New Nukes?! Comment NOW!

This just in from Peace Action.

The Bush Administration want to start building new nuclear weapons! The Energy Department program is called Complex 2030, but in reality the name should be Nuclear Bombplex 2030.

Click here to contact the Department of Energy and demand that they abandon their “Bombplex 2030” plan, which is a threat to the security of the U.S. and the planet.

This plan was made public just a few weeks ago, and only when the Department of Energy (DOE) released a Notice of Intent to prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement for Complex 2030. They are holding hearing across the country right now – we’re notifying members who live near those hearings so you can attend – but it is also possible to send a comment via email to the DOE, and they are obligated by law to take public comments.

What Is Complex 2030? The following is from the latest OREPA News letter:

DOE wants to build a new nuclear weapons complex and design and build a new bomb in it. Why? Well, lots of dollars for Bechtel and other contractors, of course. But also to make sure we lure a new generation of physicists into bomb building - - without a nice shiny plant and an exciting new bomb to work on, it's hard to get bright young men and women to build weapons of mass destruction.

Listen to some of DOE/NNSA's own words: "In our vision for the nuclear weapons enterprise of the future Reliable Replacement Warhead concepts will be more easily and efficiently manufactured at fewer, modernized facilities with safer and more environmentally benign materials." That's not just bad science fiction writing, folks, it's from the Foreword of the DOE's Complex 2030 planning document. These people have no sense of irony: headline for the Foreward-Start with the end in mind. While DOE wants to make the new nuclear weapons complex sound lean and clean, they want to reassure us, too. "These replacement warheads will have the same military characteristics, be carried on the same types of delivery systems, and hold at risk the same targets as the warheads they replace, but they will be re-designed for long-term confidence in reliability and greater security, and ease of production and maintenance. "

Building the new bomb-The Reliable Replacement Warhead-is Strategy 1 in Bombplex 2030. Strategy 2 is to build a modernized, cost-effective nuclear weapons complex. The new complex will maintain weapons labs at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos, build new facilities at Y12 in Oak Ridge, build a new plutonium center at a site to be chosen, modernize the Pantex assembly plant in Texas, make tritium at Savannah River, privatize much of the nonnuclear production of bombs (now done in Kansas City), and consolidate high explosive work at Pantex. You'll be glad to know that as part of Strategy 3, the NNSA plans to "Create a culture that manages risk rather than one that seeks to eliminate it." Sorry, you read that right.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

First things first: Tell someone else about this. We have to organize.

Second: Go to a hearing, write comments and send them in. Get on the phone or go to a meeting with your Senators and Representative. Be loud and clear and honest and brave. Tell them we can not lead the world toward nuclear proliferation. Tell them we want true security, rooted in taking care of people in this country. Send your written comments by email to Complex2030@nnsa.doe.gov or to the address at right. Comment period ends January 17, 2007.

Third: Support OREPA with a donation. We depend on people who want to end bomb production, and we need
your gift now so we can continue to do this work. Give more than you usually do. This is important.

IMPORTANT: Ask to be placed on the document distribution list. They need to know that thousands of people are concerned enough to ask. Send an email to Complex2030@nnsa.doe.gov to get on the list. Or write to:
Theodore A. Wyka Complex 2030 SEIS Document Manager Office of Transformation U.S. Department of Energy, NA-l0.l 1000 Independence Avenue, SW. Washington, DC 20585.
Additional info available: Complex2030PEIS.com.