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
Heal Fukushima 
From Albuquerque Journal
Feds reach settlement with Navajos over uranium mine cleanup
By Susan Montoya Bryan / Associated Press
Tuesday, July 19th, 2016
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The federal government has reached another settlement with the Navajo Nation that will clear the way for cleanup work to continue at abandoned uranium mines across the largest American Indian reservation in the U.S.
The target includes 46 sites that have been identified as priorities due to radiation levels, their proximity to people and the threat of contamination spreading. Cleanup is supposed to be done at 16 abandoned mines while evaluations are planned for another 30 sites and studies will be done at two more to see if water supplies have been compromised.
The agreement announced by the U.S. Justice Department settles the tribe’s claims over the costs of engineering evaluations and cleanups at the mines.
The federal government has already spent $100 million to address abandoned mines on Navajo lands and a separate settlement reached with DOJ last year was worth more than $13 million. However, estimates for the future costs for cleanup at priority sites stretch into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could not immediately pinpoint the worth of the latest settlement.
Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden, who is with the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said the latest settlement marks the second phase of ensuring cleanup of mines that pose the most significant public health risks.
“Addressing the legacy of uranium mining on Navajo lands reflects the commitment of the Justice Department and the Obama administration to fairly and honorably resolve the historic grievances of American Indian tribes and build a healthier future for their people,” Cruden said in a statement.
Navajo leaders have been pushing for cleanup for decades, specifically for the removal of contaminated soils and other materials rather than burying and capping the waste on tribal land. Since 2005, they’ve had a ban on uranium mining.
Over four decades, some 4 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from mines on Navajo lands with the federal government being the sole purchaser from the 1940s through the 1960s, when commercial sales began. The mining operations stretched from western New Mexico into Arizona and southern Utah.
Decades of uranium mining have left behind a legacy of contamination that includes one of the nation’s worst disasters involving radioactive waste: a spill in the Church Rock area that sent more than 1,100 tons of mining waste and millions of gallons of toxic water into an arroyo and downstream to the Rio Puerco. The result was a Superfund declaration.
Advocates have called for more studies on the health effects of continued exposure to the contamination resulting from the mining sites, and some have criticized the slow pace of cleanup and the lack of adequate funding for the work that needs to be done.
In a report submitted to New Mexico lawmakers last year, a team of consultants estimated it would take EPA more than a century to fund the removal of contamination at just 21 of the highest priority sites.
In a letter sent last month to President Barack Obama and EPA leadership, Navajo President Russell Begaye said the abandoned uranium mines project continues to struggle with outreach, coordination and trust issues.
EPA officials say in the last decade, the agency has remediated nearly four dozen homes, conducted field studies at all 523 mines on Navajo lands and provided safe drinking water to more than 3,000 families. Stabilization and cleanup work also has been done at nine abandoned mines.