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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Cardinal Cupich: A world without nuclear weapons is ‘not some utopian dream’
“Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to all life on Earth,” Cupich wrote. “Working toward a world without nuclear weapons, in which vigorous international monitoring and enforcement mechanisms verify compliance, is not some utopian dream. It is, rather, a practical and moral necessity.”
catholicnewsagncy.com June 15, 2021
Ahead of important international meetings this week, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago urged President Joe Biden and other world leaders to work for “a world without nuclear weapons” as a “moral necessity.”
Cardinal Cupich wrote an op-ed published in The Hill on June 11, before Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet on June 16 in Geneva. American and Russian diplomats are expected to begin negotiations on eventually replacing the 2010 New START nuclear arms control treaty, according to Politico. The two nations each control around 6,000 nuclear weapons each – about 90% of the world’s total stockpile.
Cupich wrote that at Thursday’s summit between Biden and Putin, “top on the agenda should be establishing a climate in which the Review Conference can succeed in reducing the nuclear threat.” He argued that the moment “could not be more urgent.”
“Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to all life on Earth,” Cupich wrote. “Working toward a world without nuclear weapons, in which vigorous international monitoring and enforcement mechanisms verify compliance, is not some utopian dream. It is, rather, a practical and moral necessity.”
The United States and Russia, as the two countries controlling most of the world’s nuclear weapons, “have unique responsibilities in taking the lead to eliminate the nuclear threat,” he said.
Biden Is Going “Full Steam Ahead” on Trump’s Nuclear Weapons Spending Plans
FROM TRUTHOUT truthout.org June 10, 2021
“As President Biden prepares for the G7 and NATO summits and a meeting with Vladimir Putin, we look at how the United States, Russia and other nuclear-armed nations continue to spend billions on nuclear weapons during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite President Biden’s criticisms of the Trump administration’s nuclear policies during his candidacy, his administration is continuing initiatives to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal and is seeking $43 billion for nuclear weapons in his new budget. This comes as a new report from the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons reveals global spending on nuclear weapons increased during the pandemic, and found the world’s nine nuclear-armed countries spent $72.6 billion on nuclear weapons in 2020, with the United States alone spending $37 billion.
“We’ve been seeing, from year to year, the spending on nuclear weapons has been increasing,” says Alicia Sanders-Zakre, ICAN’s policy and research coordinator (and former Nuclear Watch New Mexico 2019 summer intern). “Despite Biden’s campaign promises of wanting to work for arms control, wanting to work for disarmament, we’re seeing that in reality he’s going full steam ahead with Trump’s legacy nuclear weapons programs and continuing to spend more money on these weapons of mass destruction.”
U.S. must pledge ‘No First Strike’
“The Savannah River pit plant will cost about $11 billion to build, the NNSA said in its latest budget request: nearly two-and-a-half times as much as a preliminary estimate dating back at least to 2018. The Los Alamos pit plant will cost about $4 billion to build, the NNSA estimated in April, quoting figures from the project’s critical decision 1 review. It will cost some $30 billion to operate both plants for about 50 years, the NNSA has estimated.”
By Mary Burton Riseley | Santa Fe New Mexican
A spate of feel-good public relations articles and editorials have been published in the newspaper lately about all the beneficial work Los Alamos National Laboratory does — for example, analyzing the climate effects of wildfire smoke, helping plot the COVID-19 virus response, the economy-boosting relocation of over 500 LANL employees into otherwise unrented, empty office buildings in Santa Fe, and most recently, exploring the use of AI to predict earthquakes. With the exception of the move to Santa Fe, all of these aspects of the lab’s work are welcome.
Thanks especially to Rod Borup for the LANL work on hydrogen engines for commercial trucking.
But I, for one, cannot forget the lab’s core mission confirmed by a public presentation by its director, Thom Mason, on April 29. Always it is nuclear weapons design and development. From 100 percent of its budget in 1945, nuclear weapons work is still 79 percent. Since Rocky Flats has been closed, LANL’s mission has stretched to weapons production.
There have been better times. At the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidential term, nuclear weapons accounted for only 55 percent of LANL’s work, but Ronald Reagan quickly canceled extensive solar and geothermal energy programs. Many of us old-timers remember the vast quantities of expensive experimental solar equipment the late Ed Grothus sold from his lab outlet store, The Black Hole.
Despite the impression given by recent articles, LANL’s fiscal year 2021 budget of $3.68 billion allocates only meager amounts for nonnuclear weapons programs: 8.6 percent for nonproliferation, an estimated 6.8 percent work for others (whatever that may be), 3.1 percent for environmental cleanup, 1.7 percent for science programs, 0.1 percent for renewable energy and zero percent for energy efficiency.
Meanwhile, plutonium from past work continues to contaminate the Pajarito Plateau, as do radioactive chromium, cesium and other toxic radionuclides. This contamination is close to and upstream from Santa Fe. Why was Rocky Flats closed? Because it had so poisoned the earth and water under it that it threatened the well-being of thousands of Colorado residents.
DoE Nuclear Agency Can’t Fully Meet Production Deadline for Warhead Cores, Agency Official Tells Lawmakers
“The Savannah River pit plant will cost about $11 billion to build, the NNSA said in its latest budget request: nearly two-and-a-half times as much as a preliminary estimate dating back at least to 2018. The Los Alamos pit plant will cost about $4 billion to build, the NNSA estimated in April, quoting figures from the project’s critical decision 1 review. It will cost some $30 billion to operate both plants for about 50 years, the NNSA has estimated.”
By: Dan Leone | defensedaily.com
The National Nuclear Security Administration cannot meet a legal requirement to make at least 80 new plutonium cores for intercontinental ballistic missile warheads in 2030, the agency’s acting boss told lawmakers Thursday.
With the planned Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SPPPF) up to five years behind scheduled, “based on our latest information we assess that meeting the 2030 [deadline] … is not going to be achievable,” Charles Verdon, the acting administrator of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said in the final minutes of a hearing of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee.
That cat had been part way out of the bag since late May, when Jill Hruby, the Biden administration’s nominee to be the NNSA’s permanent administrator, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that SRPPF at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., would be as many as five years late.
Verdon’s testimony Thursday, however, clarified that without the SRPPF — to be built from the partially constructed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in Savannah River’s F-Area — the NNSA’s other planned pit plant, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, cannot shoulder the load on its own by 2030.
Both pit plants are eventually supposed to be capable of surging their manufacturing capacity and staff to single-handedly produce the needed 80 pits annually, but the NNSA has not said when that might be possible. The agency did not reply to a request for comment on Thursday.
Biden aims to boost LANL cleanup cash
“That’s good news,” Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said of the plan to get rid of the 35-year-old facility. “Demolishing that building will save the public costs and reduce risks.”
Coghlan at first said he was “pleasantly surprised” to see such a large increase in the budget for cleanup.
“Perhaps better put, flabbergasted,” he added, noting the $107.5 million increase in spending on the task compared to the current fiscal year.
He also noted that the Trump administration had proposed a $100 million decrease in spending on cleanup a year ago, but Congress ultimately kept cleanup spending at LANL at $226 million.
In a news release, Coghlan praised Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and state Environment Secretary James Kenney for suing DOE over a “continuing pattern of delay and noncompliance” with a 2016 consent order that provided benchmarks for cleanup that LANL has failed to meet.
By T.S. Last / Journal North | Copyright © 2021 Albuquerque Journal June 9, 2021
Los Alamos Lab May Face Greater Demand for Plutonium Pits
“In the end, more than five times could be spent on that building than was spent constructing the $4 billion One World Trade Center — all to manufacture bomb cores, said Jay Coghlan, executive director of nonprofit Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
Extending renovations by several years is bound to put pressure on the lab to ratchet pit production beyond the current goal, Coghlan said.”
By Scott Wyland [email protected] Jun 8, 2021 | Santa Fe New Mexican
The plutonium pit factory at Savannah River Site in South Carolina will take years longer and cost billions of dollars more to ramp up than previously planned, which could push Los Alamos National Laboratory to make more nuclear bomb cores to fill the gap, watchdog groups say.
For the past three years, plans have called for the Los Alamos lab to produce 30 plutonium warhead triggers by 2026 and Savannah River to make 50 by 2030, but the latter is proving much more costly and nettlesome than anticipated.
Jill Hruby, the nominee to head the National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a U.S. Senate hearing last week that Savannah River might not fully operate until 2035.
And a recently released budget proposal for the country’s nuclear weapons program going into 2022 shows the estimated cost of converting Savannah River Site into a pit plant ballooning to $11 billion from $4.6 billion. A budget note said the estimate could go up.
