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| | | published Tuesday, January 31, 2012 | 89 Views :: 0 Comments |
Press Conference Advisory: Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9:15 am Rotunda, Roundhouse at the corner of Old Santa Fe Trail and Paseo de Peralta Topic: Map Documenting Community Water Concerns to be Released as Part of Legislative Day for People of Faith Concerned about Clean Air, Water and Earth Contact: Joan Brown, Partnership for Earth Spirituality 505-266-6966 (Albuquerque), joankansas@swcp.com Joni Arends, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety 505-986-1973 (Santa Fe), jarends@nuclearactive.org A map documenting community and people of faith concerns for water will be released Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9:15 in the Rotunda of the State Capitol. The document release is part of a Legislative Day for People of Faith Concerned for Water, Land, Air and People. The project was initiated by people of faith and communities concerned about water and funded by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy – Northeast Community.
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| | | published Monday, January 23, 2012 | 182 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 Monday, December 12, 2011 | 815 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 Thursday, November 03, 2011 | 913 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 07, 2011 | 944 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following article covers part of ANA member group Georgia Women's Action for New Directions' campaign to restore environmental monitoring of nuclear sites in Georgia. Learn more about Georgia WAND's campaign for environmental justice from this 5 minute CNN clip.
Oct. 4, 2011
By Walter C. Jones Morris News Service / Augusta Chronicle
ATLANTA — A group of anti-nuclear activists held a rally on the Capitol steps Tuesday to call for the U.S. Department of Energy to resume funding Georgia’s monitoring of air and water quality for dangerous emissions from Savannah River Site.
The group, Women’s Action for New Directions, said the funding was needed as an early warning against accidental releases of nuclear hazards that could contaminate the air, crops, wildlife and private wells and raise the risk of cancer in people living in Richmond, Burke, Screven, Effingham and Chatham counties.
Dr. Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician who co-founded the group and Physicians for Social Responsibility, contended federal officials feared an objective environmental assessment because it would show that the residents of those counties would have to be relocated.
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| | | published Wednesday, September 07, 2011 | 555 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 Tuesday, September 06, 2011 | 629 Views :: 0 Comments |
Y-12 mercury project plagued by problems
September 5, 2011
By Frank Munger From the Knoxville News' Atomic City Underground blog
OAK RIDGE — Most of the Recovery Act-funded cleanup projects at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant have been completed successfully, with some coming in well ahead of schedule and under budget. Over the past couple of years, workers have taken down dirty and dilapidated buildings, removed hazardous materials and, in one memorable case, made a decades-old scrap yard disappear.
The jury is still out, however, on a project that's supposed to reduce the amount of mercury pollution — a legacy of the plant's Cold War work on thermonuclear weapons — that's entering East Fork Poplar Creek.
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| | | published Monday, August 29, 2011 | 1100 Views :: 1 Comments |
The following op-ed was written by a member of New Mexico Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). PSR is a long-time Alliance for Nuclear Accountability member group and we are happy to promote their work to keep Americans safe from radioactive health threats.
Aug 25, 2011
By Dr. Robert M. Bernstein From the Albuquerque Journal Water from the Rio Grande is again pumping into faucets of Albuquerque homes (soon to be followed by Santa Fe). Unfortunately, questions remain about whether pollutants from Los Alamos National Laboratory are being flushed into the river by runoff from recent storms, following the Las Conchas Fire. Because these contaminants are so toxic, it’s essential that the water be carefully tested by an independent contractor.
While there was much publicity about the danger to some 20,000 containers of transuranic waste stored under fabric tents in Area G, little was said about the 21 million cubic feet of radioactive and chemical waste on-site (21 million cubic feet is three times the amount that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is designed to hold at capacity). This waste began during World War II, and much was buried on the mesas and canyon bottoms in unlined pits, trenches and shafts. Radioactive liquid wastes were discharged directly to the canyons, especially Acid Canyon, an offshoot of Los Alamos Canyon, which flows to the Rio Grande.
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| | | published Wednesday, August 24, 2011 | 639 Views :: 2 Comments |
August 24, 2011
By Frank Munger
From the Knoxville News
OAK RIDGE — The state is using a new discharge permit at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant as a way to spur cleanup actions and reduce the amount of mercury — a toxic legacy of Cold War operations — that's entering the East Fork Poplar Creek.
Because Y-12 has long been out of compliance with water-quality standards for mercury and cannot realistically achieve compliance within the five-year term of the new permit, the state is requiring completion of five projects — some of which are already under way — to guarantee the Oak Ridge plant makes environmental progress.
Federal officials, however, aren't happy with the tactic, arguing that it's "inappropriate" to use a permit under the Clean Water Act to enforce cleanup projects that are the purview of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act — commonly known as Superfund.
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| | | published Friday, August 19, 2011 | 955 Views :: 0 Comments |
Friday, Aug. 19, 2011
By Annette Cary
From the Tri-City Herald
The Department of Energy has authorized its environmental cleanup contractors at Hanford to lay off up to 1,100 more workers in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
That's in addition to up to 1,985 layoffs already announced this year, the majority of which will be Sept. 29.
Hanford started the year with about 12,000 employees, meaning the potential layoffs announced this year would cut jobs by about a quarter.
That does not include the jobs at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where about 50 jobs are expected to be trimmed from its staff of about 4,470 in Richland.
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