Communities Against a Radioactive Environment
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Tri-Valley CAREs stops nuclear weapons where they start. We watchdog the nuclear weapons complex and its Livermore Lab, one of two locations that develops all US nuclear bombs and warheads. Nuclear weapons pose one of the great social, economic, and ecological challenges of our time. We work toward their global abolition. |
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Tri-Valley CAREs was founded in 1983 in Livermore, California by concerned neighbors living around the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of two locations where all US nuclear weapons are designed. Tri-Valley CAREs monitors nuclear weapons and environmental clean-up activities throughout the US nuclear weapons complex, with a special focus on Livermore Lab and the surrounding communities.
Tri-Valley CAREs’ overarching mission is to promote peace, justice and a healthy environment by pursuing the following five interrelated goals:
- Convert Livermore Lab from nuclear weapons development and testing to socially beneficial, environmentally sound research.
- End all nuclear weapons development and testing in the United States.
- Abolish nuclear weapons worldwide, and achieve an equitable, successful non-proliferation regime.
- Promote forthright communication and democratic decision-making in public policy on nuclear weapons and related environmental issues, locally, nationally and globally.
- Clean up the radioactive and toxic pollution emanating from the Livermore Lab and reduce the Lab’s environmental and health hazards.
Press Room
TVC In the News
Judge’s ruling seen as victory in fight to control nuclear weapons proliferation
by | Oct 11, 2024 | New Bomb Plants, Nuclear Weapons, TVC in the News
This undated file photo shows the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. | The Albuquerque Journal/AP
A three-years’-long quest by four public interest groups has taken a major step forward with a federal judge’s ruling that the government agencies responsible for U.S. nuclear weapons must thoroughly examine environmental consequences and potential alternatives for their plans to ramp up production of new plutonium pits, or bomb cores, for a new generation of nuclear weapons that includes the W87-1 warhead and the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile it is to arm.
The plaintiff organizations – Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (Tri-Valley CAREs), are longtime monitors of sites where nuclear weapons are developed. They were joined by a tribal group located near the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Gullah Geechee Sea Island Coalition.
Judge’s ruling seen as victory in fight to control nuclear weapons proliferation – People’s World
The Energy Department just made one plutonium pit. Making more is uncertain
“A federal court ruling: Coinciding with NNSA’s announcement of the first diamond-stamped pit, a US District Court ruled that the Energy Department and the NNSA violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with pit production, requiring the agency to conduct a programmatic environmental impact assessment.
This was a victory for transparency and the community groups—among them, Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition—who, for years, have been asking for such an assessment.”
By Dylan Spaulding, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
A pellet of dioxide of plutonium 238 used as a heat and power source glows under its own light. Most nuclear weapons have sphere-shaped pits made of plutonium 239 and with a gray color typical of metals. (Credit: US Energy Department public domain image)
Two conflicting developments arose this month in US efforts to produce new plutonium pits for its nuclear weapons: The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced it had produced a warhead-ready pit—the explosive core of a nuclear weapon—for the first time in decades, and a federal court ruled that NNSA will be required to consider the cumulative environmental and health impacts of its pit production program.
U.S. Nuclear Weapons Sites Violated Rules, Judge Finds
By , Newsweek
A federal judge ruled this week that some nuclear weapons sites in the U.S. do violate environmental regulations.
On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that the National Nuclear Security Administration violated environmental regulations by failing to adequately assess the environmental impact of its plan to expand plutonium pit production at facilities in South Carolina and New Mexico.
The case involves a lawsuit that targeted a 2018 plan to establish two plutonium pit production sites—one at South Carolina’s Savannah River and the other at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Plaintiffs argued the plan was based on an outdated environmental impact study, which failed to properly assess the implications of simultaneous production at both locations. They also insisted the plan weakened safety and accountability measures for the multibillion-dollar nuclear weapons program and its associated waste disposal.
In the ruling on Thursday, Judge Mary Geiger Lewis said, “Defendants neglected to properly consider the combined effects of their two-site strategy and have failed to convince the court they gave thought to how those effects would affect the environment.”
This undated photo shows the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. On Oct. 3, 2024, a federal judge ruled that some nuclear sites in the U.S. violated rules and environmental regulations. The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File/The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File
The ruling comes just as U.S. officials this week gave the green light to the first newly produced plutonium pit from Los Alamos, marking a significant milestone in efforts to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The certified pit will be used as a critical component in updated nuclear warheads.
Plutonium pits, which are hollow and spherical, form the core of nuclear warheads. Along with highly enriched uranium, plutonium is one of the two essential materials used in the production of nuclear weapons.
The ruling from a federal court in South Carolina determined that nuclear weapons regulators breached the National Environmental Policy Act by not thoroughly evaluating alternatives to producing nuclear warhead components at the Savannah River and Los Alamos sites.
‘Significant Victory’: Court Rules Planned Plutonium Pits for New Nukes Violate US Law
By Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was one of two sites designated by the DOE and NNSA for the production of new plutonium pits. (Photo: DOE)
In what advocates called a major win for frontline communities and the rule of law, a U.S. district court judge ruled on Monday that the federal government could not move forward with producing plutonium pits—”the heart and trigger of a nuclear bomb“—at two proposed sites in New Mexico and South Carolina.
Instead, Judge Mary Geiger Lewis agreed with a coalition of nonprofit community groups that the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to fully consider alternatives to producing the pits at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and South Carolina’s Savannah River Site (SRS). Now, the federal government must conduct a full environmental impact statement of how pit production would work at sites across the U.S.
“This is a significant victory that will ensure NEPA’s goal of public participation is satisfied,” attorney for the plaintiffs Ben Cunningham, of the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, said in a statement. “Public scrutiny is especially important because the activities at issue here, by their very nature, result in the production of dangerous weapons and extensive amounts of toxic and radioactive waste. I hope the public will seize the upcoming opportunity to review and comment on the federal agencies’ assessment.”
Press Releases
U.S. ICBM Test Launch Set for Election Day from California, Activists Denounce It As ‘Wasteful’ and ‘Dangerous’
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Monday, November 4, 2024
For further information, contact: [email protected]
At 11:45 pm on Election Day, Nov. 5, activists from around the state will gather near Vandenberg Space Force Base to witness and protest the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). During such tests, which occur several times a year, the weapons are launched from the Vandenberg base near Lompoc, Calif., and aimed at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Activists with the Defuse Nuclear War coalition issued the following statement on Saturday:
We condemn these launches in the strongest possible terms as a wasteful, dangerous step backward for peace. Scheduling this latest test on Election Day is a clear attempt to avoid public scrutiny of these tests, even as the continued existence of ICBMs is a profound threat to the life and security of every single person in the United States and around the world. We ask that the upcoming ICBM test, and all future scheduled tests, be canceled.
ICBMs have been sold to the public as a guarantor of security. In reality, they are an imminent threat to public security. In the words of the late Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine, these weapons make “any conflict enormously more dangerous than it has to be” by increasing “the danger that any armed conflict between major nuclear states can escalate to all-out war.” ICBMs are on hair-trigger alert and, once launched, cannot be recalled, virtually guaranteeing a strike on the country that launches them. As long as ICBMs exist, we live with the constant risk that misinterpreted intelligence, human error, or a single rash decision could end civilization as we know it within an hour.
Maintaining these weapons is a huge waste of resources. The U.S. has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars to “modernize” its ICBM force, which in practice means replacing the entire system. The ICBM program is now an astonishing 81% over budget and years behind schedule, not including the expense for its new W-87-1 nuclear warhead development being done at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the new plutonium pits that will built at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Yet the U.S. Secretary of Defense has certified, through a “comprehensive, unbiased review” not shared with the public, that the program will proceed.
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Court Rules U.S. Nuclear Weapons Production Plan Violates Federal Law
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACTS
Scott Yundt
Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment
[email protected] (925) 443-7148
Tom Clements
Director, Savannah River Site Watch
[email protected] (803) 834-3084
Jay Coghlan
Nuclear Watch New Mexico
[email protected] (505) 989-7342
Queen Quet
Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition
[email protected]
Ben Cunningham, Esq.
South Carolina Environmental Law Project
[email protected] (843) 527-0078
AIKEN, S.C. — On September 30, United States District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled that the United States Department of Energy (“DOE”) and its semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (“NNSA”), violated the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with their plan to produce plutonium pits, a critical component of nuclear weapons, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and, for the first time ever, at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Court found that the plan’s purpose had fundamentally changed from NNSA’s earlier analyses which had not considered simultaneous pit production at two sites. These changes necessitated a reevaluation of alternatives, including site alternatives, which Defendants failed to undertake prior to moving forward while spending tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars.
Therefore, the Court entered judgment in favor of Plaintiffs, the nonprofit public interest groups Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Water New Mexico, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition and Tom Clements as an individual plaintiff.
As a result of this ruling, the Defendants are required to newly assess pit production at a nation-wide programmatic level which will mean undertaking a thorough analysis of the impacts of pit production at DOE sites throughout the United States, including radioactive waste generation and disposal. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), this will provide the opportunity for public scrutiny of and formal comment on their assessments.
As background, plutonium pits are the fissile cores of nuclear weapons. No future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing, extensively tested nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, future production is for speculative new-design nuclear weapons that can’t be tested because of an international testing moratorium, or alternatively could prompt the U.S. to resume full-scale testing, which would have serious proliferation consequences. Moreover, independent experts have found that plutonium pits have reliable lifetimes of at least 100 years (their average age is now around 42). At least 15,000 pits are already stored. Expanded plutonium pit production will cost taxpayers more than $60 billion over the next thirty years. However, the independent Government Accountability Office has reported that the NNSA has no credible cost estimates or “Integrated Master Schedule” between the two production sites.
“The judge’s ruling is a notable victory for the main argument in our lawsuit – that the NNSA’s NEPA analysis on plutonium pit production was inadequate, and now a Programmatic EIS must be prepared that reviews DOE-wide impacts of plutonium pit production and associated radioactive waste disposal,” said Tom Clements, Director of Savannah River Site Watch in Columbia, SC. “The design and construction work on the proposed SRS pit plant should be put on hold until the PEIS has been finalized,” added Clements.
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Press Release: “Silent Fallout” Groundbreaking Japanese Film Uncovers U.S. Nuclear Testing Secrets
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 7, 2024
National and Bay Area Film Contacts:
Adrienne Uthe, [email protected] 715.418.1614
August 9 showing, Sherry Larsen-Beville, [email protected]
August 10 showing, Chizu Hamada, [email protected]
August 11 showing, Scott Yundt, [email protected]
“Silent Fallout”
Groundbreaking Japanese Film Uncovers U.S. Nuclear Testing Secrets;
Director Hideaki Ito is in the Bay Area to Show Award-Winning
Documentary on August 9 (in English), August 10 (in Japanese), and
August 11 (in English)
OAKLAND & BERKELEY, CA – Silent Fallout proudly announces the North American
screening tour of “Silent Fallout,” an award-winning documentary by acclaimed
Japanese director Hideaki Ito.
This profound and moving film has already received international acclaim, winning
Outstanding Achievement at the Swedish International Film Festival, Best Editing at
the Maverick Film Awards (UK), and Best Story at the Toronto Documentary Feature
& Short Film Festival (Canada), among other honors, including at U.S. film festivals.
“Silent Fallout” delves deeply into the untold stories of victims of nuclear testing
in America. In 1951, the US began nuclear weapons testing in Nevada, exposing
residents in Nevada and across the country to dangerous levels of radiation.
Mary Dickson, growing up in suburban Utah during the ’50s and ’60s, witnessed her
elementary school classmates succumbing to unusual illnesses and deaths.
Concurrently, Dr. Louise Reiss in St. Louis conducted a groundbreaking study by
collecting baby teeth, revealing widespread exposure across the United States.
The film follows these and other accounts, traversing from Salt Lake City to Virginia,
Missouri, the United Kingdom, and Japan to unravel and expose the complex and
disturbing truths behind the bomb. The documentary film also showcases the
relentless efforts of individuals who risked everything to bring these stories to light.
Bay Area showings with remarks by the director and an opportunity for Q & A
by journalists, are part of a two-month U.S. tour. The screenings are:
• Friday, August 9: 7pm to 9pm, First Unitarian Church, 685 14th Street, Oakland.
The film will be shown in English, and director Ito will have an interpreter.
To read more CLICK HERE!
All Press Releases CLICK HERE!
Media Advisory – Major Rally, Japanese Bon Dance, Risk Arrest Action at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory on Hiroshima Day, Aug. 6
View OuR short documentary below celebrating Tri-Valley CAREs’ 30 years of creating peace, justice, and a healthy environment.
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Tri-Valley CAREs | 4049 First Street, Suite 243 | Livermore, CA, 94551
