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| | | published Monday, July 11, 2011 | 882 Views :: 0 Comments |
July 11, 2011
BY Tony Rutherford
From the Huntington News
HUNTINGTON, WV (HNN) – Depending upon your degree of ‘trust’ in government agencies, the revelations about dangers at the former Huntington uranium processing plant and the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant either border on disrespect or symbolize how the truth slowly ebbs out exposing even the best planned cover up.
Actually, Piketon, Ohio, atomic plant workers such as Owen Thompson and Vina Colley joined the ranks of whistleblowers long ago which eventually led to the unraveling of decades of denial.
Thompson had a special security clearance. He worked in the “E Area” of the huge diffusion facility. Between 1978-1979, he just followed order by driving a hay wagon to some already dug trenches. When the contents were dumped, he saw a green goo. Thompson also observed that the wagons , trucks and other tools were entombed.
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| | | published Saturday, July 09, 2011 | 1026 Views :: 0 Comments |
By Martin Schneider
From the Nuclear Weapons & Materials Monitor
The idea of broadly restructuring the Department of Energy is set to make a return engagement for the 2012 Presidential Election, with President Obama preparing to float the possibility of a new Department of Competitiveness that would include most of DOE as part of his reelection campaign, NW&M Monitor has learned. The proposal would consolidate the Department of Commerce with non-defense portions of the Department of Energy such as the Department’s loan office, Office of Nuclear Energy, Fossil Energy, and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The National Nuclear Security Administration would be split off into a separate standalone agency. It remains unclear where the offices of Environmental Management and Legacy Management would end up under the proposal.
The merger, which has been proposed in a white paper by White House Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients, would seek to better position the United States to compete against other countries with state- controlled industry, while freeing up the disparate missions within the Department of Energy. Industry officials expect the proposal to enjoy support from Democrats and opposition from Republicans. John Bryson, the Obama Administration’s nominee to be the next Secretary of Commerce, is likely to begin floating the idea if he is confirmed by the Senate.
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| | | published Thursday, April 28, 2011 | 926 Views :: 0 Comments |
April 28, 2011
By Mark Oswald
From Albuquerque Journal
Environmental and community groups and Los Alamos National Laboratory announced Wednesday that they had reached a settlement agreement resolving a three-year legal dispute over stormwater runoff from the lab.
In a 2008 federal court complaint, the plaintiffs alleged the lab had violated the Clean Water Act by allowing contaminants to wash into the Rio Grande and threaten drinking water supplies. LANL denied that its runoff violated standards.
The groups that had sued the lab on Wednesday called the settlement “historic” and the lab described it as a “win-win.”
The Western Environmental Law Center, based in Taos, agreed to drop the lawsuit in exchange for access to inspect certain sites at the lab, $200,000 in funding for technical consulting and a portion of legal fees.
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| | | published Thursday, February 10, 2011 | 3567 Views :: 1 Comments |
For immediate release, February 9, 2011
For further information:
Susan Gordon (505) 577-8438
The Obama Administration’s FY 2012 budget request is slated
to be released on Monday, February 14, 2011. Despite pledging to reduce
the U.S. nuclear stockpile in the recently ratified New START treaty,
the Department of Energy (DOE) will likely ask Congress for
significantly more funds for nuclear weapons activities, including
expanding U.S. warhead production capacity, while nonproliferation
programs are allowed to stagnate. The DOE request will not reflect
recent scientific conclusions that existing nuclear weapons can be
reliably maintained for decades under current programs or the
President’s stated goal of global nuclear weapons reductions.
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| | | published Wednesday, February 09, 2011 | 2524 Views :: 0 Comments |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 8, 2011
Contact: Scott Kovac, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 505.989.7342, scott@nukewatch.org
Santa Fe -
A recently released report from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
sharply increases cost estimates for various remediation alternatives
for the Lab’s largest radioactive waste dump. This is revision 2 of a
Corrective Measures Evaluation (CME) conducted for Material Disposal
Area (MDA) G. This CME increases the cost estimates for all proposed
alternatives including the most expensive option, total excavation and
disposal of the wastes offsite, now estimated at over $32 billion.
The method of remediation is yet to be determined by the New Mexico
Environment Department (NMED). Public participation will be important!
NMED must approve the report, propose a preferred remedy, and start a
public comment period. The Lab wants to simply “cap and cover” the
wastes, maintain “institutional controls” (such as fences) for 100
years, and call it cleaned up. In contrast, one of the
primary contaminants at MDA G, plutonium-239 used in nuclear weapons,
remains dangerous for 100,000 years.
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| | | published Tuesday, January 18, 2011 | 1253 Views :: 1 Comments |
January 15, 2011
Nearby resident: Program 'one of the best things that ever happened to me'
From The Cincinnati Enquirer By Dan Horn
Robin Brandenburg was skeptical when she first heard about the medical monitoring program for residents living near the Fernald uranium foundry.
She'd grown up a few miles from the facility and, like thousands of her neighbors, she was upset when she found out radioactive dust had contaminated the soil and water.
She saw the medical tests as one more intrusion into her life, as an experiment that made her feel like "a rat in some kind of maze."
That was before she got the phone call about a lump on her breast that was too small to feel or see. It was before she learned that the tests she didn't want to take probably saved her life.
"It was one of the best things that ever happened to me," Brandenburg said.
The medical monitoring program at Fernald is perhaps the most extraordinary legacy of a court case that formally ended last month after 26 years.
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| | | published Monday, August 10, 2009 | 2911 Views :: 3 Comments |
Japan Times, Monday, Aug. 10, 2009
By DAVID JEFFRIES
Kyodo News
HANFORD, Wash. (Kyodo) For Shirley Olinger, managing the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear site —part of the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state that produced the
plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 — is personal.
Despite these signs of progress, Tom Carpenter, executive director of
the Hanford Challenge, warns that the bulk of the work has yet to be
done.
"I call this 'stopping the bleeding' because it was damaging the
environment," Carpenter said. "But what can we really say about tank
waste? Ninety percent of the Hanford cleanup is this waste. And I think
they are stuck."
Originally published in the Japan Times: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090810a8.html
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| | | published Thursday, August 06, 2009 | 2902 Views :: 14 Comments |
By Nickolas Roth, Program Director, Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
August 6th, 2009
The
anniversary of the United States atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki serve as a reminder of the danger posed by nuclear weapons and
the need for this country to work in good faith toward their
elimination. The bombings killed more than 200,000 people and set in
motion an arms race that has resulted in several near brushes with
nuclear war.
There are more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in
existence today. The vast majority of these weapons are held by the
United States and Russia, with 9,400 and 13,000 respectively.
Originally published in the Los Alamos Monitor:
http://www.lcni5.com/cgi-bin/c2.cgi?075+article+Opinion+20090806145909075075001
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2009 Fact Sheet Nuclear Weapons Forever | |
| | published Monday, February 23, 2009 | 695 Views :: 0 Comments |
Life Extension Program
In the late-1980’s the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Rocky Flats Plant, which produced plutonium pits for nuclear warheads, was shut down after a raid by the FBI. Eventually, the plant was shuttered, disrupting the U.S. capacity for producing new warheads.
Download 2009 Fact Sheet: LEP2 final.pdf
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2009 Fact Sheet Nuclear Weapons Environmental Cleanup | |
| | published Monday, February 23, 2009 | 745 Views :: 0 Comments |
Six decades of U.S. nuclear weapons research, testing, and production activities have left dozens of Department of Energy (DOE) sites polluted with massive amounts of radioactive and hazardous wastes. Most DOE sites are now on the Superfund list of the nation’s most environmentally dangerous facilities. Their contamination threatens millions of people living near the sites or along major waste transportation routes. Some of the nation’s most important water resources are endangered.
Download 2009 Fact Sheet: Cleanup5.1 final.pdf
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