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| | | published Thursday, November 03, 2011 | 1155 Views :: 0 Comments |
ANA thanks the Santa Fe Reporter for their excellent feature article on toxic waste coming from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The following article quotes several ANA members and asks "Why are we expanding weapons production and cutting corners on environmental protection?"
Nov. 2, 2011
By Wren Abbott
From the Santa Fe Reporter  In the summer of 2010, an excavator lifted a 1940s-era radiation protection suit from a pit in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Technical Area 21. With it came two pickup trucks of the same vintage—one of which may have been involved in the famous Trinity nuclear test near White Sands—and a 30-foot-tall chemical mixing tank.
The successful excavation of Material Disposal Area B, the lab’s oldest waste site, disproved a commonly held belief: that comprehensive cleanup of radioactive waste at the lab was cost-prohibitive, if not impossible. The project cleared a 200,000 square foot area and removed 750,000 cubic feet of toxic waste that had lain dormant since World War II. It cost $110 million—a modest sum for a facility with an approximately $2 billion budget.
Unfortunately, Area B is one of 24 waste sites at LANL, which in 1944 started burying everything from uranium chips to contaminated dump trucks in unlined pits. More than half of the lab’s estimated 17 million cubic feet of remaining waste lies in Area G—the only disposal site where LANL continues to dump, and one it seeks to expand. Though Area G’s fate has been bandied about for decades, it has now reached a critical turning point.
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| | | published Friday, October 14, 2011 | 1080 Views :: 0 Comments |
October 12, 2011
By Los Alamos Monitor Staff
A Record of Decision has been issued for the Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) facility Wednesday afternoon by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The new facility will consist of two buildings which will be linked by tunnels.
Sources close to the situation have indicated the decision has been made to move ahead with the project that promises to be an economic shot in the arm for the Los Alamos area at least during the construction phase of the multi-billion dollar project.
The NNSA is remaining mum on the decision, according to spokesperson Toni Chiri, who said a press release will be issued Thursday morning with details of the ROD.
“We will be spending tonight making Congressional notification,” she said.
Controversy has swirled around the project since planning for a replacement began in 1999 for the aging 550,000 square foot CMR building that was originally completed in 1952.
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| | | published Tuesday, September 13, 2011 | 1014 Views :: 0 Comments |
Sep 13, 2011
By John Fleck From the Albuquerque Journal
A pair of congressmen on the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee, including Albuquerque Democrat Martin Heinrich, are pushing to protect a proposed nuclear weapons budget increase from an increasingly likely Congressional failure to pass a federal budget Oct. 1.
In a letter Monday, Heinrich and Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, asked the Obama administration to declare an "anomaly" for the National Nuclear Security Administration's budget. NNSA is the prime funding source for Los Alamos and Sandia labs here in New Mexico, and the administration is asking for a big budget increase for the agency in the coming year.
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| | | published Friday, September 09, 2011 | 879 Views :: 0 Comments |
Sep 08, 2011
By Nickolas Roth
From the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation's Nukes of Hazard Blog
The search for federal budget savings was apparent as the Senate Appropriations Committee released its version of the fiscal year 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill on September 7. While the Committee recommended $7.19 billion for nuclear weapons programs, approximately $250 million more than the fiscal year 2011 enacted level and over $800 million more than the fiscal year 2010 enacted level, it made major strides in addressing some excessive and wasteful nuclear weapons programs.
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| | | published Friday, September 09, 2011 | 1045 Views :: 0 Comments |
By John Fleck and Michael Coleman From the Albuquerque Journal
The U.S. nuclear weapons program appears headed for another budget increase in the coming year, but it will likely be less than the Obama administration had hoped.
A key Senate committee Wednesday signaled what appears to be a bipartisan congressional consensus to put the brakes on the administration’s plans for big increases in coming years.
Members of the Democratic-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee joined their House Republican colleagues in voting to trim the administration’s requested spending hike for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons work, which provides much of the support for spending at two major national labs in New Mexico.
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| | | published Wednesday, September 07, 2011 | 818 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following article highlights the work of ANA member group Healing Ourselves and Mother Earth, including a quote from the president of our Board of Directors, John Hadder.
Sep. 6, 2011
By Launce Rake
From The Nevada View
Continued nuclear, biological and conventional weapons testing? Renewable energy experiments and commercial solar power? Expanded transport, burial and storage of radioactive waste?
These are all potential outcomes from a review and re-set of activities at the federal Nevada Test Site, now formally known as the Nevada National Security Site.
Test Site Vision, a project of Healing Ourselves & Mother Earth, a national organization working to make information on the nuclear agency open to the general public, is encouraging public participation in the Test Site’s Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement.
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| | | published Monday, August 29, 2011 | 2194 Views :: 0 Comments |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 26, 2011
Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.920.7118, jay[at]nukewatch[dot]org Santa Fe, NM - Without public notice this late Friday afternoon the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has posted online its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project (CMRR)-Nuclear Facility. While providing materials characterization and analytical chemistry for “special nuclear materials” the Nuclear Facility will be the keystone to an expanded plutonium pit production complex at Los Alamos, quadrupling the Lab’s manufacturing capability from 20 radioactive nuclear weapons cores per year to 80. The Nuclear Facility is also slated to have a vault that can hold up to six metric tons of plutonium that it will share via underground tunnels with the Lab’s plutonium pit production plant. As expected, NNSA changed little in the Final CMRR-Nuclear Facility SEIS from the draft, whose required public review period expired in July 2011. NNSA refused to revisit its 2004 decision to build the Nuclear Facility, claiming that nothing relevant had changed since then. This is despite much public comment pointing out the U.S.’ adoption of a future nuclear weapons-free world as a long-term national security goal, and repeated congressional rejections of new-design nuclear weapons and directly related expanded plutonium pit production.
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| | | published Monday, August 29, 2011 | 2184 Views :: 1 Comments |
August 26, 2011 (after 4:30 PM)
Press Release Kansas City Peace Planters Contact: Rachel M. MacNair, Ph.D. (Plaintiff in the lawsuit), Phone: (816)753-2057 Ann Suellentrop, (913)271-7925 On the petition for “Production of Nuclear Weapons Components Prohibited,” Judge Edith Messina has granted us an order to put our measure on the ballot -- a “Preliminary Writ of Mandamus.” Being preliminary means that the hearing already scheduled for next Monday will determine whether it will become permanent, but it also means that the City Council has to defend its actions because the default position is with the petitioners. It is not simply a two-sided matter where each side presents its case and gets equal consideration.
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| | | published Monday, August 29, 2011 | 1745 Views :: 0 Comments |
Press Release Kansas City Peace Planters August 26, 2011
Contact: Rachel M. MacNair, Ph.D. (Plaintiff in the lawsuit), Phone: (816)753-2057 Ann Suellentrop, (913)271-7925 At its regular legislative session August 25, the City Council voted (with only one dissenter) to keep the initiative petition entitled "Production of Nuclear Weapons Components Prohibited" off the ballot. Accordingly, we are filing today with the court for a Writ of Mandamus to safeguard our rights as citizens according to the City Charter to have it put on the November 8 ballot. All legal requirements were met:
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| | | published Thursday, August 11, 2011 | 1098 Views :: 0 Comments |
Aug. 10, 2011
By Emily Cadei
From CQ Today Online News
Nuclear weapons upgrades, one of the programs under scrutiny as part of looming defense spending cuts, got a major boost Wednesday with the appointment of Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl to the new Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.
The Arizona Republican, a longtime advocate for a robust nuclear arsenal, was one of three GOP senators named to the panel by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky. He has a track record as a champion of funding to upgrade the nuclear stockpile.
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