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| | | published Tuesday, February 15, 2011 | 1691 Views :: 0 Comments |
February 15, 2011
By Frank Munger
From the Knoxville News Sentinel
WASHINGTON - The 2012 outlook for Oak Ridge National Laboratory isn't so bad, given that President Barack Obama's proposed budget released Monday calls for the shutdown of the Holifield research accelerator and reflects other belt-tightening measures that Energy Secretary Steven Chu said were a commitment to fiscal responsibility.
Overall, the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, which is just a proposal at this point and still must pass through congressional appropriations, supports science in key lab programs and would sustain ORNL's spending level of recent years at about $1.4 billion.
But it's not the 2012 budget that's got ORNL Director Thom Mason worried - and he's plenty worried. It's what could take place in the remainder of 2011.
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| | | published Thursday, February 10, 2011 | 3567 Views :: 1 Comments |
For immediate release, February 9, 2011
For further information:
Susan Gordon (505) 577-8438
The Obama Administration’s FY 2012 budget request is slated
to be released on Monday, February 14, 2011. Despite pledging to reduce
the U.S. nuclear stockpile in the recently ratified New START treaty,
the Department of Energy (DOE) will likely ask Congress for
significantly more funds for nuclear weapons activities, including
expanding U.S. warhead production capacity, while nonproliferation
programs are allowed to stagnate. The DOE request will not reflect
recent scientific conclusions that existing nuclear weapons can be
reliably maintained for decades under current programs or the
President’s stated goal of global nuclear weapons reductions.
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| | | published Friday, January 14, 2011 | 811 Views :: 0 Comments |
January 9, 2011 From Chatanoogan.com
Over 20 organizations, including the Tennessee Environmental Council, Citizens to End Nuclear Dumping in Tennessee, and the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance are calling for public adjudicatory hearings on a proposal to import worldwide radioactive waste to burn in Tennessee.
Utah-based EnergySolutions is applying to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) bring nuclear waste from Eckert and Ziegler Nuclitec, a German company, which, according to its website, collects radioactive wastes from all over the world.
If approved by NRC, the radioactive waste would be shipped into and throughVirginia to Oak Ridge, where EnergySolutions would incinerate it.
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| | | published Monday, January 03, 2011 | 1603 Views :: 0 Comments |
From the Santa Fe New Mexican By Roger Snodgrass
December 22nd, 2010
The U.S. Senate's ratification Wednesday of a disarmament treaty with Russia paves the way for a dramatic budget boost in the nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The New Start agreement between the two major nuclear powers in the world established new numeric limits and procedures for reducing and verifying strategic nuclear weapons.
Seven days of debate capped a year of deliberations in which the deteriorating infrastructure of the national weapons laboratories was a consistent theme.
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| | | published Monday, December 21, 2009 | 2394 Views :: 2 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 Monday, December 07, 2009 | 2564 Views :: 0 Comments |
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, Federation of American Scientists & the Bipartisan Security Group
Invite you to briefings
The New START Treaty: What Next for the Nuclear Weapons Infrastructure?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 10:00 am – 11:00 am, Senate Dirksen G11
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 1 pm – 2:00 pm, Rayburn B340
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Hans Bethe Center, 322 Fourth St. NE
With
Ambassador Robert Grey
Director, Bipartisan Security Group
Former US Representative to the
Conference on Disarmament from 1998-2001
Ivan Oelrich, Ph. D.
Acting President, Federation of American Scientists
Former Senior Analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment
Ralph Hutchison
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
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| | | published Monday, November 09, 2009 | 3565 Views :: 3 Comments |
Seventy Nine Truckloads from Huntington’s Nickel Plant Buried
Once Radioactivity Released, You Can’t Put This 'Genie' Back in Bottle; Former Worker Alleges Plutonium Contamination
By Tony Rutherford
Huntingtonnews.net Reporter
Editor’s
Note: Vina Colley, a former worker at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion
Plant, has been one of the most outspoken workers suffering cancer and
other illnesses from their years working at the facility near
Portsmouth, Ohio. Although the interview is in a Q and A format, it
should be noted that Ms. Colley often had to stop speaking to get her
breath. Occasionally, her thoughts were completed by a member of the
clean up panel.
HNN: You worked as an electrician at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant?
VINA COLLEY: As a Second Class Electrician I worked in every building on the plant site and many of the buildings off site.
HNN: Right now, like other employees , you suffer from multiple aliments attributed to your years at the plant.
VINA
COLLEY: I have 57% lung impairment due to the chronic bronchitis. A low
immune system where I had to take gamma glammas? Before. Memory lapses.
Home oxygen. Three tumors, a total hysterectomy and skin cancer.
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| | | published Wednesday, November 04, 2009 | 3819 Views :: 11 Comments |
The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance today released a "white
paper" that analyzes the missions at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and
proposes that the Oak Ridge plant refocus its efforts entirely on
dismantlement.
"Changes in U.S. policy, concern over nuclear proliferation, and global
realities have created an environment in which the power of arguments
for a new production facility has eroded significantly," the report,
titled The Future of Y-12, says.
Posted by Frank Munger on November 3, 2009 at 7:24 PM
The 9-page report is online at:
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/munger/y12orepa.pdf
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| | | published Wednesday, October 28, 2009 | 2352 Views :: 4 Comments |
Immediate release
October 27, 2009
DOE ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR NEW BOMB PLANT IN OAK RIDGE, TN
LONG AWAITED DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT
INCLUDES PLAN FOR $3.5 BILLION “URANIUM PROCESSING FACILITY”
TO BUILD THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
AT Y12 NATIONAL SECURITY COMPLEX
The National Nuclear Security Administration is slated to release the
long-awaited draft of the Y12 Site Wide Environmental Impact Statement
with a Notice of Availability in the Federal Register by October 30,
2009. Copies of the Y12SWEIS were sent to the NNSA’s distribution list
earlier this week and posted on the web at www.y12sweis.com
. Among the alternatives considered in the draft EIS is the siting and
construction of the Uranium Processing Facility, a new facility which
would produce thermonuclear “secondaries” out of highly enriched
uranium, lithium deuteride, beryllium and other materials.*
The New Bomb Plant
The Draft Y12SWEIS embraces a full-scale nuclear weapons production
facility capable of producing 50-80 secondaries a year, or enough
capacity to double the size of the US arsenal every 20 years, and to
maintain an enduring nuclear stockpile. The preferred alternative,
called the “Capability-sized UPF” would lead to an initial increase in
construction employment but the eventual downsizing of nearly half the
Y12 workforce and fails to address increased mission requirements for
dismantlement and disposition of retired nuclear weapons.
for more information: Ralph Hutchison 865 776 5050 | orep@earthlink.net
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| | | published Monday, August 10, 2009 | 2445 Views :: 0 Comments |
It was a relatively solemn ceremony this morning on the front lawn of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge.
Peace
activists gathered to commemorate the anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945,
atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Y-12 produced the highly
enriched uranium that was used in the Little Boy bomb.
Erik Johnson of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance said
removing the peace cranes was of no great concern. "Our prayers have
already been released," Johnson said.
Originally published on Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground: http://blogs.knoxnews.com/munger/2009/08/hiroshima_aug_6_1945.html#more
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