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| | | published Tuesday, February 02, 2010 | 747 Views :: 0 Comments |
Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010
By Martin Matishak
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON
-- The Obama administration yesterday unveiled a spending plan that
would increase funding for the U.S. National Nuclear Security
Administration to $11.2 billion in the next fiscal year (see GSN, Jan.
29).
The agency, a semiautonomous branch of the Energy Department, would
receive a 13.4-percent budget increase in fiscal 2011 to maintain the
country's nuclear stockpile and conduct nonproliferation activities
around the globe, according to the White House funding request.
More than $7 billion would be devoted beginning Oct. 1 to "weapons
activities," which ensure the safety and performance of the nation's
atomic stockpile. The amount is a $624 million increase from this year.
Another
$2.7 billion would be funneled to the agency's Defense Nuclear
Nonproliferation program, a hike of 25.8 percent above fiscal 2010.
That effort seeks to secure nuclear materials around the globe that
could be used for weapons and convert them for peaceful purposes.
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| | | published Wednesday, January 27, 2010 | 1531 Views :: 2 Comments |
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability a national network of organizations working to address issues of nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup
http://www.ananuclear.org
for further information, contact:
Nickolas Roth 914-673-6666
Susan Gordon 505-577-8438
or local contacts listed at end of advisory
for immediate release Wednesday, January 27, 2010
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN THE U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY FY 2011
NUCLEAR WEAPONS BUDGET REQUEST
The FY 2011 budget request will be released on Monday, February 1,
2010. The Obama administration has laid out an aggressive
nonproliferation agenda that includes deep reductions in nuclear
stockpiles, ratification of a nuclear test ban, and decreased
prominence for nuclear weapons in US defense policy. Despite this
agenda, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) budget request will ask
Congress to significantly increase nuclear weapons activities,
including funding for construction of new facilities that will expand
U.S. warhead production capacity. The DOE request will not reflect
recent independent scientific conclusions that existing nuclear weapons
can be reliably maintained for decades under current, well-established
programs.
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a
national network representing communities downwind and downstream from
U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, is concerned that increased funding
for nuclear energy and weapons research and production will rob
precious resources for needed environmental cleanup and clean,
sustainable energy solutions.
Items of interest:
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| | | published Monday, January 25, 2010 | 647 Views :: 0 Comments |
Published on National Catholic Reporter
by Joshua J. McElwee
The
Obama administration is moving ahead with the development of new
nuclear weapons components at three key weapons facilities at the same
time it is conducting a sweeping review of U.S. nuclear weapons
policies that could lead to further slashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
For
the moment, U.S. nuclear weapons policies appear to be running in
contrary directions, and while some critics of U.S. nuclear policy are
cautiously optimistic, they are also worried President Obama’s nuclear
disarmament vision is not yet being supported by concrete policy
actions.
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| | | published Wednesday, January 06, 2010 | 781 Views :: 0 Comments |
Wall Street Journal Article Makes Ill Advised Recommendations on the Future of Nuclear Weapons
Yesterday,
the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed supporting recommendations
made in a letter sent to the President by 40 Republican Senators and Senator Joe Lieberman. The op-ed supports construction of new
facilities and new warheads. The following is ANA’s analysis of the
letter:
Modernization takes focus away from investments in nuclear weapons complex expertise that actually do need to be made.
- Verification: The national nuclear laboratories can uniquely develop
technologies that will contribute to detecting nuclear tests around the
world and facilitate verification of nuclear weapons reductions under
arms control treaties with Russia.
- Safeguards: The national
laboratories can improve technologies to detect diversion for military
purposes of nuclear power technology or materials in countries without
nuclear weapons.
- Dismantlement: The Labs can increase the rate of
dismantlement (process by which nuclear warheads are removed from the
stockpile, disassembled, and disposed of) to support permanent
reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
- Threat reduction at the
source: Consolidation, reduction and elimination of stockpiles of
nuclear weapon and nuclear weapons-usable materials where these
materials are produced and stored worldwide. Increasing funding for
these efforts advances U.S. ability to reduce and lock down vulnerable
nuclear materials and reduces the risk of nuclear terrorism
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| | | published Wednesday, September 30, 2009 | 1256 Views :: 2 Comments |
By Matthew Cardinale, North American Correspondent, Inter-Press
Service; and News Editor, The Atlanta Progressive News (September 30,
2009)
ATLANTA,
Georgia, Sep 30 (IPS) - Despite statements by U.S. President Barack
Obama that he wants to see the world reduce, and eventually eliminate
nuclear weapons, the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear
Security Administration continues to push forward on a programme called
Complex Modernisation, which would expand two existing nuclear plants
to allow them to produce new plutonium pits and new bomb parts out of
enriched uranium for use in a possible new generation of nuclear bombs.
Originally published at http://atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0522.html
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| | | published Monday, September 14, 2009 | 663 Views :: 1 Comments |
Originally published at
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090910_a_hundred_holocausts_an_insiders_window_into_us_nuclear_policy/
Posted on Sep 10, 2009
By Daniel Ellsberg
Editor’s note: This is the first installment of Daniel Ellsberg’s
personal memoir of the nuclear era, “The American Doomsday Machine.”
The online book will recount highlights of his six years of research
and consulting for
the Departments of Defense and State and the White House on issues of
nuclear command and control, nuclear war planning and nuclear crises.
It further draws on 34 subsequent years of research and activism largely on nuclear policy , which followed the intervening 11 years of his preoccupation with the Vietnam War . Subsequent installments also will appear on Truthdig. The author is a senior fellow of theNuclear Age Peace Foundation .
American Planning for a Hundred Holocausts
One
day in the spring of 1961, soon after my 30th birthday, I was shown how
our world would end. Not the Earth, not—so far as I knew then—all
humanity or life, but the destruction of most cities and people in the
Northern Hemisphere.
What I was handed, in a White House office,
was a single sheet of paper with some numbers and lines on it. It was
headed “Top Secret—Sensitive”; under that, “For the President’s Eyes
Only.”
The “Eyes Only” designation meant that, in principle,
it was to be seen and read only by the person to whom it was explicitly
addressed, in this case the president. In practice this usually meant
that it would be seen by one or more secretaries and assistants as
well: a handful of people, sometimes somewhat more, instead of the
scores to hundreds who would normally see copies of a “Top
Secret—Sensitive” document.
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| | | published Friday, September 04, 2009 | 970 Views :: 0 Comments |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 4, 2009
Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.920.7118, jay@nukewatch.org
Santa Fe, NM – Nuclear Watch New Mexico (NWNM) has discovered Los Alamos National Laboratory viewgraphs showing that the U.S. nuclear weapons labs want to leverage “stockpile modernization” through formal Safeguards attached to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty during Senate ratification. This modernization would include “large changes” made to existing nuclear weapons refurbished during existing Life Extension Programs, and/or complete “replacement designs” as early as 2015. Congress has rejected funding a new-design “Reliable Replacement Warhead” (RRW) for the last two years, but the labs have clearly not given up. Moreover, there is a danger that the Obama Administration might concede to some form of RRW in order to win the Congressional supermajority of 67 needed to ratify the CTBT. Further, Obama has just reappointed a formerly strong proponent of RRW to again head up the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
A decade ago, under President Clinton, the Senate rejected CTBT ratification. This last April, while declaring that a world free of nuclear weapons is a long term U.S. national security goal, President Obama pledged, “my Administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.” The Treaty’s declared purpose has always been to cut off the advancement of nuclear weapons. But the American labs, now endowed with supercomputer simulated testing, obviously believe that a ban to physical tests no longer blocks the deployment of new nuclear weapons designs. In contrast, they now even seek to enshrine the capability for major modifications and possible new-designs in CTBT Safeguards.
Ratification of the CTBT by the U.S. will be viewed internationally as a concrete sign of America’s commitment to fulfilling the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty’s mandate for nuclear disarmament. CTBT ratification before the May 2010 NPT Review Conference at the United Nations would be a diplomatic victory, if the Obama Administration can win the necessary Senate votes. Ironically, possible CTBT Safeguards enshrining new or heavily modified U.S. weapons designs could derail the strengthening of the global nonproliferation regime by demonstrating to other countries that the U.S. is not really serious about nuclear disarmament.
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| | | published Monday, August 10, 2009 | 1437 Views :: 0 Comments |
Sixty-four
years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we host a
roundtable discussion on the present nuclear landscape. We speak with
nuclear physicist and disarmament activist Pervez Hoodbhoy, peace
activist Frida Berrigan, and Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who
leaked the Pentagon Papers. Over the next year, Ellsberg will release
regular installments of his insider’s memoir of the nuclear era, “The
American Doomsday Machine.”
Frida Berrigan, Peace activist
and senior program associate of the Arms and Security Initiative at the
New America Foundation. Previously, she served for eight years as
deputy director and senior research associate at the Arms Trade
Resource Center at the World Policy Institute at the New School in New
York City.
Daniel Ellsberg, the
country’s best known whistleblower. In 1971 he leaked the Pentagon
Papers to the New York Times and the Washington Post. .
Pervez Hoodbhoy, Nuclear physicist and
disarmament activist. He is chair of the Physics Department at the
Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.
Fuel Video can be seen at: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/10/for_the_64th_time_no_more
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| | | published Wednesday, April 08, 2009 | 4383 Views :: 0 Comments |
FOR RELEASE, April 8, 2009 Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505-989-7342 cell 505.920.7118 jay@nukewatch.org
Transforming the U.S. Strategic Posture and Weapons Complex
For Transition to a Nuclear Weapons-Free World
“…as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act... So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009, Prague, Czech Republic.
Washington, DC - - Today, April 8th, in the nation’s capital, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network released a major report outlining how the President’s vision of a nuclear weapons-free world can begin to be concretely realized in the near-term. First, the United States must declare that its strategic stockpile exists for only one purpose — to deter the use of nuclear weapons by others until the world is free of nuclear weapons. For that interim deterrence, a total stockpile of 500 warheads is more than sufficient, and the nuclear weapons complex can be downsized from eight sites to three.
Maintaining a Potent Deterrence
The U.S. stockpile has been extensively tested. Further, recent lifetime studies have shown it to be even more reliable than previously thought. The stockpile can be maintained through a nuts-and-bolts “curatorship” program, instead of the expensive and speculative “Stockpile Stewardship” Program that erodes confidence by intentionally introducing changes to existing nuclear weapons. Under a minimalist (but still extremely potent) nuclear deterrent, U.S. strategic forces can be progressively reduced step-by-step and the weapons complex downsized accordingly, in alignment with the President’s stated national goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Re-focusing Research Critical for the 21st Century
Our plan is the plan that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under the Bush Administration should have proposed for its misnamed “Complex Transformation” – but did not. NNSA’s archaic plan is dead on arrival in the Obama Administration, while our plan sets a reasonable path for 21st Century security on which the U.S. can and should embark. Our plan takes the Lawrence Livermore Lab out of nuclear weapons programs and directs it toward the energy, environmental and global climate change research that our country so desperately needs. It also ends NNSA control of the Sandia Lab in California and the Nevada Test Site by 2012, and ends weapons work at the Kansas City Plant by 2015. As the arsenal is reduced toward 500 warheads, the Savannah River Site near Aiken, SC, and then the Y-12 Site near Oak Ridge, TN, would also cease to be part of the nuclear weapons complex.
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Obama Envisions World Free of Nuclear Weapons | |
| | published Tuesday, April 07, 2009 | 494 Views :: 0 Comments |
Listen to this segment
Barack Obama in a speech on Sunday, envisioned a “world without nuclear weapons,” committing the US to complete nuclear disarmament. In his speech, delivered in Prague, Obama promised to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. His speech came only hours after a report that North Korea launched a “multi-stage rocket” many fear could be capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. A day earlier Obama met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to discuss a new bi-lateral treaty on reducing the two countries’ arsenals. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, Russia and the United States together possess the majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, with nearly 10,000 warheads deployed between the two. Obama’s position was lauded by nuclear disarmament advocates around the world, including in Japan, the only country to have been struck with nuclear weapons. His position is a complete about-turn from the Bush administration, which had defied any attempt at nuclear disarmament. Even former President Clinton withheld the US’s right to respond with nuclear force to chemical, biological, and even conventional weapons.
GUEST: Susan Gordon, Director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
For more information, visit www.nuclearweaponsfree.org, www.ananuclear.org.
Watch the entire video of President Obama’s speech in Prague here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwYzAp7QV3U
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