I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Bloggers who keep tabs on the nation’s nuclear weapons complex are abuzz this week over a reported security failure at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos’ sister lab in California.
Time magazine reported yesterday that Livermore’s security force didn’t do well defending the lab’s plutonium repository during a mock attack. During the recent exercise, a commando team posing as terrorists penetrated the lab, “quickly overpowering its defenses to reach its `objective’ — a mock payload of fissile material."
A Contra Costa Times story published today suggests that parts of Time’s account may be exaggerated, but for activists and some lawmakers the incident highlights the need to move LLNL’s plutonium out of highly populated California (Lawrence Livermore is an hour’s drive from San Francisco) to a less populated area like Los Alamos. According to the Contra Costa Times:
"Failing an exercise like a mock terrorist attack highlights serious and unacceptable security shortcomings," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo. "I have insisted that the plutonium housed at Livermore be consolidated and moved away from Livermore to a safe location away from population centers as soon as possible."
In March, the National Nuclear Security Administration said it was on track to remove the plutonium from the Livermore lab by 2012, in part to reduce security costs by consolidating special nuclear materials at fewer sites.
National Nuclear Security Administration director Thomas D’Agostino told the Times that it makes sense to move Livermore’s plutonium to its sister nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico because "you don’t have communities growing up around Los Alamos."
The 2012 goal is two years earlier than the previous plan, but critics still think the plutonium can and should be moved sooner.
"We think this should be the DOE’s highest priority," said Marylia Kelley of Livermore-based watchdog group Tri-Valley CAREs.
Kelley believes the plutonium could be safely packaged and removed by 2010, perhaps even by the end of 2009.
As part of it’s plan to consolidate the weapons complex, The Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration want Los Alamos to be home to a permanent pit production facility — capable of producing up to 80 of the highly radioactive plutonium bomb cores per year. The plan is meant to actually shrink the overall size of the nuclear weapons complex and stockpile, but it has met fierce opposition from local activist groups and some local governments, which have cited environmental, safety and moral concerns.
