CCNS Update

This week 63 non-governmental organizations and 52 individuals requested that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant a two-month extension of time to provide informed public comments about the scope of the Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for Continued Operations of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL SWEIS). On August 19 th , DOE announced a 45-day comment period. Currently, comments...

Taos ceramic artist Serit Kotowski’s beautiful Sacred Trust: BROKEN is an educational installation that focuses on the impact of the nuclear weapons industry in New Mexico. Using a traditional potter’s repertoire Kotowski created two sets of dinnerware to demonstrate that, if ingested, radioactive  substances are harmful, if not deadly. The plates and cups are labeled “NOT FOOD SAFE.”

New scientific work demonstrates that even a “limited” nuclear war would cause abrupt climate disruption and global starvation. A limited nuclear war is defined as a conflict confined to one region and involving a small fraction of the world’s nuclear arsenals. But such a conflict would be neither limited nor regional and despite statements to the contrary, it would be an event on a planetary scal...

Did you know that the current hazardous waste permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) states that waste disposal operations will end in 2024, followed by a ten-year period to close the underground waste disposal site?

On Tuesday, August 9 th the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission will hear virtually a petition for review of the groundwater discharge permit, DP-1132, filed by non-governmental organizations CCNS and Honor Our Pueblo Existence (HOPE). DP-1132 allows Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to handle, store and discharge treated radioactive and hazardous waters from the Radioactive Liquid Was...

August 6 th and 9 th were the days in 1945 when the U.S. bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs 77 years ago. Every year community members gather at to commemorate those events, to recognize the harm done, and to recommit to working for peace. You are invited to participate in these commemoration events.

Did you know the hazardous waste permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is up for its ten-year renewal? In August, the New Mexico Environment Department may release a draft permit for public review and a 60-day comment period.

In the face of continuing problems and escalating costs for expanded production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores for nuclear weapons, U.S. Congressman John Garamendi, of California, has offered a common sense amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for  plutonium pit accountability.

Holtec International recently purchased two shutdown nuclear power plants in Michigan to create a supply chain of spent fuel rods for its proposed consolidated interim storage facility in southeastern New Mexico’s Permian Basin. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff is expected to issue a Final Environmental Impact Statement this month and an operating license in early 2023 for the propose...

Did you know that the Department of Energy (DOE) plans to continue disposing of plutonium-contaminated radioactive and hazardous waste in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) essentially forever? In filings submitted to the New Mexico Environment Department on Monday, DOE stated, “[the] final facility closure could begin no earlier than [Calendar Year] 2083.”

This week before the start of the First Meeting of States Parties for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna, three countries deposited their ratification documents with the United Nations. Grenada, Cabot Verde, and Timor Leste joined 62 countries to ratify the treaty,  for a total of 65. One-third of the world’s 195 countries have now ratified the Treaty.

If you were in charge of allocating U.S. taxpayer money, would you invest $84,094 [dollars] per minute for nuclear weapons? What would your priorities be?

While you may not be able to travel to Vienna, Austria for the First Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, you can sign the online Statement on the Existential Threat of Nuclear Weapons . 

Decisions being made by federal and state agencies about the plutonium-contaminated waste stored at the Waste Control Specialists facility located on the Texas-New Mexico border may foreshadow how non-compliant waste may be stranded in the future.

In November 2021, Los Alamos National Laboratory applied to the Environmental Protection Agency to begin construction of a new radioactive liquid waste treatment facility for transuranic, or plutonium contaminated, liquid waste from the Plutonium Facility.

Plutonium operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory's Technical Area 55 are centered in the middle of the 36 square mile national nuclear weapons facility.

Recently released Biden Administration budget documents reveal that for Fiscal Year 2023, beginning on October 1st, the Administration is proposing a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) budget of $4.6 billion, an overall increase o 21 percent.

As of Wednesday evening May 4th, the Cerro Pelado wildland fire was about five miles from the "back gate" of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

Nearly 30 years ago, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board began communications with the DOE about ventilation systems in nuclear facilities, saying that they must contain or confine radioactive materials during an accident or seismic event that might be followed by a fire. 

Exploding Biden Administration budgets for the three Department of Energy (DOE) sites in New Mexico fully support the dangerous trend to develop more provocative nuclear weapons. 

Eight years after the 2014 explosion of one or more waste containers disposed in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) underground, on Saturday, April 9 th , WIPP announced that one or more waste containers had leaked radioactive liquids while being unloaded from a TRUPACT-II shipping container in the Waste Handling Building.

Last week we quoted Cynthia Lazaroff about the nuclear dangers in Ukraine and her call to come forward that "Our work is more important now that ever." This week we quote the call to come forward from Ralph Hutchison, Coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, to all those working for the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty, that this is our time.

This week the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation held a virtual presentation by Cynthia Lazaroff and Richard Falk about the nuclear dangers in Ukraine. www.wagingpeace.org

This week Nuclear Watch New Mexico announced the successful settlement of its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) about its slow cleanup of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

Please join the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service to acknowledge Robert Alvarez, one of the bedrock founders of the national movement to unmask the human and environmental carnage that resulted directly from the U.S. effort to create a massive nuclear arsenal. The live virtual event runs from 1 to 2:30 pm Mountain Daylight Time this Saturday March...