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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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