Communities Against a Radioactive Environment
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. |
Our story
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
New Environmental Justice Coalition Protests EPA Cuts
If President Trump and Elon Musk want to cut federal waste, they should listen to activists who’ve been targeting the land-based leg of the nuclear triad for decades.
He says that “ICBMs are not just proliferation provocative, they are extremely expensive, vulnerable to attack, and redundant of capabilities of the submarine leg of the nuclear triad.” And that the development of new ICBMs “escalates the new nuclear arms race.”
By Ryan Black, progressivehub.net
At a press conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, President Trump once again reiterated his desire to cut military spending. He stated that the United States, Russia, and China should reduce their “defense” budgets in order to focus on more productive things.
“It doesn’t really make sense, does it? We’re spending the money against each other and we could spend that money for better purposes if we get along,” Trump said. “And I’ll tell you, I think that something like that will happen.”
MacGregor Eddy with “say no to ICBMs” sign at Vandenberg
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a town hall with troops at the Pentagon, also hinted at military program cuts. And Trump says DOGE will look at the Pentagon.
Trump was more specific when discussing nuclear weapons. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many you could destroy the world 50 times over or 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and [Russia] is building new nuclear weapons, and China is building new nuclear weapons.”
U.S. ICBM Test Launch from CA Base Draws Opposition
Livermore Lab Needs Public Comments on Its Plutonium Plan
Lawrence Livermore National Lab has announced that they want to increase the plutonium “Utilization” at their plutonium facility. Plutonium is a highly hazardous, radioactive metal used in the Lab’s nuclear weapons development work. This plan will increase the quantities of plutonium shipped in and out of the Lab, increase the type and frequency of risky plutonium experiments the Lab performs, and increase the amount of radioactive waste the Lab generates.
The public comment period regarding this decision will be open until March 3. It is your opportunity to state concern and ask questions regarding the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement that the Lab is going to prepare.
To file a comment, you can: (1) Call or leave a message at 833-778-0508, (2) email [email protected], (3) or mail them to 7000 East Ave., L-293,
Livermore, CA, addressed to “Mr. Alan Chen, NEPA Document Manager.”
Your comments can make a difference! For more information and talking points about this issue, check out Tri-Valley CAREs website at trivalleycares.org
by Livermore
Government plans more plutonium at Livermore Lab for nuclear arsenal as advocacy groups push back
Hot Plutonium Pit Bomb Redux
“Plaintiffs including Savannah River Site Watch, South Carolina Environmental Law Project Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri-Valley CAREs forced NNSA to halt construction on many phases of its plutonium pit facility near Aiken, SC, to hold public scoping meetings, solicit public comments, and produce a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement within thirty months.”
Savannah River Site. Photo: DOE.
Last week U.S. District Judge Mary Lewis Geiger, South Carolina, faulted the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Agency for ignoring the National Environmental Protection Act and rushing plans to fabricate plutonium pit bombs at Savannah River Site, near Aiken, South Carolina.
Newly designed plutonium pits will serve as “triggers” for the next generation of nuclear warheads mounted atop Sentinel, the next generation of intercontinental ballistic missile, and for new submarine-launched nuclear weapons. Combined, these projects comprise major components in the trillion-dollar “modernization” of the U.S. strategic deterrence force.
Plaintiffs including Savannah River Site Watch, South Carolina Environmental Law Project Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri-Valley CAREs forced NNSA to halt construction on many phases of its plutonium pit facility near Aiken, SC, to hold public scoping meetings, solicit public comments, and produce a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement within thirty months.
Plaintiffs successfully argued that the plutonium pit modernization project was complex, involving diverse entities, was spread over wide geographical regions and therefore, by definition, required a “programmatic environmental impact statement, PEIS.
To read the rest of the article visit: https://trivalleycares.org/2025/hot-plutonium-pit-bomb-redux
Press Releases
Historic Settlement Reached in NEPA Lawsuit Over Plutonium “Pit” Bomb Core Production
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Government Quietly Announces Dangerous New Plan for More Plutonium at Livermore Lab to Increase its Nuclear Weapons Activities
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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.
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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