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“Are They Already Cutting Corners on Worker Protection at DOE’s New Plutonium Processing Plant?”

CounterPunch, September 11, 2023

As of this past Labor Day,

The U.S. Department of Energy is central to U.S. plans for full-scale nuclear war. But some patriots are confronting those plans as they pose a threat to all of us .

Oppenheimer’s Legacy: South Carolina and SRS at the Center of the New Nuclear Arms Race

In case you missed the August 16,

An often-ignored but important agency – the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) – which conducts oversight of DOE activities reveals that a leaking radioactive drum “believed” to be uranium waste was “discovered”

A draft recommendation before the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board (SRS CAB) to explore reprocessing of commercial spent fuel at SRS is misguided, poorly written and reveals profound ignorance of SRS abilities and the problems associated with reprocessing.

At showings of the films “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” at The Nickelodeon Theater in Columbia, South Carolina, in July 2023, pink-clad Barbies have been leafletting and engaging film attendees concerning the renewed threat of nuclear war,

Please attend this event in Columbia, South Carolina on August 6, 2023, to commemorate the 78th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima (uranium bomb) and Nagasaki (plutonium bomb).

South Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club: Action alert against plutonium pit production for new nuclear warheads, July 2023:

Call to Action to Oppose Plutonium “Pit” Production  —

While investigative journalism is dead concerning SRS – to the detriment of our democracy – good that it still lives in New Mexico:

“Safety lapses at Los Alamos National Laboratory –

Plutonium pit production – for the core of nuclear weapons – was an environmental and health disaster at the Rocky Flats plant near Denver, Colorado. Officially closed in 1992,

Do challenges in plutonium pit fabrication for a new ICBM pose the risk of a return to nuclear weapons testing in Nevada?
“As America’s Nuclear Arsenal Upgrades, Usual Testing is Scrapped”

This article about new nuclear bomb production at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico is of importance because the same thing is happening at SRS. The “defense”

Embarrassed DOE Forced to Finally Publicly Admit Failure in Scheme to Dump German High-Level Nuclear Waste on SRS, But SRS Watch Learned Much Earlier that the Project was Dead and Informed the Public Months Ago,

DOE finally confirms that the congressionally required public-private funding plan for the plutonium-fueled Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) doesn’t exist.

Why did it take over two years to make this embarrassing admission?

If you are following the issue of production of plutonium “pits” for new nuclear weapons, you will want to check out this April 27, 2023 article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

Dealing with a debacle: A better plan for US plutonium pit production

By Curtis T.

Read why there is no “need” for a nuclear bomb factory (to make plutonium cores for new nuclear weapons) at SRS:

“Dealing with a debacle: A better plan for US plutonium pit production“

As always, complex nuclear projects for DOE are always delayed and run far over budget. Now we see that happening with the proposed SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant and the missile for which new pits would be supplied (for the W87-1 warhead).

Nuclear Watch New Mexico reviews proposed Fiscal Year 2024 federal budget and finds  some very alarming things, March 13, 2023:

Biden Releases Record NNSA Nuclear Weapons Budget

Santa Fe,

SRS Watch news: SCANA Official in Charge of Construction of Failed VC Summer Nuclear Project to be Sentenced in Federal Court on March 8, 2023; Admitted Felon Faces 5-Years in Prison but Asks for 15-Month Sentence;

Will export of uranium from the United States to Russia help pay for the war?  How long will uranium export and import go on? Will a new export license be sought after the current license expires on December 31,

Those aiming to proliferate weapon-usable plutonium suffer yet another setback:

“Japan’s Rokkasho reprocessing plant, 25 years behind schedule, delayed again”

On 26 December 2022, Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited announced another delay in completion of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant.

Governor Michele Lujan Grisham of New Mexico has sent a letter, dated November 16, 2022,  to President Biden in opposition to private plans for “interim” storage of highly radioactive commercial spent fuel in southeastern New Mexico.

New plutonium pit production facilities at the Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina are being pursued to initially make pits (cores,

Schedule for federal court proceedings against top Westinghouse official – Jeffrey Benjamin – at the VC Summer construction site for felony conspiracy & fraud in the failed construction of two Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors –

More public interest victories to add to the list of victories over 40 years!

In July 2022, there have been two significant developments at the U.S.

The new CDU-Green coalition in the North Rhine-Westphalia government has negative implications for the decade-long effort to dump German spent fuel on the Savannah River Site. That spent fuel is from the long-closed AVR gas-cooled reactor and the spent fuel is stored at Jülich.

A skeptical Congress is finally beginning to put some requirements on plutonium pit production, for new nuclear weapons, in the face of DOE’s effort to move forward without constraints. 

Zombie project stays in the crypt: The Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) was defunded by Congress in March 2022 and therefore killed. But some die-hard backers in DOE still keep after the reactor,

SRS Watch staff and volunteers were asked to table at the Bonnie Raitt/Lucinda Williams concerts in Charlotte, NC on June1, 2022 and in Columbia, SC on June 4,

Film about air crash over Spain, with four lost nuclear weapons – THE PLUTONIUM WASTE & CONTAMINATED EQUIPMENT WAS DUMPED in LOW-LEVEL WASTE BURIAL GROUND AT the US DOE’s SAVANNAH RIVER SITE in SOUTH CAROLINA.