DOE moves, expands nuke complex

[marylia@earthlink.net (marylia)]

Hi. Several people have sent me email notes asking if I have written a
succinct article on DOE's "megastrategy" to move and expand key aspects of
the nuclear weapons complex. Here is a piece I did for this month's
Tri-Valley CAREs newsletter. Feel free to adapt it for your newsletter --
or any other public education-type use. Please credit our organization, if
possible. Thanks. Peace, Marylia

New Plan to Expand Nuclear Weapons Activities Revealed:
Plutonium from Los Alamos Lab to be Moved to Livermore

by Marylia Kelley
from Tri-Valley CAREs' September 1999 newsletter, Citizen's Watch

Note -- In last month's Citizen's Watch, we made public DOE's plan to ship
some of Rocky Flat's plutonium to Livermore Lab. Now we have uncovered a
proposal to bring plutonium from Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico to Livermore.
Read on ...

The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) is poised to make major changes in its
nuclear weapons program and move more plutonium work to the Livermore Lab,
according to materials used by DOE to brief high-level Clinton
administration officials on the plan.

Tri-Valley CAREs obtained the briefing papers from the federal Office of
Management and Budget and released them to the media and the public in
August. The proposed changes will have far-reaching, negative consequences
for Bay Area public health and safety, for national efforts to reign in the
escalating nuclear weapons budget and for international nuclear
non-proliferation and disarmament goals.

DOE will give Livermore Lab plutonium pit work now performed at Los Alamos
Lab in New Mexico. A "pit" refers to the plutonium core of a nuclear
weapon. This plan will include moving nuclear weapons to Livermore for
plutonium pit surveillance. Additionally, the workload for the W80
submarine and air launched cruise missiles is slated to move to Livermore
Lab from Los Alamos. This, too, will mean more plutonium pits at Livermore
Lab.

Until now, this plan has gone forward in secret, and the public has been
inappropriately excluded from any knowledge or decision-making role.
Earlier this year, DOE and Livermore Lab hosted a public meeting at which
officials testified that no major changes were contemplated to the Lab's
operations over the next 5 years. On that basis, DOE and Livermore Lab
decided, in March 1999, not to conduct a new site-wide environmental
review. Put simply, they lied.

Tri-Valley CAREs and its colleague organizations in the Bay Area are
demanding full environmental review and public hearings before any money is
allocated or any nuclear materials are moved.

Moreover, the DOE plan extends beyond shifting "Stockpile Stewardship"
functions between labs. It expands the so-called "Stewardship" program and
further enhances U.S. nuclear capability -- demonstrating once again a "do
as I say and not as I do" proliferation policy on the part of the U.S. That
hypocrisy will not go unnoticed by other nations, some of whom will use it
to justify their own pursuit of new nuclear weapons capabilities. The
result will be an increase in environmental risks locally and proliferation
dangers worldwide.

                                                        Major Changes Proposed

*  DOE will "move promptly" the W80 nuclear warhead workload from Los
Alamos Lab in Mew Mexico to Livermore Lab in California. This will increase
the plutonium pit work at Livermore. The briefing papers also reveal what
appear to be changes in the warhead that go far, far beyond mere
maintenance procedures to preserve the existing weapon's "safety" or
"reliability" while it remains in the arsenal. The W80 "upgrade" proposed
here is sufficiently extensive to raise new questions about DOE plans to
(re)design nuclear weapons in the 21st century. The W80 was originally
designed by Los Alamos, and this plan marks the first time that
responsibility for a nuclear weapon designed by one of the labs will be
shifted to the other.

*  DOE will also "move promptly" the plutonium pit surveillance mission and
workload from Los Alamos to Livermore. DOE expressly says one of the aims
is to give Livermore Lab more plutonium work. This means pits from weapons
besides those of the W80 discussed above will come to Livermore, where the
Lab already has about 880 pounds of plutonium and is slated to get more
from Rocky Flats.

*  Los Alamos Lab's Appaloosa program will be expanded. Appaloosa is the
code name for a new hydrodynamic test program wherein, essentially,
high-explosives and surrogate pits (including with plutonium 242) are set
off inside above-ground tanks.

*  DOE will consolidate hydrodymamic testing at Los Alamos, although
administration officials have been told by DOE that Livermore Lab will hang
on to its hydrodynamic test program, including the new "Contained Firing
Facility," now under construction at Livermore Lab.

*  DOE will build a huge, new 50 gigaelectron volt proton accelerator at
Los Alamos Lab. The existing LANCE facility will become merely an injector
beamline for the new mega-machine, according to DOE.

*  DOE will conduct additional underground subcritical nuclear tests for
the W80 and W88 programs. The briefing papers specify that additional
subcritical shots will involve "weapon relevant shapes."

*  DOE will move ATLAS and Pegasus from Los Alamos Lab to Nevada. ATLAS is
a new fusion facility being constructed at Los Alamos. Pegasus is an older
machine. These two programs will be used to develop technology that will
allow for "explosively driven pulse power for future special nuclear
material [i.e., plutonium] experiments in U1A." The U1A is the underground
tunnel complex where subcritical nuclear experiments are detonated. These
pulse power  tests are of a new type.

*  DOE will build a new "infrastructure for weapons microsystem components
...MESA" at Sandia Lab in New Mexico. This capability will "support future
AF&F (arming, firing and fusing) needs."

Collectively, these plans substantially ratchet up U.S. nuclear weapons
activities. We must act swiftly to counter this.

The DOE briefing papers make it clear that one of plan's "drivers" is the
desire to keep Livermore Lab operating as a full-service nuclear weapons
design lab -- with a robust plutonium workload to match its weaponeers'
fusion aspirations, fueled by the National Ignition Facility.

Tri-Valley CAREs is preparing a letter outlining our objections. Call the
office for details, or come to our meeting on September 23rd to discuss
next steps.

(For those groups receiving this article by email, just let me know if you
can sign on. An electronic copy of the letter will be available by mid
week. Let me know if you wish to see a copy. --Marylia)

Don't just get mad -- get organized with us!


Marylia Kelley
Tri-Valley CAREs
(Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)
2582 Old First Street
Livermore, CA USA 94550

<http://www.igc.org/tvc/> - is our web site, please visit us there!

(925) 443-7148 - is our phone
(925) 443-0177 - is our fax

Working for peace, justice and a healthy environment since 1983, Tri-Valley
CAREs has been a member of the nation-wide Alliance for Nuclear
Accountability in the U.S. since 1989, and is a co-founding member of the
international Abolition 2000 network for the elimination of nuclear
weapons.