers no victory for either side,” he wrote on X.
By Ronny Reyes | October 28, 2025 nypost.com
Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s latest threats that Moscow is preparing to deploy its new “invincible” nuclear-powered cruise missile has drawn a rebuke from President Trump and a reminder of America’s own nuclear might.
But experts say the Burevestnik missile could end up being more like a disastrous “flying Chernobyl” for Russia — and proves Putin is actually nervous about the possibility of the US giving Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.
George Barros, of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, described Putin’s ominous Sunday announcement as a form of fear mongering from a Kremlin afraid that the US could give Kyiv a much more conventional weapon — the tried and true Tomahawk.
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
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: October 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.
Trump Administration Providing Weapons Grade Plutonium to Sam Altman
“If there were adults in the room and I could trust the federal government to impose the right standards, it wouldn’t be such a great concern, but it just doesn’t seem feasible.”
By: Joe Wilkins | October 24, 2025 futurism.com
With the economy the way it is these days, it’s nice to have a little walking around money.
Donald Trump certainly thinks so. Since his return to the White House, the president has labeled 440 federal properties for possible sale, leased 13.1 million acres of public land for strip mining, and held a fire sale for satellites developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
In one of his wildest money moves to date, the Financial Times reports that Trump is now offering companies access to plutonium from America’s arsenal of cold war nuclear missiles.
On Tuesday, the US Department of Energy (DOE) launched an application for interested parties to apply for access to a maximum of 19 metric tonnes — a little under 42,000 pounds — of weapons-grade plutonium, which has long been a key resource undergirding the US nuclear arsenal.
One of the companies anticipated to receive shipments of the fissile isotope from the DOE is Oklo, a “nuclear startup” backed — and formerly chaired — by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Earlier in October, Oklo was one of four US companies chosen by the DOE to join a new pilot program meant to rush the testing and approval of experimental reactor designs.
As the FT reports, we won’t know for certain until December 31, when the DOE announces the companies selected to purchase the plutonium, but it’s likely Oklo will be among them. That’s stirring up plenty of anxiety throughout the scientific community, who say the relaxed approach to nuclear development is a major cause for alarm.
“If there were adults in the room and I could trust the federal government to impose the right standards, it wouldn’t be such a great concern, but it just doesn’t seem feasible,” Edwin Lyman, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists told the FT.
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:
Budget:
• House Republicans passed by one vote $57.3 billion in Energy and Water appropriations. They made big cuts to renewable energy programs while boosting nuclear weapons and energy.
• Congress is back from August recess facing a government shutdown October 1. There will likely be a Continuing Resolution(s).
Plutonium Pit Production:
A draft plutonium pit production programmatic environmental impact statement is expected to be released next year in early 2026.
New Updates: Two specific amendments to the Defense Authorization Act (DAA) —Continue reading
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….
Nuclear News Archive – 2022
Lockheed Martin-Funded Experts Agree: South Korea Needs More Lockheed Martin Missiles
Adam Johnson writes: “As tensions between the United States and North Korea continue to rise, one think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has become a ubiquitous voice on the topic of missile defense, providing Official-Sounding Quotes to dozens of reporters in Western media outlets. All of these quotes speak to the urgent threat of North Korea and how important the United States’s deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system is to South Korea…
“In the past year, FAIR has noted 30 media mentions of CSIS pushing the THAAD missile system or its underlying value proposition in US media, most of them in the past two months. Business Insider was the most eager venue for the think tank’s analysts, routinely copying and pasting CSIS talking points in stories warning of the North Korean menace.
Last August (8/8/16), the New York Times revealed internal documents of CSIS (and the Brookings Institution) showing how the think tanks acted as undisclosed lobbyists for weapons manufacturers…
**Note that the top 10 corporate donors to CSIS include 5 top defense contractors: Lockheed, Northrup-Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics and Leonardo-Finmeccanica. see CSIS
WIPP, LANL Settlement Projects In Progress
“With nuclear waste again on the road to Carlsbad’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, work is underway to improve WIPP transportation routes around the state….” From Carlsbad Current Argus.
WIPP Seals Off Nuclear Waste For 10,000 Years. Should It Be A Model For Storage?
“Shut down after two 2014 incidents, New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant accepted its first new shipments of nuclear waste last week ….” From The Christian Science Monitor.
How US Nuclear Force Modernization is Undermining Strategic Stability: The Burst-Height Compensating Super-Fuze
The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing- boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three- and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.
The revolutionary increase in the lethality of submarine-borne US nuclear forces comes from a ‘super-fuze’ device that since 2009 has been incorporated into the Navy’s W76-1/Mk4A warhead as part of a decade-long life-extension program. We estimate that all warheads deployed on US ballistic missile submarines now have this fuzing capability. Because the innovations in the super-fuze appear, to the non-technical eye, to be minor, policymakers outside of the US government (and probably inside the government as well) have completely missed its revolutionary impact on military capabilities and its important implications for global security…
The W76 upgrade reflects a 25-year shift of the focus of US hard-target kill capability from land-based to sea-based ballistic missiles. Moreover, by shifting the capability to submarines that can move to missile launch positions much closer to their targets than land-based missiles, the US military has achieved a significantly greater capacity to conduct a surprise first strike against Russian ICBM silos…
In spite of its severe limitations, this growing defense system could appear to both Russia and China as a US attempt to reduce the consequences of a ragged Russian or Chinese retaliation to a US first strike against them.
We cannot foresee a situation in which a competent and properly informed US president would order a surprise first strike against Russia or China. But our conclusion makes the increased sea-based offensive and defensive capabilities we have described seem all the more bizarre as a strategy for reducing the chances of nuclear war with either Russia or China…”
-Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, Theodore A. Postol from The Bulliten of Atomic Scientists
Defense Science Board Recommends “A More Flexible Nuclear Enterprise”
Sometimes, maybe, the status quo is something we need to safeguard, not disrupt. That may be the case when it comes to a new push to abandon the US-Russian mutual prohibition on the deployment of low-yield nuclear weapon systems as part of theater warfighting doctrine.
Since the late 1980s both US and Soviet, now Russian, policy has been to not develop and deploy ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons, including theater-range missiles, because it was agreed that it would be very difficult to prevent a ‘tactical’ exchange in a regional conflict from progressing rapidly to a civilization-ending ‘strategic’ exchange.
But new doubts are arising about the credibility of a strategic deterrent in the case of a local or regional conflict: one which, for example, the US could be involved in, even though the stakes may not put essential US security at risk. In such cases, some US warfighters would like to have the option of threatening counterforce and intermediate range strikes using low-yield nukes. Or, they argue, what if an adversary uses a tactical nuke to “escalate to de-escalate”? Some want to be able to respond in kind. These doubts about classical deterrence, along with a ‘multipolar’ landscape of nuclear-armed states, are the basis for the nuclear boosters’ meme of “The Second Nuclear Age”).
See Pentagon Panel Urges Trump Team to Expand Nuclear Options
“Astoundingly High” Radiation Levels Detected at Fukushima Unit 2
The radiation level in the containment vessel of reactor two has reached as high as 530 sieverts per hour, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco as it’s known, said last week.
Are levels rising?
Azby Brown reporting on Safecast’s website, February 4th:
No, radiation levels at Fukushima Daiichi are not rising
“It must be stressed that radiation in this area has not been measured before, and it was expected to be extremely high. While 530 Sv/hr is the highest measured so far at Fukushima Daiichi, it does not mean that levels there are rising, but that a previously unmeasurable high-radiation area has finally been measured. Similar remote investigations are being planned for Daiichi Units 1 and 3. We should not be surprised if even higher radiation levels are found there, but only actual measurements will tell.” (see more at Safecast)
Feb. 8, Denver Post: Could the radiation level be even higher? Possibly. The 530 sievert reading was recorded some distance from the melted fuel, so in reality it could be 10 times higher than recorded, said Hideyuki Ban, co-director of Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center.
García-Robles’ Nobel Medal Sold at Auction
Alfonso García Robles drafted the 1967 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982. He died in 1991. The Treaty of Tlatelolco, as it became known, was the first of its kind and is credited with keeping Latin America and the Caribbean free of nuclear weapons.
Obama Administration Announces Unilateral Nuclear Weapon Cuts
Vice President Joe Biden announced that the Obama administration had cut 553 warheads from the US nuclear weapons stockpile since September 2015. The cuts bring the total number of reductions during the last 8 years to 1,255; the current number of nuclear warheads in the stockpile is now at 4,018. These were not, however, “deployed” nuclear weapons.
FAS stated, “We estimate that the warheads were taken from the inactive reserve of non-deployed warheads that are stored to provide a ‘hedge’ against the technical failure of a warhead type or to respond to geopolitical surprises.”
Hans Kristensen noted, “The cut adds significantly to the large inventory of retired (but still intact) warheads that are awaiting dismantlement.” That number was estimated by VP Biden to be now 2,800. Most, if not all, of these weapons awaiting dismantlement, are stored at the Kirtland AFB storage site in Albuquerque. (Also stored there are some number of “hedge” weapons, so it is possible that these 553 warheads just received a modified designation, but otherwise have not even been moved.) The warheads are meant to be dismantled at the Pantex Plant; however, at the current average rate of 278 per year, it will take to 2026 to dismantle the current backlog.
Kristensen notes, “Even so, the Obama administration still holds the position of being the administration that has cut the least warheads from the stockpile compared with other post-Cold War presidencies.”
From the Federation of American Scientists
Another nuclear weapons contractor pays millions to settle charges of illegally diverting federal funds
Allegations of illegally spending federal funds to lobby for new funds now encompass contractors working at six of the eight U.S. nuclear weapons sites.
By Patrick Malone, Center for Public Integrity
This time it’s Bechtel and URS Corp
The latest settlement involves work by Bechtel National Inc. and its parent Bechtel Corp., and URS Corp. and its subsidiary URS Energy and Construction Inc., which together have been trying to clean up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, in Washington state, the most toxic site in the country. The settlement is part of an emerging pattern.
Lockheed Martin Corp., which operates one of three U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories – Sandia, agreed in August 2015 to pay $4.7 million to settle a complaint by the Justice Department that it used federal funds to lobby for a no-bid contract extension. In December of 2016, Department of Energy selected a different contractor team, led by Honeywell International, to run Sandia for up to a decade, beginning next year.)
Meanwhile, Fluor Corp. paid $1.1 million in April 2013 to settle accusations that it used federal funds to lobby government agencies for more business at its Hanford training facility.
George Shultz: The Power of Ought
A salute to former Secretary of State George Shultz on his 95th birthday from the organization he co-founded, Nuclear Threat Initiative
Area G – Brief Backgrounder
For more than 70 years, Los Alamos National Laboratory dug thousands of deep and shallow graves across mesas and filled them with the radioactive waste, chemicals, and solvents used to make nuclear weapons.
Workers disposed of the waste in these unlined pits before the widespread contamination that would follow was fully understood or governed by environmental laws. Radioactive particles that live longer than some civilizations mixed freely with the red soil.
WIPP plans will go on even if Russia quits plutonium deal
The Albuquerque Journal reports:
“At Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, the breakdown in the bilateral agreement may deal a decisive blow to already deteriorated relationships between scientists at New Mexico’s national laboratories and their Russian counterparts, who had been working together to iron out the technical aspects of plutonium disposition under the deal, according to Don Hancock with the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque.”
Ed Lyman of Union of Concerned Scientists said “Even until last week, the U.S. was optimistic that this was one area that Russia and the U.S. could cooperate.”
Security Council Urges All to Ratify Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
“Reaffirming that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and their means of delivery, threatens international peace and security, the United Nations Security Council today adopted a resolution urging all States who haven’t done so to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty”
-From UN News
“A world free of nuclear of weapons goes by stopping testing too, and then taking steps that will reinforce the agreements that are already here, and then leading us towards what we all want: a world free of nuclear weapons; a world free of any attempt of modernization that some are talking about today.”
-Lassina Zerbo, Executive Secretary of CTBTO:
The Virtues of Nuclear Ignorance
Zero-knowledge proof and nuclear disarmament verification: how do you prove a bomb is real without revealing what’s inside?
More at the New Yorker
NTI Launches the William J. Perry Project
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has just published a new book, a memoir titled “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink”. At the same time, NTI has launched the online William J. Perry Project, to “educate and engage the public on the dangers of nuclear weapons in the 21st century”.
“I hope to encourage young people to take the baton I am trying to pass to them. My generation created this existential problem- their generation must find a way to solve it.”
– William Perry.
70th Anniversary of the Trinity Test
The first atomic detonation. Oppenheimer recalls his impressions of the moment for an interview on NBC in 1965.
The first nuclear weapon test was carried out by the United States at the Trinity site on July 16, 1945, with a yield approximately equivalent to 20 kilotons. The first hydrogen bomb, codenamed “Ivy Mike”, was tested at the Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands in November 1952, also by the United States. The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was the “Tsar Bomba” of the Soviet Union at Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961, with an estimated yield of around 50 megatons.
In 1963, many (but not all) nuclear and many non-nuclear states signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. The treaty permitted underground nuclear testing. France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, China continued up until 1980. Neither has ever signed the treaty.[1]
The United States conducted its last underground test in 1992, the Soviet Union in 1990, the U.K. in 1991, and both China and France in 1996. After signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996 (which has as of 2012 not yet entered into force), all these states have pledged to discontinue all nuclear testing. Non-signatories India and Pakistan last tested nuclear weapons in 1998. The most recent nuclear test was by North Korea on Feb. 12, 2013.
For a more detailed resource on the history of Nuclear testing, see this United Nations guide,released August 29, 2012, the official ‘International Day Against Nuclear Tests’.
Cooperation of US and Russian scientists helped avoid nuclear catastrophe at Cold War’s end
Former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Siegfried Hecker recounts the epic story of how American and Russian scientists joined forces to avert some of the greatest post-Cold War nuclear dangers.
Hecker is currently a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a research professor of Management Science and Engineering.
Flawed Pentagon Nuclear Cruise Missile Advocacy
Hans Kristensen, Federation of American Scientists, writes:
“The Pentagon’s arguments for why the LRSO is needed and why the amendments [to strip funding] are unacceptable are amazingly shallow – some of them even plain wrong.”
Here is a particularly disturbing argument:
“The Kendall letter from March also defends the LRSO because it gives the Pentagon the ability to rapidly increase the number of deployed warheads significantly on its strategic launchers. He does so by bluntly describing it as a means to exploit the fake bomber weapon counting rule (one bomber one bomb no matter what they can actually carry) of the New START Treaty to essentially break out from the treaty limit without formally violating it:
Additionally, cruise missiles provide added leverage to the U.S. nuclear deterrent under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The accounting rules for nuclear weapons carried on aircraft are such that the aircraft only counts as one weapon, even if the aircraft carries multiple cruise missiles.
It is disappointing to see a DOD official justifying the LRSO as a means to take advantage of a loophole in the treaty to increase the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons above 1,550 warheads. Not least because the 2013 Nuclear Employment Strategy determined that the Pentagon, even when the New START Treaty is implemented in 2018, will still have up to one-third more nuclear weapons deployed than are needed to meet US national and international security commitments. (more at FAS)
See the DOD letter circulated to Congress in May.
Transcripts Kept Secret for 60 Years Bolster Defense of Oppenheimer’s Loyalty
“…the declassified material, released Oct. 3 by the Energy Department, suggests that Oppenheimer opposed the hydrogen bomb project on technical and military grounds, not out of Soviet sympathies…”
U.S. Had Plans for “Full Nuclear Response” In Event President Killed or Disappeared during an Attack on the United States.
From the Nukevault
Newly declassified document expands limited public record on nuclear “pre-delegation”.
Both USSR and China were to be targeted simultaneously, even if attack were conventional or accidental, and regardless of who was responsible.
LBJ ordered a change in instructions in 1968 to permit more limited response, avert “dangerous” situation.
How A War Game Brought The World To The Brink Of Nuclear Disaster
1983: Once-classified documents show how close Soviet Union came to launching nuclear war
“Chilling new evidence that Britain and America came close to provoking the Soviet Union into launching a nuclear attack has emerged in former classified documents written at the height of the cold war… Cabinet memos and briefing papers released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a major war games exercise, Operation Able Archer, conducted in November 1983 by the US and its Nato allies was so realistic it made the Russians believe that a nuclear strike on its territory was a real possibility…”
Russia Has Pulled Out Of The Troubled MOX Project
Russia has given many expliantions for their recent exit from the MOX pact. Overall it is clear that MOX is a “good idea gone bad”. For more see the links below.
Citing “the threat to strategic stability posed by US hostile actions against Russia”. ref
Russia’s Lavrov: Russia’s MOX pact exit is a signal to Washington that: “speaking in the language of sanctions & ultimatums won’t work”
The Russian Non-Proliferation Department’s official reason: The US did not officially inform on planned change of PU disposal method (from MOX plant to WIPP disposal) as required in 2000 pact.
Join the Conversation- PSR Nukebusters Short Film Contest 1st Prize
Physicians for Social Responsibility: This film by Jonathan Deaton won the top award in the Student category. (more award winners)
Studies by Once Top Secret Government Entity Portrayed Terrible Costs of Nuclear War
NESC reports included both Soviet and US first strike scenarios
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 480. Posted July 22, 2014.
“The NESC reports on nuclear war were multi-volume, highly classified studies and none has ever been declassified in their entirety. The summaries published here today- for the annual reports from 1957 to 1963- provide a glimpse of the full reports, although important elements remain classified. Besides the summaries and fuller reports for 1962 and 1963, today’s posting includes a number of special studies prepared by the NESC, including an especially secret report requested by President Eisenhower that led to the production of the comprehensive U.S. nuclear war plan in 1960, the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)…”
Playing Pass the Parcel With Fukushima
“The defilement of Fukushima wasn’t just the result of a natural catastrophe. It was also the aftermath of a manmade disaster caused by a slapdash approach to nuclear safety. Five years on, the Japanese government isn’t handling these issues any more responsibly.”
Read more at Peter Wynn Kirby, NYTimes OpEd
New Push For Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Since the Senate failure to ratify the CTBT in 1999, significant improvements in monitoring and verification have changed the picture.
High Radiation Forcing a Rethink of Robot Strategy
TEPCO and its network of partner companies at Fukushima Daiichi have yet to identify the location and condition of melted fuel in the three most seriously damaged reactors. Removing it safely represents a challenge unprecedented in the history of nuclear power. Quantities of melted fuel are believed to have accumulated at the bottom of the damaged reactors’ containment vessels, but dangerously high radiation has prevented engineers from accurately gauging the state of the fuel deposits.
TEPCO is now worried that the scorpion robot will not be able to reach the space beneath the pressure vessel, and like its predecessor, will not be able to work for very long in the damaged plant (the scorpion is designed to handle 1,000 total sieverts). The high level of radiation may force TEPCO, a nationally-owned company, to rethink its robot-based strategy for locating the molten fuel. The firm is currently in the early stages of a cleanup that’s expected to last decades. Until TEPCO knows the precise location of the melted fuel, and until it’s able to ascertain the structural damage in each of the three reactors affected, the company won’t be able to decommission the plant and remove the fuel.
New Cruise Missile Capability Debated
By Kingston Reif, Arms Control Association, January/February 2016
“The United States is planning to purchase a new fleet of nuclear-capable air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) that will be far more advanced than the ones they are slated to replace, according to members of Congress and other sources, raising questions about the plan’s consistency with a pledge made by the Obama administration not to provide nuclear weapons with new capabilities.
“The development of the new missile also has sparked a debate about whether it could be more ‘usable’ than the existing ALCM, thereby lowering the threshold for when the United States might consider using nuclear weapons.In a Dec. 15 letter to President Barack Obama urging him to cancel the new cruise missile, also known as the long-range standoff weapon, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and seven other senators wrote that the ‘proposed missile is a significantly altered version’ of the existing ALCM. The letter did not say what specific capabilities the new missile would provide, but claimed the proposal contradicts the policy statement from the 2010 ‘Nuclear Posture Review [NPR] Report’ that efforts to sustain U.S. nuclear weapons ‘will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities.’
Advocates of the new missile argue that it provides a continuing ability to quickly add missiles to bombers. They note that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty does not cap the number of weapons that can be carried on each bomber.
The source said the technical characteristics of the new missile are still being defined because the program is still in the early development stage but that the goal is to increase the range and accuracy of the missile. The source said another goal is to incorporate the latest stealth features, making the missile much more difficult for adversary air defense systems to detect.
Regarding the proposed life extension program for the ALCM warhead, known as the W80-4, the source who has been briefed said a goal of that program is to permit ‘greater flexibility in actually picking’ the desired yield. The ALCM warhead is believed have a built-in option to allow detonation at lower or higher yields.
According to the source, increasing the accuracy of the missile allows for more flexibility in the warhead yield, thus enhancing the overall capability of the weapons system.
The source said the briefings made it clear that the Pentagon is envisioning potential uses for the new cruise missile that go beyond ‘the original mission space’ of the ALCM.
For example, the source said that, in the event of a major conflict with China, the Pentagon has talked about using the new missile to destroy Chinese air defenses as a warning to Beijing against escalating the conflict further.”
Cruise Control
“Franklin Miller, a veteran nuclear strategist now at the Scowcroft Group, points out that Mr Obama would never have persuaded the Senate to ratify the New START treaty in 2010 had he not pledged to renew America’s nuclear weapons on land, sea and in the air. That agreement allows for what is known as the ‘bomber discount’, which counts an aircraft carrying several bombs as a single warhead. The LRS-B (the upcoming Long-Range Strike Bomber) will be able to carry internally a payload of cruise missiles, the new B61-12 bombs or a smaller stand-off missile with a conventional warhead. It is improbable that any president would forgo that option while Russia retains it.”
The Case of Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin manages the Nevada National Security Site, Sandia National Laboratories, together with Bechtel The Y-12 National Security Site, and the Pantex Plant in Texas.
Last fall, Washington Business Journal reported that
“if anyone is benefitting from the unease between Russia and the rest of the world, it would have to be Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT). The company is positioned to make large profits off what could very well be an international military spending spree by Russia’s neighbors.”
DOE: IG Sheds More Light on Lobbying for Sandia Contract
“Yesterday, the department’s inspector general released a revised special inquiry report with fewer redactions in response to an appeal under the Freedom of Information Act. The new document is still heavy with white out but does show more of who was helping Sandia as well as who they were trying to influence on Capitol Hill and the Obama administration…”
Mr. President, Kill the New Cruise Missile
The open letter that kick-started the debate:
Former Secretary of Defense Perry and Former Ass’t Secretary of Defense Weber to Obama:
“Because they can be launched without warning and come in both nuclear and conventional variants, cruise missiles are a uniquely destabilizing type of weapon.
Two years ago, when Britain decided not to pursue a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile, Philip Hammond, then-British defense secretary and now-foreign secretary, explained the problem well: ‘A cruise-based deterrent would carry significant risk of miscalculation and unintended escalation. At the point of firing, other states could have no way of knowing whether we had launched a conventional cruise missile or one with a nuclear warhead. Such uncertainty could risk triggering a nuclear war at a time of tension.
One of us (William J. Perry) led the Defense Department’s development and procurement of the current air-launched cruise missile and the B-2 stealth bomber in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, the United States needed the cruise missile to keep the aging B-52, which is quite vulnerable to enemy air defense systems, in the nuclear mission until the more effective B-2 replaced it. The B-52 could safely launch the long-range cruise missile far from Soviet air defenses. We needed large numbers of air-launched nuclear cruise missiles to be able to overwhelm Soviet air defenses and thus help offset NATO’s conventional-force inferiority in Europe, but such a posture no longer reflects the reality of today’s U.S. conventional military dominance.
With the updated B-2 and B61 expected to remain in service for many decades, and the planned deployment of new B-3 penetrating bombers with B61 bombs starting in 2025, there is scant justification for spending tens of billions of dollars on a new nuclear air-launched cruise missile and related warhead life-extension program.
We therefore urge President Obama to cancel the current plan to develop and buy 1,000 to 1,100 new nuclear-capable air-launched cruise missiles. Such strong U.S. leadership, coupled with a challenge to the other major nuclear powers to eliminate or, in the cases of China and India, forgo deployment of this extremely destabilizing class of weapons, would reduce the risk of nuclear weapons use and be a historic practical step in the direction of a world without nuclear weapons.”
– William J. Perry and Andy Weber from Mr. President, Kill the New Cruise Missile
William J. Perry was U.S. secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997. Andy Weber was assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs from 2009 to 2014.
The Pope and the Bomb: Bishop Oscar Cantú Remarks
Bishop Oscar Cantú, Chairman, Committee on International Justice & Peace, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, at “The Pope and the Bomb: New Nuclear Dangers and Moral Dilemmas” event on September 17, 2015, with moderator E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post columnist, former Sen. Sam Nunn, NTI Co-Chairman and CEO, and Prof. Maryann Cusimano Love, Associate Professor of International Relations, The Catholic University of America.
The 10 Worst Things About Lockheed Martin’s Alleged Lobbying Fraud
Note that five of the ten “Worst Things” directly involve New Mexico’s ex-Congresswoman Heather Wilson. (read more)
Nukewatch’s Jay Coghlan adds these remarks in regard to Heather Wilson:
Ex-Congresswoman Heather Wilson was appointed by John Boehner to be on the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise. In December 2014 the Panel came out with its long awaited report, “A New Foundation for the Nuclear Enterprise”, which benefited the contractors. For example, it argued for diminished federal oversight over contractors, which flies in the face of reality (e.g., constant cost overruns, WIPP, Y-12 security incident, etc., etc.)
Perhaps most alarmingly, the Panel recommended that congressional oversight be strengthened by having the DOE Secretary report to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources and Armed Services Committees, and to the House Energy and Commerce and Armed Services Committees. This would likely have the opposite effect, as it seems to preclude the traditional jurisdiction of the House and Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittees, which have provided key oversight in the past, and have often cut certain nuclear weapons programs.
I publicly called on Heather Wilson to resign from that Panel because of her conflict-of-interests. She did not. To add insult to injury, the co-chair of the Panel is Norm Augustine, ex-CEO of Lockheed Martin. LM’s tentacles are very widespread.
- Lockheed Martin had $32 billion in federal contracts in 2014 (classified projects unknown). (ref) and (API)
- This included $28 million for IRS data management. (ref)
- In the nuclear weapons complex, in addition to Sandia Labs it runs the combined Y12-Pantex nuclear weapons production contract ($2 billion requested in FY 2016) with Bechtel, as Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC.
- Between 2008 and 2015 Lockheed Martin had 169,345 contracts with the US government, worth $293 billion. (ref)
See more at Charles Tiefer’s outstanding article at Forbes
Sandia Corporation Agrees To Pay $4.7 Million To Resolve Allegations Related To Lobbying Activities
Lockheed Martin gets slap on the wrist for lobbying violations in Sandia Labs contract extensions.
Watchdogs Denounce Slap on Wrist for Illegal Lobbying Activities By the World’s Biggest Defense Contractor- and Demand Real Accountability by Barring Lockheed Martin From Future Sandia Labs Contract
Nuclear Watch New Mexico denounces the $4.7 million settlement agreement as a slap on the wrist for the world’s biggest defense contractor. Lockheed Martin clearly broke the law by engaging in illegal lobbying activities to extend its Sandia contract without competition, and engaged in deep and systemic corruption, including paying Congresswoman Heather Wilson $10,000 a month starting the day after she left office for so-called consulting services that had no written work requirements. There should be criminal prosecutions for clear violations of federal anti-lobbying laws, and Lockheed Marin should be barred from future competition for the Sandia Labs contract, expected next year.
View full press release (PDF)
View Department of Justice’s settlement agreement (PDF)
View Rep. Heather Wilson’s contract and invoices pursuant to our FOIA request (PDF)
More on the New Nuclear Cruise Missile
Russia is Proving Why Nuclear-Tipped Cruise Missiles Are a Very Bad Idea
“Those four cruise missiles that crashed in Iran could’ve been carrying nuclear warheads- which is why the US should ban them, not renew them.”
…inherently ambiguous… can add major risks to a crisis… In 2007, six nuclear-armed cruise missiles were mistakenly loaded onto a B-52 bomber and flown across the United States. Because nuclear-armed cruise missiles are virtually indistinguishable from conventional ones, the error went undetected for 36 hours..”
-Tom Collina and William Saetren, Ploughshares Fund.
Jan. 13: Just How New is the New, Nuclear-armed Cruise Missile?
“Deploying the planned new nuclear-armed cruise missile will actually make the United States less secure. Known as the Long-Range Standoff Weapon, or LRSO, it will be significantly more capable than the existing nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missile (ALCM). And for just that reason, by demonstrating that the United States sees this weapon as a valuable military tool, it will undermine higher priority U.S. security goals. Specifically, pursuing the LRSO ignores the reality that nuclear weapons are no longer a security asset for the United States, but a liability that should be constrained.” –Stephen Young, Sr. Analyst, Union of Concerned Scientists
Dec. 15: Eight Senate Democrats, including three members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, sent a letter to President Obama urging him to terminate the Air Force’s plans for its next-generation air-launched cruise missile. Read More
LRSO: The Nuclear Cruise Missile Mission
“It seems clear from many of these statements that the LRSO is not merely a retaliatory capability but very much seen as an offensive nuclear strike weapon that is intended for use in the early phases of a conflict even before long-range ballistic missiles are used.” – Analysis by FAS/Hans Kristensen
- Who Needs a New Nuclear Air-Launched Cruise Missile Anyway?- Steven Pifer, Brookings
- Overkill: The Case Against a New Nuclear Air-Launched Cruise Missile- Kingston Reif/ACA
- You’re NUTS: New Nuclear Cruise Missiles are Inherently Destabilizing
- New Nuclear Cruise Missile Won’t Control Escalation, Will Erode Stability
New York City, 1982: One Million Rally for Nuclear Freeze
On June 12, 1982, one-million concerned citizens gathered in Central Park in New York in an unprecedented call for “the United States and the Soviet Union . . . to adopt a mutual freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.” A few months later, Freeze referenda were on the ballots in 9 states and dozens of major cities. Across the nation some 18 million Americans voted on the Freeze in the fall of 1982, with some 10.7 million, or 60 percent, voting in favor.
As Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said years later:
“It was the closest our country has ever come to a national plebiscite on nuclear arms control. Within a very brief time the freeze had taken education at the grassroots and translated it into political muscle at the ballot box, delivering to the White House a resounding vote of no confidence in its nuclear buildup.”
The Nuclear Bomb Industry is Booming
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX hit hard at the fishy collusions in the military-industrial-congressional complex, and the results in the nuclear arsenal, like the new B61-12 nuclear bomb.
To listen to the podcast click here
See also: A Revolving Door in the Nuclear Weapons Industry
Infographic- Back and forth through the nuclear revolving door: Augustine, Wilson, Tauscher, Cook, Mies, Lyons.
Busted: Lockheed’s Sandia Corp Illegally Lobbied Key Congress Members With Federal Funds to Block Competition For Lucrative Contract
The complete DOE IG November 2014 investigation report has now been released to The Center for Public Integrity following their FOIA request.
CPI has come out with a hard-hitting article about illegal lobbying by the world’s biggest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, to extend its management contract of the Sandia Labs.
This report peels back part of the veil surrounding a defense corporation’s “capture strategy” for the Obama administration.
Last November Inspector General Gregory Friedman issued his report on the Special Inquiry into “Alleged Attempts by Sandia National Laboratories to Influence Congress and Federal Officials on a Contract Extension”. The full report was designated “For Official Use Only” and given exclusively to the contractor; but a summary was released which outlined the case against Lockheed and Sandia Corp, including the payments made from public funds to then just-retired Congresswoman Heather Wilson for ‘consulting services’.
Now, The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the full report through a FOIA request. In it, Inspector General Friedman writes:
“We recognize that Lockheed Martin Corporation, as a for-profit entity, has a corporate interest in the future of the Sandia Corporation contract. However, the use of Federal funds to advance that interest through actions designed to result in a noncompetitive contract extension was, in our view, prohibited by Sandia Corporation’s contract and Federal law and regulations.”
“Given the specific prohibitions against such activity, we could not comprehend the logic of using Federal funds for the development of a plan to influence members of Congress and federal officials to, in essence, prevent competition.”
And in a phrase that did not appear in the November public summary:
“Perhaps [Sandia National Laboratories] felt empowered because it had improperly directed Federal funds to similar activities in the past.”