On the happy occasion of our 30th anniversary, we invite you to contemplate 30 of our successes through the years:

Click here for a pdf of the 30 accomplishments.

1. We conducted original research and produced reports that have been cited by delegates to the United Nations, U.S. members of Congress, major media outlets and others. Examples include our seminal critique of the U.S. Stockpile Stewardship program, analyses of U.S. nuclear posture and policy, and reports on the National Ignition Facility and the dangers of pursuing new nuclear weapons such as the Reliable Replacement Warhead.
2. We have produced annual, reader-friendly analyses of the Dept. of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget request for nuclear weapons activities, along with our recommendations for Congress and the Administration.
3. We held special briefings for, and conducted numerous meetings with, members of Congress, their staff and Administration officials with oversight responsibilities for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.
4. We persuaded Congress to eliminate funding for a new, bunker-busting nuclear weapon that Livermore Lab was developing for use in the “war on terror,” called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator bomb. Tri-Valley CAREs played a lead role in a national coalition that prevented this bomb from becoming a reality.
5. We followed our victory over the nuclear bunker-buster by countering the next new weapons scheme, the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). Tri-Valley CAREs helped win funding cuts to the RRW, briefed then-candidate Barack Obama’s point person on it, and, with allied groups, succeeded in shutting down the program.
6. We played a pivotal role in exposing security deficiencies at Livermore Lab, including its failure in “force on force” tests, during which mock terrorists gained access to nuclear materials. Tri-Valley CAREs mobilized the community and pressed DOE to remove thousands of pounds of plutonium and highly enriched uranium from Livermore Lab. This victory constrains Livermore Lab’s nuclear weapons design capability, and we are hard at work to protect it from being rolled back.
7. We have been invited to testify before the California legislature and the U.S. Congress on the nuclear weapons complex and Livermore Lab’s activities.
8. We were instrumental in stopping Livermore Lab from developing a new method to produce nuclear weapons-grade plutonium using lasers to separate the isotopes. More recently, the Lab tried to revive the plan and we quashed it again.
9. We raised awareness about the DOE’s Complex Transformation plan to revitalize the nuclear weapons complex.Tri-Valley CAREs prepared an in-depth analysis and submitted alternatives that even DOE officials said significantly impacted the plan. New bomb plants that were proposed for Livermore Lab were stopped, including an annex to the High Explosives Application Facility.
10. With colleagues, we prevented construction of numerous nuclear weapons projects across the country, including the Modern Pit Facility that would have produced up to 450 plutonium bomb cores annually. More recently Tri-Valley CAREs helped win a delay of 5-years or more to the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement - Nuclear Facility, another multi-billion-dollar proposal to produce plutonium cores for new-design nuclear weapons.
11. We brought grassroots voices from our community to Washington, DC each year for three decades to speak truth to power in meetings with Congress and the Administration. We offer first-hand experiences to inform the policy debates on nuclear weapons and waste.
12. We regularly informed and activated thousands of our members and numerous allies so that they may more effectively raise their authentic voices to create positive social and political change.
13. Internationally, we participated at the United Nations in the Review and Extension Conference for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in numerous NPT meetings since. By sharing our research we have aided countries that have chosen not to develop nuclear weapons in their efforts to hold the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states accountable to the disarmament obligations that are central to the treaty.
14. We led a campaign that stopped the DOE and Livermore Lab from building a massive toxic and radioactive waste incinerator. And we permanently shut down the Lab’s existing incinerator, too.
15. We were the first group in the western U.S. to win an EPA Technical Assistance Grant, which we used to monitor the Superfund cleanup at Livermore Lab. Then, we became the first community-based organization in the country to win a recognition award from EPA Headquarters for our work to involve directly affected members of the public in cleanup decisions.
16. We have achieved numerous improvements in Livermore Lab’s program to clean up soil and groundwater contaminated by nuclear weapons research. For example, Tri-Valley CAREs halted a plan to send millions of gallons of contaminated groundwater emanating from Livermore Lab into the San Francisco Bay untreated. Instead, we pressed the government to send the water back to the Lab for treatment on-site in a specially built facility, which is operating today.
17. We chair regular daylong meetings on the Superfund cleanup with the EPA, DOE, the state Department of Toxics, Regional Water Quality Control Board, and Livermore Lab. This process has led to innovative cleanup strategies that meet the needs of the public.
18. Tri-Valley CAREs played a lead role in preventing government sites like Livermore Lab from doing an end run around the Superfund law by enacting variances through a process called Risk Based End States.
19. We were among the first organizations in the country to bring litigation against the DOE using state and federal environmental laws. Our first such lawsuit in the mid-1980s brought the California Environmental Quality Act to bear on Livermore Lab activities, subsequent litigation won additional review and transparency at Livermore Lab and other sites under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). One NEPA lawsuit in which we played a key role resulted in disclosures regarding contamination and waste management at DOE sites while also establishing a $6.25 million settlement fund for technical assistance to hundreds of community groups and tribes around the country directly affected by DOE’s polluting activities.
20. We filed landmark litigation, with colleagues, to force DOE to comply with federal environmental standards before constructing bio-warfare agent research facilities at its Livermore and Los Alamos Labs. Our lawsuit succeeded in compelling an analysis of the environmental impacts of a terrorist attack on the biological facilities. It also resulted in DOE promulgating the agency’s first-ever requirement for such reviews nationwide. Further, DOE agreed to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement and hold public hearings for its planned biological activities at Los Alamos Lab, although not for those at Livermore.
21. We then defeated a Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) proposal to build a major bio-warfare agent research complex at Livermore Lab’s Site 300, located in the hills near Tracy. After we vigorously organized against it, the DHS website attributed the agency’s decision to abandon its plan for Site 300 to a lack of “community acceptance.”
22. With allied organizations, we pioneered federal legislation to aid workers at Livermore Lab and other sites made ill by on-the-job exposures. Since the law’s enactment, Tri-Valley CAREs’ work has improved the law and increased worker access to the compensation it provides. For example, we garnered congressional support and funding for a Resource Center to inform workers about their rights and we facilitate a support group for sick workers and their families.
23. We helped initiate a process to involve the community in deciding what to do about the plutonium-contaminated sludge from Livermore Lab that was given to residents for use in their lawns and gardens. We worked with state and county health agencies and other organizations to establish a plutonium sludge task force.
24. We successfully sued the government a dozen times using the Freedom of Information Act and other open-government laws. Examples include legal victories to force public disclosure of Livermore Lab’s nuclear weapons activities and to stop DOE from shipping plutonium from its Rocky Flats plant in Colorado to Livermore Lab. Moreover, our victory in that lawsuit prevented DOE from shipping plutonium across the country in DT-22 containers that had failed a simple “crush test.”
25. We have conducted a longstanding truth-telling campaign around Livermore Lab’s largest single project, and one of the DOE’s biggest boondoggles, the National Ignition Facility mega-laser. Tri-Valley CAREs compelled declassification of plans to use plutonium in NIF, and has forestalled those experiments so far. We have revealed NIF’s 8-fold soaring costs. Our campaign disclosed illegal overhead cost shifting at NIF, which was terminated due to our efforts. Tri-Valley CAREs is widely recognized for its NIF research, and was quoted extensively following the mega-laser’s recent failure to reach ignition.
26. We submitted an innovative, multi-volume proposal to run Livermore Lab when its management contract was put up for bid. Our plan would have moved Livermore Lab away from nuclear weapons to civilian science initiatives. Although we never expected that DOE would award the contract to us (indeed, a consortium of Bechtel Corporation, the University of California and other military-industrial partners got the contract) we succeeded in our goal of bringing local and national attention to the Lab management issue. We changed the terms of the debate by showing what Livermore Lab could become and illuminating the direction that management should lead it.
27. We have enhanced community empowerment by organizing numerous vigils and demonstrations at the gates of Livermore Lab. Working with allied groups throughout the Bay Area, on Hiroshima Day and at other times we have mobilized hundreds of peace advocates - and sometimes thousands - to say “NO” to nuclear weapons and “YES” to nonviolent solutions.
28. We brought much-needed attention to an anthrax release caused by Livermore Lab. Our community right to know advocacy forced the Lab to come clean with details surrounding the release. We also used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain additional information about this occurrence, which resulted in workers being placed on the antibiotic Cipro due to exposure risks.
29. We publish a newsletter, “Citizens’ Watch,” that has kept our members and the community informed about activities at Livermore Lab and throughout the DOE nuclear weapons complex for three decades. Our membership has grown from 450 to 5,600 families.
30. We provide a website that includes fact sheets, reports, upcoming events, a “what’s new” blog and other important materials. Thousands each week, and about a half-million people annually, visit us at www.trivalleycares.org

These 30 successes provide a snapshot of our work together. Each of our successes has been a collaborative endeavor. Our members and friends continue to make it all possible.

Click here for a pdf of the 30 accomplishments.