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| | | published Monday, December 19, 2011 | 672 Views :: 0 Comments |
December 17, 2011
From the Associated Press
The compromise budget bill approved by the U.S. House on Friday slashes funding for and prohibits any site preparation work on a controversial new $6 billion nuclear facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The spending bill appropriates $200 million for the project this fiscal year, $100 million less than the administration had requested. It also notes that “no construction activities are funded for the project this year,” and calls for a new report on the country’s capability for manufacturing “pits,” or the cores that power nuclear weapons.
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| | | published Monday, December 12, 2011 | 865 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following article discusses the Hanford, WA nuclear waste treatment plant that ANA has long been concerned about. The article examines retaliation against Walt Tamosaitis, a whistleblower who ANA recognized at our 2011 DC Days awards reception. The piece also quotes ANA member, Tom Carpenter, a long-time Hanford watchdog.
December 11, 2011
By Shannon Dininny
From the Associated Press
The federal government says a one-of-a-kind plant that will convert radioactive waste into a stable and storable substance that resembles glass will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more and may take longer to build, adding to a string of delays and skyrocketing price tag for the project.
In addition, several workers at southeast Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation have raised concerns about the safety of the plant's design — and complained they've been retaliated against for voicing their issues.
The turmoil has some in the Pacific Northwest uneasy about the plant's long-term viability and fearful that a frustrated Congress could balk at paying more money for a project long considered the cornerstone of cleanup at the highly contaminated site.
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| | | published Friday, December 09, 2011 | 531 Views :: 0 Comments |
Representative Edward J. Markey U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 December 8, 2011 Dear Rep. Markey, On behalf of our 47 organizations and the members that we represent, we would like to express our gratitude to you for your principled call for reducing the amount of money that our country spends on nuclear weapons and related programs. In the letter that you signed on October 11 to the Supercommittee members about this issue, you expressed a view that—based on moral, security and fiscal grounds—our country can no longer justify current levels of spending on nuclear weapons programs. We endorse that position.
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| | | published Monday, December 05, 2011 | 1038 Views :: 0 Comments |
December 1, 2011
PRESS STATEMENT
Contact:Tom Carpenter, 206-419-5829, tomc@hanfordchallenge.org
Seattle, WA: Hanford Challenge today sharply criticized a report from a team of contractorselected experts that it says downplayed the seriousness of safety culture problems at the Hanford nuclear site.
“The report is a veiled attack on safety-culture oversight. It failed to acknowledge some of the most explicit indicators of the vit plant’s flawed safety culture. There was no mention of disclosures from three important safety experts on the Waste Treatment Plant who have gone public and filed concerns about suppression of technical and safety issues and putting schedule and cost before safety,” said Tom Carpenter, Executive Director of Hanford Challenge. Carpenter noted that this includes the Manager of Nuclear and Environmental Safety, DOE’s top scientist on the project, and the former Manager for Research and Technology.
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| | | published Monday, December 05, 2011 | 754 Views :: 0 Comments |
Dec. 2, 2011
By William Hartung
From the Huffington Post
Your government is slated to spend hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade to purchase, maintain and operate our massive nuclear arsenal. The costs include everything from new nuclear bombers, submarines and bomb factories to the huge but unknown costs of deploying and maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons.
It's an outrage that we are spending this kind of money on these outmoded and unnecessary systems at a time when deficit reduction is the order of the day. It is equally outrageous that our government will not tell us exactly how much we're spending on them -- and may not even be keeping track.
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| | | published Monday, November 28, 2011 | 741 Views :: 0 Comments |
This piece quotes long-time ANA member Don Hancock as he tries to explain some of the issues involved with federally funding nuclear waste cleanup.
Nov. 25, 2011
From The Republic
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Los Alamos National Laboratory is asking the state of New Mexico for more time to meet some mandated cleanup milestones as it faces shifting priorities and uncertainty about its environmental cleanup budget.
The northern New Mexico lab would be able to speed up the shipment of radioactive waste from lab property to a permanent disposal site if allowed to shift resources to higher priority work, George Rael, head of environmental management for the federal government's Los Alamos Site Office told the Albuquerque Journal (http://bit.ly/v5Ystc ).
The changes in lab cleanup priorities come amid discussion among the state, the lab and members of the public regarding the lab's 2005 agreement on environmental cleanup milestones.
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| | | published Tuesday, November 22, 2011 | 1329 Views :: 0 Comments |
Region’s Leading Hanford Cleanup Watchdog Group Will Ask for Federal Court to Order Action to Empty Leaky High-Level Nuclear Waste Tanks to Prevent Safety and Environmental Disaster
For Immediate Release Nov. 21, 2011 Contact: Gerry Pollet, JD; Executive Director (206)382-1014 / cell: (206)819-9015 The US Department of Energy (USDOE) informed Washington State today that it is not able to meet the court approved schedule it agreed to in October, 2010 for building the massive plant to turn liquid High-Level Nuclear Waste in leaky tanks at Hanford into a glass, referred to as the Vitrification Plant. Heart of America Northwest, the region’s leading Hanford Clean-Up watchdog group had objected to the highly publicized court settlement in 2010 between the USDOE and State, under which the USDOE was allowed to take an extra 22 years – to the year 2040 - to empty massive leaky, decades old, Single Shell Tanks of High Level Nuclear Waste in exchange for what USDOE and Washington State said would be a court enforceable schedule to build the Vitrification Plant.
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| | | published Friday, November 18, 2011 | 816 Views :: 0 Comments |
Nov 18, 2011
By John Fleck
From the Albuquerque Journal
Members of a federal safety panel meeting in Santa Fe on Thursday expressed impatience with federal efforts to reduce nuclear safety risks at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“We’re a little frustrated,” said Peter Winokur, chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
Winokur’s comments came during a public hearing at the convention center probing nuclear safety at the lab’s current facilities, emergency preparedness and plans for new buildings at the nuclear weapons design and manufacturing center.
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| | | published Thursday, November 17, 2011 | 598 Views :: 0 Comments |
Nov 17, 2011
By John FleckFrom the Albuquerque Journal
Seismic upgrades to the building at Los Alamos National Laboratory used for plutonium manufacturing could cost $150 million to $300 million and take until 2020 to complete.
The spending and timeline was included in a September report from the lab’s federal managers to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which will gather today in Santa Fe for a lengthy hearing on safety at the nuclear weapons lab.
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| | | published Thursday, November 17, 2011 | 640 Views :: 0 Comments |
Nov 17, 2011From the Albuquerque Journal
Facing intense budget pressure, the U.S. Department of Energy should consider the equivalent of the military’s base closure process for its sprawling research lab complex, an internal agency review has recommended.
Two of those labs are in New Mexico, where the Department’s nuclear weapons program is a major employer.
The Department of Energy spends more money in New Mexico than any other state – $4.1 billion in 2010, the most recent year for which numbers are available. That money supports some 20,000 workers at Los Alamos and Sandia labs, where U.S. nuclear weapons are designed, manufactured and maintained.
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