Nuclear weapons

[Vrede too]

Congress Just Gave President Trump a New, More "Usable" Nuke: Write Your Representative Today

[Vrede too]

U.S. To Spend Hundreds Of Millions To Replace A $5 Part In Revamped Nuclear Weapons
Issues with the commercial capacitors, meant to help save money, have now caused more than a year of new delays for both of these programs.

Opps.

Plutonium Test Results Stall Plan For Toll Road Near Rocky Flats

Opps.

After hundreds of us were arrested at the Naval Submarine Base Bangor, WA, Rocky Flats was my 2nd mass protests against nuclear weapons, both in 1978. We were correct, and Colorado is still suffering.

[O Really]

U.S. To Spend Hundreds Of Millions To Replace A $5 Part In Revamped Nuclear Weapons
Issues with the commercial capacitors, meant to help save money, have now caused more than a year of new delays for both of these programs.

There's always a reason for being the lowest bidder.

[Vrede too]

This was bad enough:

"Modernization" of Cold War-Era B61 Proceeding Over Broad Objections

Follow the Money: Obama's $1 Trillion Arms Race

US Air Force Hires Two Firms to Start Developing America’s Next ICBM

... The military is in the early stages of a sweeping overhaul of its nuclear arsenal. It’s buying new stealth bombers, nuclear submarines, cruise missiles, and ICBMs. The total price tag over the coming decades could top $1.5 trillion, the Arms Control Association warned last week....

:gthumb: :cussing:

CBO Cost Estimation of Nuclear Modernization Omits Hazardous Cleanup
High-level radioactive waste pose threats to environment around nuclear management facilities

... If these costs are included, the total price tag goes to $1.74 trillion over three decades....

Thanks, Obama. Now:

U.S. Nuclear Budget Skyrockets

[Vrede too]

Surging U.S. Nuclear Weapons Budget a Growing Danger

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https://www.icanw.org/healthcare_costs

[Vrede too]

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima massacre, Sunday is Nagasaki day.

Op-Ed: U.S. leaders knew we didn't have to drop atomic bombs on Japan to win the war. We did it anyway

(Current) World Nuclear Weapon Stockpile

Total Nuclear Weapons: 13,355

RUSSIA 6,370
USA 5,800
FRANCE 300
CHINA 290
UK 215
PAKISTAN 150
INDIA 130
ISRAEL 80
NORTH KOREA 20

[neoplacebo]

I've been to the Peace Park in Nagasaki. Got lots of photos of it back in 76. It was a sobering experience.

[Vrede too]

I've been to the Peace Park in Nagasaki. Got lots of photos of it back in 76. It was a sobering experience.

I'll bet.


US urges countries to withdraw from UN nuke ban treaty

Fuck PINO, but it's great that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons may go into force this week.

[Vrede too]

US soldiers 'revealed locations of nuclear weapons in Europe by posting details on online flashcards,' report claims

American soldiers have mistakenly revealed the exact locations of US nuclear weapons in Europe by uploading details as part of revision exercises that were publicly available to view, a report claims.

An investigation by Bellingcat alleges that soldiers attempting to learn intricate security protocols uploaded a multitude of sensitive information to the internet, including not only the bases at which the weapons are held, but in which exact vaults they are stored.

The US Air Force has launched an investigation into "the suitability of information shared via study flashcards."

Questions and answers were written on flashcards, which have now disappeared, and appeared to show the positions of cameras, the frequency of patrols around the vaults, secret duress words that signal when a guard is being threatened and the unique identifiers that a restricted area badge needs to have, Bellingcat said.

The cards had been uploaded as long ago as 2013 on websites including Cram, Quizlet and Chegg, and accessed as recently as April this year. Some of those sites have the visibility of the cards set to be viewed by anyone by default....

Various leaked documents have indicated that they use six sites across the continent.

In 2019, a document, written for the Defence and Security Committee of the Nato Parliamentary Assembly, made passing reference to the roughly 150 US nuclear weapons being stored in Europe.

“These bombs are stored at six US and European bases - Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi-Torre in Italy, Volkel in The Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey,” one line read, according to the Belgian newspaper De Morgen....

Opps.

[Vrede too]

U.S. To Spend Hundreds Of Millions To Replace A $5 Part In Revamped Nuclear Weapons
Issues with the commercial capacitors, meant to help save money, have now caused more than a year of new delays for both of these programs.

Opps.

There's always a reason for being the lowest bidder.

Rocket carrying new nuclear missile component explodes in late-night test

I love these Vandenberg AFB failures. As a peace protestor I watched one from a jail cell on base. It was sort of like this:


West Wing - Charlie Brown of missile defence

LOL. The jail guards were not pleased.

[GoCubsGo]

LOL. The jail guards were not pleased.

Oh Good Grief!

[Vrede too]

Oh Good Grief!

Trinity Nuclear Test’s Fallout Reached 46 States, Canada and Mexico, Study Finds

In July 1945, as J. Robert Oppenheimer and the other researchers of the Manhattan Project prepared to test their brand-new atomic bomb in a New Mexico desert, they knew relatively little about how that mega-weapon would behave.

On July 16, when the plutonium-implosion device was set off atop a 100-foot metal tower in a test code-named “Trinity,” the resultant blast was much stronger than anticipated. The irradiated mushroom cloud also went many times higher into the atmosphere than expected: some 50,000 to 70,000 feet. Where it would ultimately go was anyone’s guess.

... “The extent to which America nuked itself is not completely appreciated still, to this day, by most Americans, especially younger Americans,” he said.

[GoCubsGo]

Oh Good Grief!

Trinity Nuclear Test’s Fallout Reached 46 States, Canada and Mexico, Study Finds

In July 1945, as J. Robert Oppenheimer and the other researchers of the Manhattan Project prepared to test their brand-new atomic bomb in a New Mexico desert, they knew relatively little about how that mega-weapon would behave.

On July 16, when the plutonium-implosion device was set off atop a 100-foot metal tower in a test code-named “Trinity,” the resultant blast was much stronger than anticipated. The irradiated mushroom cloud also went many times higher into the atmosphere than expected: some 50,000 to 70,000 feet. Where it would ultimately go was anyone’s guess.

... “The extent to which America nuked itself is not completely appreciated still, to this day, by most Americans, especially younger Americans,” he said.

The irony of developing a nuke and then not knowing how powerful it may be and not foreseeing consequences is not lost on me.

[Vrede too]

The irony of developing a nuke and then not knowing how powerful it may be and not foreseeing consequences is not lost on me.

Then, we did over 100 more above ground tests in Nevada, along with the South Pacific tests, and over 1000 tests total. If Trinity can be partially excused out of wartime urgency and ignorance, what we did after Japan is mass murder. The US is the most bombed nation on the planet.

[Vrede too]

Militant Rocket Hit Base Linked to Israeli Nuclear Missile Program



A rocket most likely fired by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel struck an Israeli military base where, experts say, many of the country’s nuclear-capable missiles are based, according to a visual analysis of the attack’s aftermath by The New York Times.

While the missiles themselves weren’t hit, the rocket’s impact, at the Sdot Micha base in central Israel, sparked a fire that approached missile storage facilities and other sensitive weaponry....

Comments:

This fiscal year alone, the U.S. government will redistribute over $3.8 billion in American wealth to the government of Israel—violating federal law every step of the way.

While having amassed upwards of 200 nuclear warheads, Israel is not a member of the the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons unlike every other state on Earth other than North Korea, India, Pakistan and South Sudan.

That makes U.S. aid to Israel illegal under the Symington Amendment of 1976, which bars economic and military assistance to countries that acquire nuclear reprocessing technology without submitting to international safeguards and inspections. The law was reinforced by the Glenn Amendment of 1977.

Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal: A No-So-Secret Secret

Where its nuclear arsenal is concerned, Israel is said to pursue a policy of “nuclear ambiguity”—neither confirming nor denying its existence. For nearly 50 years, the U.S. government has played along.

However, in the face of overwhelming information in the public domain—including revealing statements by U.S. officials—the government’s implicit and explicit professions of ignorance of Israel’s nuclear weapons program long ago grew farcical.

The most glaring of that public information surfaced in 1986, when former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu spilled the beans on Israel’s nuclear weapon program to the British Sunday Times, providing photos and details from his eight years working at the country’s Dimona nuclear facility

"The Apollo Affair" where Israel stole the nuclear materials for their program from a processing facility in Pennsylvania. Also the US is on the hook for the 250 million dollar cleanup from the aftermath.

I had never heard of this despite being an anti-nuclear activist for decades.

The Apollo Affair

The Apollo Affair was a 1965 incident in which a US company, NUMEC, in the Pittsburgh suburbs of Apollo and Parks Township, Pennsylvania was investigated for losing 200–600 pounds (91–272 kg) of highly enriched uranium, with suspicions that it had gone to Israel's nuclear weapons program.

... A General Accounting Office study of the investigations declassified in May 2010 stated "We believe a timely, concerted effort on the part of these three agencies would have greatly aided and possibly solved the NUMEC diversion questions, if they desired to do so."

"if they desired to do so."

Or:

... In his 1991 book, The Samson Option, Seymour Hersh concluded that Shapiro did not divert any uranium; rather "it ended up in the air and water of the city of Apollo as well as in the ducts, tubes, and floors of the NUMEC plant." ...

Later U.S. Department of Energy records show that NUMEC had the largest highly enriched uranium inventory loss of all U.S. commercial sites, with a 269 kilograms (593 lb) inventory loss before 1968, and 76 kilograms (168 lb) thereafter....

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing a cleanup of contaminated land at the site of NUMEC's waste disposal. The project was scheduled to be completed in 2015, but the discovery of a substantially larger amount of contamination resulted in a seven year delay. Excavation is now scheduled to begin in 2021, with an estimated project time of 10 years....

Deadly US nuclear incompetence, with or without evil Israeli actions.

[Vrede too]

US Minuteman III missile replacement breaks $96 billion budget, triggers Pentagon review

Feed the Pentagon and the merchants of death, nothing else matters.

[Vrede too]

Tony Goldwyn, Jane Fonda, Matthew Modine and More Sign Open Letter Ahead of Oscars to “Make Nukes History”
The Nuclear Threat Initiative's campaign is set to capitalize on the attention on Christopher Nolan’s best picture nominee 'Oppenheimer' in the run-up to Hollywood's biggest night.

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