Decisions Today To Build New Nuclear Bomb Plants

[bigtree]

Monday, 22 December 2008

Energy Dept. Issues Decisions Today To Build New Nuclear Bomb Plants, Endanger Communities

Tri-Valley CAREs Charges Department is "Locking in" Provocative Nuclear Weapons Decisions in Waning Days of Bush Administration; Calls on Government to Downsize Weapons Complex, Prioritize Removal of Bomb-making Materials from Livermore Lab

LIVERMORE – In Federal Register notices published today, the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) issued two legally-binding authorizations, called Records of Decision (RODs), to revitalize and rebuild the nuclear weapons complex, at Livermore Lab in California and other sites across the country.

The two RODs codify the DOE NNSA’s "preferred alternatives" laid out in the agency’s final Complex Transformation Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, issued on October 24, 2008.

One ROD covers all of the agency’s "programmatic" decisions, defined as operations involving plutonium, uranium and assembly/disassembly of nuclear weapons. The other ROD covers 3 of 6 "project-specific" decisions, defined as tritium research and development (R&D), flight test operations, and major environmental test facilities to assess performance of nuclear weapons under varying conditions. The 3 "project-specific" decisions that await a ROD are high explosives R&D, hydrodynamic testing, and weapons support functions at the Sandia, Livermore site.

"What we are witnessing today is the DOE NNSA trying to lock in a provocative revitalization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex in the waning days of the Bush Administration," charged Marylia Kelley, Executive Director of Tri-Valley CAREs and a close neighbor of Livermore Lab.

"The ROD issued for operations involving plutonium, uranium and weapons assembly/disassembly admits that DOE NNSA is not choosing the ‘environmentally preferable’ alternative," Kelley continued. "In plain English, the Bush Administration is putting our communities and environment at risk in order to implement its plans for new nuclear bomb plants and bomb making capabilities.

Kelley continued, "The Bush Administration’s ‘preferred alternative’ for Complex Transformation runs counter to our genuine security. Moreover, the Complex Transformation strategy is explicitly tied to the Bush Administration’s 2001 nuclear posture review, which has been declared dead on arrival in the Obama Administration. These important decisions involving billions of tax dollars and our Nation’s nuclear policy objectives should not be made a scant month before President-elect Barack Obama takes office and brings in his own team and governing philosophy."

Under the DOE NNSA’s two RODs issued today, all eight active locations in the current nuclear weapons complex stand to remain open for further weapons activities. "This is in marked contrast to the 1990s when the nuclear weapons complex moved from twelve active bomb-making sites down to eight," remarked Kelley. "My organization calls for Livermore Lab to be used for civilian science missions like global warming research and energy independence rather than further development of new and militarily modified nuclear weapons."

"A record number of people, more than 100,000 strong, rose in opposition to the plan during the formal public comment period. Today, we are seeing the DOE brush aside the expressed wisdom and wishes of the people, many of whom live downwind and downstream of U.S. nuclear weapons facilities in California and across the country," said Kelley.

"Complex Transformation will adversely affect communities around the Livermore Lab main site in Livermore and its Site 300 high explosives testing range near Tracy," noted Tri-Valley CAREs’ Staff Attorney, Robert Schwartz. "It will mean continuing pollution and potential new dangers."

The same ROD also "green lights" a massive, new Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12 in TN . . .

read more: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0812/S00478.htm


related:

Obama's Holdovers in Pentagon Leadership Still Pushing Hard for New Generation of Nuclear Weapons
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree/1294

[Idealism]

1. Lets just rip up that Non-proliferation treaty

It would only be the 4th or 5th treaty the Bush Regime has shit on

[bigtree]

2. when that treaty was first enacted

. . . most of that generation was riveted to it's outcome, here in America and around the world.

But administration is intent on focusing our attention on reviving their Cold War obsession with possessing more and more.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

5. Most of "that generation" ? and what about THIS GENERATION?

[bigtree]

7. heh

that's what I was getting at

[dysfunctional press]

3. why can't something like this be nullified by the new administration?

and why doesn't someone send shit-for-brains on a 30-day cruise to the south pacific...?

[bigtree]

8. I think it can

. . . the new president needs a commission to craft a new nuclear posture if he wants to stop this train. These moves coincide with the Nuclear Posture Review that this administration initiated at the beginning of Bush's term.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

4. This has got to be stopped at all cost, seems like most people

don't understand what is really important to our survival as living world. Nuclear weapons will bring us down and put us in the dirt faster then any global warming. All nuclear weapons must be destroyed no country has the right to hold them over our heads.

[pleah]

6. K&R GDI! There are already to many on this earth.

This has to be stopped, asap.

[bigtree]

9. sunshine

political disinfectant