July 25, 2016
WASHINGTON — As the clock
ticks down on the final term of US President Barack Obama, who is believed to be reviewing a potential disarmament agenda for his last months in office, there has been a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill to try to influence the internal debate.
Lawmakers both pro and con for nuclear modernization have fired off dueling letters—the latest a July 20 letter to Obama from five key House Democrats who want to scale back standing nuclear
modernization plans.
In addition to potential budget cuts, the White House is mulling several other disarmament initiatives. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that they included a five-year extension of the New START agreement, United Nations approval of the unratified Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and a public pledge that the United States would never use nuclear weapons unless another nation used them first—as well as
the cancellation of the Long-Range Stand Off (LRSO) weapon program to replace aging cruise missiles.
Following the report came the letter signed by House Armed Services Chairman Ranking Member Adam Smith, D-Wash., and others, which backed the no-first-use policy declaration and eliminating the launch-on-warning nuclear posture as “steps that could avoid an unintentional or hasty start to unprecedented and catastrophic nuclear
devastation."
Nuclear modernization plans have become unaffordable and untenable in the face of statutory budget caps, the letter warns.
“At a time when the United States is facing an extremely complex threat environment and Congress shows no indication that it will eliminate its budget caps, this plan risks squandering hundreds of billions of dollars on certain weapons
programs that will likely be either delayed or cancelled, and it will plunder much-needed funds for conventional military forces in the process,” the letter reads.
Five ranking members signed on: Reps. Smith; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., of the Budget Committee; Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, of the Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee; Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., of the Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Subcommittee; Jackie
Speier, D-Calif., of the Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.
On the opposite side of the aisle, HASC Chair Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, told reporters the nuclear deterrent is the foundation of US national security, and downplayed its expense in the context of the larger defense budget. Anything that calls the commitment to nuclear deterrence into question, he said, “results in a more dangerous
world.”
While lawmakers agreed to the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia amid the administration’s assurances it would modernize what remained, “We’ve not kept that promise, so it’s like other situations: I’m grateful the administration plan is not worse.”
“Some of these calls for further cuts are irresponsible in my opinion,” Thornberry
said.
Competing visions are also evident within the platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties, whose conventions to nominate their presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump respectively — are this month.
The GOP platform invokes Cold War-president President Ronald Reagan, with a peace-through-strength style approach and a robust “Reagan-era force.” It
advocates a multi-layered missile defense system, nuclear modernization, an end to the mutually assured destruction doctrine and to rebuild relationships with allies, “who understand that as long as the U.S. nuclear arsenal is their shield, they do not need to engage in nuclear proliferation.”
“We should abandon arms control treaties that benefit our adversaries without improving our national security,” the platform
reads.
A draft platform document for the Democratic Party—whose convention began Monday in Philadelphia—drew a contrast with Trump, who is “unwilling to rule out using a nuclear weapon against” the Islamic State. It proposes strengthening the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and heading off the expansion of nuclear weapons programs.
“To this end, we will work
to reduce excessive spending on nuclear weapons-related programs that are projected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years,” a draft of the platform reads.
Still, the partisan split on nuclear modernization is not a clean one. A bipartisan group of 14 senators signed a July 8 letter spearheaded by Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., that called on Defense Secretary Ash Carter to reaffirm the Pentagon’s commitment to modernize the nation’s
nuclear triad.
They are Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont.; Jon Tester, D-Mont.; Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Joe Donnelly, D-Ind.; Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.; Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Mark Warner, D-Va.; David Vitter, R-La.;, Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.; John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; Deb Fischer, R-Neb.; the Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, D-Va.
Key military officials back nuclear modernization. The House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hosted military officials in charge of the nuclear arsenal July 14, where Adm. Cecil Haney, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said the president’s 2017 budget request, contained “no margin to absorb” cuts.
Gen. Robin Rand, chief of Air Force Global Strike Command, defended the LRSO, which would replace the
Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) program. ALCM is scheduled to age out in 2030, and LRSO would replace it with 1,000 to 1,100 cruise missiles, representing the Air Force’s standoff nuclear delivery capability.
Rand described the ALCM as “a ten-year missile in its thirtieth year” which will be increasingly vulnerable to enemy air defenses, while the nascent stand-off weapon will be tougher for an enemy to
target.
“You don't want to get into the eye of the tiger if you can avoid it,” Rand said.
A group of 10 Democratic senators signed a separate letter to Obama July 20 urging him to cancel LRSO development. It was signed by Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California, Al Franken of Minnesota, Jeff Merkley of Oregon,
Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who recently ended his campaign for the presidency.
Senate Armed Services Chair John McCain, R-Ariz., and Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Corker, R-Tenn., signed a June 17 letter urging Obama to stick with nuclear modernization plans, arguing he is bound by longstanding commitments he made to
Congress.
In a June 6 address to the Arms Control Association, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes gave the first hints of a turnabout on nuclear policy, saying Obama was working to advance the agenda of the 2009 Nuclear Security Summit in Prague. In his first major foreign policy speech, Obama announced his drive to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and eventually rid the world of
them.
Citizens Advisory Board to consider nuclear material, employment proposals
July 23, 2016
The Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board will convene for its bimonthly full board meeting Monday followed by a full day Tuesday.
The Citizens Advisory Board, or CAB, provides the Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management and designees with advice, information and recommendations on issues affecting the Environmental Management program. The CAB is comprised of several smaller
committees including the nuclear materials and the legacy and waste management committees.
Monday’s meeting gets underway at 1 p.m., and early discussion will feature a draft recommendation concerning employee recruitment and retention. According to previous CAB presentations, the average age of the Savannah River Site workforce is over 50 years old. The draft recommendation suggests the Energy Department provide incentives to
contractors on-site for hiring and staffing programs to address the aging workforce.
Recommendations, if adopted by the full CAB, are presented to the Energy Department for action. Another recommendation suggests the DOE examine processes at the nation’s only chemical separations facility, H-Canyon, and find ways to maximize throughput at the facility.
The CAB also adopts
official position statements on various issues affecting SRS and the surrounding communities. On this week’s agenda are two such draft positions, one regarding the importation and processing of spent nuclear fuel from Germany and a position statement regarding interim and long-term storage of high-level nuclear waste that opposes such material storage at SRS.
Both days’ meetings will be held at the New Ellenton Community Center, 212
Pine Hill Avenue, New Ellenton. Monday’s will be 1 to 5 p.m. and Tuesday’s will be 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Cab meetings are open to the public, and meetings will be opened for public comment during both days’ meetings.
Safety equipment shortage sends Hanford workers home
July 25, 2016
About 65 construction workers have been sent back to their union halls as some work has been
cut back at the Hanford tank farms, a fallout of a new policy to protect workers from chemical vapors.
Washington River Protection Solutions is requiring workers to wear supplied air respirators inside all Hanford tank farms in response to a stop-work order issued by the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council.
Sen. Ron Wyden,. D-Ore., holds a shared press conference about worker exposures to tank farm vapors following a tour of the Hanford site. He is joined by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson. Bob Brawdy - Tri-City Herald
HAMTC, an umbrella group of 15 non-construction unions doing Hanford work, ordered on July 11 a halt to all work within the tank farms unless workers are
wearing supplied air respirators.
“With a limited number of air bottles and masks, and a limit to our ability to clean and refill the equipment in a timely manner, work is being impacted,” the tank farm contractor said in a statement.
Tasks have been prioritized, with respiratory equipment assigned to
workers doing the highest priority tasks until Washington River Protection Solutions can have more supplied air respirators available. An estimate of when that might be was not immediately available.
More than 50 workers have received medical checks for possible exposure to chemical vapors in recent months. All were cleared to return to work. But Hanford workers are concerned that breathing in
chemicals associated with chemicals from the waste held in tanks could cause serious lung and neurological illnesses.
The work currently assigned the highest priority at the tank farms is in the AY, C and AP Tank Farms.
Workers are installing equipment inside the AY-102 Tank, to continue retrieving waste.
It is the oldest of Hanford’s 28 double-shell tanks and has waste leaking between its shells, although no waste is believed to have escaped the tank into the ground.
DOE and its contractor agreed to have enough waste emptied to determine the cause of the leak in March 2017. The equipment used to empty much of the waste in the tank this spring is being replaced with enhanced reach sluicers that fold
out within the tank to get closer to the remaining waste, including waste at the sides of the 1 million-gallon tank.
At the C Tank Farm, waste is being emptied from one of two remaining single-shell tanks there that must be emptied to meet requirements of a recently revised court-enforced consent decree. Waste from leak-prone single-shell tanks is being emptied into double-shell tanks that remain in
service until the waste can be treated for disposal.
Work is being done with exhausters at the AP Tank Farm to meet a recommendation by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board on tank waste flammable gas.
The amount of work at the A and AX Tank Farms is being reduced, but not stopped entirely, because
of the limited number of supplied air respirators available.
Infrastructure is being installed there to prepare to empty their single-shell waste tanks as work wraps up at the C Tank Farm.
Crews that have been sent home were assigned to subcontractors doing construction work at the A and AX Tank Farms.
They were building trades workers rather than HAMTC workers.
“WRPS has notified subcontractors so they can manage their work force in accordance with scheduled work,” according to the statement from the tank farm contractor.
About 800 union workers continue to do work at the tank farms, with another 2,000
nonunion workers employed by Washington River Protection Solutions and its subcontractors also continuing work.
Before the stop-work order related to supplied air respirators was issued, the tank farm contractor was allowing some work to be done in double-shell tank farms, which are equipped with exhausters, if waste was not disturbed. Disturbing waste increases the risk that chemical vapors could be
released.
Washington River Protection Solutions is buying more respirator masks and also air bottles. HAMTC demanded that 60-minute bottles be removed from service and replaced with lighter 30-minute bottles. The tank farm contractor is complying with that demand but needs more of the lighter bottles.
However, the work that can be done is limited by how the equipment must be monitored.
Each time the supplied air respirators are used, they must be checked for radioactive contamination. Once cleared, they are sent by truck to the Hanford Fire Department.
There a subcontractor
inspects them for damage, sanitizes them and refills the bottles using an air compressor. Then the equipment is trucked back to a central Hanford building for workers to check out.
Procedures and work plans also have to be updated for the supplied air respirators, and workers need to be certified to use them. Certification requires workers to receive a medical evaluation, a mask fitting and
training.
No one could be reached Monday at the Central Washington Building Trades Council about the issue.
Fmr. Gov. Cecil Andrus details his fight against storing nuclear waste in Idaho
July 22, 2016
Former longtime Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus served as the Gem State’s chief executive
for 14 years.
During that time, he dealt with many issues facing Idaho, but one in particular has been a lifelong battle.
Andrus has been battling for decades to keep nuclear water from being stored in Idaho. After Andrus became Governor, he toured the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho and was disturbed by what he says they called storage of nuclear
waste.
“They took a bulldozer and dug a hole in the sand and put in barrel and paste board boxes, then covered it up with sand and called that storage. And it is above the largest fresh water aquifer in America,” said Andrus.
Andrus told 6 On Your Side that during a meeting in 1970 with the head of the Atomic Energy Commission a promise was made to remove the waste by the end
of the decade.
Andrus alleges this promise was the first in a series of broken promises made by the federal government.
After serving as Secretary of Interior under President Jimmy Carter, Andrus returned to the Idaho Statehouse.
In 1988, Andrus says he had enough, so he took a stand against the government sending more
nuclear waste into Idaho and sent a state trooper to physically block a shipment headed for INL.
“I said, 'The only way we are going to get rid of it is to block the border and the patrolman who parked his car had a bicep as big as my thigh. He was wearing a gun, and he was parked on the tracks.' A freelance photographer who was a stringer for the New York Time took a picture of him and shot it back to the Times. It was on the
front page, and that got the attention of some politicians who did not understand what was going on,” said Andrus.
When Phil Batt succeeded Andrus as governor, one of his first actions was striking a deal with the federal government allowing more waste into Idaho. But there were strings attached, and the waste was eventually supposed to be moved to the then-under-construction Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage
site.
After the government spend billions of taxpayer dollars constructing the site, it never opened.
“That was wrong. I disagreed with it then, and I disagree with it now,” Andrus said. He added that deadlines in the 1995 Batt agreement have been missed, more promises have been broken and the nation is no closer to a permanent nuclear
repository.
When Governor Butch Otter suggested allowing more waste into Idaho for research and economic benefit, Andrus and Batt threatened to sue. The two former governors argue that if the waste were to somehow leak into the aquifer, it would destroy the economy in southern Idaho.
