By John Witham, on August 9th, 2010
Sixty-five years ago today the Japanese city of Nagasaki was destroyed by a nuclear weapon powered by plutonium. As we remember the 70,000 dead… and the tragedy, suffering and terror caused by the use of atomic bombs, let us heed the growing global call to rid the world of these terrible weapons. Let us take action, NOW, towards that goal by stopping the needless expansion of the plutonium complex at Los Alamos. The proposed 4.5 billion-dollar CMRR Nuclear Facility is too expensive, excessive and even dangerous in a world on the path towards less, rather than more nuclear weapons. The impact of building this facility is not known and should be carefully reconsidered. Serious questions must be asked before the greedy momentum to rebuild the obsolete cold-war nuclear weapons industry proceeds. Among them: Does Northern New Mexico (or the world) really need a modern, expanded plutonium bomb complex? Should Los Alamos National Lab base its future on plutonium? Perhaps reflecting on the legacy of Nagasaki will guide our actions.
By John Witham, on July 28th, 2010
From KC PeaceWorks-
YOUR PRESENCE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN KANSAS CITY NEXT MONTH.
HERE IS YOUR INVITATION FOR ALL OF THE ACTIVITIES…
Peace people from KC and around the country will gather Aug. 13-16 for the KC Nuclear Weapons Plant Conference: Close It! Clean It! Don’t Repeat It!
What’s that all about?
Well, the city of Kansas City, Missouri has sold $687 million dollars of municipal bonds, backed by the feds, for a new mind-boggling $4.8 billion dollar KC Plant, the first new U.S. nuclear weapons plant to be built in 32 years! It [...]
By John Witham, on July 28th, 2010
On Friday, August 6, we kick off Santa Fe’s exclusive theatrical run of this film (at CCA Cinematheque/1050 Old Pecos Tr. Santa Fe, NM) with an introduction by Valerie Plame Wilson and a panel discussion: New Mexico and the Bomb (with Nuclear Watch Executive Director, Jay Coghlan and others)
For Tickets/Reservations call (505) 982-1338 (Reservations strongly recommended)
Proceeds benefit the CCA Cinematheque.
Friday 8/6 (7 pm)
Saturday 8/7 (4:30 and 6:30)
Sunday 8/8 (4:30 and 6:30)
Monday 8/9 (4:30 and 6:30)
(for other show times see CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS)
By John Witham, on July 13th, 2010
Large Arsenal Maintained, Dismantlements Bottlenecked, Plutonium Pit and Waste Production at Los Alamos Expanded.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has prepared but not publicly released a FY 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan. NNSA describes it as “an unprecedented and comprehensive effort to detail the plans for managing the Nation’s nuclear deterrent in the coming decades.” Other than some incremental arms reductions, conspicuously lacking are planned concrete steps toward reaching the nuclear weapons-free world that President Obama claimed as a long-term national security goal in his now-famous April 2009 Prague [...]
By John Witham, on July 2nd, 2010
Maryville, Tennessee- Over the July Forth weekend, Jay Coghlan, and many others, will be joining The Nuclear Resister, Nukewatch (the Wisconsin-based environmental and peace action group) and the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) for a national gathering, culminating with nonviolent anti-nuclear direct action to declare our independence from nuclear weapons and nuclear power. The gathering will be held at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee, with protest and action at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in nearby Oak Ridge, where OREPA has sustained a nonviolent campaign for over 20 years.
Visit [...]
By Jay Coghlan, on June 25th, 2010
While being narrowly correct, LANL PR man Kevin Roark is misleading when he claims [in a June 25, Letter to the Editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper] that plutonium pit production will not take place in the new Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project (CMRR). What he fails to disclose is that the Lab is not building just one facility, but instead is creating an integrated manufacturing complex for expanded production for which the CMRR is absolutely key. This complex will consist of LANL’s existing production facility “PF-4” [...]
By BigDawg, on June 24th, 2010
On the heels of a GAO report made public Monday, which stated that accounting procedures used by various branches of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex are preventing NNSA from pinpointing the exact total cost of maintaining its nuclear deterrent, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has released a weekly report also showing LANL’s inability to accurately estimate even the tiniest of specific costs.
In the June 4th weekly report for Los Alamos Lab, the DNFSB stated that the Lab underestimated the cost of seismically upgrading gloveboxes at its plutonium pit [...]
By BigDawg, on June 21st, 2010
The Government Accounting Office (GAO) released a new report today. Actions Needed to Identify Total Costs of Weapons Complex Infrastructure and Research and Production Capabilities, GAO-10-582, June 2010
I’ll start with the conclusion –
Within the global community, the Administration, and Congress, a bargain is being struck on nuclear weapons policy. Internationally, if the [START] treaty is ratified, significant stockpile reductions [will] have been negotiated between the United States and Russia. Domestically, a new Nuclear Posture Review has provided an updated policy framework for the nation’s nuclear deterrent. To enable this arms reduction agenda, [...]
By Jay Coghlan, on June 9th, 2010
I only now happened to run across the article below from the Los Alamos National Laboratory Nuclear Weapons Journal about how the remanufacturing of Fogbank was reestablished. As dated as it is, I think its implication is very important that existing programs are more than sufficient to keep the nuclear weapons stockpile safe and reliable, until eventual disarmament.
You may recall that the loss of Fogbank was a bit of a crisis that seriously delayed the W76 Life Extension Program. It had at various times been used as rationale for why [...]
By Jay Coghlan, on June 8th, 2010
I was in Washington, DC last week and heard a number of congressional offices express support for the CMRR-Nuclear Facility, indicating what we already know, that it will be very difficult to defeat directly. However, the issue of costs is another matter, and I have some hope that the Nuclear Facility can die a death of 1,000 cuts.
For example, while in DC I met with a staff person knowledgeable about DOE project cost accounting requirements introduced by the Senate Armed Services Committee. I expressed my concern that LANL could implement [...]
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