Los Alamos

— November 16: Forum on U.S. proposal to build up nuclear arsenal

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From Los Alamos Study Group

Thursday, November 16, 2023
6-8 PM Mountain Time
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
107 W. Barcelona Road
Santa Fe, New Mexico
In-person and webcast

Panel discussion on the Congressional Nuclear Strategy Commission’s proposed crash program to increase U.S. nuclear weapons production, deployment, and spending by 2035, along with rapid qualitative and quantitative increases in other strategic weapons.

Speakers:
Peter Kuznick
Steven Starr
Greg Mello

Register for webcast:
To join the meeting by Zoom, register in advance at this link:  https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZclcemgpzIrH9GVf3g3ImNz1s8m1W6ilRoV.

Bulletin 333:

In late 2010, President Obama agreed to a wide-ranging plan to modernize the entire nuclear weapons establishment in negotiations with Senate Republicans over the ratification of New START. That plan involved the serial modernization or replacement of every single U.S. nuclear warhead factory, warhead, and delivery system. Since 2010 this plan has gradually evolved and expanded, and of course it has also greatly increased in cost.

Now, a radical increase in scale and pace of modernization, along with an increase in the size of nuclear forces, is being proposed by an influential bipartisan group appointed by Congress, as laid out in the The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Oct 2023). It was recently presented to the Senate (video 1) to general acclaim (“Bi-partisan support for strategic posture report in Senate Armed Services Committee hearing,” Exchange Monitor, Oct 19, 2023).

This report makes the claim that unless the U.S. greatly increases its nuclear weapons efforts along with other strategic system acquisitions over the 2027-2035 period, “deterrence” vis-a-vis Russia and China will be lost.

As regular readers of these Bulletins will know, that happens to be the period of time in which Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is expected to make all the new plutonium warhead cores (“pits”) for what these authors hope will be an expanding U.S. nuclear arsenal. Absent new pits from LANL, no altogether new warheads will be possible.

This Thursday, November 16, from 6-8 pm, we will host a nationally-webcast, panel and audience discussion of this new strategic proposal at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Santa Fe, at 107 W. Barcelona Road (map). Panelists will include Peter Kuznick, who will speak on how this plan is being received internationally, Steven Starr, and myself. If you are local, please come in person if you can.

To join the meeting by Zoom, register in advance at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZclcemgpzIrH9GVf3g3ImNz1s8m1W6ilRoV. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

…Many of you may be interested in this recent expose (with which we had a lot to do): “Chess, cards and catnaps in the heart of America’s nuclear weapons complex, Searchlight New Mexico, Nov 8, 2023).

https://lasg.org/ActionAlerts/2023/Bulletin333.html

1 armed-services.senate(dot)gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-findings-of-the-congressional-commission-on-the-strategic-posture-of-the-united-states

— Dangerous radioactive hot particles span the globe

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From Beyond Nuclear International

Citizen scientists are uncovering risks that governments would rather cover up

November 20, 2019

By Cindy Folkers

When reactors exploded and melted down at the Fukushima nuclear power complex in March 2011, they launched radioactivity from their ruined cores into the unprotected environment.  Some of this toxic radioactivity was in the form of hot particles (radioactive microparticles) that congealed and became airborne by attaching to dusts and traveling great distances.

However, the Fukushima disaster is only the most recent example of atomic power and nuclear weapons sites creating and spreading these microparticles. Prior occurrences include various U.S. weapons sites and the ruined Chernobyl reactor. While government and industry cover up this hazard, community volunteer citizen science efforts – collaborations between scientists and community volunteers – are tracking the problem to raise awareness of its tremendous danger in Japan and across the globe.

After the Fukushima nuclear disaster began, one highly radioactive specimen, a particle small enough to inhale or ingest, was found in a private home where it should not have been, hundreds of miles from its source, in a vacuum cleaner bag containing simple house dust.

Fukushima Nagoya map

Continue reading →

• U.S. gov’t blew up nuclear reactor to expose Los Angeles to radiation; U.S. Public Health Service monitored fallout

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Compiled by ENE News

U.S. Gov’t intentionally ‘blew up’ nuclear reactor outside Los Angeles in massive human radiation experiment on public — Southern California covered in radioactive plume — Officials “documented effects of long-range effluent cloud on people downwind” (MAP)

9-6-15

New York Times, Aug 24, 1994 (emphasis added): U.S. Nuclear Accident in 1965 Was Staged, Documents Show — The Atomic Energy Commission staged a nuclear rocket accident in the Nevada desert in 1965 that sent a radioactive cloud more than 200 miles to Los Angeles, documents released today showed… [Details] were discovered in archival documents from the Energy Department, as part of a continuing inquiry into the Government’s secretive human radiation experiments… Jan. 12, 1965, in Jackass Flats, Nev., part of a rocket’s nuclear core was intentionally vaporized so that scientists could study the behavior of the reactor and the environmental effects of the radiation, the documents showed… [C]onsiderably more people were exposed than in other experiments because the cloud traveled so far, [Congressman Edward Markey] said. The cloud was tracked by aircraft, and increased radioactivity… was observed in Barstow, San Bernadino, Los Angeles and San Diego…

U.S. Dept. of Energy (pdf), 1995: Human Radiation Experiments… The Kiwi Transient Nuclear Test… involved a controlled nuclear excursion resulting in partial vaporization of the reactor core. This created a radioactive plume that, while low in radioactivity, was detectable far off-site… The U.S. Public Health Service monitored the cloud to beyond 200 miles downwind, which extended to Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean.

Los Alamos National Laboratory of the University of California (pdf), 1968: Environmental Effects of the Kiwi-TNT Effluent — The Kiwi Transient Nuclear Test (Kiwi-TNT) was a controlled excursion… to vaporize a significant portion of the reactor core. The test studied… environmental effects of the radioactive materials released… The U.S. Public Health Service [USPHS] monitored the neighborhood and collected milk samples in southern… California to beyond 200 miles downwind. The course of the effluent cloud was tracked by aircraft… From 5 to 20% of the reactor core was vaporized with approximately 67% of the products from about 3 x 10^20 fissions released to the effluent cloud… USPHS provided offsite radiation surveillance by aerial tracking of the effluent cloud, monitoring radiation dosage of the off-site population, and collecting environmental samples in southern Nevada and California… Following the test… milk samples were collected… 14 locations in southern California. The milk sampling program continued for approximately a week. Vegetation samples were obtained… [Aircraft] tracked the effluent cloud from Death Valley over the Los Angeles area and terminated contact over the Pacific Ocean… The weather at the time of the test fulfilled the desired conditions… The winds were northeasterly [blowing to southwest] at all levels, ranging from 14 to 27 knots… The Kiwi-TNT reactor was “exploded” in the sense that it was a violent disruption and dispersion of an originally intact object. It blew up in an unusual fashion… Because the Kiwi-TNT was a unique, controlled simulation of a phenomenon frequently called a maximum credible reactor accident, there was great interest in the radiological characteristics and effects of the effluent many miles from the test point… The USPHS documented the effects of the long-range effluent cloud on the people and agriculture downwind. [Personnel] observed the radioactive cloud shortly after it reached California and again as it reached the Pacific Ocean… At 11 hours 20 minutes after the Kiwi-TNT event… aircraft again attempted to locate the effluent cloud… Positive signals were received over the ocean from Los Angeles to near Santa Barbara… [Several hours later] it returned to the previous search area and again detected weak, but positive signals… A few days after… officials observed increased radioactivity in routine air samples from the Barstow, San Bernardino. Los Angeles, and San Diego, California, areas…

See also: Los Angeles-area Meltdown: Cesium-137 still up to 1,000 times higher than standard — Plutonium also detected — Located between Chatsworth and Simi Valley

http://enenews.com/govt-intentionally-exploded-nuclear-reactor-los-angeles-conduct-human-radiation-experiment-southern-california-covered-radioactive-plume-officials-documented-effects-long-range-effluent-cloud-pe

 

$355 Billion expansion of nuclear weapons proposed by Obama administration and Congress

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From the Guardian, September 29, 2014
By Cady Enders

…Congress and the Department of Defense, together with New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), are gearing up to dramatically increase production of nuclear weapons cores to numbers not seen since the cold war. In a report to Congress last month, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) outlined specific recommendations for a nuclear production plan under which as many as 80 explosive plutonium cores – 3.5in spheres that trigger an atomic bomb – would be created per year by 2030.

The Los Alamos proposal, which aims to increase plutonium core production at the nuclear facility thirtyfold from 2013 levels, leaves various environmental, fiscal, and political questions unanswered. Los Alamos, which the CRS report cites as the only plausible place for the slated nuclear expansion, happens to have a staggeringly poor history of safeguarding war-grade nuclear materials. A federal study last month found the nuclear facility unprepared to respond to emergencies; environmental violations abound; and a former employee was recently sentenced to a year in federal prison for trying to sell nuclear secrets to the Venezuelan government.

The plan, which has already been quietly adopted in broad terms by the House and Senate armed services committees as part of the 2015 Defense Authorization Act, is expected to contribute an estimated $355bn for nuclear weapons development over the next decade. The spending would seem to stand in stark contrast to President Obama’s stated position on nuclear weapons.

Obama has previously indicated a strong commitment to cutting the nuclear stockpile from 5,113 warheads in 2009 to 1,500 by the year 2016. In a 2009 speech in Prague, cited by the Nobel committee as the primary reason for awarding him the peace prize…

… James Doyle, a former scientist in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Division at LANL, said that the scale of the proposed project lacks supporting research, particularly in the quantity of cores required. “I’ve never seen the justification articulated for the 50-80 pits per year by 2030,” Doyle said.

Doyle, a 17-year veteran of Los Alamos, was dismissed on July 8 for publishing an article in support of nuclear disarmament that had been approved prior to publication by the laboratory’s classification department. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the State Department have since classified the article, despite the fact that the media review process at the lab prior to publication identified no classification breaches. (The article remains available to the public even after the classification.)

Doyle believes that the timing of his ouster was connected to the congressional push for nuclear weapons maintenance. “I think the laboratory would like to review for message, too,” he said.“I would speculate that the message of my article was in opposition to the labs’ message when searching for funding for the plutonium pit project.”

Doyle believes that the government should turn its focus from weapons component production to a strategic plan for eliminating nuclear weapons by the year 2045. “I think there are plenty of people at the lab who share my view that are now even less likely to write an article like that now this has happened to me,” Doyle said.

… Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear watchdog group, said that the reason the pit proposal has progressed, despite monumental cost to the taxpayer, comes down to the priorities of the for-profit corporations that now run all the country’s nuclear laboratories since they were privatized in 2006. That includes Los Alamos National Security, a private limited liability corporation that manages and operates Los Alamos National Laboratories.

“The business model of the nuclear weapons labs is to blackmail the government into continuing excessive appropriations,” said Mello. “The nuclear weapons labs are sized for the Cold War, and they need a Cold War to keep that size.”

For the complete article:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/congress-nuclear-weapons-new-mexico-radioactivity

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44968
Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2014 to 2023

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