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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Does the U.S. Need “New” Nuclear Weapons?
Watch “McCuistion Perspectives Matter” TV programs – subscribe to the McCuistionTV YouTube channel.
Episodes can also be viewed at McCuistionTV.com.
Aired Sunday, June 23, at 11:30 AM on KERA, Channel 13, PBS Dallas
The film “Oppenheimer” and the saber-rattling from Russia and North Korea have increased interest in U.S. nuclear weapons.
Today, Russia, China, and the United States are each committed to robust and expensive nuclear modernization, programs. At the same time, long-standing arms control treaties have either been suspended, or canceled and negotiations to extend them have essentially been stalled.
Join host Jim Falk to discuss this issue along with:
Sarah Scoles, a science journalist, and author of “Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons.” Her articles have been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Popular Science, Scientific American, and others.
Jay Coghlan is president of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. Established in 1999, Nuclear Watch promotes safety and environment at nuclear facilities and diversification away from nuclear weapons programs.
Hans Kristensen is the Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. He is the co-author of the Nuclear Notebook column in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, considered widely to be the most accurate source of information on nuclear weapons available to the public.
The economic and political questions surrounding the state of our nuclear stockpiles are among the best-kept national security secrets.
Certainly, aspects must remain under wraps, but given the enormous amount of money devoted to our nuclear arsenal, it seems appropriate for there to be more transparency.
Watch the episode to learn more about our U.S. nuclear program from experts who are very familiar with the current situation.
EPISODES CAN BE VIEWED ON YOUTUBE OR AT MCCUISTIONTV.COM
Oil and gas ‘ready to defend’ decision to block license for nuke waste in Permian Basin
Nuclear Companies “Holtec” and “Interim Storage Partners” Appeal Block of Licenses to Store Waste in the Permian Basin —
Monica Perales, an attorney with Fasken Oil and Ranch which filed the initial suit against the NRC’s licensing decision, [argued] the proposals to store the nuclear waste in southeast New Mexico and West Texas should be evaluated by federal lawmakers, not a single agency like the NRC, due to the significant impact on the region and national policy she said consolidated interim storage of the waste could have.
Perales said the companies and the NRC were not transparent and did not convey the true impact of the projects to all of those affected, including southeast New Mexico and West Texas communities around the site, but also those along the transportation routes the waste will take into the Permian Basin via train.
“The NRC is acting like a rogue agency. They’re out of order,” Perales said. “These plans are of such political and economic consequence that they should be looking to Congress for a directive as to how to deal with this tremendous amount of spent nuclear fuel that’s piling up around the country, and not take it upon itself to send it to the Permian Basin and force it on us.”
By Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus | June 24, 2024 currentargus.com
A nuclear technology company looking to store spent nuclear fuel rods in the Permian Basin, along the Texas-New Mexico state line, appealed in U.S. Supreme Court a decision last year to vacate its license to do so, hoping to bring the waste from privately-owned reactors around the country.
Interim Storage Partners (ISP) was issued a license in 2021 to build a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) to hold up to 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel at the Waste Control Specialists site in Andrews, Texas. The project was smaller but almost identical to another facility proposed by Holtec International to hold about 100,000 metric tons of the same waste at a facility near Carlsbad and Hobbs.
Guterres warns humanity on ‘knife’s edge’ as AI raises nuclear war threat
UN secretary general makes plea for nuclear states to agree on mutual pledge not to be first to use nuclear weapons
“The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has warned that the spread of artificial intelligence technology multiplies the threat of nuclear war, and that humanity is now ‘on a knife’s edge’ as dangers to its existence coalesce.”
By, The Guardian | June 7, 2024 theguardian.com
Guterres’s warning is due to be shown on a recorded video to be played on Friday morning at the annual meeting of the US Arms Control Association (ACA) in Washington.
In the video, the secretary general makes his most impassioned plea to date for the nuclear weapons states to take their non-proliferation obligations seriously, and in particular, agree on a mutual pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons.
“The regime designed to prevent the use, testing and proliferation of nuclear weapons is weakening,”
Guterres says in the recorded message, in a warning that comes with some 600 days to go before the expiry of the 2010 New Start accord between the US and Russia, the last remaining agreement limiting the strategic arsenals of the two nuclear superpowers.
U.S. Considers Expanded Nuclear Arsenal, a Reversal of Decades of Cuts
“China’s expansion and Russia’s threats of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine and in space have changed a U.S. drive to reduce nuclear weapons.”
ByJulian E. Barnes and , New York Times | June 7, 2024 nytimes.com
A senior Biden administration official warned on Friday that “absent a change” in nuclear strategy by China and Russia, the United States may be forced to expand its nuclear arsenal, after decades of cutting back through now largely abandoned arms control agreements.
The comments on Friday from Pranay Vaddi, a senior director of the National Security Council, were the most explicit public warning yet that the United States was prepared to shift from simply modernizing its arsenal to expanding it…
A ‘TOTAL, COMPLETE’ FAILURE
“Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is speaking out against his own party’s House leadership after the chamber left for the week with no plan for reauthorizing and expanding a program compensating victims of nuclear radiation exposure that’s due to expire on June 10.”
By Anthony Adragna, Politico | June 5, 2024 politico.com
“Clearly, it’s not a priority,” Hawley told Inside Congress. “The next few days, hopefully, are focusing people’s minds on the fact that we’re about to go over the precipice here.”
Hawley, who has been an outspoken champion of expanding the program to include Missouri communities, said the program’s looming expiration represents “just the failure of leadership.” He worked with Democrats, including Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), to get an expanded version of the program, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act, through the Senate in March by a wide 69-30 bipartisan margin.
Critics have blushed at the cost of the expansion, estimated at $50 to $60 billion over ten years without any offsets for the new spending. That has complicated passage in the House, and Speaker MIke Johnson’s office did not respond to Hawley’s comments.
Cracks in the Sin Screen: The Link Between Mormon Tithes and Nuclear Weapons
Read Taylor Barnes’ deep dive into Northrup Grumman, chosen manufacture of the Sentinel ICBM, for which the Los Alamos National Lab and Savannah River Site would make new plutonium pits. As they are the ones doing the dirty work of preparing for full-scale nuclear war (a la the “Nuclear Posture Reviews” of Trump & Biden), all NNSA and DOE contractors need this kind of scrutiny. — Tom Clements, SRS Watch
Words: Taylor Barnes – Pictures: Aubrey Odom, Inkstick Media | June 4, 2024 inkstickmedia.com
On March 28, 1979, a handful of Air Force officers and a Mormon civilian employee from Utah’s Hill Air Force Base arrived in Salt Lake City for an unusual meeting. They were seeking a blessing: For the Church of Latter-day Saints’ top three leaders to endorse a plan to construct 8,500 miles of roads and 4,600 concrete garages for a nuclear weapons system. It would constantly shuttle 200 missiles on racetracks, playing a “shell game” intended to keep the Soviet military guessing where America’s nuclear warheads really were at any given moment. The Soviets could, of course, just build more nuclear weapons and take out the entire missile field at once, so American war planners imagined the project, called “Missile, Experimental,” or MX, would continuously grow, becoming 8,250 garages and 360 missiles by 1990. And so on.
That sort of arms race meant the Air Force needed Americans willing to host the ever-growing missile field. The desert landscape of the Great Basin spanning western Utah and central Nevada appealed to them. It had few highways, little infrastructure, and relatively sparse numbers of human residents. Of the population that did exist in the basing area, however, 80% was Mormon, according to an account of the MX battle in “The Mormon Military Experience,” a book recently published by historians Sherman L. Fleek and Robert C. Freeman from West Point and Brigham Young University.
Your NukeWatch NM Team in DC!
Your Nuclear Watch New Mexico team has just returned from a weeklong trip to Washington D.C. (we went so you don’t have to!). We proudly joined the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) in their annual “DC Days” conference and following Spring Meeting, where over 60 individuals from 30+ groups journeyed to DC to lobby congress on nuclear weapons, energy, and waste policy on behalf of the frontline nuclear communities we represent. From across the U.S. near nuclear complex sites in Georgia, New Mexico, Tennessee, California, Missouri, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan and beyond, members were present from the following groups: Beyond Nuclear, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Parents Against Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Peaceworks Kansas City, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles & Wisconsin, Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center, Snake River Alliance, Southwest Research and Information Center, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. There were also a number of individual attendants participating from groups not currently affiliated with ANA as official members, notably more than previous years, which lends optimism for the potential growth of DC Days and ANA as a whole.
Boulder County reconsidering involvement in trail connection to Rocky Flats due to plutonium concerns
“During a windstorm on April 6, Michael Ketterer, a retired scientist and adjunct professor at the University of Denver, took samples and said he detected high levels of plutonium in the air.
‘The concentrations in the dirt that’s just kind of blowing right past us on that day are higher than can be explained in any way in normal,’ said Dr. Ketterer.”
By Natalie Chuck, Denver 7 News | May 23, 2024 denver7.com
“More people are coming every day,” said Scott Riemer, who comes to the area to bike multiple times a week.
But now, Boulder County commissioners are facing concerns from community members as a result of decisions made by their predecessors. At the center of the controversy is Rocky Flats, acres of federal land formerly home to a nuclear weapons facility.
In 1989, the facility was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for alleged environmental violations, including elevated levels of plutonium. All operations were suspended. Since then, trails have been developed on Rocky Flats.
In 2016, wheels were set in motion to develop the Rocky Mountain Greenway, a string of trails from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge to the Rocky Flats Mountain Wildlife Refuge to Rocky Mountain National Park.
While trails on Rocky Flats have been built, construction impacting Boulder County has yet to start.
Feds: Indian Point owner Holtec had laid-off workers agree not to testify against company
“It is essential that current and former plant workers feel free to raise safety concerns with the NRC,” spokesman Neil Sheehan said. “They are (or were) at the plant on a daily basis and can have knowledge of issues that are not available to us.”
This is the second time in recent months Holtec has reversed course after the NRC caught the company violating federal regulations.
In February, the NRC cited Holtec for spending $63,000 of ratepayer funds meant for the demolition of Indian Point to sponsor a high school fashion show, sports teams and a golf outing. Holtec had to reimburse the money, which it took out of some $2 billion in decommissioning trust funds it inherited after buying the plant from Louisiana-based Entergy.
By, LOHUD | May 29, 2024 lohud.com
Indian Point’s owners had workers sign agreements saying they would not discuss safety concerns with outsiders after they stopped working at the shuttered nuclear power plant, an investigation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found.
The NRC last week cited Holtec International, the plant’s New Jersey-based owners, for including language in the severance agreements of employees who left the company in 2022 and 2023 that would restrict or discourage them from testifying as a witness in a proceeding that could damage Holtec.
Additionally, the NRC said, Holtec required the employees to tell Holtec if they received “subpoenas, correspondence, telephone calls, requests for information, inquiries or other contacts” from government agencies or other third parties.
