New & Updated

Obama's Budget Increases Funding for New Nuclear Weapons Production Facilities; Cuts Funding for Dismantlements

In the new budget request for 2011 the Obama Administration proposes to freeze discretionary domestic spending for programs such as education, nutrition, air traffic control and national parks for three years while dramatically increasing funding for new US nuclear weapons production facilities. Obama is preemptively surrendering to the nuclear weapons labs, the for-profit private corporations running those labs, and the 2/3rd’s Senate majority needed for treaty ratifications. All of these special interests explicitly seek to extract more taxpayer funding for nuclear weapons programs in exchange for ratification of a renewed bilateral arms control treaty with Russia and a long-sought-for Test Ban Treaty. (more)

Press Release -February 2, 2010

Nuclear Watch Tabulation of NNSA Weapons Funding [100KB] -February 2, 2010

Graph by Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar at Institute for Policy Studies, where he is currently focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies.

See our latest presentation for the Kansas City Plant

Kansas City and the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex, January 8, 2010 [5.95 MB]

New Issue of the Watchdog is Online

In This Issue: Los Alamos Plutonium Center of Excellence--or Negligence? New Bomb Plants Aren’t Needed and Don’t Match that Shiny New Nobel Peace Prize; 2010 Policy Events Calendar: A Promising Year for Nuclear Weapons Issues.

Volume 10 Issue 3 [1.4MB] - December 21, 2009

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

Concerned about the Environmental Impact of Operations at the Nevada Test Site?

Currently there is an opportunity for public comments on the scope of a proposed new analysis of the environmental impact of operations at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), the location where most of the US nuclear weapons types were tested by detonation. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Notice of Intent regarding the new NTS Site Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) describes proposed alternatives for operations. The public scoping process can help to identify alternatives, issues, and other pertinent information to be included in and analyzed by the SWEIS.

Because of Nuclear Watch Freedom of Information Act litigation the NNSA has posted all the Sites’ Ten Year Plans. These can now be used as an information resource for informed comment on operations at sites such as NTS.

Comments on the scope of the proposed SWEIS may be submitted in writing by October 16, 2009 to:

NNSA/NSO SWEIS Comments, PO Box 98518, Las Vegas, NV 89193-8518

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

Commemorate August 6th - Join the

Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Free World

We're Closer Than We've Been in a Long Time

Join Our President To Do All We Can

Obama Will Chair UN Meeting on NonproliferationBy EDITH M. LEDERER (AP) UNITED NATIONS — President Barack Obama will chair a high-level meeting of the Security Council on nonproliferation and disarmament during the U.S. presidency of the U.N.'s most powerful body in September, the U.S. ambassador said Tuesday...Obama pledged in April to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons — a major reversal from former President George W. Bush's policy.The president's pledge and new U.S.-Russian cooperation spurred hope for an end to a long deadlock on global disarmament efforts.

Read More

“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)

“…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.

Watchdogs Force NNSA to Post Strategic Plans for its Nuclear Weapons Sites

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within the Department of Energy, has quietly posted “Ten Year Site Plans” (TYSPs) for all of its eight active nuclear weapons research, production and testing sites. This unprecedented electronic access to NNSA’s strategic planning for each of its sites is the result of a successful three-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Nuclear Watch New Mexico. These Plans are authoritative references for detailed site descriptions, employment levels, budgets, future missions, and proposed new or upgraded facilities. Access to these Plans should help inform public debate over future nuclear weapons policies, which Congress has required the Obama Administration to address through a new “Nuclear Posture Review.”Nuclear Watch Press Release   [196KB] -January 22, 2009Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground - "Nuclear Watch: credit where credit's due" -January 23, 2009 Global Security Newswire - "U.S. Releases Nuclear Complex Modernization Details" -January 23, 2009

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