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. |
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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.
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US conducts its ICBM test
Beyond Nuclear International November 9, 2025
Although not carrying a nuclear warhead, the test is still provocative, say Defuse Nuclear War and Tri-Valley CAREs
In the early morning hours of November 5th, Vandenberg Space Force Base launched a Minuteman III missile, the current intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) ground-based nuclear warhead delivery system in roughly 400 underground silos across five states that would target US adversaries in a full-scale nuclear war.
This ICBM test, which landed roughly 30 minutes later at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, is one of several that occur at Vandenburg every year — as they have for many decades. According to the Space Force Press Release, today’s test “validates” the “reliability, operational readiness, and accuracy of the ICBM system.” While these tests are launched without the nuclear warhead, the purpose is to practice nuclear war fighting and these tests are just as provocative to US adversaries as their nuclear-capable missile tests are to us.
This launch has an increased gravitas, as it comes hardly a week after the President used his social media platform to make a confusingly provocative announcement that, “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis.”
Exactly what was meant by the President’s vague statement has been debated in the days since. The President could not have been referencing other countries conducting explosive nuclear tests, because no nation except North Korea has conducted an explosive nuclear test this century.
The reference to “equal basis” with other “countries testing programs” has been thought to be in reference to nuclear weapon delivery system tests, which have been conducted by both Russia and China. But as today’s launch displays, these delivery system tests are nothing new, and the United States has long tested all of the delivery vehicles in its triad, including today’s ICBM test.
If the US were to resume explosive nuclear testing, Russia and others have already signaled they will follow. This reckless move would break a 30-year taboo that has kept the world safer. If the US resumes testing, it won’t just poison the air: it could destroy decades of progress toward preventing nuclear war.
Resuming explosive nuclear testing at this time would solely be a political decision, and it would be a very bad one. The human and environmental toll would be immense: radiation poisoning that seeps into lungs, water, and soil; children born with preventable cancers; ecosystems rendered unlivable. Testing again would repeat history’s worst mistakes on purpose.
US resumption of explosive nuclear testing would open the door to all of the other nuclear powered states conducting their own tests for both their existing stockpile warhead designs, and those that are in development, potentially opening the door to decades of testing and associated releases of radiation into the environment.
Influential right wing think tanks like The Heritage Foundation have come out in opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and have directly called for the U.S. to prepare to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). For example, in its January 2025 report, America Must Prepare to Test Nuclear Weapons, it claims that testing is necessary for the global image of America and would be a display of resolve.
Additionally, Project 2025 calls for the United States to “Reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and indicate a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary. This will require that the National Nuclear Security Administration be directed to move to immediate test readiness…”
Officials from the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Labs who manage the existing nuclear weapons stockpile have expressed that there’s no military or technical justification for explosive nuclear testing at this time. The billions spent on the Labs’ supercomputer modeling, National Ignition Facility laser testing and multiple other simulation systems allow them to ensure that the stockpile will work as designed in a “use scenario.”
The US conducted 100 atmospheric and 828 underground explosive nuclear tests at NNSS between 1951 and 1992. The agency currently needs 36 months to get “ready” for a full-scale, underground, explosive nuclear test at NNSS.
In response to the President’s sudden announcement, on October 30th Congresswoman Dina Titus (NV-01) introduced the Renewing Efforts to Suspend Testing and Reinforce Arms Control Initiatives Now (RESTRAIN) Act to prohibit the United States from conducting explosive testing of nuclear weapons.
In her press release announcing the RESTRAIN Act, Representative Titus states, “Donald Trump has put his own ego and authoritarian ambitions above the health and safety of Nevadans. His announcement to resume nuclear testing in the United States goes against the arms control and nonproliferation treaties that the U.S. has spearheaded since the end of the Cold War, and will trigger new tests by Russia and China, reigniting an international arms race. It also puts Nevadans back in the crosshairs of toxic radiation and environmental destruction. With just 97 days until the only arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia expires, now should be the time to negotiate further arms-control agreements, not create mushroom clouds in the Nevada desert.”
The RESTRAIN Act amends U.S. Code to insert a prohibition of explosive nuclear testing while simultaneously preventing any funding from going toward the Trump Administration’s effort to conduct explosive nuclear tests.
Emma Claire Foley with the Defuse Nuclear War coalition said of today’s launch, “ICBM tests make war more likely and damage the place they supposedly protect. Scheduling this latest test on Election Day is an attempt to avoid public attention on a weapons system that experts agree makes the U.S. less safe.” She added, “ICBMs are a threat to the life and health of every single person in the United States and around the world. We ask that the upcoming ICBM test, all future scheduled tests, be canceled, and that the U.S. hold to its decades-long record of not conducting nuclear tests.”
ICBMs have been sold to the public as a guarantor of security, when in fact, they are an imminent threat. 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 Minuteman III system that was tested today with an entirely new missile system – the Sentinel ICBM, and a new nuclear warhead design.
Thus far, the Sentinel 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 be 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.
Scott Yundt, Executive Director of Livermore-based Tri-Valley CAREs criticized the launch from Vandenburg, saying, “Test launches like today’s damage human communities and ecosystems. The Marshall Islands, already forced to bear the overwhelming environmental costs of U.S. nuclear weapons testing, are still used as a target test area.”
Yundt went on to say “When tensions among nuclear-armed states are high, each test launch carries an added risk. The U.S. military has acknowledged as much by pausing these launches at high points of tension in the war in Ukraine. The risk of nuclear escalation remains too high to introduce the possibility of misinterpretation of a test into the mix.”
“ICBM tests are damaging and provocative acts masquerading as business as usual. We condemn all wasteful, destructive tests that keep the world at the edge of nuclear destruction,” Yundt concluded.
TriValley CAREs watchdogs the nuclear weapons complex and its Lawrence Livermore Lab, one of two locations that develops all US nuclear bombs and warheads. Defuse Nuclear War is a coalition of more than 200 organizations and organizers dedicated to reducing the risk of nuclear war.
Headline photo: An unarmed U.S. Air Force Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test May 3, 2017, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Photo by US Department of Defense.
The opinions expressed in articles by outside contributors and published on the Beyond Nuclear International website, are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Beyond Nuclear. However, we try to offer a broad variety of viewpoints and perspectives as part of our mission “to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future.”
NNSA cancels public engagement efforts for increased plutonium use at LLNL
Jude Strzemp at Livermore Vine January 7, 2026
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (Photo by Jude Strzemp)Jude Strzemp at Livermore Vine January 7, 2026
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration recently retracted its intention to publish a draft environmental report for public comment about increasing the amount of fissile material for research and development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
In addition to increasing the quantity of material, the project dubbed “Enhanced Plutonium Facility Utilization at LLNL” proposes increasing materials shipments and waste generation/shipments during operations, conducting security and infrastructure construction activities and upgrading the security categorization of the LLNL Plutonium Facility operations from security category III (plutonium metal limited to 400 grams) to security category II (plutonium metal limited to 2 kg) with added operational and security personnel, according to an NNSA presentation from a public scoping meeting about the project last January.
A draft of the SEIS was set to be published for public comment, according to a notice of intent by NNSA published Jan. 13, 2025 in the National Register.
But given recent regulatory changes, NNSA no longer plans to publish the draft environmental document for public comment or host any relevant public hearings, according to NNSA’s November notice reversing its previous intention. Additionally, the NNSA does not intend to wait 30 days after issuing a final environmental impact statement to publish its record of decision.
Sans publication of the draft SEIS and corresponding public hearings, the final statement is expected for publication during early 2026 along with the agency’s record of decision, the November notice states.
Among those expressing discontent with NNSA’s decision is Tri-Valley CAREs, a Livermore-based organization that monitors activities in the U.S. involving nuclear weapons and environmental clean-up, with particular attention to LLNL.
“This decision makes it clear that the Lab, and the National Nuclear Security Administration prefers that the Livermore community and the American public not engage in decision making about nuclear weapons development programs and the impacts on the communities that house them,” Tri-Valley CARES executive director Scott Yundt told Livermore Vine.
According to the Jan. 29, 2025 presentation, NNSA needs increased “space” for plutonium research and development due to new and evolving international security concerns.
The space is critical to the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program, a plan for sustaining and modernizing an effective nuclear weapons stockpile.
Additionally, LLNL’s plutonium facility research and development capability is underutilized, the presentation states.
However, the SEIS does not propose changes to the facility’s hazard categorization, nor its “administrative limit” as described in a 2023 LLNL site-wide report, the presentation adds.
“NNSA and LLNL are committed to safeguarding the health and welfare of their employees, neighbors and surrounding communities,” NNSA officials told Livermore Vine.
The lab also maintains practices that ensure its environmental stewardship, agency officials added.
Regulatory changes that led to the NNSA’s decision to no longer publish its draft SEIS or hold additional public hearings include an Executive Order Jan. 20, 2025 dubbed Unleashing American Energy and amendments to the National Environmental Policy Act’s implementing procedure.
According to the November notice, the regulatory update and new implementing procedures “significantly streamline NEPA processes by focusing on statutory requirements while retaining meaningful review of potential environmental impacts”.
Comments received during the public scoping period lasting from January of 2025 through March 3, 2025 have been considered and incorporated in the SEIS, NNSA officials told Livermore Vine.
The notice regarding LLNL was issued in tandem with an announcement that the NNSA will not publish a draft site-wide environmental impact statement for continued operation of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.
“Without the ability to comment in writing or orally at a public hearing… there is little to no incentive for members of the public to even read the SEIS,” Yundt said of the altered public engagement.
Yundt also expressed concern about the potential dangers caused by increased transportation of plutonium to the lab, experimentation, accidents and waste removal.
“It will be used to develop a new generation of more technologically advanced nuclear weapons, contributing to an already escalating new nuclear arms race where the U.S. is a major driver and where a possible nuclear war could end human civilization as we know it,” he said.
Tri-Valley CAREs is set to hold its monthly meeting Jan. 15 regarding its response to NNSA’s announcement.
Meanwhile, NNSA initiated the second, five-year review of its environmental clean up at LLNL’s Site 300, a U.S. DOE experimental test facility for high explosives materials located in the Altamont Hills between Livermore and Tracy.
According to a Dec. 19, 2025 statement by LLNL officials, The review is set to summarize the nature and extent of contamination, the progress of cleanup and whether the remedy continues to protect human health and the environment.
The review is required by the Superfund law every five years when “contaminants at a site remain above levels that allow unrestricted access”, according to the statement.
The final review is set to be available online for a 60-day review period beginning April 13.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect details provided by NNSA officials following publication.
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Frustrated residents hold mock ‘funeral’ for Santa Susana Field Lab
The Acorn October 17, 2025
Photos by MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers
Carrying candles and dressed in black, Simi Valley residents gathered at the Rancho Santa Susana Community Center on Oct. 7 to mourn what they called “the death of a full cleanup” at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
The vigil and mock funeral, complete with tombstones, came shortly before California regulators unveiled Boeing’s newly proposed soil cleanup plan, which community members object to because they say it leaves most toxins in place and abandons the decades-long promise of full restoration.
During the virtual public meeting Oct. 7 hosted by the Department of Toxic Substances Control, officials detailed Boeing’s Corrective Measures Study and DTSC’s Statement of Proposed Remedy for contaminated soil and soil vapor across Boeing-owned areas of the 2,850-acre site.
DTSC’s Thanne Berg, deputy director of site mitigation and restoration, said the plan, which stems from a 2022 Boeing settlement, aims to speed cleanup without reducing environmental protection, and uses tools such as excavation, treatment and preservation to limit contamination while safeguarding cultural and biological resources.
RIP—William Bowling places a rose on a casket during the Oct. 7 mock SSFL funeral.
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Nuclear weapon opponents gather at Livermore Lab to declare: ‘Never Again!’
People’s World August 15, 2025
LIVERMORE, Calif.—Among advocates for abolition of nuclear weapons mobilizing worldwide on Aug. 6 to commemorate the 80th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were over 100 peace protesters who gathered outside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Westgate entrance to honor victims of the attack and to call for the weapons’ total abolition.
The theme of their gathering: 80 Years of Nuclear Devastation – Remember Our History, Reshape Our Future.
Livermore Lab, one of two locations designing every nuclear bomb and warhead in the U.S. arsenal, has played a central role in escalating the power and reach of these weapons since its founding in 1951.
Marylia Kelley, co-founder, executive director emerita and now senior advisor at Tri-Valley CAREs (Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), which monitors the Livermore nuclear weapons complex and works for the weapons’ worldwide abolition, began her remarks with a tribute to the now-dwindling role of hibakusha, survivors of the bombings who have devoted their lives to sharing their memories of the horrific attacks with the world.
Kelley highlighted the Nobel Peace Prize awarded last year to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, and recalled bombing survivors who have shared their stories at past commemorations at Livermore Lab, including Nagasaki survivor and retired Methodist Minister Rev. Nobuaki Hanaoka and Hiroshima survivor Takashi Tanemori.
“In this period, we who are here, we who strive for peace and justice, must pick up the torch being passed to us by the last witnesses who experienced the atomic explosions,” Kelley said. “Today at Livermore and moving forward, we heed their plea of ‘Never again,’ and pledge to do everything in our power to make sure the world does not forget the human devastation caused by nuclear weapons and the absolute imperative of their elimination.”
With the Trump administration calling for an overall 58% boost in spending for “nuclear weapons activities,” Livermore Lab’s overall 2026 budget request is up by 16% over last year to nearly $3 billion, with nearly 90% earmarked for nuclear weapons development.
While the Lab has sought over the years to “mask its horrific weapons activities in the neutral language of science,” Kelley said, “we are here today to pull down that mask—follow the money!”
She held up a pie chart of the Lab’s 2026 budget request, citing weapons and components the Lab is developing:
- The W80-4 new warhead that will let pilots launch a sneak attack from thousands of miles away to strike a target anywhere in the world with an earth-hugging, radar-evading nuclear weapon;
- The new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCMN, to be placed on small U.S. Navy submarines that have not carried nuclear weapons for over three decades;
- The W87-1 warhead to top the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile which will be deployed in land-based silos throughout the Midwest.
- The W-93, a totally newly designed warhead to be deployed on the large nuclear-armed submarines that patrol the ocean.
- New plutonium bomb cores, or pits, to be installed on the W87-1 warhead.
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Demonstration outside LLNL commemorated 80 years since nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki
Crowd of approximately 90 people gathered outside of Lab for event organized by Tri-Valley CAREs
Peaceful protesters rallied outside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory last week calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons worldwide, in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Approximately 90 people gathered Aug. 6 for “80 Years of Nuclear Devastation: Remember Our History, Reshape Our Future” — organized by Tri-Valley CAREs — to echo the call of atomic bomb survivors “hibakusha,” who urge world governments to rid themselves of nuclear weapons, according to Livermore resident and Tri-Valley CAREs executive director Scott Yundt.
“We as a nation are at a pivot point,” Yundt said in a statement. “We must step back from the abyss while we still can. The August 6 commemoration at Livermore Lab is one such step.”
Attendees of the annual event gathered outside of LLNL at 9 a.m. on a lawn located on the north side of Westgate Boulevard, Yundt said.
Speakers discussed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, LLNL’s history and ongoing role in the development of nuclear weapons, the environmental and fiscal cost of nuclear weapons development as well as the goal of global nuclear disarmament, Yundt said.
The lab has an annual budget of nearly $3.3 billion, according to an LLNL fact sheet. It has also contaminated the site and nearby environment, Yundt noted.
Among the calls to action was an urge to contact congressional representatives to cosponsor House Resolution 317 — proposing the U.S. leads the world’s retreat from the brink of nuclear war as well as halt and reverse the nuclear arms race, Yundt said.
“I feel keenly the responsibility to ‘pick up the torch’ being passed to us by the Japanese survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Tri-Valley CAREs senior advisor Marylia Kelley said in a statement. “Being at Livermore Lab with other peace advocates on August 6 is part of my commitment to ensure the world never forgets the human devastation of nuclear weapons and the imperative for their abolition.”
Following the rally, about 60 attendees participated in a “die-in” wherein a mock siren announced the faux dropping of an atomic bomb and participants laid on the street in front of the lab entrance. Their bodies were outlined in chalk, which Yundt said recalls how some people in Hiroshima were vaporized to ash by the atomic bomb.
Participants then rose for a traditional Japanese Bon Dance to commemorate ancestors who died as a result of the bombings.
By noon, everyone had left the site and the lab entrance was reopened, according to Yundt. LLNL spokesperson Michael Padilla said the demonstration did not impact employees’ daily work.
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U.S. nuclear weapons sites remember 80th anniv. of Hiroshima A-bomb
OAK RIDGE, Tennessee – Events commemorating the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima were held in some U.S. cities on Wednesday, its 80th anniversary, including Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where uranium was enriched to make a deadly weapon that ushered in the nuclear age.
The southern U.S. city was a secret site built to produce highly enriched uranium as part of the Manhattan Project, under which the United States sought to develop atomic bombs.
While a number of Americans believe that the atomic bombing hastened the end of World War II and therefore reduced overall casualties, some people have come to be more ambivalent toward nuclear weapons.
Outside the so-called Y-12 complex, which still stores nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear-powered vessels, over 20 people offered paper cranes in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing, and remembered their sufferings and the range of destruction rendered by the ultimate weapon.
Gyoshu Utsumi, a 73-year-old monk at a Buddhist temple in the state who hailed from northeastern Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture, recited a sutra after the participants observed a moment of silence to mark the blast 80 years ago on Aug. 6.
Utsumi was joined by Emily Strasser, a Tufts University professor whose grandfather worked on uranium enrichment as a chemist at Oak Ridge, among others. She admitted feeling bewildered at her grandfather’s involvement and said targeting an atomic bomb at a civilian population is unacceptable.
In San Francisco and nearby Livermore in California, home to one of the United States’ nuclear weapons laboratories, people also gathered to rally for nuclear abolition.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, located around 30 miles east of San Francisco, is one of only two sites in the United States currently designing nuclear weapons.
A coalition of community groups who have gathered outside the laboratory nearly every year since 1981 to remember the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki returned this anniversary with renewed urgency.
Group members staged a die-in, a form of protest popularized by environmental and antiwar advocates in the 1970s, commemorating the people who perished in the atomic bombings or soon after due to radiation.
After the outlines of their bodies were chalked into the pavement, participants rose to perform a Japanese Bon dance.
Lifelong advocates for nuclear disarmament said they felt the current nuclear threat level is higher than it has ever been in their lives.
That sentiment was shared by the crew of the Golden Rule, the peace boat that first sailed in 1958 with the mission to end the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and celebrated its arrival in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Gerry Condon, 78, the president of the Golden Rule committee, said they are sailing today against the looming threat of nuclear war.
“All the guardrails are off,” Condon said.
Related coverage:
Activists protest outside California national lab to mark 80th anniversary of atomic bombing of Japan
AP News – By Michael Wittner, Patch Staff, August 5, 2025
Anti-Nuclear Weapons Rally Takes Place In Livermore On Hiroshima 80th Anniversary
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“Remember our History, Reshape our Future” – Nonviolent Rally & Action at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab
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Lawsuit Compels Nationwide Public Review of Plutonium Bomb Core Production
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: info@defusenuclearwar.org
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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