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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 Monday, February 01, 2010 | 879 Views :: 1 Comments |
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY
McClatchy Newspapers
Fri, Jan. 29, 2010
The
Obama administration plans to ask Congress to increase spending on the
U.S. nuclear arsenal by more than $5 billion over the next five years
as part of its strategy to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and
eventually rid the world of them.
The administration argues that
the boost is needed to ensure that U.S. warheads remain secure and work
as designed as the arsenal shrinks and ages nearly 18 years into a
moratorium on underground testing and more than two decades after
large-scale warhead production ended.
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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, December 07, 2009 | 960 Views :: 0 Comments |
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, Federation of American Scientists & the Bipartisan Security Group
Invite you to briefings
The New START Treaty: What Next for the Nuclear Weapons Infrastructure?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 10:00 am – 11:00 am, Senate Dirksen G11
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 1 pm – 2:00 pm, Rayburn B340
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Hans Bethe Center, 322 Fourth St. NE
With
Ambassador Robert Grey
Director, Bipartisan Security Group
Former US Representative to the
Conference on Disarmament from 1998-2001
Ivan Oelrich, Ph. D.
Acting President, Federation of American Scientists
Former Senior Analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment
Ralph Hutchison
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
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| | | published Thursday, November 19, 2009 | 2210 Views :: 0 Comments |
New Government Report Challenges Justification for New Warheads and Production Facilities
For Immediate Release:
November 19, 2009
Contact:
Nickolas Roth
914-673-6666
Susan Gordon
505-577-8438
A new government report released today refutes arguments that new nuclear warheads or weapons production facilities are needed.
Since 2005, both Air Force and Department of Energy officials have claimed that new design nuclear warheads were necessary because of diminishing confidence in the nuclear stockpile. At the centerpiece of plans for building new warheads are new weapons production facilities proposed for Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico.
In the report, the JASONs group, an independent panel of scientists contracted by the government to evaluate issues related to the nuclear stockpile, affirmed that current methods used by DOE were adequate for extending the lifetime of the nuclear stockpile.
It also found no evidence to support claims that changes to the stockpile as a result of refurbishments have increased risks to the reliability of the arsenal.
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| | | published Friday, November 06, 2009 | 2752 Views :: 12 Comments |
Sandia Director Makes $1.7 million
By John Fleck
Thursday, 05 November 2009 19:16
Sandia National Laboratories Director Tom Hunter makes $1.7 million per
year, according to data made public this week.
Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Michael Anastasio makes $800
thousand per year. The numbers became public this week when the labs reported them as one of
the conditions of accepting money under the federal stimulus program.
The compensation triggered outrage from critics of the nuclear weapons
research centers.
Originally Published in the Albuquerque Journal.
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| | | published Wednesday, November 04, 2009 | 1705 Views :: 7 Comments |
The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance today released a "white
paper" that analyzes the missions at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and
proposes that the Oak Ridge plant refocus its efforts entirely on
dismantlement.
"Changes in U.S. policy, concern over nuclear proliferation, and global
realities have created an environment in which the power of arguments
for a new production facility has eroded significantly," the report,
titled The Future of Y-12, says.
Posted by Frank Munger on November 3, 2009 at 7:24 PM
The 9-page report is online at:
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/munger/y12orepa.pdf
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| | | published Tuesday, November 03, 2009 | 1256 Views :: 1 Comments |
The Path to Zero
by Jill Ragar Esfeld
SHAWNEE — Good Shepherd parishioner Ann Suellentrop loves the number
zero. To her, it is the most important number in the world. And she
truly believes, with God’s grace, the world can reach the number zero
in her lifetime – global zero, that is; total nuclear disarmament.
Suellentrop’s dreams may be global, but her focus is local. She is a
member of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a board member of
PeaceWorks Kansas City, the metro area’s leading voice against the
nuclear arms race.
Originally published at www.theleaven.com.
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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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