* President Clinton visits LANL to view
bomb test simulation.
* Department of Energy budget demands
increased funds for weapons, but not for cleanup.
* World leaders sign petition for
nuclear abolition.
* French Government shuts down world's
largest fast-breeder nuclear reactor.
* President Clinton recently visited Los
Alamos National Laboratory, birthplace of the first atomic bomb,
and observed first-hand a nuclear test simulation by the "Blue
Mountain" supercomputer. The President is asking for Senate
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a global
treaty banning nuclear weapons tests. The treaty has been signed
by 156 countries, but only 10 states have ratified it. The U.S.
has observed a moratorium on testing since 1992, but Republicans
question whether the U.S. atomic stockpile can be properly
maintained without testing. The President maintains that this
can be done using computer experiments without the actual
explosion. His budget for fiscal year 1999 includes $500 million
for the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop the new generation
of supercomputers.
"The point of the treaty is to ban the bang, not the bomb,"
said Robert Bell, National Security Council Director for arms
control. Arms control activists worry that the explosion in
supercomputing power could allow scientists to design new kinds
of nuclear weapons without having to test them, thus violating
the spirit if not the letter of the test ban treaty, which was
historically intended to prevent further modernization of nuclear
weapons, and, eventually, to eliminate them.
During the President's visit, activists gathered to protest
LANL's new plutonium pit production and the Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant (WIPP,) a nuclear waste storage facility due to open in
Carlsbad, NM this spring. "This state is becoming more and more
of a nuclear weapons colony. It's important to let the president
know that not everybody in New Mexico supports his weapons plans
for the state." said Jay Coghlan, LANL program director for
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety.
* According to the Alliance for Nuclear
Accountability, or ANA, the Department of Energy budget request
for 1999 "robs legally mandated environment programs to fund
radioactive pork." ANA is a network of three dozen local,
regional and national organizations, including CCNS, which
monitor all facilities that were part of the U.S. nuclear weapons
complex. ANA claims that the DOE proposal for the "Stockpile
Stewardship and Management" budget rose to 4.5 billion dollars,
an increase of more than 10% over last year. This total is
higher than the annual average for nuclear weapons spending in
the cold war. Funding for environmental programs, in contrast,
has not been increased, and is slated for cut-backs in the
future. ANA asserts this will probably result in failure to meet
mandated clean-up compliance agreements at various facilities.
Many ANA groups are currently involved in a major lawsuit
challenging DOE programs that fail to comply with the National
Environmental Policy Act. At the suggestion of Federal Judge
Stanley Sporkin, who is hearing the case, the plaintiffs recently
filed a contempt motion seeking to imprison top DOE management,
including Sec. Federico Pe�a, for failing to conduct an
environmental analysis of the agency's clean-up program.
* A statement calling for nuclear
abolition, signed by 117 civilian leaders including 47 past or
present heads of state was released this week. Former President
Jimmy Carter signed for the U.S. In Russia, former President
Mikhail Gorbachev held a news conference to release the
statement. The statement called the eradication of nuclear
weapons "a moral imperative." It advocated placing all atomic
warheads in storage, halting production of materials for nuclear
weapons, and initiating U.S.-Russian talks immediately, to
achieve deeper cuts in nuclear arsenals. It also urged
consideration of adopting a "no first use" policy, repatriating
nuclear weapons deployed abroad, and banning production and
possession of long-range ballistic missiles. It echoed a similar
statement by 60 admirals and generals in 1996, reflecting growing
support for nuclear abolition among those directly responsible
for nuclear weapons.
* And in another part of the globe,
French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and a group of his key
ministers decided Monday to shut down the world's largest fast-
breeder nuclear reactor, nicknamed the "Superphoenix." The
reactor cost the nation billions of dollars, but furnished
electricity for only six months. Its cooling system, which uses
flammable liquid sodium, repeatedly suffered costly shutdowns due
to leaks. Deconstructing the Superphoenix, which has been
troubled by technical problems and cost overruns since its
beginning, will cost the French government $1.76 billion dollars.
