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| | | published Friday, February 03, 2012 | 94 Views :: 0 Comments |
Tell the Department of Energy not to put nuclear bombs in power plants!
Jan. 3, 2012
The Department of Energy (DOE) is currently accepting public comments on the scope of their upcoming Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) regarding disposing of surplus plutonium. The DOE has already held it's only public hearing for this SPEIS, but you can still make a comment until March 12th, 2012. Read the comment that ANA submitted at this hearing here.
Submit your own comment!
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| | | published Tuesday, January 31, 2012 | 133 Views :: 0 Comments |
January 29, 2012 By LeRoy Moore and Robert Del Tredici
Whether to build the Jefferson Parkway or to turn Rocky Flats into a playground, the determining factor should not be commercial or residential development. The determining factor should be hot particles of plutonium.
A hot particle of plutonium is one that can lodge in air sacs of a lung or be moved via blood elsewhere in the organism. Wherever it resides in the body it irradiates surrounding tissue. A single particle of plutonium can damage more than 10,000 cells within its range.
Nobel chemist Glenn Seaborg, who discovered plutonium in 1941, called it "fiendishly toxic, even in small amounts." Physicist Jeremy Bernstein recently declared plutonium "the world's most dangerous element."
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| | | published Monday, January 23, 2012 | 276 Views :: 0 Comments |
January 20, 2012
By Todd Jacobson From the Nuclear Weapons & Materials Monitor
With less than a month remaining before the Obama Administration’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget release, Los Alamos National Laboratory officials are bracing for what is expected to be a massive cut to its biggest project: the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility. The multi-billion-dollar project that will replace the lab’s aging Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility has come under fire in recent months, both from Congress and from government watchdog groups like the Project on Government Oversight and the Los Alamos Study Group. Although lab and NNSA officials haven’t said anything publicly about the project, lab officials are privately expecting the worst when it comes to funding for the project, which is estimated to cost between $3.7 and $5.8 billion. “We’re not expecting funding for CMRR,” one official told NW&M Monitor. “Right now, we’re planning to go without.”
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| | | published Monday, January 23, 2012 | 188 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following article tracks changing plans for constructing the Mixed Oxide Plutonium Fuel (MOX) Plant at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The article quotes ANA's Nonproliferation Policy Director Tom Clements commenting on the projects ballooning budget.
January 22, 2012
By Rob Pavey
From the Augusta Chronicle
The government’s $4.8 billion quest to rid itself of tons of high-grade plutonium from old nuclear bombs is veering in new directions this year.
The broad plan is to build a mammoth mixed oxide, or “MOX” plant at Savannah River Site, where the material will be rendered forever unusable in weapons by blending it into commercial nuclear reactor fuel.
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| | | published Monday, January 23, 2012 | 192 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following infographic was developed by the Project on Government Oversight to illustrate how many nuclear weapons and plutonium pits (the nuclear core of atomic weapons) currently our government currently holds in reserve. With so many nuclear components sitting in storage - why do we need to invest billions in producing more?
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| | | published Monday, January 23, 2012 | 107 Views :: 0 Comments |
January 19, 2012
By The Associated Press
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — An accident at the Idaho National Laboratory that exposed 16 employees to plutonium radiation could have been prevented, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Inadequate safety measures and ineffective training contributed to the November contamination and lab officials missed several opportunities to make changes, states a report released Wednesday by the Energy Department’s Office of Health, Safety and Security.
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| | | published Monday, January 23, 2012 | 255 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following feature explores problems at the Washington State nuclear Waste Treatment Plant and quotes ANA member Tom Carpenter. ANA has been tracking progress at the Waste Treatment Plant or decades and recognized whistleblower Walt Tamosaitis at our 2011 DC Days awards reception.
January 17, 2012
By H. Darr Beiser
From the USA TODAY
HANFORD SITE, Wash. – Seven decades after scientists came here during World War II to create plutonium for the first atomic bomb, a new generation is struggling with an even more daunting task: cleaning up the radioactive mess.
The U.S. government is building a treatment plant to stabilize and contain 56 million gallons of waste left from a half-century of nuclear weapons production. The radioactive sludge is so dangerous that a few hours of exposure could be fatal. A major leak could contaminate water supplies serving millions across the Northwest. The cleanup is the most complex and costly environmental restoration ever attempted.
And the project is not going well.
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| | | published Thursday, January 12, 2012 | 721 Views :: 2 Comments |
Under Growing Financial Pressure, DOE Revises Plutonium Disposition Program
For Immediate Release: January 12, 2012
Contact: Tom Clements, Columbia, SC, 803-834-3084 KatherineFuchs, Washington, 202-544-0217 Washington, DC – Under growingbudgetary stress, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it is amendinga troubled program to dispose of surplus weapons plutonium[i]. DOE aims to eliminate a costly new facility fordisassembling plutonium cores (pits) from nuclear bombs and is considering processingthe pits in existing facilities at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in SouthCarolina and the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico.
Facing a host of hurdles, DOE aims to turn the separated plutonium into controversial new mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel (MOX) for use in unnamed nuclear power reactors. Today’s notice reveals that DOE is widening its search for utilities willing to accept MOX and states that they “will analyze use of MOX fuel in a generic reactor in the United States to provide analysis for any additional future potential utility customers.”
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| | | published Monday, December 19, 2011 | 724 Views :: 0 Comments |
ANA member Tom Carpenter and 2011 whistleblower awardee Dr. Walt Tamosaitis were interviewed on the Rachel Maddow show on December 15th. They discussed problems at the Waste Treatment Plant which is supposed to process millions of gallons of nuclear waste currently leaking underground in Washington State.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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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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