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.”
New & Updated
Nuclear Radiation is Becoming a Campaign Issue
Why it’s time to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
“Without congressional action, RECA will expire in July 2022. Because of the arbitrarily drawn lines of eligibility written into the original 1990 bill, many Downwinders and other impacted individuals, like many uranium workers, are not eligible for compensation — both in Utah, and in states across the West and territories in the Pacific.”
| March 29, 2022 inkstickmedia.com
In recent weeks, the world has held its collective breath as Russia shelled, and then occupied, Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst-ever nuclear reactor disaster, and Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Not to mention Putin’s thinly veiled threats of nuclear war to those who support Ukraine. With these developments, the world consciousness has been reinvigorated with concern about nuclear radiation. But, the concern over radiation never waned for those in the American West, who continue to live with the disastrous health consequences from Cold War-era nuclear testing and production.
Santa Fe New Mexican Letters to the Editor:
THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN | April 2, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
With Russia at war in Ukraine, US ramps up nuclear-weapons mission at Los Alamos. Is it a ‘real necessity’?
“The core debate: A multi-billion-dollar project to make plutonium cores at Los Alamos National Laboratory may be unsafe, unnecessary and ill-conceived. But proponents say the mission is a must.”
BY Annabella Farmer| March 24, 2022 Searchlight NM searchlightnm.org
LOS ALAMOS — Los Alamos began as an “instant city,” springing from the Pajarito Plateau in 1943 at the dawn of the Atomic Age. More than 8,000 people flocked here to work for Los Alamos National Laboratory and related industries during the last years of World War II. Now the city may be on the brink of another boom as the federal government moves forward with what could be the most expensive warhead modernization program in U.S. history. Under the proposed plan, LANL will become home to an industrial-scale plant for manufacturing the radioactive cores of nuclear weapons — hollow spheres of plutonium that act as triggers for nuclear explosions. The ripple effects are already being felt.
Roads are planned to be widened to accommodate 2,500 extra workers. New housing developments are appearing, one of them about a mile from large white tents that house drums of radioactive waste. And these are just the signs visible to the public: Within the lab, workers are busy around the clock to get facilities ready to produce the first plutonium core next year.
The cores — known as pits — haven’t been mass-produced since the end of the Cold War. But in 2018, under pressure from the Trump administration, the federal government called for at least 80 new pits to be manufactured each year, conservatively expected to cost $9 billion — the lion’s share of a $14.8 billion weapons program upgrade. After much infighting over the massive contract, plans call for Los Alamos to manufacture 30 pits annually and for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to make the remaining 50.
The idea of implementing an immense nuclear program at Los Alamos has sparked outrage among citizens, nuclear watchdogs, scientists and arms control experts, who say the pit-production mission is neither safe nor necessary.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Jay Coghlan on the Richard Eeds Show – March 29, 2022
Jay Coghlan, Executive Director @ Nuclear Watch New Mexico, on tactical nukes in the Ukraine war with Russia, the deterrent factor, PIT manufacturing in Los Alamos and other related topics.
Feds agree to LANL waste cleanup and repairs to settle lawsuit
Federal officials would agree only to study the possibility of clearing out waste from the Area G pit and wouldn’t commit to following through, said Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch’s executive director.
“Ideally, the transuranic nuclear waste would go to WIPP, and the low-level radioactive materials would be buried in a landfill with liners and a leachate collection system. Capping and covering the on-site pit is problematic because it’s unlined and could allow toxins to leach into the groundwater,”
| March 23, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
Los Alamos National Laboratory will do extensive waste cleanup and fix a long-broken monitoring system for polluted runoff to comply with a settlement of a watchdog’s lawsuit.
The U.S. Department of Energy and Nuclear Watch New Mexico agreed to a settlement in federal court last week to end six years of litigation for what the watchdog group characterized as neglect of longtime issues.
“It’s now a legal obligation on the part of DOE,” said Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch’s executive director. “I do expect DOE will be cooperative in this.”
Say NO to nuclear war!
Stop President Biden’s atrocious request: an $813 billion Pentagon budget!
President Biden has requested an additional $31 billion to increase the Pentagon budget from this year’s already excessive level of $782 billion. But this money should be spent on YOUR needs!
The Ukraine war has been used as an excuse for this outrageous Pentagon budget — which is 12 times more than Russia’s military spending. The Pentagon, which spends more than the next 11 countries combined, can easily afford to arm Ukraine and send more troops to Europe (though we oppose these steps) without additional funding.
The rapid increases in the Pentagon budget are making us less safe, even as war rages in Ukraine. They will only raise tensions with Russia and China, prepare for a superpower conflict, and put innocent people at risk.
