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.”
High Detections of Plutonium in Los Alamos’ Acid Canyon
Full Video Recording: NukeWatch and Dr. Michael Ketterer Present Results from Recent Sampling for Plutonium Contamination Around the Los Alamos National Lab |
Dr. Michael Ketterer's Presentation of Results Showing High Detections of Plutonium in Los Alamos Neighborhood |
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RE: The Santa Fe New Mexican “GAO: Cost, time estimates for making nuclear bomb cores flawed” – Underneath it All is the Nuclear Elephant in the Room: Future Pit Production is Actually Unnecessary.
BY JAY COGHLAN
Good article indeed. Kudos to Scott Wyland.
But to add to it:
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) cannot do, or rather will not do, good governance 101 for its largest program ever (i.e., expanded plutonium pit production), which is credible cost estimates and schedules. Why won’t NNSA do that? Because of PR and political concerns when their flaky cost estimates (such as they are) get blown up by inevitable escalating costs. NNSA knows that if it gave accurate projected costs Congress and the public would balk. Thus, the agency goes in lowballing costs, which always inevitably rise. I could rattle off a dozen NNSA projects over the last 15 years in which costs have exploded, wasting tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars.
But get this, future pit production is also unnecessary and may actually degrade national security. To begin with, independent experts have found that pits have serviceable lifetimes of at least a century (their average age is now around 40). And we already have at least 15,000 existing pits stored at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX.
The Results Are In! Staff at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Recognized as 2022 Arms Control Persons of the Year – SANTA FE ARCHBISHOP JOHN C. WESTER RUNNER-UP! Thank you for voting!
ARMS CONTROL ASSOCIATION | January 13, 2023 armscontrol.org Media Contacts: Tony Fleming, director for communications, Daryl G. Kimball, executive director
(Washington, D.C.)—The Energoatom staff at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) were selected as the 2022 Arms Control Persons of the Year through an online poll that drew more than 3,500 participants from nearly 80 countries.
Zaporizhzhia staff gathered Feb. 16, 2022, for a day of unity celebrated by Energoatom’s employees. (Photo: Energoatom)
The annual contest is organized by the independent, nongovernmental Arms Control Association to highlight positive initiatives—some at the grassroots level, some on the international scale—designed to advance disarmament, nuclear security, nonproliferation, civilian protection, and international peace, security, and justice.
The runner-up in this year’s contest was Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, nominated for preaching the nuclear disarmament gospel in a religious context. His January 2022 pastoral letter reflects the Catholic Church’s long history of speaking out against the threats posed by nuclear weapons and calls on U.S. citizens to take “concrete steps toward abolishing nuclear weapons and ending the nuclear threat.”
The December 2022 issue of Arms Control Today includes an interview with Wester by editor Carol Giacomo titled: “Making the Case That Nuclear Weapons Are Immoral.”
In a First, South Korea Declares Nuclear Weapons a Policy Option
“Mr. Yoon himself reiterated on Thursday that his country remained committed to the NPT, at least for now. He said on Wednesday — and his Defense Ministry reiterated on Thursday — that the more
“realistic means” of countering the North Korean threat would be through joint deterrence with the United States.”
BY CHOE SANG-HUN, THE NEW YORK TIMES | January 12, 2023 nytimes.com
President Yoon Suk Yeol said that if North Korea’s nuclear threat grows, his country may build a nuclear arsenal of its own or ask the United States to redeploy in the South.
LANL waste contractor receives lowest score in its tenure, receives $7.16 million bonus
“It’s the lowest score on the lowest bar of so-called cleanup,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “I’m going to very much point my finger at the weak and defective 2016 consent order.”
Coghlan is among the critics who have bashed this cleanup agreement crafted under Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, saying it weakened the original 2005 order by eliminating real deadlines and imposing few penalties for slow or deficient work.
By Scott Wyland, The Santa Fe New Mexican | January 7, 2023 santafenewmexican.com
The contractor in charge of cleaning up Los Alamos National Laboratory’s legacy waste will receive the lowest percentage of its yearly bonus in its four years at the lab, mainly because of deficiencies in worker safety and packaging waste for shipping.
Newport News BWXT, commonly known as N3B, received 77% of its bonus fees for the year ending in October, the lowest since it began cleaning up the lab’s pre-1999 waste in 2018 and the first time the portion fell below 80%.
The U.S. Energy Department’s Environmental Management Field Office at Los Alamos issues the scorecards that determine how much of a bonus fee N3B will get in a given year under its $1.4 billion, 10-year contract for the cleanup work.
The contractor will be awarded about $7.16 million out of a possible $9.2 million, according to the 2022 scorecard.
The C-17A Has Been Cleared To Transport B61-12 Nuclear Bomb To Europe
“At this point in time, it is unknown if B61-12 shipments to Europe have begun. If not, it appears to be imminent. That said, deployment will probably not happen in one move but gradually spread to more and more bases depending on certification and construction at each base.”
By Hans Kristensen, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS | January 6, 2023 fas.org
In November 2022, the Air Force updated its safety rules for airlift of nuclear weapons to allow the C-17A Globemaster III aircraft to transport the new B61-12 nuclear bomb.
The update, accompanied by training and certification of the aircraft and crews, cleared the C-17A to transport the newest U.S. nuclear weapon to bases in the United States and Europe.
🗣️No new nuclear weapons in Europe!
The majority of people in European host countries object to nuclear weapons being stationed on their soil and want to join the #nuclearban! pic.twitter.com/jPJpq9aLqp
— ICAN (@nuclearban) January 7, 2023
Nuke waste rules proposed for Carlsbad-area site critiqued by watchdogs, local leaders
“We are opposed to the idea of continuing to expand the WIPP underground…Back when this got started, everyone agreed it would take 25 years and all the waste would be emplaced…That’s not going to happen by 2024.
That’s not the citizens of New Mexico’s fault or NMED’s fault. It’s on the DOE. They don’t want an end date. That’s something we need to push on.” — Nuclear Waste Program Director Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center
By Adrian Hedden Carlsbad Current-Argus | January 6, 2023 news.yahoo.com
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant operates under a permit with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), which is renewed every 10 years.
That process is ongoing for WIPP, and NMED added several provisions in a draft permit released last month that called for a stricter accounting of waste coming to WIPP each year, required updates on the process of finding a new repository and demanded a greater priority be placed on disposal of nuclear waste generated in New Mexico.
Feds push plan to dispose plutonium using nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad
“We want an end to the situation where New Mexico is the only nuclear waste dump for all 50 states. The concern is that if you increase the number of shipments, the number of years, and you increase the dangerousness of the waste, at some point, somewhere an accident is inevitable.” – Cindy Weehler, co-chair of Santa Fe-based activist group 285 ALL
By Adrian Hedden Carlsbad Current-Argus | January 5, 2023 currentargus.com
Federal nuclear waste managers said they planned to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus, weapons-grade plutonium at a nuclear repository in New Mexico after the waste is diluted to a lower level of radioactivity.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) proposed in 2020 a “dilute and dispose” method of eliminating the plutonium from the environment, ultimately via emplacement at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant repository near Carlsbad.
Before that can happen, the NNSA said the waste can be “downblended” to meet requirements at WIPP, which is designed to dispose of transuranic (TRU) waste that can only be of a certain level of radioactivity.
