Plutonium Sampling at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Cost of RECA Chart
In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
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Activists Decry Feds’ Plans to Ramp Up Nuclear Work at LANL
The federal government should not turn Los Alamos National Laboratory into a hub for making nuclear bomb cores and instead should spend the money to assist the state with education, health care, poverty and climate change impacts, a group of activists and concerned residents said Wednesday at the state Capitol.
BY: SCOTT WYLAND | santafenewmexican.com
The nonprofit Los Alamos Study Group, which supports nuclear disarmament, set up a sound system outside the deserted Roundhouse so critics could express their ire about plans for LANL to produce 30 warhead triggers a year by 2026 without a sitewide environmental study.
The comments, recorded as if the event were a public hearing, will be sent to New Mexico’s congressional delegates, including Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, who support LANL reviving and expanding plutonium pit production, saying it will boost the regional economy and strengthen national security.
World’s Biggest Wind and Solar Producer Now Worth More than ExxonMobil
“The shift is as significant as the one the world has seen in the auto industry, with electric vehicle maker Tesla overtaking the biggest car companies in the world in the last year, to the point where it is now valued at more than the next five biggest global car makers combined, despite producing just a fraction of the number of cars.”
BY: GILES PARKINSON | reneweconomy.com
In yet another sign of the pace of the global energy transition – and the massive switch taking place in the investment community – the market value of company that describes itself as the world’s biggest producer of wind and solar power, US utility NextEra, has overtaken that of what used to be the world’s most valuable company, oil major ExxonMobil.
The flip occurred last last week, when NextEra overtook ExxonMobil to become the largest energy company in the US by market value. As Forbes reported, an investment in NextEra a decade ago would have delivered to return of 600 per cent, while an investment in ExxonMobil would have returned minus 25 per cent.
U.N. Nuclear Ban Treaty Likely to Enter Into Force Early Next Year
“The only way to completely eliminate nuclear risk is to completely eliminate nuclear weapons” and that the nuclear ban treaty “remains the cornerstone of the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime,” Guterres said at a meeting of the General Assembly on Friday.
NEW YORK/UNITED NATIONS – A U.N.-adopted nuclear ban treaty is likely to enter into force early next year as the number of signatories is anticipated to reach the needed threshold of 50 soon, possibly later this month, a diplomatic source said Friday.
According to the source and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), 46 countries and regions have completed ratification procedures.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted in 2017, will enter into force 90 days after it has been ratified by at least 50 countries and regions.
At least four additional countries have already notified the United Nations of their intention to ratify the treaty, the source and the nonprofit organization said, without revealing the names of any such signatories.
State Public Land Commissioner Speaks Out Against Nuclear Waste Facility
SANTA FE, N.M. (KRQE) – The state Public Lands Commissioner is speaking out against a proposed nuclear waste storage facility in Lea County. In comments submitted to the National Regulatory Commission, Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard says that Holtec International ignored concerns about storing nuclear waste in a highly active oil field.
BY: KRQE Staff | krqe.com
Read Garcia Richard’s full comment and submission to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Commissioner Garcia Richard’s released the following statement in a news release Monday regarding the public comment:
I remain vehemently opposed to this proposal for reasons stated since I took office in January 2019. Holtec has misrepresented themselves and this project through every step of the process, including recently raising the intended number of nuclear canisters from 500 to 10,000. They have misrepresented their purported control of the site while also lying about their ability to restrict oil and gas operations in the area.
Holtec has ignored numerous safety concerns regarding the transportation of high-level nuclear waste through New Mexico communities, as well as failing to address questions about storing such waste in the middle of a highly active oil field. As Commissioner of Public Lands, I have a constitutional obligation to protect state trust land for future generations. This project comes with far too much risk and little to no reward.
Activists Push Congress to Revive Probe Into Links Between Nuclear Plants and Cancer
“Nuclear Regulatory Commission killed study in 2015 after spending five years and $1.5 million on the effort”
BY: TERI SFORZA | ocregister.com
Scientists and activists were stunned back in 2015 when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission pulled the plug on what was designed to be the best study of cancer near nuclear power plants ever done.
The pilot study’s price tag was $8 million — a pittance in the NRC’s $1 billion budget — and five years of work had already gone into it. But it was killed because officials were convinced it would be too costly and couldn’t link reactors to disease, a Southern California News Group investigation found.
Last week, a petition with some 1,200 signatures demanding that the study resume went to members of Congress representing Southern and Central California.
Texas Governor Urges Trump To Oppose Nuclear Waste Plans
“It’s an unusual thing for environmentalists and oil companies to be on the same page, and we are on this issue,” says an Austin-based environmental advocate.
BY: | texasstandard.com
A view of an existing site in West Texas where a company wants to store highly radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants, one of two such proposals the Texas governor now says he opposes.
From Courthouse News Service:
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has come out against two rival plans to ship highly radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants to sites on the Texas-New Mexico border, saying either plan would be unsafe and would threaten the region’s sprawling Permian Basin oilfield.
“A stable oil and gas industry is essential to the economy, and crucial to the security of our great nation,” Abbott, a Republican, wrote in a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday. “Allowing the interim storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste at sites near the largest producing oilfield in the world will compromise the safety of the region.”
The nuclear waste plans have for years drawn the ire of advocacy groups who worry about a range of possible environmental and safety threats, but oil and gas interests have become increasingly involved in the fight as well.
A coalition of oil companies and West Texas landowners called Protect the Basin was launched in 2018 to oppose the plans and has more recently stepped up its outreach. One of the coalition members, a ranching and oil company tied to one of the nation’s richest families, has been involved in fighting the issue all the way up to the D.C. Circuit.
