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NO NUKES Y'ALL!

ACTION CENTER | STOP THE NEW NUCLEAR ARMS RACE

PUBLIC COMMENT NEEDED
"Stop the new nuclear arms race!
Stop nuking our future with more plutonium pits!"

Despite the global health emergency posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the nuclear death industry is "full torpedoes ahead' with its unholy agenda to start a new global nuclear arms race. On April 3, 2020, the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA), a semi-autonomous, super-secretive agency within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), published its intent to convert the unfinished MOX factory at Savannah River Site into a factory to manufacture the plutonium cores of nuclear weapons AKA "plutonium pits" and released a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). A virtual public hearing was held on April 30, 2020. The deadline to comment is June 2, 2020. Below is a researched, prepared comment you may edit any way you wish and e-mail to participate in the public comment process.

Currently, we are witnessing an unprecedented level of global cooperation as every nation on Earth focuses its attention on protecting its human citizens from the deadly new virus. All of our military might and nuclear weaponry fail to protect us from this killer COVID-19 organism that has become our common enemy. There is no good reason on Earth to be pouring time, money and effort into new, improved plans for annihilating our home planet. Now more than ever, we are at a choice point. Please join in using the power of the National Environmental Policy Act to speak out for a world beyond nuclear war!

BACKGROUND The nuclear arms race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union amidst shocking revelations of widespread environmental contamination and an horrific inventory of nuclear materials and radioactive waste in the secret complexes where nuclear weapons were created. In the U.S., work at crumbling nuclear weapons manufacturing reservations in a dozen states converted from nuclear weapons manufacturing to environmental management. This environmental management focus was short-lived as the nuclear weapons contractors refused to give up their lucrative nuclear weapons contracts and now we are presently resisting the fourth attempt in the past 30 years to establish plutonium pit production at SRS.

The first generation of nuclear weapons factories were built in the press of World War II. SRS was built in 1950 at the height of U.S. fears of Communist Russia and Red China. In 1970, however, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) along with the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act and the modern-day environmental movement was born. NEPA requires an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) considering ALL IMPACTS of a proposed facility to be written, and provides for public comment and engagement in the process. NEPA has provided a crucial tool for holding the line on new nuclear weapons development.

In 1989, The FBI raided the Rocky Flats plutonium pit manufacturing facility near Denver, CO. Rockwell International was found guilty of covering up serious plutonium fires which contaminated the Colorado countryside. Since Rocky Flats closed in 1989, the U.S. has not had a factory dedicated to manufacturing plutonium pits. Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico has taken up the work but has been troubled by accidents and worker contaminations and pit production there has been slow. There are 20,000 plutonium pits in storage at Pantex in Amarillo, TX, so there is no actual need to manufacture plutonium pits.

There is, however, a need to disassemble plutonium pits as plutonium poses a global security risk. For almost 20 years, the U.S. pursued an expensive, now-abandoned project to build a factory to convert weapons-grade plutonium into experimental reactor fuel called MOX for mixed-oxides of uranium and plutonium. Congress finally killed the MOX program only to have NNSA/DOE step in with an illegal scheme to convert the half-finished MOX factory to a plutonium pit factory.

Our most recent stand against plutonium pits was in 2007. The public spoke strongly against making more nuclear weapons. NNSA/DOE bided their time, trying to make pits at Los Alamos. The U.N. signed a Treaty for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons which has already been ratified by 36 countries. When 50 countries have ratified the treaty it will become international law. Now the nuclear industry is back with the current proposal as part of the $2 trillion new nuclear arms race. Many of you participated in the first part of the current process by commenting in the EIS "scoping" hearings last summer. Now is our opportunity to comment on the draft EIS.

Below is an e-mail comment letter you may edit and send by adding your name and contact information in the fields provided. Your comment will appear in the EIS record.

IMPORTANT! Please write your own unique sentence at the beginning of the editable e-mail. Consider naming what it is on Earth that is for you most precious to protect from nuclear annihilation. Your children? Your grandchildren? Trees? Birds? Cake and ice cream??! Feel free to share your heart. We are all in this together!!

TAKE ACTION!

COMMENT DEADLINE IS JUNE 2, 2020.
THIS AUTOMATED ACTION IS CURRENTLY DISABLED,
PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THE LETTER BELOW INTO AN EMAIL ADDRESSED TO: NEPA-SRS@srs.gov
TITLE YOUR E-MAIL: "Comment in Opposition to
Plutonium Pit Production Proposed for SRS in the Draft EIS"
SEND BCC: info@nonukesyall.org

YOU MAY EDIT THE LETTER ANY WAY YOU WISH
REMEMBER: SIGN YOUR LETTER WITH YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION!!!

June 1, 2020 TO: Ms. Jennifer Nelson NEPA Document Manager National Nuclear Security Administration Savannah River Field Office P.O. Box A Aiken, SC 29802 Dear Ms. Nelson, The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires analysis of ALL IMPACTS of a proposed action in an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) but the EIS for Plutonium Pit Production at Savannah River Site (SRS) fails to analyze the impact of its end product, a nuclear weapon, the impact of which is wholesale environmental destruction. The EIS is also deficient in its failure to analyze the impacts on national security from starting a new nuclear arms race or from insider sabotage and malevolent acts which a volatile plutonium facility would attract. It has been almost 30 years since the Cold War's nuclear arms race ended, with the U.S. the most heavily armed of all nations. The International Court of Justice has outlawed nuclear weapons, and a U.N. Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is in the process of being ratified having already garnered 36 of 50 signtures required. The U.S. is out of step with world trends and should be showing leadership in nuclear dismantlement and disarmament, instead of starting a new nuclear arms race. On the heels of failure to complete a MOX plutonium fuel factory at SRS, a Department of Energy (DOE) project which wasted 17 years and billions of taxpayer dollars, DOE is illegally pursuing its intent to convert the unfinished MOX factory to make plutonium pits for nuclear weapons with publication of this EIS. It amounts to a theft of public trust and funding to switch tracks from a nuclear security and environmental management program to a nuclear weapons manufacturing program. The idea of converting SRS from a plutonium clean-up site into manufacturing nuclear warhead triggers has been proposed, studied, and rejected three times. Plutonium pit production at SRS was proposed in 1989 in the "Complex 21" proposal, in 2003 as the "Modern Pit Facility" and again in 2007 as "Complex 2030." In each instance, the pit production facility failed to garner public acceptance and was abandoned. Los Alamos has been unable to produce pits, and for the 4th time in 30 years, plutonium pit production at SRS is proposed, this time to convert the failed MOX plutonium fuel factory at SRS to plutonium pit production. The time is ripe for a new strategy -- Plutonium immobilization utilizing 35,000,000 gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste stored at SRS, a concept which was considered in the Programmatic Plutonium EIS which accompanied the MOX program and which should be considered as the Preferred Alternative in the current EIS. Up to 13 tons of plutonium are stored at SRS, the leftovers from operations at Rocky Flats, Los Alamos, Hanford, and Lawrence Livermore. The plutonium at SRS, called "junk plutonium" by critics, is in the form of plutonium oxide "dust," metal scraps, and contaminated objects, and is stored in thousands of small canisters at SRS. The junk plutonium at SRS was not suitable for MOX fuel and is not suitable for pits. To convert the abandoned MOX factory to pit production would require importing more plutonium to SRS and would block the option to repurpose the MOX factory to responsible management of the plutonium already stranded in South Carolina by converting it to plutonium immobilization. This is a problem which is not contemplated in the EIS. National security will be best served with a plutonium immobilization program to place the plutonium already at SRS into the glassification process at SRS’s Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). This immobilization process utilizes the intense, long-lived radioactivity of the tank waste as a security barrier for the junk weapons-grade plutonium, thus satisfying both waste remediation and non-proliferation goals. Plutonium immobilization is the best option for national security and for SRS. Plutonium immobilization is the most efficient and cost-conscious way to solve both the radioactive waste problem and the plutonium security problem. Plutonium immobilization is the preferred use for the partially complete MOX plutonium fuel factory. A plutonium immobilization program will be a long-term federally funded program, bringing millions of dollars into the economy, employing South Carolinians and Georgians, and ultimately protecting the low country environment while aiding global security. We urge NNSA/DOE to provide the necessary leadership to get the plutonium immobilization option restored and funded by including it in the EIS. Please send me a copy of the final EIS and include me in future public hearings about plutonium disposition at SRS. Respectfully submitted,

COMMENT DEADLINE IS JUNE 2, 2020.
THIS AUTOMATED ACTION IS CURRENTLY DISABLED,
PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THE LETTER ABOVE INTO AN EMAIL ADDRESSED TO: NEPA-SRS@srs.gov
TITLE YOUR E-MAIL: "Comment in Opposition to
Plutonium Pit Production Proposed for SRS in the Draft EIS"
SEND BCC: info@nonukesyall.org

YOU MAY EDIT THE LETTER ANY WAY YOU WISH
REMEMBER: SIGN YOUR LETTER WITH YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION!!!

"To the village square
we must carry the facts
of atomic energy.
From there must come America's voice."

ALBERT EINSTEIN

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