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| | | published Wednesday, April 08, 2009 | 6111 Views :: 1 Comments |
FOR RELEASE, April 8, 2009 Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505-989-7342 cell 505.920.7118 jay@nukewatch.org
Transforming the U.S. Strategic Posture and Weapons Complex
For Transition to a Nuclear Weapons-Free World
“…as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act... So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009, Prague, Czech Republic.
Washington, DC - - Today, April 8th, in the nation’s capital, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network released a major report outlining how the President’s vision of a nuclear weapons-free world can begin to be concretely realized in the near-term. First, the United States must declare that its strategic stockpile exists for only one purpose — to deter the use of nuclear weapons by others until the world is free of nuclear weapons. For that interim deterrence, a total stockpile of 500 warheads is more than sufficient, and the nuclear weapons complex can be downsized from eight sites to three.
Maintaining a Potent Deterrence
The U.S. stockpile has been extensively tested. Further, recent lifetime studies have shown it to be even more reliable than previously thought. The stockpile can be maintained through a nuts-and-bolts “curatorship” program, instead of the expensive and speculative “Stockpile Stewardship” Program that erodes confidence by intentionally introducing changes to existing nuclear weapons. Under a minimalist (but still extremely potent) nuclear deterrent, U.S. strategic forces can be progressively reduced step-by-step and the weapons complex downsized accordingly, in alignment with the President’s stated national goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Re-focusing Research Critical for the 21st Century
Our plan is the plan that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under the Bush Administration should have proposed for its misnamed “Complex Transformation” – but did not. NNSA’s archaic plan is dead on arrival in the Obama Administration, while our plan sets a reasonable path for 21st Century security on which the U.S. can and should embark. Our plan takes the Lawrence Livermore Lab out of nuclear weapons programs and directs it toward the energy, environmental and global climate change research that our country so desperately needs. It also ends NNSA control of the Sandia Lab in California and the Nevada Test Site by 2012, and ends weapons work at the Kansas City Plant by 2015. As the arsenal is reduced toward 500 warheads, the Savannah River Site near Aiken, SC, and then the Y-12 Site near Oak Ridge, TN, would also cease to be part of the nuclear weapons complex.
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Obama Envisions World Free of Nuclear Weapons | |
| | published Tuesday, April 07, 2009 | 763 Views :: 0 Comments |
Listen to this segment
Barack Obama in a speech on Sunday, envisioned a “world without nuclear weapons,” committing the US to complete nuclear disarmament. In his speech, delivered in Prague, Obama promised to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. His speech came only hours after a report that North Korea launched a “multi-stage rocket” many fear could be capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. A day earlier Obama met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to discuss a new bi-lateral treaty on reducing the two countries’ arsenals. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, Russia and the United States together possess the majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, with nearly 10,000 warheads deployed between the two. Obama’s position was lauded by nuclear disarmament advocates around the world, including in Japan, the only country to have been struck with nuclear weapons. His position is a complete about-turn from the Bush administration, which had defied any attempt at nuclear disarmament. Even former President Clinton withheld the US’s right to respond with nuclear force to chemical, biological, and even conventional weapons.
GUEST: Susan Gordon, Director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
For more information, visit www.nuclearweaponsfree.org, www.ananuclear.org.
Watch the entire video of President Obama’s speech in Prague here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwYzAp7QV3U
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2009 Fact Sheet Plutonium "Triggers" for Nuclear Bombs | |
| | published Monday, February 23, 2009 | 724 Views :: 0 Comments |
Plutonium pits — carefully fabricated spheres of metal — and high explosives are the “triggers” for modern thermonuclear weapons. The U.S. manufactured pits at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver until 1989, when the FBI raided the facility to investigate environmental crimes, effectively ending industrial-scale plutonium pit production.
Download 2009 Fact Sheet: Pits5 final.pdf
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| | | published Tuesday, February 17, 2009 | 6137 Views :: 1 Comments |
What happens to the U.S. arsenal if we don’t do life extensions?
Practically speaking, essentially nothing. DOE has never identified an
uncorrectable aging issue in the nuclear arsenal that would compromise
the ability of weapons to “function as designed.” Eventually,
surveillance may discover an aging anomaly that would call a warhead ’s
reliability into question. By then, the U.S. should be retiring
warheads as it meets its obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty.
In contrast, DOE asserts the only viable alternative to life extension
for current warheads is building new bombs—the Reliable Replacement
Warheads. Whether by LEP or the RRW
program, planning for maintenance of a modernized nuclear arsenal for
many decades to come is contrary to our Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
(NPT) disarmament obligation.
-From ANA's 2008 DC Days Fact Sheet
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| | | published Tuesday, February 17, 2009 | 3400 Views :: 0 Comments |
Congress refused to fund production of the last two new nuclear warheads proposed by DOE—the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (“Bunker Buster”) and the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). At the same time, DOE is making an end run around the Congressional rejection of new nuclear weapons by modifying the W76 through its Life Extension Program.
The FY 2008 LEP budget is $234 million; for FY 2009: $211 million. The decrease reflects the completion of the B61 LEP, but the W76 LEP is now ramping up. Additional monies may be included in other parts of the DOE budget.
DOE just finished a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for “Complex Transformation.” The estimated cost for refurbishing the nuclear weapons complex is more than $150 billion. Despite claims that the overall “footprint” of the complex will be reduced, the eight production sites will all add manufacturing facilities in order to construct new design nuclear weapons. This plan is in addition to the current Life Extension programs which are already in place and the Stockpile Stewardship Programs that annually certify that the nuclear arsenal is safe and secure.
-From ANA's 2008 DC Days Fact Sheet
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| | | published Tuesday, February 17, 2009 | 3414 Views :: 1 Comments |
Under Life Extension Programs, DOE plans to upgrade every type of nuclear warhead in the planned United States arsenal. Upgrades have already been done on the W87 warhead and are nearing completion on the B61.
Upgrades of the W76 warhead are slated to begin in 2008. Modifications to the W76 are so extensive that it is being given a new number: the W76-1/Mk4A. A new fuse that allows for a ground burst capability and strongly improved accuracy for the reentry vehicle fundamentally change the military application of this Trident submarine warhead—it can now be used on “hard targets.” The Bush Administration recently decided to convert 2,4000 W76 warheads to W76-Is.
Congress refused to fund production of the last two new nuclear warheads proposed by DOE—the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (“Bunker Buster”) and the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). It seems DOE is now making an end run around the Congressional rejection of new nuclear weapons by modifying the W76 through its Life Extension Program.
-From ANA's 2008 DC Days Fact Sheet
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| | | published Friday, November 21, 2008 | 3136 Views :: 0 Comments |
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a network of 36 local, regional and national organizations representing the concerns of communities in the shadows of the U.S. nuclear weapons sites, finds that the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Final Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (SPEIS) did not adequately address comments submitted during the NEPA process. During that time more than 120,000 comments were submitted, most requesting that the final records of decision be delayed until a new nuclear posture review was conducted; that the nuclear weapons complex not support the development of new or modified nuclear weapons; that the role of the Kansas City Plant be included in the SPEIS; and that the NNSA support “curatorship” of the stockpile as a reasonable programmatic alternative. All of these issues are left unresolved in the Final SPEIS.
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| | | published Tuesday, October 28, 2008 | 1934 Views :: 0 Comments |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 28, 2008
Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch, 505.989.7342, cell: 505.920.7118, jay@nukewatch.org
Defense Sec. Robert Gates Declares Reducing Nuclear Weapons
Not Possible Without Building New Design Weapons
Santa Fe, NM: Today, exactly one week before the November 4 presidential elections, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a strong pitch for new-design nuclear weapons, the so-called Reliable Replacement Warheads (RRWs), which the Bush Administration has repeatedly pushed for. In August 2007 the candidate now projected as the frontrunner for the presidency, Barack Obama declared, “I believe the United States should lead the international effort to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons around the world. I also believe that our policy towards the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) affects this leadership position. We can maintain a strong nuclear deterrent to protect our security without rushing to produce a new generation of warheads. I do not support a premature decision to produce the RRW.”
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| | | published Friday, October 24, 2008 | 5951 Views :: 5 Comments |
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
A national network of organizations working to address issues of
nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup
For further information, contact: Susan Gordon: 505-577-8438
Nickolas Roth: 202-544-0217
For immediate release: , October 23, 2006
On Friday, October 24, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability admonished the Department of Energy (DOE) for recommendations in a newly released report mapping out the future of nuclear weapons production in the United States.
The report titled, Final Complex Transformation Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, drew unprecedented attention last year as part of a legally required public comment period in which more than 100,000 letters were sent to DOE opposing their plan to revamp the industrial infrastructure responsible for building and maintaining nuclear weapons. The plan referred to as “the Bombplex,” would ensure an indefinite reliance on nuclear weapons.
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2008 Sample Complex Transformation Action Alert | |
| | published Friday, October 24, 2008 | 454 Views :: 0 Comments |
Stop the Bombplex!
Bombplex = Nuclear Bombs Forever
The Department of Energy's (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) wants to refurbish the industrial infrastructure responsible for building and maintaining nuclear weapons. DOE originally called this plan Complex 2030; they have now changed the name to Complex Transformation. We are calling it the Bombplex because it will ensure that the U.S. continues building new nuclear weapons indefinitely. The Bombplex is expensive ($150 billion) and dangerous.
Bombplex = Proliferation
Among other things, the Bombplex will give DOE the capacity to build new nuclear weapons. This will hinder international non-proliferation initiatives and cripple international nuclear disarmament efforts. If the DOE is designing new nuclear weapons and improving its ability to make them, the U.S. will not be able to convince other countries to abandon their nuclear weapons programs. "Do as we say, not as we do" is not good foreign policy. The Bombplex will result in more countries with nuclear weapons and ultimately jeopardize national security.
Help Stop the Bombplex: No Nukes is Good Nukes!
In accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), DOE has just released their final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement which maps out their plan for the Bombplex. There is still a brief window where DOE is required to accept and consider comments on the Bombplex. This is your chance to be part of a growing movement! More than 120,000 comments have already been submitted-a record for DOE! Tell your government to abandon their Bombplex plan and instead work towards eliminating nuclear weapons.
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