Watchblog
Defense Dept. Memo Criticizes Cost of Nuclear Weapons Labs While Los Alamos Director’s Salary Nearly Triples
Nuclear Watch New Mexico had been independently compiling data on the salaries of the three laboratory directors, as presented in the table below. It shows that the salary of the Los Alamos Director has nearly tripled since for-profit management began in June 2006, even as the Lab is cutting some 600 jobs. As seen in the chart below, privatization of the nuclear weapons labs’ management contracts has resulted in directors’ salaries far above average in both the federal government and the private sector. Continue reading→
Love and Loss in the Jemez
We’re lucky in that it appears Los Alamos Lab has dodged the bullet with respect to the Las Conchas Fire, but I do want to say something about 100,000 acres of some of the most beautiful land in New Mexico burning up in the Jemez Mountains. I know it fairly well. Back in the early... Continue reading→
Still Time to Comment on LANL’s Burning Desire for Expanded Weapons Production
Ironically today (June 28) is the deadline for public comment under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for concerned citizens to comment on a proposed ~$5 billion facility at the Los Alamos Lab ponderously called the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project- Nuclear Facility. In short, it is a huge new plutonium facility that will... Continue reading→
The Risk to Waste Stored at Area G
We pride ourselves here at Nuclear Watch New Mexico on trying to stick to the facts as we best we know them and not being alarmist. That said, the Las Conchas Fire that has now crossed the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL’s) southwestern boundary is a real threat. For starters is the mind-blowing fact that... Continue reading→
Extensive B61 Life Extension Serves Lab’s Self-Interest More than Weapon’s Mission
To add to the uncertainty surrounding the pending B61 Life Extension Program: The NNSA’s FY 2012 Congressional Budget Request says that among other things the scope of the B61 LEP will include “implementation and maturation of enhanced surety technologies into the nuclear explosive package,” a major rationale for the program to begin with. B61 surety... Continue reading→
Replacement of Neutron Generators is Routine
At a town hall meeting this week in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the proposed location of the new “UPF” nuclear weapons facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex, the state’s junior senator, Bob Corker quipped: It’s just about the fact that our nuclear arsenal is absolutely obsolete. I saw neutron generators, literally, out in New Mexico... Continue reading→
Big Money for the B61’s New Ride
In a mid April report to Congress, the Pentagon stated lifetime cycle costs of the dual [nuclear] capable F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will exceed $1 trillion. The F-35 will have a lot to do with future forward deployment in Europe (or not) of the proposed heavily modified B61-12 tactical nuclear bomb. According to Inside Defense,... Continue reading→
The Corporate Folly of Nuclear Power
Meltdowns at the reactors are not the biggest threat, as horrific as they are. Instead the biggest threat is the spent fuel rod pools if they lose circulating water. The reactors at Fukushima were designed by US General Electric, whose corporate slogan is “bringing good things to life.” The Fukushima reactors had their back up... Continue reading→
Mother Earth Gives Nuclear Renaissance a Black Eye
Our hearts and prayers go out go out to the people of Japan. As Japan is faced with the possibility of nuclear meltdowns in five earthquake-damaged nuclear reactors, the U.S. and other countries are re-considering nuclear plans. While it is unlikely that radiation that has leaked or will leak from the Japanese reactor accidents will... Continue reading→
CMRR FY2012 Budget Request – Blank Check or Black Budget?
CMRR FY2012 Budget Request – Blank Check or Black Budget? The FY2012 budget request shows $300 million for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) Project, which is now estimated to cost a total of $6.22 billion. $29.9 million is requested for equipment in the recently completed first building, the Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building (RLUOB). But... Continue reading→
Regarding NNSA’s Defense Nonproliferation Programs and MOX
I think it would be a big mistake to give unqualified support to restoring funds for NNSA’s Defense Nonproliferation Programs. In my view the best thing that could be done for those programs would be to kill the Mixed Oxide reactor fuel (MOX) program and revive immobilization for ultimate plutonium disposition. I endorse the strategy of... Continue reading→
LANL Gestures to Gas Shortage
Although shutting down LANL would almost make up for the shortage in gas affecting northern New Mexico, it is not quite that equitable. LANL and the Los Alamos town site have their own dedicated gas pipeline coming from the NW San Juan Basin, in New Mexico. Whereas Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Espanola, Taos etc are fed natural gas from the Permian Basin gas fields in Texas. Therefore it is questionable that curtailing operations (which cost taxpayers ~$6 million/per day) at LANL helps to relieve gas supplies in northern New Mexican communities. Continue reading→
Nuclear Science Week, by the makers of the “Bomb”
This press release from NNSA is really deceptive. The words “nuclear” and “science” are used quite a bit, but “weapons” only like in “As we continue to turn a Cold War nuclear weapons complex into a 21st century nuclear security enterprise.” The uninformed reader would get the impression that NIF, DARHT and the Z machine... Continue reading→
NNSA Will Not be “Burdened” by Costs for Clean-Up at New KCP
I found what I think is an interesting quote concerning the new KCP in NNSA’s FY 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (which is the plan that NNSA showboats to Congress). “Finally, because the new facility [KCP] will be leased, there will be no capital investment and NNSA will not be burdened by costs for... Continue reading→
Weight Restrictions for Weapons Workers?
Question: What is the tripping-man impact scenario for a nuclear weapons production technician? Answer: A 280 lb production technician traveling 2 .5 miles per hour. We are all familiar with the horrible impacts that nuclear weapons have on humans, but now we have an Analysis of Human Impacts on Weapons. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety... Continue reading→
Once Again – It’ll Cost More and Take Longer
Decades of nuclear materials production at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River Site in South Carolina have left 37 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste in 49 underground storage tanks. This is just a small part of DOE’s Cold War cleanup legacy that currently has an estimate of $360+ billion to remediate across the... Continue reading→
CMRR is Key to Expanded Plutonium Pit Production
While being narrowly correct, LANL PR man Kevin Roark is misleading when he claims [in a June 25, Letter to the Editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper] that plutonium pit production will not take place in the new Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project (CMRR). What he fails to disclose is that the... Continue reading→
Revised Estimates for Safer Gloveboxes Hurt Budget
On the heels of a GAO report made public Monday, which stated that accounting procedures used by various branches of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex are preventing NNSA from pinpointing the exact total cost of maintaining its nuclear deterrent, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has released a weekly report also showing LANL’s inability... Continue reading→
A Bargain – But At What Cost?
The Government Accounting Office (GAO) released a new report today. Actions Needed to Identify Total Costs of Weapons Complex Infrastructure and Research and Production Capabilities, GAO-10-582, June 2010 I’ll start with the conclusion – Within the global community, the Administration, and Congress, a bargain is being struck on nuclear weapons policy. Internationally, if the [START] treaty is... Continue reading→
Curating the Stockpile: Remanufacturing Fogbank
I only now happened to run across the article below from the Los Alamos National Laboratory Nuclear Weapons Journal about how the remanufacturing of Fogbank was reestablished. As dated as it is, I think its implication is very important that existing programs are more than sufficient to keep the nuclear weapons stockpile safe and reliable,... Continue reading→
Power of the Purse over DOE Projects
I was in Washington, DC last week and heard a number of congressional offices express support for the CMRR-Nuclear Facility, indicating what we already know, that it will be very difficult to defeat directly. However, the issue of costs is another matter, and I have some hope that the Nuclear Facility can die a death... Continue reading→
Three Huge New Facilities Rebuild U.S. Nuclear Weapons Production Capacity
Modern nuclear weapons are comprised of three general types of components: plutonium pit primaries, uranium/lithium secondaries that are triggered by the primaries, and the 1,000’s of non-nuclear components that create deliverable weapons of mass destruction (fuzes, radar, bomb cases, etc.). The U.S. is aggressively pursuing major new production facilities for all three types. At the... Continue reading→
A Compromised START
Nuclear Watch New Mexico is a staunch supporter of arms control treaties, particularly since they can be confidence building steps toward the long term goal of creating the nuclear weapons-free world articulated by President Obama. However, we fear that arms control treaties will be turned on their heads to become in effect armament treaties for... Continue reading→
Obama Bails Out Arms Reduction Treaty by Dramatically Increasing Nuclear Weapons Budgets
Santa Fe, NM – Yesterday President Obama submitted the new bilateral Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia to the Senate for ratification. At the same time he submitted a modernization plan required by Congress that “includes investments of $80 billion to sustain and modernize the [U.S.] nuclear weapons complex over the next decade.” Given... Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Cross-Sections
At the recent LANL Hazardous Waste Permit Hearings, the public was presented with two cross-sections of the current understanding of the geology under the Lab's largest nuclear waste disposal area, Tech Area 55. These cross sections are important because the NM Environment Department, with public input, will soon have to decide the final disposition of the over 800,000 cubic yards of radioactive and hazardous waste buried there. The options range from leaving the waste in place with some sort of cover to exhuming the waste. Continue reading→
New Nuclear Facility – An Attempt to Divide and Conquer
During our March 3, 2010 CMRR public meeting in Los Alamos, the CMRR DOE Project Manager told us the the final estimate for the CMRR Nuclear Facility was scheduled for 2014. Additionally we learned that the CMRR Project as a whole is planning to segment some of the work into smaller projects with their own separate schedules for... Continue reading→
Coghlan Report from NPT Rev Con
I’m in New York City for the first week of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference that opened today (Monday May 3). Yesterday global citizens marched from Times Square to the United Nations demanding nuclear weapons abolition. I was very moved to see ~10,000 people from ~25 countries pour into this little park across from the... Continue reading→
The CMRR-Nuclear Facility Is All About Expanding Plutonium Pit Production Capacity
In response to a question by Senator Jeff Bingaman at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on April 14, 2010, NNSA Administrator Tom D’Agostino stated “We will not make pits in the CMR replacement facility. We’ll make them in the existing older facility.” That is narrowly true, but highly misleading. In fact, the Chemistry and... Continue reading→
What the New Definition of “New” Is
On March 16 I met with a senior congressional staff members. I raised the issue of what is “new.” I specifically pointed to an earth-penetrating variant of the B61 gravity bomb (the B61-11) that was rushed to the stockpile in 1997, likely because of a perceived threat of an alleged Libyan hardened underground bioweapons facility.... Continue reading→
LANL Installing Equipment for Manufacuring 80 Plutonium Pits Per Year
The question arose at the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability meeting this week over the potential level of future pit production at LANL and the role that the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project – Nuclear Facility will play in it. See the below from the FY10-14 Supplement to the Stockpile Stewardship Plan, p. 14, under... Continue reading→
Senator Bingaman Supports More Nuclear Plants
In the January/February issue of Mother Jones magazine Mariah Blake writes that New Mexico’s Senator Bingaman aided by Lisa Murkowski (R, Alaska) has introduced legislation likely to be included in the coming climate bill that would create a Clean Energy Development Agency (CEDA) within DOE with authority to extend a ‘virtually unlimited number of loan guarantees—without... Continue reading→
TIME TO TAKE SENATOR BINGAMAN TO TASK!
When Jeff Bingaman replaced Pete Domenici as New Mexico’s senior Senator, environmentalists were pleased. But is Bingaman the new Domenici? Is he stepping into Pete’s radioactive shoes as chief procurer of pork for nuclear contractors, the environment be damned? Consider this: Bingaman’s so-called “Clean Energy” legislation sticks taxpayers with a huge financial burden to cover... Continue reading→
New Plutonium Facility Estimate Embraces $4.5 Billion
Buried in Volume 1 of the Department of Energy’s FY 2011 Congressional Budget Request are the Details of Project Cost Estimate for LANL’s proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building Replacement (CMRR) Project. (Pg.226 & 227) The Details – $164 million – The cost of the Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building (RLUOB) recently finished with... Continue reading→
DOE Fails to Make Minimum Payment on Environmental Cleanup
Last I looked, the Cold War ended 18 years ago. We won. OK, I used to think we won, but there is still a big debt that needs to be paid off before any victory party. The Department of Energy’s Agency Financial Report for Fiscal Year 2009 (Pg.52) gives some sobering figures. Even with extra... Continue reading→
Mother of Nuclear Weapons Complex Modernization speaks at Global Zero Summit
Re : Ellen Tauscher, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, addressing Global Zero Summit, Paris, February 3, 2010 The good news is there is no bad news in her speech… she basically goes rhetorical using standard mountain climbing analogy language of journeying to the summit of a world free of nuclear weapons. But... Continue reading→
Despite Non-Proliferation Pledge – $7B for Nuclear Arsenal
February 2, 2010 – Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman interviews Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch AMY GOODMAN: All forty Republican senators, as well as Joseph Lieberman, implied in a letter to Obama last month that they would block ratification of the new treaty with Russia unless he funds a, quote, “modern” warhead and new facilities at... Continue reading→
Obama’s New Budget Increases Funding for Nuclear Weapons Production Facilities; Cuts Dismantlements
In the new budget request for 2011 the Obama Administration proposes to freeze discretionary domestic spending for programs such as education, nutrition, air traffic control and national parks for three years while dramatically increasing funding for new US nuclear weapons production facilities. Meanwhile the proposed budget for dismantling warheads retired from the stockpile is down... Continue reading→
Meet the Nuke Boss, Just Like the Old Boss!
While Obama’s rhetoric soars toward a grand nuclear weapons-free world, his Office of Management and Budget is getting ready to ask Congress for a 10% increase in research and production? Apparently our president is preemptively surrendering to the 40 Republican senators +1 (“independent” Lieberman) that demanded linkage of ratification of a new Strategic Arms Reduction... Continue reading→
Kansas City (Nuke Plant) Blues
Some pertinent points on the new Kansas City Plant, prompted by the Kansas City Star article: • Groundbreaking will probably be sometime after March given that final private financing still has to be found. • However, groundbreaking for a major new U.S. nuclear weapons production plant, costing $4.76 billion to build and operate over its... Continue reading→
Sandia Claims Technology Supports the CTBT While Modernizing Weapons
Above its masthead the hard copy 12/4/09 Sandia Lab News has a cool NNSA/DoD “W76-1/MK4A” badge with a black submarine and a vertical warhead above it with a slanted trident across it. MK4A is the reentry vehicle for the W76. The sub, of course, is a Trident submarine. To summarize some points: • It states... Continue reading→
Update – Lab Shipment Scare at Sunport
Phil Parker at the Journal gives an update. The package was labeled “explosives” on the inside, so the cargo handlers were rightfully concerned when their alarms went off. The cargo facility was closed for about four hours during the incident. It was reported that , “The containers are usually shipped via ground transportation but sometimes,... Continue reading→
Lab Tries To Ship Explosives on Commercial Airline
KOB TV 4 broke the story and is still has the only account as best as I can tell. Read report and see video here. Los Alamos National Laboratory sent an 8’ package labeled “explosives” to the Sunport to be flown to California on Southwest Airlines (where bags fly free). A sensor alarm alerted the... Continue reading→
Lab’s Cyber Security Still Not Trustworthy
A GAO Report released Friday the 13th found that “significant information security control weaknesses remain on LANL’s classified computer network. LANL had vulnerabilities in several critical areas, including (1) identifying and authenticating the identity of users, (2) authorizing user access, (3) encrypting classified information, (4) monitoring and auditing compliance with security policies, and (5) maintaining... Continue reading→
Complete excavation of Area G now estimated at only $9.1 billion
Q: How much does it cost to cleanup a 65-acre, 50-year-old, nuclear weapons laboratory unlined dump full of low-level radioactive waste (LLW), radioactively contaminated infectious waste, asbestos contaminated material, transuranic waste, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and much more? A: About 8 years of the Lab’s nuclear weapons activities budget. First, define cleanup. (Closure is the better... Continue reading→
What NIF Might Do?
Speaking for myself, I will grudgingly concede that NIF has succeeded in its real mission of ensuring that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory survives as a nuclear weapons lab Continue reading→
Operations at Plutonium Facility stood down due to fire suppression system
In the latest of a string of fire system deficiencies on Wednesday September 30th, LANL management declared the fire suppression system inoperable in PF-4 at TA-55. Facility activities were placed in stand-by mode, which were still stood down as of three weeks later on Oct. 23rd. DNFSB explained that the stand down was based on... Continue reading→
(Un)Reliable Replacement Rationale
The rationale for the new Kansas City Plant was originally predicated upon extensive production of new Reliable Replacement Warheads and Life Extension Programs involving existing nuclear weapons numbering in the 1,000’s. Continue reading→
Los Alamos Director Anastasio’s Two Hats
Apparently the National Nuclear Security Administration reimburses Los Alamos National Security LLC (LANS) $397,341 for LANL Director Anastasio’s salary. Then LANS LLC pays him another $400K to promote the NNSA agenda from which LANS LLC derives a profit. During all this time Anastasio also acts as President of the for profit LANS (for which he gets a combined total of $800K). Continue reading→
Weapons Lab Director Paid Double the Salary of Nobel Peace Prize-Winning President Obama
Santa Fe, NM – On December 10 President Barack Obama will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway for his beginning efforts to abolish nuclear weapons. The President is paid $400,000 a year for running the country. Michael Anastasio, the Director of the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in northern New Mexico, is paid... Continue reading→
Hikers, dogs found inside the fence
Summary Report of Occurrences Reviewed From October 26 – 30, 2009 Near Miss – • NA – Los Alamos National Laboratory (Significance Category 3). On October 22, a Water Quality sampling crew discovered two hikers with three dogs at Technical Area 68 (TA-68) during High Explosive (HE) Operations. The hikers were instructed to exit DOE...