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| | | published Friday, January 29, 2010 | 679 Views :: 0 Comments |
By Patrick Oppmann, CNN
January 29, 2010 8:02 a.m. EST
Hanford Nuclear Site, Washington (CNN) -- The federal government has set aside nearly $2 billion in stimulus funds to clean up Washington State's decommissioned Hanford nuclear site, once the center of the country's Cold War plutonium production.
That is more stimulus funding than some entire states have received, which has triggered a debate as to whether the money is being properly spent.
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| | | published Friday, January 29, 2010 | 493 Views :: 0 Comments |
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
January 27, 2010
http://www.hanfordnews.com/news/2010/story/14707.html
RICHLAND -- Speakers at a public hearing Tuesday night split their comments between calling for the Fast Flux Test Facility to be saved and worries that proposed cleanup plans for Hanford would not protect the environment and human health.
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| | | published Wednesday, January 27, 2010 | 1437 Views :: 2 Comments |
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability a national network of organizations working to address issues of nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup
http://www.ananuclear.org
for further information, contact:
Nickolas Roth 914-673-6666
Susan Gordon 505-577-8438
or local contacts listed at end of advisory
for immediate release Wednesday, January 27, 2010
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN THE U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY FY 2011
NUCLEAR WEAPONS BUDGET REQUEST
The FY 2011 budget request will be released on Monday, February 1,
2010. The Obama administration has laid out an aggressive
nonproliferation agenda that includes deep reductions in nuclear
stockpiles, ratification of a nuclear test ban, and decreased
prominence for nuclear weapons in US defense policy. Despite this
agenda, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) budget request will ask
Congress to significantly increase nuclear weapons activities,
including funding for construction of new facilities that will expand
U.S. warhead production capacity. The DOE request will not reflect
recent independent scientific conclusions that existing nuclear weapons
can be reliably maintained for decades under current, well-established
programs.
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a
national network representing communities downwind and downstream from
U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, is concerned that increased funding
for nuclear energy and weapons research and production will rob
precious resources for needed environmental cleanup and clean,
sustainable energy solutions.
Items of interest:
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| | | published Monday, January 25, 2010 | 601 Views :: 0 Comments |
Published on National Catholic Reporter
by Joshua J. McElwee
The
Obama administration is moving ahead with the development of new
nuclear weapons components at three key weapons facilities at the same
time it is conducting a sweeping review of U.S. nuclear weapons
policies that could lead to further slashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
For
the moment, U.S. nuclear weapons policies appear to be running in
contrary directions, and while some critics of U.S. nuclear policy are
cautiously optimistic, they are also worried President Obama’s nuclear
disarmament vision is not yet being supported by concrete policy
actions.
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| | | published Friday, January 22, 2010 | 342 Views :: 0 Comments |
Beyond Nuclear Bulletin
January 21, 2010
“The Hidden and Not-So-Hidden Costs
of Entergy’s Vermont Yankee”
Background:
Despite assuring the State of Vermont for more than a year that it had
no buried pipes carrying radioactivity, Entergy Nuclear’s Vermont
Yankee reactor has revealed it is leaking radioactive tritium, almost
certainly from underground pipes that it now admits do exist. In fact,
Vermont Yankee has even announced the discovery of “highly radioactive
water,” 50 times more radioactive than would be allowed in drinking
water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Nuclear expert Arnie
Gundersen has made clear that Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee has indeed
lied about the existence of buried pipes over the course of many months.
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| | | published Thursday, January 14, 2010 | 357 Views :: 0 Comments |
KC breaks silence about environment
http://www.unews.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&uStory_id=9b342a90-2271-4cac-bdaf-484d476624e6
By: Alexia Lang
Posted: 1/11/10
Consider the silence broken in Kansas City.
Several
hundred Kansas Citians gathered Jan. 8-9 at the Reardon Convention
Center in Kansas City, Kan. for the third annual Breaking the Silence
Environmental Conference.
Organized by Building a Sustainable
Earth Community, the theme for the conference this year was how health
and the environment connect.
Richard Mabion, founder of the
conference and popular voice on KKFI, said the conference is about
making connections with other people who are passionate and
knowledgeable.
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| | | published Wednesday, January 06, 2010 | 753 Views :: 0 Comments |
Wall Street Journal Article Makes Ill Advised Recommendations on the Future of Nuclear Weapons
Yesterday,
the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed supporting recommendations
made in a letter sent to the President by 40 Republican Senators and Senator Joe Lieberman. The op-ed supports construction of new
facilities and new warheads. The following is ANA’s analysis of the
letter:
Modernization takes focus away from investments in nuclear weapons complex expertise that actually do need to be made.
- Verification: The national nuclear laboratories can uniquely develop
technologies that will contribute to detecting nuclear tests around the
world and facilitate verification of nuclear weapons reductions under
arms control treaties with Russia.
- Safeguards: The national
laboratories can improve technologies to detect diversion for military
purposes of nuclear power technology or materials in countries without
nuclear weapons.
- Dismantlement: The Labs can increase the rate of
dismantlement (process by which nuclear warheads are removed from the
stockpile, disassembled, and disposed of) to support permanent
reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
- Threat reduction at the
source: Consolidation, reduction and elimination of stockpiles of
nuclear weapon and nuclear weapons-usable materials where these
materials are produced and stored worldwide. Increasing funding for
these efforts advances U.S. ability to reduce and lock down vulnerable
nuclear materials and reduces the risk of nuclear terrorism
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| | | published Monday, December 21, 2009 | 796 Views :: 0 Comments |
The Modernization of the US Nuclear Weapons Complex in Light of the Renewal of the START Treaty
December 16, 2009
The United States nuclear stockpile of more than 2,000 warheads is
safe, secure and reliable; over the next ten years, the number of
warheads in our deployed stockpile will drop by twenty-five to thirty
percent, and both the US and Russia have indicated these reductions are
only a first step toward deeper reductions. Even so, as long as the US
relies on a nuclear deterrent, the need for confidence in our arsenal
increases as the number of warheads in our arsenal decreases. The
recently released JASON report on Stockpile Stewardship indicates that
the US stockpile is, at present, safe, secure and reliable. That is the
starting point for the discussion about new warhead production
facilities.
The current nuclear weapons complex is comprised of
eight facilities spread across the southern United States, from
Lawrence Livermore in California to Savannah River in South Carolina.
At three of these sites, the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons
wing, the National Nuclear Security Administration, has major new
facilities on the drawing board, and in the budget. These facilities,
if they are built, will expand the United States’ capacity to design
and build new nuclear weapons.
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| | | published Friday, December 11, 2009 | 1217 Views :: 0 Comments |
Associated Press - December 10, 2009
LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) - A federal report says improper accounting practices at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have hidden $80 million in additional costs for a new facility dedicated in May.
The National Ignition Facility studies nuclear fusion, which could provide the country with another clean energy source (sic). The October report by the National Nuclear Security Administration says the facility is not contributing its fair share to the overall running of Lawrence lab in accordance with federal accounting standards. That means other departments have been left to pick up the tab, which amounts to about $80 million in this fiscal year alone.
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| | | published Thursday, December 10, 2009 | 958 Views :: 0 Comments |
December 10, 2009
Originally Appeared here
LIVERMORE – An internal U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) study details how managers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) shifted costs to understate total spending on the controversial National Ignition Facility (NIF) mega-laser. The previously secret document, released today by the nuclear watchdog group Tri-Valley CAREs, pegs the current hidden costs of NIF at $80 million annually.
"Livermore Lab is systematically disguising the true costs of the NIF," charged Tri-Valley CAREs' executive director, Marylia Kelley. "When calculated over the life of the project, these hidden costs total more than $2 billion." Kelley continued, "This illegal scheme circumvents the United States Congress, which sets NIF's budget each year, and violates our nation's most basic federal contracting laws."
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