ACTION ALERT: TELL THE NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION TO RECONSIDER ITS PLANS FORDEVELOPING NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND MODERNIZING ITS PRODUCTION COMPLEX.

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Incredibly, the National Nuclear Security Administration(NNSA) is relying on a seven-year old “Nuclear Posture Review Report” to Congress, from the discreditedformer Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to guide its analysis of future alternatives for downsizing, consolidating, and upgrading the widely dispersedfacilities that comprise the nation’s Nuclear Weapons Complex. As a consequence, NNSA’s “Complex Transformation” plan seeks to preserve an oversized complex, while modernizing it to perform what have becomestrategically irrelevant and even harmful Cold War missions, such as the design and manufacture of new nuclear weapons with improved military capabilities (dubbed “Reliable Replacement Warheads”).

Agrowing bi-partisan chorus of national security experts—including former cabinet secretaries Bill Perry, George Schultz, and Henry Kissinger, former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nun, and a wide array of national organizations—arecalling for a radically different organizing principle for US nuclear weapons policy: reestablishing the shared global vision of a nuclear-weapons-free-world,and immediately pursuing a range of concrete initiatives that will set us firmly on the road toward this objective,thereby restoring US leadership and credibility on the critical issues of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons and progressively eliminating nuclear stockpiles worldwide.

As required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is currently taking public comments on its Draft Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Draft Complex Transformation SPEIS, DOE/EIS-0236-S4). This draft document must by law analyze the potential environmental risks and benefits that could flow from implementing a range of reasonable alternatives for downsizing and consolidating operations, facilities, and sites within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. The environmental analysis includes the NNSA’s preferred alternative, but by law it must also examine all reasonable alternatives to the agency’s proposed action.

In late 2006, NNSA received more than 33,000 comment documents from the public regarding the scope of its proposed Complex Transformation environmental analysis, especially the range of reasonable alternatives that must be examined to uncover options that could:inflict fewer harmful impacts on the US environment; diminish risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism; and help stabilize nuclear deterrent relationships among the major powers at progressively lower levels of nuclear forces, setting the stage for eventual elimination of nuclear arsenals as required by our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

NNSA has largely ignored this public outpouring in stitching together its “preferred alternative,” which offers no major reduction in the environmental footprint, security overhead, costs, or types of activities conducted within the complex, but instead merely shuffles weapons material and weapons-research capabilities within and between sites. Major decisions regarding the future consolidation of the complex are simply postponed, while major initiatives to build multi-billion-dollar new facilities are continued.

One statistic says it all: in 1995, five years after the Cold War ended, NNSA’s operational nuclear weapons complex consisted of eight sites in seven states. Under its proposed plan, by 2020 -- 25 years later -- NNSA’s operational nuclear weapons complex will still consist of the same eight sites in the same seven states, but it will be maintaining a weapons stockpile that is likely to be 1/10 - 1/20 the size.

In reality there is no need to maintain two nuclear weapon design laboratories, because the nation has no current or foreseeable requirements for new nuclear weapons, and one nuclear design laboratory will more than suffice as a “hedge” against an uncertain future. Likewise, there is no need to maintain a nuclear weapons test site in Nevada when the rest of the world is committed to observing a permanent Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and no need to produce new plutonium pits, as thousands of existing surplus pits are available to be refurbished and recycled. The non-nuclear parts manufacturingneeded to maintain nuclear weapons could easily be consolidated within the footprint of the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, avoiding the costs and environmental impacts of building a separate new factory at a greenfield site in Kansas City.

The NNSA’s public comment period ends on April 10, 2008. If you live in Nevada, New Mexico, or Northern California, you can attend one of the public hearings listed below, where you may submit your written comments in person, make an oral statement of typically 3-5 minutes in length, talk to reporters, and meet other citizens concerned about the National Nuclear Security Agency’s plans to modernize the nuclear weapons complex and restart nuclear weapons development and production.

ATTEND A NEPA PUBLIC HEARING

  • Tuesday, March 4, 2008: Tonopah, Nevada, Tonopah Convention Center, 301 Brougher Avenue, Tonopah, NV, (6 p.m.-10 p.m.);
  • Thursday, March 6, 2008: Las Vegas, Nevada, Atomic Testing Museum, 755 E. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, NV, (11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 6 p.m.-10 p.m.);
  • Monday, March 10, 2008: Socorro, New Mexico, Macey Center (at New Mexico Tech), 801 Leroy Place, Socorro, NM, (6 p.m.-10 p.m.);
  • Tuesday, March 11, 2008: Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque Convention Center, 401 2nd Street NW, Albuquerque, NM, (11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 6 p.m.-10 p.m.);
  • Wednesday, March 12, 2008: Los Alamos, New Mexico, Hilltop House, 400 Trinity Drive at Central, Los Alamos, NM, (6 p.m.-10 p.m.);
  • Thursday, March 13, 2008: Los Alamos, New Mexico, Hilltop House, 400 Trinity Drive at Central, Los Alamos, NM, (11 a.m.-3 p.m.);
  • Thursday, March 13, 2008: Santa Fe, New Mexico, Genoveva Chavez Community Center, 3221 Rodeo Road, Santa Fe, NM, Thursday, March 13, 2008 (6 p.m.-10 p.m.);
  • Tuesday, March 18, 2008: Tracy, California, Holiday Inn Express, 3751 N. Tracy Blvd., Tracy, CA, (6 p.m.-10 p.m.);
  • Wednesday, March 19, 2008: Livermore, California, Robert Livermore Community Center, 4444 East Avenue, Livermore, CA, (11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 6 p.m.-10 p.m.); and
  • Tuesday, March 25, 2008: Washington, DC, ForrestalBuilding, 1000 Independence Ave, SW., Washington, DC, (11 a.m.-3 p.m.).

Whether or not you plan to attend one of the above sessions in person, please take a moment now to communicate your concerns and objections to NNSA using the draft message in the box below, or compose your own message.

SEND YOUR MESSAGE

Mr. Thomas P. D’Agostino, Administrator

National Nuclear Security Administration

Department of Energy

Washington, DC20585

Via email to:

Dear Mr. D’Agostino:

I write to communicate my serious concerns about the current draft Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (SPEIS). NSSA appears to have ignored thousands of public comments submitted during the scoping process. These requested that NNSA analyze the full range of reasonable alternatives for downsizing and consolidating the nuclear weapons complex between now and 2030, including an alternative that would both support and reflect progressive implementation of the U.S. obligation under the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to negotiate the progressive reduction and eventual elimination of its nuclear arsenal, in concert with the other nuclear powers.

In particular, I would like to draw your attention to the following serious deficiencies:

1. The draft SPEIS analysis is guided explicitly by a widely discredited“Nuclear Posture Review Report” that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeldsubmitted to Congress in December 2001. The actual authors of the report, ideological associates of Mr. Rumsfeld, alsodeparted government service some time ago. Even at the time, this now obsolete report was limitedto “laying out the direction for American nuclear forces over the next 5-10 years,”and therefore itcannot properly serve as the basis for the current analysis, which was publicly “scoped” to run until the year 2030. This is particularly true in light of the multiple pending nuclear weapons and nonproliferation policy reviews that Congress has mandated in the FY 2008 national defense authorization act.

2. The draft SPEIS arbitrarily excludes the examination of major consolidation options between, as opposed to merely within, geographically distinct sites, leaving a proposed complex for 2020 and beyond that looks remarkably like the complex of 1995.

3. The draft SPEIS fails to relate complex consolidation options to reasonably foreseeable requirements for maintainingmuch smaller, technologically stablenuclear deterrent forces, which could enable consolidation of the existing complex into just three or four sites, significantly curtailing environmental impacts and costs as the U.S. government searches for ways to negotiate and verify the elimination of nuclear stockpiles worldwide.

4. The draft SPEIS fails to includea reasonable consolidation alternative that would eliminate the obviously redundant nuclear weapons design and stockpile support missions of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year to sustain even as they endanger the health and safety of nearby residents, and convert the laboratory to the pursuit of more socially productive missions in civilian science and technology.

5. The draft SPEIS fails to include a reasonable consolidation alternatives that would, 12 years after the United States signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, finally close the Nevada Test Site and consolidate any essential above-ground testing activities at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

6. The draft SPEIS and indeed NNSA’s entire public process have unreasonably excluded consideration of the future of the Kansas City Plant, thereby depriving the citizens of the Kansas City area of their due process rights to participate in NEPA public hearings on theComplex Transformation proposal, and arbitrarily excluding from the analysis an obviously reasonable consolidation alternative for non-nuclear fabrication at the Sandia National Laboratory.

[Personalize your message here]

In sum, this draft SPEIS is unacceptable in its current form and shouldnot proceed toward a planned Record of Decision later this year.Following receipt of the above-mentioned nuclear policy reviews over the next 10 to 18 months, a radically revised SPEIS, fully rectifying the problems noted above, should then be issued for public comment.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

[Your address]

______

[INFORMATIONALSIDEBAR:THE NNSA COMPLEX TODAY. Today’s complex consists of eight major sites in seven states that design, develop, manufacture, maintain, store, dismantle and dispose of nuclear weapons:

- the Y-12 National Security Complexnear Oak Ridge, TN stores, dismantles, and refurbishes the highly enriched uranium and lithium-deuteride “secondary” (thermonuclear) stage of nuclear weapons;

- the Savannah River Site (SRS)near Aiken, South Carolina, extracts and purifies the tritium “boost” gas used to increase the size of the primary stage explosion that detonates the secondary stage,which contains most of a nuclear bomb’s explosive force, and continues to process and store plutonium wastes generated onsite and sent from elsewhere in the complex;

- the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX, assembles and disassembles nuclear weapons, produces and disposes of high explosives used to compress plutonium into its explosively chain-reacting state, and stores many thousands of plutonium “pits” used in the “primary” stages of nuclear weapons, which themselves produce explosions equivalent to the detonation of a few hundred to several thousands of tons of chemical explosive;

- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) at Los Alamos, NM, designs, develops, and tests the nuclear components of nuclear weapons, fabricates plutonium pits and detonators, and conducts other kinds of defense-related research;

- Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) located principally in Albuquerque, NM, designs, develops, tests, and integrates all the non-nuclear components that go into complete deliverable nuclear weapons systems, and conducts surveillance of existing stockpile weapons to ensure ongoing stockpile reliability;

- the Kansas City Plant (KCP) in Kansas City, MO, produces in quantity many of the non-nuclear weapon parts engineered by SNL; teamed with the General Services Administration, NNSA is currently trying to launch construction, without debate or approval by Congress, of a plush new $500 million plus greenfield “campus KCP” using a private developer and complex third-party private financing arrangements of dubious benefit to taxpayers;

- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, CA is historically the nation’s second (and redundant) nuclear weapon design laboratory that is no longer critical to the functioning of the nuclear weapons complex, but it remains a constant source of pressure for unnecessary nuclear weapons-related projects, such as the gargantuan $5 billion dollar National Ignition Facility for laser fusion research (to simulate banned nuclear weapon test explosions at a very small scale), and the “Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW),” a project to design and build a new submarine-launched missile warhead without resort to nuclear testing;

- the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, remains a site for both underground nuclear weapons “experiments” and above-ground open air detonations of mock nuclear devices that do not qualify as banned nuclear test explosions under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the United States signed in 1996 but has yet to ratify. END BOX]