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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 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 Wednesday, November 16, 2011 | 708 Views :: 0 Comments |
The following article discusses the MOX plutonium fuel program, which ANA opposes. Touching on several of the problems with the program, the Reporter quotes two ANA members, Tom Clements and Jay Coghlan.
Nov. 16, 2011
By Wren Abbott
From the Santa Fe Reporter
Los Alamos National Laboratory is doubling down on a project that helps create a controversial, highly reactive new fuel used in nuclear power plants. Beginning next year, LANL will create twice as much plutonium oxide, an essential component of mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel, which combines uranium and plutonium.
MOX fuel is believed to have amplified the effects of the recent nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan.
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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 Friday, October 07, 2011 | 1676 Views :: 1 Comments |
The following National Nuclear Security Agency press release announces completion of the first step in making Mixed Oxide Plutonium Fuel (MOX). ANA is against this project which intends to turn surplus weapons grade plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. Plutonium oxide powder is extremely carcinogenic when inhaled. We should not be creating more of this substance or shipping it around the country for commercial use. Instead of MOX, ANA recommends disposing of plutonium through immobilization in vitrified (glass) high level waste.
For Immediate Release: October 6, 2011 Contact: NNSA Public Affairs, (202) 586-7371
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced this week that it had successfully disassembled nuclear weapons “pits” and converted them into more than 240 kg of plutonium oxide, an initial step in permanent plutonium disposition. The certified oxide is an initial source of feed for NNSA’s Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility, which is currently under construction at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The disassembly, conversion and certification, which were completed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), is a significant accomplishment in an ongoing effort to safely dispose of surplus weapon-grade plutonium.
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| | | published Thursday, September 29, 2011 | 1843 Views :: 0 Comments |
For Immediate Release Thursday, September 29, 2011 Contact:
Courtney Hanson What: Georgia WAND will host a press conference exposing the Department of Energy’s (DOE) failure to stand behind their agreement to implement environmental testing and monitoring in Georgia, specifically in rural, poor counties near Savannah River Site (SRS). A US nuclear weapons site, known by local residents as ‘the bomb plant’, SRS is currently tasked with Cold War legacy waste management, waste clean-up after reprocessing, plutonium disposition, and tritium production for nuclear weapons.
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| | | published Friday, September 23, 2011 | 862 Views :: 1 Comments |
September 20, 2011
By Jessica Leigh Lebos
From Connect Savannah
With its federally–funded clean–up projects coming to a close this month, the Savannah River Site (SRS) will send the last of 3000 stimulus–backed jobs packing.
In an effort to consolidate waste and operations at the Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) oldest weapons–grade plutonium plant, temporary workers contracted by the site’s managing entity, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), have spent the last two years sealing off old reactors, bringing down old buildings and shipping out contaminated waste accumulated during the Cold War.
“We’re kind of in celebration mode around here,” says Barbara Smoak, an SRNS spokesperson. “We were glad to be able to provide those jobs, even if some of them were temporary.”
Now that the clean–up is “complete” (while much radioactive debris has been removed from the property, only two of the site’s 49 tanks of high–level, radioactive liquid waste were filled with concrete) and $1.6 billion of taxpayer money has been spent, what’s next?
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| | | published Monday, September 12, 2011 | 961 Views :: 0 Comments |
Sept. 12, 2011
By Rob Pavey From the Augusta Chronicle
The National Nuclear Security Administration is more than six months late on its annual status report to Congress on the mixed oxide fuel project at Savannah River Site.
The document, mandated under the 2003 National Defense Authorization Act, was due Feb. 15 and was to include updated details on the $4.8 billion project’s construction progress and completion schedule, among other things.
Critics of the project say the delay is another sign the government’s program to dispose of surplus plutonium from dismantled nuclear bombs could be facing more problems.
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| | | published Monday, August 15, 2011 | 1001 Views :: 0 Comments |
Aug 14, 2011
By Rob Pavey
From the Augusta Chronicle
They came, they toiled -- and now most of them are gone.
As the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act enters its final weeks, Savannah River Site's stimulus-funded cleanup projects are winding down.
"They're wrapping up this month, and next month," said Jim Giusti, a Department of Energy spokesman at the site.
The $1.6 billion windfall created or saved about 3,000 jobs and accelerated dozens of projects that might have languished for years before money became available to complete them.
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