In This Issue...

- RRW Will Lead to New Nuclear Weapons

- Lab Security Badges Go Unaccounted

- Whistleblowers in State's Highest Court

- Citizen's Alerts

Tri-Valley CAREs' Latest Study Examines Dangers of the "Reliable Replacement Warhead" Program

The United States is embarking on a major program to develop new nuclear weapons, according to a study released by Tri-Valley CAREs.

The report, “The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: A Slippery Slope to New Nuclear Weapons,” provides the first comprehensive review of an emerging Dept. of Energy (DOE) initiative that could “significantly harm our national security, disrupt international cooperation in non-proliferation and diminish pressure on North Korea and Iran to forego their nuclear programs,” according to Dr. Robert Civiak, the study’s author. Dr. Civiak finds the RRW program may, ultimately, also lead to a resumption of full-scale nuclear weapons testing.

Dr. Civiak is a physicist who served for more than a decade in the White House Office of Management and Budget as Program Examiner for DOE national security programs, including Stockpile Stewardship. He also served as a Visiting Scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Joining Dr. Civiak in a press conference on January 24th to release the report was Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley CAREs' executive director. The group commissioned the study as part of its ongoing program to expose nuclear weapons development taking place at the Livermore Lab in CA and Los Alamos in NM.

Congress initiated the RRW program in fiscal year 2005 with $9 million and gave direction in the form of a single sentence stating the lawmakers’ intent to limit the program to “improving the reliability, longevity, and certifiability of existing weapons and their components.” For fiscal year 2006, Congress appropriated $25 million for the RRW program.

“There is a wide chasm between the RRW program Congress believes it is funding and the more aggressive program that the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration and weapons labs are planning,” charged Dr. Civiak. “The weapons labs’ goal is a multi-billion dollar enterprise to redesign and replace every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal.”

The study warns that Congress will not be able to control the extent of new warhead design in the RRW program without cutting its funding.

“Dr. Civiak’s study is both needed and extremely timely,” commented Kelley. “President Bush is expected to highlight non-proliferation challenges like Iran in the State of the Union address, just before sending his own nuclear weapons budget to Congress in early February. To decry another’s nuclear program while readying a budget request that will significantly ramp up one’s own is a strategy that is sadly doomed to failure,” she added.

Concurrent with the budget release, Tri-Valley CAREs will send a copy of the report to each Member of Congress and to relevant committee staff. “We are recommending that Congress cut the RRW program,” said Kelley. “We believe Congress is being asked to buy a ‘pig in a poke’ in the form of a dangerous, new nuclear weapons program with uncertain boundaries on warhead design and dubious, if any, limitation on the outcome.”

“The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program…” finds that new warheads resulting from the RRW program might well wind up being less safe and reliable than existing warheads.

For example, adding more plutonium to the “pit” in an RRW, which is currently planned, can degrade the nuclear weapon’s safety and increase the chance that some of the material could explode or spread in an accident. Changes in a nuclear weapon’s core may alter characteristics that were fully tested before each design was certified to be safe and reliable.

“This is why the Department of Defense would likely demand that any new replacement warhead undergo full nuclear explosive tests before the agency would accept it into the stockpile,” Civiak explained.

If the RRW program moves forward, it will result also in construction of a new weapons production infrastructure to support the new warheads — including new factories for plutonium pits and increased activities with other nuclear materials. “The U.S. weapons labs are advocating this program for job security not national security,” Dr. Civiak concluded. “It will severely damage the latter.”

The study is on the web at www.trivalleycares.org. On page 2, you will find a column on RRW from the San Francisco Chronicle.

RRW Will Lead to New Nuclear Weapons

"Rumblings Over the Bomb -- Slippery Slope to New Nukes," by Dr. Robert Civiak, on the Dept. of Energy's Reliable Replacement Warhead program, was published in the January 24, 2006 San Francisco Chronicle. Here is the text of that column.

Inside the national weapons laboratories in Livermore and Los Alamos, N.M., scientists are working on a project called the Reliable Replacement Warhead. Congress initiated the program in 2005 to “improve the reliability, longevity and certifiability of existing weapons and their components.” This innocuous-sounding undertaking, however, could significantly damage our national security.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and the weapons labs want to grow RRW into a multibillion-dollar effort to redesign and replace every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal. But an expansive RRW program would significantly damage U.S. national security, because the international uproar over our country’s development of new nuclear weapons would severely disrupt global cooperation in nonproliferation and consequently diminish pressure on Iran and North Korea to forgo their weapons programs and thwart efforts to stop clandestine trafficking in nuclear materials and equipment.

The Department of Defense will likely demand that any replacement warhead undergo nuclear explosive tests before it is accepted into the stockpile. If the United States were to conduct even a single nuclear weapons test, other nations would surely follow suit, which could lead to a new arms race. The damage this would impart to the broad nonproliferation regime far exceeds any conceivable U.S. advantage from new nuclear weapons.

A wide chasm exists between the RRW program the weapons labs are planning and what Congress believes it is funding. Last April, NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks told the Senate Armed Services Committee that we need new nuclear weapons because, “The Cold War legacy stockpile may be the wrong stockpile from a military perspective.” Brooks believes that current explosive yields are too high, our systems are not capable against deeply buried targets, and they are unsuited to defeat biological and chemical munitions.

Nevertheless, Congress opposes building new types of nuclear weapons. It recently stipulated that weapons design work under the RRW program stay within the military requirements of the existing stockpile and that any new weapon design stay within parameters validated by past nuclear tests. This limited version of the RRW is a slippery slope, however, and will be impossible to enforce. If the weapons labs are given approval to design any new warhead, they will be the ones to determine if specific modifications meet the funding restrictions. Over time, NNSA and the weapons labs will undoubtedly skirt congressional restrictions and will add new capabilities to nuclear weapons. The weapons labs are more interested in job security than national security. Congress will simply not be able to control the RRW program.

There is no need for any RRW program. The existing nuclear stockpile is extremely capable. It has considerable flexibility for responding to new security demands should they arise. The stockpile includes at least two warhead types for each of four kinds of delivery vehicle -- land-based ballistic missiles; submarine-based ballistic missiles; aircraft; and cruise missiles. Explosive yields vary from 0.3 kilotons to 1,200 kilotons. U.S. nuclear warheads can explode at various heights above the ground, on impact with the ground, with a delay after ground impact, and even after penetrating several feet into the ground to attack bunkers. Neither the Defense Department nor NNSA has identified any capability it is even thinking of adding to the existing stockpile, except for an improved earth-penetrating warhead, which Congress has already emphatically rejected.

Existing U.S. nuclear weapons are extremely safe, secure and reliable. For the past nine years, the secretaries of Energy and Defense have been required to jointly certify to the president whether U.S. nuclear weapons are safe and reliable. They have done so in the affirmative every year. Designing and building new nuclear warheads without testing them is risky. As Hoover Institution fellow Sidney Drell and former U.S. Ambassador James E. Goodby stated in their 2005 report for the Arms Control Association, “What are Nuclear Weapons For? Recommendations for Restructuring U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces”: “It takes an extraordinary flight of imagination to postulate a modern new arsenal composed of such untested designs that would be more reliable, safe and effective than the current U.S. arsenal based on more than 1,000 tests since 1945.”

The expansive RRW program envisioned by the weapons labs would be disastrous for U.S. nonproliferation objectives. Congress thinks it can allow the labs to develop new designs, but limit the scope of the program. History shows that not to be the case. Congress should eliminate all funding for the RRW and cancel the program before it results in new weapons development and diminishes our security.

Robert Civiak is a physicist and consultant who authored a new report on the Reliable Replacement Warhead for the nonprofit Tri-Valley CAREs...

Lab Security Badges Go Unaccounted

The Dept. of Energy’s Inspector General (IG) says that Livermore Lab’s “internal control structure was not adequate to ensure that security badges were retrieved at the time of employee departure or that security clearances of departing employees were terminated in a timely manner.” In other words, for example, a scenario in which a disgruntled former employee could gain ready access to nuclear materials is all too likely.

The IG’s office found that of the 1,261 employees with security clearances who terminated from the laboratory between 2002 and 2004, 373 of them did not return their security badges when they left. That is nearly 30%. In 11 cases, the IG’s office found that the Lab had written down that the security badges were properly accounted for when, in fact, they were missing.

The IG then selected a sampling of 140 terminating employees with security clearances and found that 30% of them (or 43) did not have their clearances removed from the Department’s personnel database in a timely manner and two had remained active in the database for nearly a year after employment terminated — until the IG’s office identified them during the investigation. And so it goes...

Whistleblowers in State's Highest Court

The Regents of the University of California (UC) have suffered a set back in a dispute arising from the already troubled National Ignition Facility (NIF) mega-laser.

The California Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of two former Livermore Lab workers against UC, which manages Livermore Lab for the Dept. of Energy. The computer scientists claim they were fired for complaining about safety violations, technical difficulties and poor management practices at NIF.

In addition to highlighting some of the scientific problems at the NIF project, the appeal will clarify when employees have the right to file civil lawsuits under the State Whistleblower Protection Act.

Les Miklosy and Luciana Messina were experts engaged in working the bugs out of complex computer software for the NIF laser and target positioners.

According to Miklosy and Messina, the Lab employees on the project were under great strain and rush in order to complete tasks without being given an opportunity to validate their work or ensure worker safety.

The lawsuit claims, “Given historic problems with its development, the widespread negative publicity, and ongoing controversy about whether nuclear testing should be resumed, the NIF managers began to feel the pinch.” Worker safety and sound management was being sidestepped to complete the NIF project by 2008.

The two plaintiffs stated in their lawsuit they were convinced that NIF’s Target Chamber was being operated unsafely and negligently, thus wasting taxpayer resources and posing danger of injury to workers. When they raised these concerns to management, they were given unsatisfactory performance reviews. Miklosy was then fired on February 28, 2003, and Messina resigned several days later after learning that she was about to be fired.

(Note that despite cutting corners with things like safety and software documentation, the NIF schedule has none-the-less slipped again since the two whistleblowers filed their lawsuit. The latest NIF completion date is 2009.)

According to UC lawyers, the whistleblower law only applies if workers make an internal complaint and UC fails to reach a decision. UC argued in a state appeals court in San Francisco that because Miklosy and Messina went through the proper internal channels to lodge their complaint and it was found to be without merit by a university officer, they have no right to sue. The appellate court agreed and dismissed the lawsuit in October of 2005.

However, the California Supreme Court announced in January 2006 that it would revisit the lower court’s decision. The attorney for Miklosy and Messina, Gary Gwilliam, argues that interpreting the law to bar his clients' lawsuit subverts the purpose of the California whistleblower statute and is an invitation to abuse by UC and the Lab, possibly resulting in a safety and fiscal disaster. In short, the lower court’s interpretation penalizes workers for going through proper channels.

Attorney Gwilliam has prevailed in several major suits against UC and Livermore Lab before for workplace discrimination and retaliation.

The NIF laser has been troubled since its inception in 1995. Since that time, its construction budget has ballooned from $1 billion to current estimates of $5 billion. The lifetime cost of this facility is estimated at $30 billion dollars, when operating costs are factored in.

The Lab recently approved plans to alter NIF by adding experiments with plutonium, highly enriched uranium, thorium, and lithium hydride. This will require modifications to the target chamber and will significantly increase radioactive exposure to the workers and surrounding community by as much as 300%.

No price estimates have been released for the changes. Additionally, there has been no new non-proliferation review, even though adding plutonium renders the former review moot.

The California Supreme Court has not yet set a date for hearing the whistleblowers' case. Tri-Valley CAREs plans to attend the proceedings and will keep you posted.

Citizen's Alerts

Monday, February 6
DOE Fiscal Year 2007 Budget Request for nuclear weapons, clean-up and other programs goes to Congress
www.doe.gov
www.trivalleycares.org
Tri-Valley CAREs will track the DOE budget “roll out” and have information up on our website as soon as possible.

Saturday, March 18
Rally, March, Stop the War in Iraq
11 AM, San Francisco & Walnut Creek
(925) 443-7148 or (925) 944-3366
www.peaceispossible.us
In San Francisco, rally at Civic Center (Grove and Larkin). In Walnut Creek, march to Civic Park (Civic at Broadway). Check the web for march routes and other information, or call Bob Hanson at (925) 944-3366. Sponsored by United for Peace & Justice No. CA, Code Pink, Tri-Valley CAREs, and many others. Join us.

Monday, March 27
Walk for Non-Violence begins
Morning hour TBA, 2582 Old First St., Livermore, collonge@berkeley.edu
Chelsea Collonge is organizing the walk, which will start at Livermore Lab. Tri-Valley CAREs will offer a briefing. To join all or part of the walk, contact Chelsea at collonge@berkeley.edu or collonge@uclink.berkeley.edu.

Plutonium Petitions

First, please go to http://www.actforchange.com/livermore and sign Working Assets' electronic petition to stop more plutonium from coming to the Lab.

Then, at www.trivalleycares.org, please download a paper copy of Tri-Valley CAREs’ plutonium petition. Ask your friends and family to sign it, too.

We thank all of our members and friends who have already mailed us their petitions. Our goal is 10,000 signatures. We are well on our way, with more than 2,000.

Can you help us reach 10,000?

We will use the petitions in meetings with local and national officials.

Call the Tri-Valley CAREs office for more information -- or to volunteer some time to this crucial campaign.