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 Wednesday, July 13, 2011 | 532 Views |
July 13, 2011
By John Fleck From the Albuquerque Journal
The Department of Energy claimed success when it used $172 million in stimulus money to create jobs for radioactive waste shipment crews, but there wasn’t always enough work for them to do.
According to an internal Energy Department investigation, the extra money for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant was used to hire about 400 workers with the intent of increasing the radioactive waste shipment rate.
But despite the additional manpower, the shipment rate fell far short of the promised goal.
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| | | published Monday, July 11, 2011 | 862 Views |
July 11, 2011
BY Tony Rutherford
From the Huntington News
HUNTINGTON, WV (HNN) – Depending upon your degree of ‘trust’ in government agencies, the revelations about dangers at the former Huntington uranium processing plant and the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant either border on disrespect or symbolize how the truth slowly ebbs out exposing even the best planned cover up.
Actually, Piketon, Ohio, atomic plant workers such as Owen Thompson and Vina Colley joined the ranks of whistleblowers long ago which eventually led to the unraveling of decades of denial.
Thompson had a special security clearance. He worked in the “E Area” of the huge diffusion facility. Between 1978-1979, he just followed order by driving a hay wagon to some already dug trenches. When the contents were dumped, he saw a green goo. Thompson also observed that the wagons , trucks and other tools were entombed.
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| | | published Friday, June 24, 2011 | 790 Views |
June 24, 2011
By Rob Pavey
The Augusta Chronicle
It could be decades before technology advances to the
level where large-scale recycling or reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel
could replace the need for a permanent, safe repository, according to a
subcommittee of President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission.The draft report, issued today, comes at a time when
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is gathering information on how to
license commercial reprocessing facilities that—at least in
theory—could be housed within federal facilities such as Savannah River
Site.
Economic development groups have touted SRS as a
potential site for a reprocessing program, which would bring the benefit
of jobs and money with such a new mission. However, reprocessing could
also bring more nuclear waste to South Carolina.
Under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the U.S.
Energy Department became responsible for finding disposal solutions for
spent nuclear fuel. In addition to 70,000 tons of spent fuel stored in
dozens of sites, the nation’s 104 commercial power reactors are
generating an additional 2,000 tons each year.
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| | | published Friday, June 24, 2011 | 492 Views |
June 24, 2011
By John Upton
New York Times
The world’s most-ambitious nuclear experiments have escalated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Federal researchers there are seeking to fuse some of the lightest atoms
in the universe to study — and hopefully harness — the type of energy
produced by hydrogen bombs and the sun.
The tests were delayed six months while safety devices were installed to
protect workers from radiation at the National Ignition Facility, a
stadium-sized laboratory that contains 192 lasers trained on a target
the size of a BB. The goal is to generate temperatures of more than 100
million degrees to fuse hydrogen atoms and release nuclear energy.
Scientists describe this process, which they hope to achieve next year, as the creation of a miniature star on earth.
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| | | published Monday, May 23, 2011 | 720 Views |
May 21, 2011
By Joni Arends and Robert H. Gilkeson From the Santa Fe New Mexican
The future of the nuclear-weapons complex is the topic for important public hearings this week about the proposed nuclear facility (Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement project) at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The question is whether our communities want to take on the new burden of a proposed $6 billion nuclear facility with an annual manufacturing capability of 50 to 80 plutonium triggers that would store six metric tons of plutonium, that would be in an active and poorly understood seismic zone, in a wildfire area, above the Río Grande — a drinking-water supply for Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
Four public hearings are scheduled: Monday, May 23 in Albuquerque; Tuesday, May 24 in Los Alamos; Wednesday, May 25 in Española; and Thursday, May 26 in Santa Fe. The hearings will begin at 5 p.m. and continue until everyone has spoken. Exact locations are available at: http://nnsa.energy.gov/nepa/cmrrseis
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| | | published Friday, May 20, 2011 | 1008 Views |
May 18, 2011
By the Oregonian Editorial Board
Plutonium was made in a reactor near the Columbia River, and it powered the nuclear bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945. In weapons work that lasted through the 1980s and would involve several reactors, radioactive materials were spilled onto the ground and into trenches and, over time, into tanks rotting underground. The 586-square-mile southeast Washington site is already tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into a near-impossible cleanup -- the largest in the world -- and has little chance of being completed anytime before 2050. Now the Northwest has a new Hanford challenge.
The U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees the cleanup, names Hanford as a candidate site for becoming the nation's radioactive dumping ground -- a permanent storage site not for spent nuclear fuel but for radioactive parts of decommissioned nuclear plants, mainly from Midwestern and Eastern states, as well as radioactive castoffs from medical and research processes nationwide.
This is a bad idea. It runs counter to everything that Oregon and Washington, Northwest tribes and health advocates have sought to achieve in taming a Hanford nuclear beast that menaces underground water, the Columbia River, and human and wildlife populations nearby. And the mission of our cleanup remains singular: Find the money and invent the technologies it will take to process and contain substances so radioactive they take thousands of years to lose potency.
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| | | published Tuesday, May 17, 2011 | 919 Views |
By Donald Bradley and Lynn Horsley
From The Kansas City Star
Too late to stand in front of bulldozers, an anti-nuke group has
presented a petition to try to defuse a bomb component plant going up in
south Kansas City.
Voters could see a proposed initiative on the ballot in November.
The petition does not seek to halt construction at the billion-dollar
Honeywell campus at Botts Road and Missouri 150. Instead, it would
divert the plant from its intended use to “green energy” manufacturing.
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| | | published Tuesday, May 17, 2011 | 2547 Views |
For immediate release: May 11, 2011
Contacts: Rachel MacNair, rachel_macnair@yahoo.com; Ann Suellentrop, annsuellen@gmail.com
Some 4,959 KC voters have signed a petition to prohibit the city’s involvement in supporting production of parts for nuclear weapons and instead to recommend support for green-energy jobs. Putting the petitionon the Nov. 8 ballot requires 3,572 verified signatures.
The KC Peace Planters* will sponsor a news conference about the petitiontomorrow, May 12, in Ilus Davis Park at 9th and Locust at 12:30 p.m. The petition focuses on the new nuclear weapons plant being constructed on Mo. Hwy. 150 between Botts Road and Prospect Avenue, close to Grandview. The new plant is designed to replace the current Kansas City Plant at Bannister Federal Complex. After the news conference, the KC Peace Planters will march to City Hall to deliver the signed copies of the petition (see below).
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| | | published Thursday, May 05, 2011 | 763 Views |
April 30, 2011
By John Severance
From the Los Alamos Monitor
POJOAQUE - It was evident about halfway through the public comment
session Thursday night that not too many people were in favor of the
Department of Energy wanting to build a nuclear disposal facility in Los
Alamos or anywhere in New Mexico.
In fact, one New Mexico resident had another alternative.
"Build an above grade vault on the Mall at Washington, D.C. and mandate
that all waste be sent there," said Stuart Barger, who said he lives
downwind from Los Alamos. "Make sure to use trucks and ship it there
during a Congressional session."
The remarks drew laughs and applause from the majority of the crowd at
the Cities of Gold conference room, but this was still serious business
for all those in attendance.
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| | | published Thursday, May 05, 2011 | 2470 Views |
For Immediate Release: May 5, 2011
Contact: Scott Kovac, Nuclear Watch NM (505) 989-7342, scott@nukewatch.org
Joni Arends, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (505) 986-1973, jarends@nuclearactive.org
Susan Gordon, Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (505) 473-1670, sgordon@ananuclear.org
Santa Fe- Following the release this week of the Department of Energy's
(DOE) draft Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement
Project-Nuclear Facility Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement
thirty non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from New Mexico and around
the country wrote to DOE calling for three additional public hearings,
and an extension of 75 days for the comment period past the proposed
June 13 Deadline. New Mexico Senators and Representatives have been
approached for assistance with the requests.
Because billions of dollars will be needed for the proposed construction
of a Nuclear Facility, funding for the nuclear weapons complex and the
CMRR–NF in particular has been a central focus of a significant national
debate. Currently only three public hearings are scheduled for Los
Alamos, Espanola and Santa Fe, beginning May 24. The letter demands
additional public hearings in Albuquerque, Taos, and Washington, DC.
Citing the growth in project size, construction options and complexity,
and the overlapping conflict with another DOE public hearing process,
the NGOs insist it is absolutely necessary for NNSA to grant a 75-day
extension for the comment period
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