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| | | published Friday, February 03, 2012 | 13 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 Friday, February 03, 2012 | 22 Views :: 0 Comments |
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, in collaboration with our allies at the Ploughshares Fund, the Arms Control Association, and the Union of Concerned Scientists present two new fact sheets on nuclear weapons funding.
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| | | published Monday, January 23, 2012 | 178 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 | 136 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 | 141 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 | 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 Thursday, January 12, 2012 | 611 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 Thursday, January 05, 2012 | 292 Views :: 0 Comments |
January 4, 2012
By William Hartung From The Talking Points Memo Cafe
Tomorrow morning the Obama administration will present the findings of its latest national security strategy review. The review has been undertaken with an eye towards scaling back Pentagon spending in a way that best provides for the defense of the country. This "strategy first" approach to defense reform makes good sense. The question is whether the administration will put forward a strategy that is in keeping with the threats we now face, or whether it will attempt to pass off minor adjustments as a major policy shift.
A new strategy is long overdue. The most recent Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) - the U.S. government's official, public strategy document - was in many respects just a laundry list of missions that the U.S. military was expected to carry out, including counterinsurgency, counter-terrorism, protection of allies from conventional or nuclear attack, curbing the spread of nuclear weapons, ensuring freedom of the seas, promoting economic development, providing military assistance, participating in disaster relief operations, and carrying out humanitarian interventions. To make matters worse, the QDR process makes no attempt to estimate the cost of doing all of these jobs, much less determining whether some of them might be better addressed through non-military means.
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| | | published Monday, December 19, 2011 | 633 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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| | | published Friday, December 09, 2011 | 512 Views :: 0 Comments |
Representative Edward J. Markey U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 December 8, 2011 Dear Rep. Markey, On behalf of our 47 organizations and the members that we represent, we would like to express our gratitude to you for your principled call for reducing the amount of money that our country spends on nuclear weapons and related programs. In the letter that you signed on October 11 to the Supercommittee members about this issue, you expressed a view that—based on moral, security and fiscal grounds—our country can no longer justify current levels of spending on nuclear weapons programs. We endorse that position.
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