Compiled by leaders of groups from communities located in the shadows of U.S. nuclear weapons sites. The report card grades looks to the future and lays out an agenda for the next administration.
2008 Radioactive Report Card Grade Book
Press Release
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| | | published Friday, October 07, 2011 | 944 Views |
The following article covers part of ANA member group Georgia Women's Action for New Directions' campaign to restore environmental monitoring of nuclear sites in Georgia. Learn more about Georgia WAND's campaign for environmental justice from this 5 minute CNN clip.
Oct. 4, 2011
By Walter C. Jones Morris News Service / Augusta Chronicle
ATLANTA — A group of anti-nuclear activists held a rally on the Capitol steps Tuesday to call for the U.S. Department of Energy to resume funding Georgia’s monitoring of air and water quality for dangerous emissions from Savannah River Site.
The group, Women’s Action for New Directions, said the funding was needed as an early warning against accidental releases of nuclear hazards that could contaminate the air, crops, wildlife and private wells and raise the risk of cancer in people living in Richmond, Burke, Screven, Effingham and Chatham counties.
Dr. Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician who co-founded the group and Physicians for Social Responsibility, contended federal officials feared an objective environmental assessment because it would show that the residents of those counties would have to be relocated.
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| | | published Monday, August 29, 2011 | 1997 Views |
August 26, 2011 (after 4:30 PM)
Press Release Kansas City Peace Planters Contact: Rachel M. MacNair, Ph.D. (Plaintiff in the lawsuit), Phone: (816)753-2057 Ann Suellentrop, (913)271-7925 On the petition for “Production of Nuclear Weapons Components Prohibited,” Judge Edith Messina has granted us an order to put our measure on the ballot -- a “Preliminary Writ of Mandamus.” Being preliminary means that the hearing already scheduled for next Monday will determine whether it will become permanent, but it also means that the City Council has to defend its actions because the default position is with the petitioners. It is not simply a two-sided matter where each side presents its case and gets equal consideration.
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| | | published Monday, August 29, 2011 | 1099 Views |
The following op-ed was written by a member of New Mexico Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). PSR is a long-time Alliance for Nuclear Accountability member group and we are happy to promote their work to keep Americans safe from radioactive health threats.
Aug 25, 2011
By Dr. Robert M. Bernstein From the Albuquerque Journal Water from the Rio Grande is again pumping into faucets of Albuquerque homes (soon to be followed by Santa Fe). Unfortunately, questions remain about whether pollutants from Los Alamos National Laboratory are being flushed into the river by runoff from recent storms, following the Las Conchas Fire. Because these contaminants are so toxic, it’s essential that the water be carefully tested by an independent contractor.
While there was much publicity about the danger to some 20,000 containers of transuranic waste stored under fabric tents in Area G, little was said about the 21 million cubic feet of radioactive and chemical waste on-site (21 million cubic feet is three times the amount that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is designed to hold at capacity). This waste began during World War II, and much was buried on the mesas and canyon bottoms in unlined pits, trenches and shafts. Radioactive liquid wastes were discharged directly to the canyons, especially Acid Canyon, an offshoot of Los Alamos Canyon, which flows to the Rio Grande.
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| | | published Friday, August 26, 2011 | 688 Views |
Aug. 25, 2011
By Lynn Horsley
From The Kansas City Star
The Kansas City Council declined today to place on the November ballot a measure challenging a new weapons plant in Kansas City.
The Council’s 12-1 vote against the ballot measure sets the stage for a lawsuit by a citizens group seeking the November vote.
The group calling itself KC Peace Planters gathered enough petition signatures for a ballot measure that would prohibit the production of nuclear weapons components at a billion-dollar plant under construction at 14500 Botts Road.
They recommended that the plant be converted into a “green technology” facility.
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| | | published Sunday, August 14, 2011 | 1054 Views |
ANA has been closely monitoring the situation reported on in the following article, which quotes ANA member Tom Carpenter and refers to 2011 ANA Whistleblower Award winner Walt Tamosaitis. We've strongly been urging Congress to require complete testing of Hanford's mixers and support the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in their Hanford oversight.
Engineers and scientists say equipment being installed by Bechtel Corp. at the Hanford site in Washington state poses risks, but the Energy Department is letting work continue.
August 14, 2011
By Ralph Vartabedian
From the Los Angeles Times
The Energy Department has asserted that Bechtel Corp. underplayed safety risks from equipment it is installing at the nation's largest nuclear waste cleanup project, according to government records.
A federal engineering review team found in late July that Bechtel's safety evaluation of key equipment at the plant at the Hanford site in Washington state was incomplete and that "the risks are more serious" than Bechtel acknowledged when it sought approval to continue with construction, the documents say.
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| | | published Friday, August 05, 2011 | 783 Views |
August 4, 2011
By Lynn Horsley
The Kansas City StarA
majority of Kansas City council members sponsored a resolution today to
derail a citizens’ initiative against a new weapons plant in south
Kansas City. The resolution responds to an initiative
petition by the KC Peace Planters, who gathered enough signatures to put
a measure on the November ballot in Kansas City. The proposed ballot measure asks voters to
prevent the manufacturing of non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons
at a plant being built at 14500 Botts Road. The group would like to
turn the plant into a “green manufacturing” facility, possibly for wind
energy. But council members John Sharp and Scott
Taylor introduced a resolution today that declines to put the measure on
the November ballot. The resolution is co-sponsored by Mayor Sly James,
Mayor Pro Tem Cindy Circo and council members Jan Marcason, Dick Davis
and Scott Wagner.
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| | | published Monday, August 01, 2011 | 1000 Views |
The following op-ed was written by ANA board member Judith Mohling and published by the Colorado Daily on July 28, 2011. The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, an ANA member group that Judith works with, has been fighting for honest cleanup of the Rocky Flats site since 1986.
Jon Lipsky, former FBI agent who led the 1989 raid on Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, has said he uncovered many instances of tampering with environmental monitoring and data falsification before his investigation was cut short by federal prosecutors:
"It became apparent to me during the investigation of Rocky Flats that the Department of Energy and the Department of Justice were primarily concerned about minimizing the extent to which the public became aware of the contamination at Rocky Flats, both off site and on site."
Cut to today: Become aware. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service which now has jurisdiction over the Rocky Flats buffer zone that lies around the most contaminated center, still under Department of Energy jurisdiction, has received two bids for a 300-foot wide strip of land along the eastern (Indiana St.) edge of Rocky Flats, one bid to make the land available for construction of a portion of the proposed Jefferson Parkway, another to use the land for construction of a bikeway.
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| | | published Monday, August 01, 2011 | 935 Views |
The following Jul. 30, 2011 article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram highlights the work of ANA member group Peace Farm and quotes former ANA board member Mavis Belisle.
AMARILLO -- Deep in the Texas Panhandle, farmland sprawls as far as the eye can see, dotted by the occasional wind farm and herd of cattle. It feels like the heart of the middle of nowhere. Tucked away in the vastness is one of the nation's most heavily secured facilities, an 18,000-acre complex that houses thousands of the most dangerous weapons ever made.
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| | | published Friday, July 29, 2011 | 649 Views |
The following op-ed was written by ANA's Tom Clements and published on July 29, 2011 by South Carolina's The State newspaper. Tom is active with ANA member group Nuclear Watch South.
In 2007, the Legislature closed the Barnwell low-level radioactive-waste facility to unconstrained national access. The hard-fought victory seemed to have ended indiscriminate nuclear dumping in our state, but it may have only been a lull in the fight.
A much larger nuclear waste threat is looming. Much of the nation’s 65,000 metric tons of radioactive spent fuel now stored at reactor sites across the country could be brought to South Carolina for “interim” storage and reprocessing. The prospect of becoming the new Yucca Mountain spent-fuel dump surely will be rejected by many South Carolinians, but the federal government’s plans threaten to leave us holding the nuclear waste bag nonetheless.
A blue ribbon commission, established by President Obama in January 2010 after the unraveling of plans for a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, is charged with recommending the fate of spent fuel. Those recommendations, expected to be issued today, also will address the deadly high-level waste at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken.
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| | | published Friday, July 15, 2011 | 689 Views |
Augusta Free Press
July 14, 2011
July
16 marks the 66th anniversary of the first nuclear weapons test
explosion. The United States’ test, code-named “Trinity,” was exploded
in the desert of New Mexico and ignited the nuclear age. The bombing of
Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 were followed by some
2,050 nuclear tests worldwide, with over half (1030) conducted by the
United States. Nuclear testing has fueled the arms race, enabling varied
and ever more deadly nuclear arsenals to grow. Along the way, nuclear
testing has harmed the environment and human health worldwide.
It has now been almost 20 years since the United States last
conducted a nuclear weapons test. For most Americans, nuclear weapon
testing is not on their radar of concern. In fact, dangers of nuclear
weapons are mostly easy to ignore nowadays. When I tell people about
work on policies to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, they’re only
vaguely interested. When I try, “I’m working toward the ratification of
the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT),” I get complete
incomprehension — eyes glaze over.
For me, this is not just another wonky issue. Nuclear
nonproliferation and disarmament — specifically the CTBT — have been
compelling work for me since the late ‘80s. Then, as an intern, I
attended a press conference about efforts to achieve a permanent ban on
nuclear testing and there heard about Women Strike for Peace. Theirs is a
story that began in 1961 when it wasn’t possible to ignore dangers of
nuclear weapons.
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