Lawrence Livermore National Security, the contractor that operates Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is now accepting applications for its 2023 Community Gift Program.
Established in 2008, the Community Gift Program provides annual awards to support nonprofit organizations addressing science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics education, community service and philanthropic needs in local and surrounding communities.
The contractor’s Board of Governors has authorized $220,000 to nonprofit California educational institutions — an increase of $20,000 from last year’s program. IRS-qualified 501(c)(3) organizations and government agencies serving Alameda, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties are eligible to apply. Gifts will be awarded in amounts ranging from $500 to $20,000.
Included in the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which the chamber passed 86-11 on Thursday, includes an amendment to strengthen the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) by including previously excluded communities harmed by radiation from above-ground nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining and nuclear waste storage.
The amendment, proposed by Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Mike Crapo (R-Nev.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), would, for the first time, extend healthcare benefits and compensation to communities impacted by the test of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, as well as expand coverage to include residents of Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana and Guam, and cover remaining areas of Nevada, Utah and Arizona.
“Today’s vote is important progress in the fight for justice for the people hurt by the production and testing of nuclear weapons, and whose health was sacrificed by our government in the pursuit of nuclear weapons,” said Lilly Adams, senior outreach coordinator for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), in statement before the amendment was approved 61-37 on Thursday. “RECA is a valuable program, but it does not go far enough to support the veterans, Indigenous communities, miners, farmers, and our neighbors who were exposed to radiation, but have been denied the support they deserve from the government.”
The question of what Australia will do with the radioactive waste eventually produced by new nuclear submarines it will buy from the U.S. has had an answer for decades, according to Australian media outlet Crikey.
Australia will get at least three Virginia-class nuclear-powered subs under the AUKUS deal with the U.S. and U.K. When those boats require reactor refueling in about 40 years, the country needs somewhere to store the spent fuel.
Crikey reports a nuclear waste dump in Albany in Western Australia for that and other spent nuclear fuel has been in the works since 1997, quoting Jim Voss, “a nuclear evangelist from America who has been part of the Australian scene for at least a quarter of a century.”
Aptim Federal Services of Baton Rouge, La., has been awarded a $68-million Department of Energy task order to take down the former Ion Beam Facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, DOE said in a Thursday press release.
The task order, announced by the DOE Office of Environmental Management, is to be completed within 57 months and was issued under the agency’s Nationwide Deactivation, Decommissioning, and Removal contract. Aptim beat out the other eight contractors selected for nationwide demolition work in July 2020.
Built in 1951, operation of the Ion Beam Facility ceased operations in 1999, DOE said in the release. The facility supported post-World War II scientific research and also housed equipment used for nuclear experimentation and aided in developing weapons technology, the agency said.
Exclusive, four-hour “behind-the-fence” tours of Los Alamos National Laboratory are being offered to the public on Oct. 18, 19 and 20. Registration for the free tours will begin Aug. 1 at 11 a.m. MDT and is on a first-come, first-served basis.
Visitors will see the Pond Cabin, where physicist Emilio Segre’s team made the pivotal discovery that the Thin Man plutonium bomb design would not work, a bunker where experiments helped determine whether the Trinity nuclear test would succeed and the Slotin Building, where a fatal criticality accident transformed the safety culture of Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to LANL.
Members of the public may register for the tours starting Aug. 1. Tour participants must be at least 18 years of age, U.S. citizens and able to provide proof of citizenship, such as a U.S. passport, birth certificate, or other document as listed on the event registration page, at tour check-in.
The Elders, a group of independent global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, published a new paper calling for global nuclear disarmament.
The 32-page report calls for “increasing international attention on the nuclear threat, protecting and strengthening the international architecture on non-proliferation, arms control and risk reduction and building an inclusive nuclear policy community and grassroots movement that can challenge status quo thinking on nuclear weapons.”
“There is an unanswerable political, strategic, security and moral case for redoubling efforts to secure meaningful nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation as a global priority,” the report said.
