* Scientists at LANL gathered recently to
toast their latest accomplishment: the manufacture of a plutonium
pit, the first new pit created in the last seven years.
Plutonium pits are the cores of thermonuclear warheads.
Technicians at LANL built the pit, reminding observers of the
1940s and 50s when Los Alamos was a weapons production facility.
Most of the nation's pits were created at the Rocky Flats plant
outside Denver, which was closed in 1989 because of safety
considerations and environmental damage. A number of Rocky Flats
workers and their equipment are now at LANL. The LANL pit is as
close as possible to the old ones, because changing production
methods could change performance. Critics of the program are
hopeful that, although equipment and production methods remain
unchanged, environmental and safety measures will be improved.
The new pit will be used as a "demo" for experimentation, not in
an actual warhead. Pits to be placed in warheads will not be
made until 2001. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has
approved a peak production of 20 pits a year by 2007, but the Lab
wants to make as many as 50, or even 80. Nuclear disarmament
activists oppose the plan as too expensive and fear it will
encourage the global arms race. Environmentalists fear a repeat
of the plutonium fires, contaminated buildings and waste-disposal
problems that occurred at Rocky Flats.
* A recent Congresssional report casts doubt on
the DOE's ability to properly supervise radioactive waste at
Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, the most
polluted site in the DOE's nuclear weapons complex. The report
was issued by the General Accounting office, the congressional
auditing agency, and questions the DOE's failure to correctly
evaluate the situation at Hanford The DOE now acknowledges that
it needs to know more about soil pollution from leaking waste,
and must also study whether recent remedies, based on mistaken
assumptions, may have made things worse. After 50 years of
maintaining that leaks from underground nuclear waste tanks were
insignificant, scientists from Hanford finally admitted that they
were wrong Nearly 1 million gallons of radioactive waste that
the government does not know how to clean up have already leaked
into the ground and reached the groundwater. Cleanup costs are
estimated at 50 billion dollars, but cleanup will probably have
to be delayed until more is known. The report questions the DOE's
failure to study the question adequately, citing numerous
warnings, which the department chose to ignore. Sen. John
Glenn,D.--Ohio. said "After all this inexcusable delay, continued
failure to plan and implement an assessment program will raise
serious questions about whether DOE should remain in charge of
this program."
Tickets will be $15.00, and are on sale at Rare Bear Records
and all TicketMaster outlets. A percentage of the proceeds will
go to CCNS to stop WIPP. For more information, call 986-
1973.
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