Remarks by Valerie Plame Wilson at the Santa Fe Opening of Countdown to Zero -August 6, 2010

Nuclear News

Why and How to Shut Down a Nuclear Weapons Facility

Why and How to Shut Down a Nuclear Weapons Facility

How Urgent is the B61 Life Extension?

Catholic activists arrested at Kansas City nuclear weapons facility

New START: A similar arms reduction pact but a different Republican reaction

Nuke Accident Would Dwarf Oil Spill

Youth seek ways to think 'outside the bomb'

Protest Planned for Los Alamos

Big bucks for bomb factory?

DOE considers WIPP for surplus plutonium

CGA Capital Arranges Financing in $4.8B National Security Project

It's the Pits - Los Alamos wants to spend billions for new nuke triggers

Radioactive Quotes

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. - President Obama, Prague, April 5, 2009

"Being skeptical of the design labs' management integrity, I'm suspicious that the real reason for the "urgency" is budget-related."

Retired Sandian Bob Peurifoy, government adviser on nuclear weapons issues, in reference to Sandia Labs chief Paul Hommert's congressional testimony about what he argued is the "urgency" of getting to work on upgrades to the B61 bomb.

[link]

"This treaty is a masterstroke. . . . It is shorn of the tortured bench marks, sub-limits, arcane definitions and monitoring provisions that weighed down past arms control treaties. It assumes a degree of trust between nations that are no longer on the precipice of war."

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), in floor speech on March 6, 2003, in support of ratification of the Moscow Treaty, signed nine months earlier by President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to the Washington Post, Kyl and many of the 24 Republican Senators are now critical of elements of the New START that they redily accepted or ignored in the treaty they proudly supported seven years ago.

[link]

"If the existing nuclear countries cannot develop some restraints among themselves, in other words, if nothing fundamental changes, then I would expect the use of nuclear weapons in some 10-year period is very possible,” says former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the film. “Once nuclear weapons are used, we will be driven to take global measures to prevent it. Why don’t we do it now?
"

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the film "Nuclear Tipping Point," January 2010

[link]

"...regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan could blot out the sun, starving much of the human race...The only way to eliminate the possibility of climatic catastrophe is to eliminate the nuclear weapons."

From a January 2010 Scientific American article, "South Asian Threat? Local Nuclear War = Global Suffering" by Alan Robock, a professor of climatology at Rutgers and Owen Brian Toon, chair of the Dept. of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. They deployed modern computers and modern climate models to validate earlier studies of the "Nuclear Winter" effect of nuclear war.

[link]

"Nuclear weapons is a dying business. Northern New Mexico’s best wealth producing employer is going to have to reinvent itself or decline."

Los Alamos City Councilor Nona Bowman, in a 9/10/2009 Council meeting, as reported by the Los Alamos Monitor.

[link]

"First, we must stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and seek the goal of a world without them... If we fail to act, we will invite nuclear arms races in every region, and the prospect of wars and acts of terror on a scale that we can hardly imagine. A fragile consensus stands in the way of this frightening outcome – the basic bargain that shapes the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. It says that all nations have the right to peaceful nuclear energy; that nations with nuclear weapons have the responsibility to move toward disarmament; and those without them have the responsibility to forsake them... America will keep our end of the bargain... We will complete a Nuclear Posture Review that opens the door to deeper cuts, and reduces the role of nuclear weapons."

September 23, 2009 remarks by President Obama to the UN General Assembly, United Nations Headquarters, New York, NY



[link]

Costly Plutonium “Nuclear Facility” at Los Alamos Conflicts With New National Security Goals

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) persists in obsolete plans to expand its plutonium bomb-making infrastructure. The construction of a proposed new $2 billion-plus “Nuclear Facility” at LANL is not yet funded, but its still-to-be completed design alone has already cost over $200 million. This new plutonium facility is essentially a resurrection of a proposal in the early 1990’s that Congress declined to fund because of the end of the Cold War. This “Nuclear Facility” should not be built because it is oversized, over budget, over sold, and simply not needed.

For more, see our new fact sheet and the supporting background paper.

Panel Finds Lifetimes of Existing Nuclear Warheads Can Be Extended For Decades

Undercuts Argument for New Designs and Facilities

In an unclassified executive summary obtained by Nuclear Watch New Mexico today, a prestigious independent panel has found that the operational lifetimes of existing nuclear weapons can be extended for decades through current Life Extension Programs (LEPs).

Among the report’s key findings are:

“JASON finds no evidence that accumulation of changes incurred from aging and LEPs [existing Life Extension Programs] have increased risk to certification of today’s deployed nuclear warheads” and

“Lifetimes of today's nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in LEPs to date.”

Nuclear Watch contends that these findings seriously undermine arguments made by the nuclear weapons labs and the Pentagon that new-design nuclear weapons are needed, in part for future ratification of the long-hoped-for Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Read the Nuke Watch Press Release here.

Read the unclassified executive summary here.

Read Elaine Grossman's article, which broke the news of these JASON findings here.

Nuclear WatchBlog Goes Live

The Nuclear Watch New Mexico Blog is now live on the web. We intend to use it to post timely information and commentary, as well as encourage informed discussion of nuclear weapons policy issues, particularly as they pertain to the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the nuclear weapons complex as a whole.

Interested persons can read items and post comments. Content can be subscribed to via RSS feed. To facilitate the clarity of the “informed” discussion, all comments will be moderated to ensure they are topical, meet basic norms of civility and screened for spam.

Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Lab Director Paid Double
President Obama's Salary

Santa Fe, NM - On December 10 President Barack Obama will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway for his beginning efforts to abolish nuclear weapons. The President is paid $400,000 a year for running the country. Michael Anastasio, the Director of the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in northern New Mexico, is paid double that of the President, $800,348 a year. Unlike the President, Mr. Anastasio has been an unabashed supporter of new-design nuclear weapons and resumed industrial-scale nuclear weapons production. Over 60% of the Lab’s $2.1 billion annual budget is specifically dedicated to nuclear weapons research and production, while much of its remaining budget supports those core programs. (more) [145KB]

NNSA Funding

See NukeWatch’s tabulation of Fiscal Year 2010 funding for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Of interest, the recent House/Senate Appropriations Conference doubled requested funding for a new nuclear weapons plutonium facility at Los Alamos and a highly enriched uranium facility at Y-12, while private financing of a new nonnuclear components production plant in Kansas City remains outside the NNSA budget. These three nuclear weapons production facilities, if allowed to go forward, will “transform” the nuclear weapons complex as NNSA has long hoped.  

Call To Action!

Congratulations to President Obama on winning the Nobel Peace Prize!

And as he noted, that award is not for what has been accomplished, but instead is for what can be accomplished.

October 9, 2009 Nobel Committee press release: "The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons… The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations.”

NukeWatch comment: Current bi-lateral START Treaty follow-on negotiations with Russia, the Obama Administration’s pending Nuclear Posture Review, the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference this coming May, and the anticipated push for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty all present golden opportunities to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles, ban testing and stop nuclear weapons production, and secure bomb-making material worldwide. If substantial progress on these goals is not made over the next year, the greatest chance to end the threat of nuclear weapons since the dawn of the Atomic Age will have slipped by.

Call To Action: It is time for you to speak out in support of President Obama’s vision of a nuclear weapons-free world. Demand that planned new production facilities, such as the proposed “Nuclear Facility” for plutonium pit production at Los Alamos, be canceled. Tell Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall to vote for ratification of the CTBT without supporting any “deals” for the nuclear weaponeers giving them yet more money and facilities. Write letters to the editor. Support your hard-working non-profit groups. Do something creative, and together we can all achieve a verifiable world free of nuclear weapons for our children and grandchildren.

Is Congress Throwing Even More Money at the UPF?

Buried in the budget numbers of the House/Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Conference Report is $94 million for a construction project designated as “06-D-141 Project Engineering and Design (PED), Y-12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge, TN.” There are a few curious things about this project. First, the NNSA made no request for it, but yet the House/Senate E&W Conference gives it $94M.

However, all along there have been NNSA requests for “06-D-140 Project Engineering and Design (PED), various locations.” Amongst those “various locations” is the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at Y-12, for which NNSA requested $44.5M in FY10 for continuing design and engineering. We believe (but can’t yet prove) that the House/Senate Conference separated the UPF from 06-D-140 and created 06-D-141. Further, it took NNSA’s original $44.5 FY10 request for UPF and more than doubled it to $94M.

We are concerned because its mission, as currently planned by the NNSA, is based on an assumption that every existing nuclear weapons going through a Life Extension Program will receive a rebuilt secondary. The UPF, if it is to proceed at all, should arguably be reoriented toward the dismantlement of secondaries rather than their rebuilding, and the downblending of an estimated 350-400 metric tons of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium at Y-12. The House/Senate E&W Conference’s doubling of UPF funding at this time seems very ill-advised, especially before the pending release of the new Nuclear Posture Review.

Equipment Will More Than Double the Cost of Plutonium Rad Lab 

Another semi-annual public meeting Wednesday night brought together officials in charge of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s projected Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement project and a group of “interested parties,” among other members of the public.

Construction is now substantially completed on the smaller of the two buildings planned for the facility, which is known as the Radiological Lab Utility Office Building, or Rad Lab for short. The building will cost over $165 million for construction plus  $199.4 million for equipment.

A second phase of the project, the much larger and more expensive Nuclear Facility is still in the design phase, with key decisions awaiting the Nuclear Posture Review, now expected in February 2010.

See our public presentation [1.4MB] – September 23, 2009

See past meeting transcripts

Labs Seek “Stockpile Modernization” Through Test Ban Ratification
“Updating” of Treaty “Safeguards” to Protect Nuclear Weapons Budgets

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. September 4, 2009

Read the press release

View selected viewgraphs

Safety Board Gives Green Light For Unneeded New Plutonium Facility at LANL

On August 26th, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), an independent safety Board chartered by Congress to monitor nuclear safety at Department of Energy defense facilities, signed off on ongoing seismic and safety issues concerning Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL's) proposed new $2 billion-plus plutonium facility. This allows around $50 million in funding to be released for its further design.  The 2009 National Defense Authorization Act required the DNFSB and DOE to submit certification to the congressional Armed Services Committees that safety and seismic concerns raised by the Board were resolved before these funds were made available. The Board had identified five certification findings ranging from structural and equipment seismic concerns to safety-related document and controls issues.

The construction of a proposed new "Nuclear Facility" at for LANL's "Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement Project" (CMRR) is not yet funded, but its design to date has cost over $200 million. This facility, whose originally stated purpose was to directly support expanded nuclear weapons production, should not be built because it is oversized, over budget, over sold, and plain not needed. Instead of a new nuclear weapons facility, major investments at LANL should be directed toward nonproliferation programs, global nuclear threat reduction, energy efficiency, environmental research, and cleanup.

Ted Kennedy: A Lion for Nuclear Disarmament

"If we build them [new-design nuclear weapons, the so-called Reliable Replacement Warheads (RRWs)] the costs are clear. No one will believe we are serious about nuclear non-proliferation. We are trying to persuade the world to "do as we say, not as we do," and few countries will oblige.... Our military has no need for these weapons - they're being developed exclusively for the hawks in the White House and the Pentagon who insist we need nuclear weapons that are more usable. What world are they living in? How can any sane person today possibly want nuclear weapons that are more usable?"-Senator Ted Kennedy, keynote speech at the Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, June 2004.

NukeWatch Note: Beware of “deals” pushed by the nuclear weapons labs for either RRWs or differently named new designs as a condition for Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Sadly, the Lion Ted Kennedy is no longer around to block that.

Nuclear Weaponeers Tug at the Obama Administration

In his April 5 speech in Prague President Obama declared a world free of nuclear weapons to be a critical long-term national security goal. Obama also said that until then the safety and reliability of the U.S. stockpile must be maintained.  This is the loophole through which the weaponeers now want to drive their gravy trains, including new-design nuclear weapons. As reported by Elaine M. Grossman of Global Security Newswire, the previously defeated “Reliable Replacement Warhead” does not yet have a stake completely through its heart! 

Regarding "The Long Road from Prague"

State Dept. Asst. Secretary Rose Gottemoeller describes a road map to a nuclear weapons-free world, beginning with a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia and global Comprehensive Test Ban and  Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaties. These are all very laudable goals for “The Long Road from Prague,” if not stymied by internal contradictions within the Obama Administration over possible new-design nuclear weapons (see above).

Our  Latest Watchdog is Now Online!

De-Nuking Our Nation and World (Including Congress?);
Final Stretch of a Marathon--the New Haz Waste Permit for Los Alamos Lab; and a Few Short and Sweet DawgBites of Nuclear News

“Fogbank” Problem is a Smokescreen for Modernization

As reported by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post on Tuesday August 4, 2009: “…delivery of the reconditioned W-76 warheads was to begin in 2007 and take nine years. But according to a March 2009 Government Accountability Report, the program ran into a problem -- "Fogbank." It turned out that there initially was no replacement for this key element of the W-76, and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) "had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency," according to the GAO.”How could NNSA "forget" how to make a critical nuclear weapons material? The wrong but politically useful conclusion is being drawn from the fogbank "problem." Instead of justifying "modernization" and related lavish appropriations (which is probably the true aim), it points to the need for conservative curatorship of the stockpile, which would be far less expensive and far more reliable than NNSA's co-called Stockpile Stewardship. With respect to nuclear weapons maintenance, let's stick to the tried and true while all nations' stockpiles await disarmament in fulfillment of thePresident's goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

On the Last Leg Towards a New Haz Waste Permit at LANL

After numerous meetings with people and groups, including Nuclear Watch, who requested a public hearing on the original draft permit, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) has released a revised draft hazardous waste facility Permit for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) that governs the lab’s operation and closure of 26 hazardous waste management units at the facility. This revised draft Permit is the result of nearly a year of addressing comments received on the original draft permit issued on August 27, 2007 and is open for public comment one last time.

(more)

Nuclear Watch has worked to improve the Permit, now it’s your turn

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Rasies Fire Protection Concerns at LANL - again

August 4, 2009 -The DNFSB released three weeklies today. A couple of fire protection issues concerned us – understaffing and equipment inadequacies with the fire protection systems at the old Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building, and a fire hydrant flow test that reduced pressure to the whole LANL site-wide fire suppression system.  

(more)

Transforming US Strategic Posture and Nuclear Weapons Complex

“…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. Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network are releasing 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.Download the Network report’s executive summary, full report fact sheet and map.

The Case for Stockpile Curatorship

• Presentation by Jay Coghlan at the Peace and Security Legislative Strategy Retreat [168KB] -January 15, 2009

Highlights of Recommendations:President Obama has pledged to work toward a nuclear weapons free world, but has also promised to adequately maintain the U.S. stockpile as long as other countries possess nuclear weapons. This is not necessarily a contradiction - -  both could be implemented through a “Curatorship Program” that is built upon and augments already existing programs. The “Enhanced Surveillance Program” and replacement-as-needed of limited life components can reliably maintain the U.S. stockpile while global nonproliferation objectives are being progressively worked toward. While continuing to reject RRW, Congress should legislate a requirement for independent expert risk/benefit analyses of proposed changes to existing nuclear weapons that could erode confidence by straying from original, tested designs.

Congress should bar any new and/or replacement designs and modifications or changes made through Life Extension Programs that introduce new military characteristics.

Congratulations to the New Members of New Mexico’s Congressional Delegation!

Let’s put them to work for us...to deny funding for the unneeded CMRR Nuclear Facility and to redirect that money for today’s urgent needs: nuclear nonproliferation, global threat reduction, energy efficiency, and environmental research and cleanup.Tell them what you think!  Here is a sample letter to use or modify.

Back to top

Rep. Tauscher on a New Nuclear Posture for the 21st Century

Constructing a 21st Century Nuclear Posture, Rep. Ellen Tausher remarks at the Center for American Progress [92KB] –November 17, 2008

Back to top

Incoming Administration Unveils Its Strategy for Global Nuclear Security

November 6, 2008- Barack Obama and Joe Biden have declared strong positions in their Fact Sheet on Defense and have stated goals for preventing nuclear terrorism and nuclear weapons proliferation. The incoming Administration states that it will prevent terrorists from acquiring a nuclear bomb by securing nuclear weapons materials at all vulnerable sites around the world within four years. The “Proliferation Security Initiative” will be institutionalized to strengthen international policing and interdiction efforts aimed at stopping shipments of WMDs, their delivery systems and production materials. Obama proposes to strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency with more authority, personnel and technologies. A verifiable treaty will be negotiated to end the production of fissile nuclear weapons materials. Real incentives and pressure will back up tough diplomacy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and verify full dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Additionally, Obama intends to work with Russia to bi-laterally take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert and to deeply and verifiably reduce nuclear arsenals globally. He further seeks to show the world that this country believes in the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s mandate to ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons, while disavowing unilateral disarmament. Finally, he states that he will end the development of new nuclear weapons.

Back to top

Archived Items