[Peace-discuss] Website, Nuclear Weapons Design at Livermore

[Barbara Dyskant]

Hi all,

I would suggest to "stay tuned" to the website  www.trivalleycares.org for
info on nuclear weapons design related to the  national laboraties,
Livermore in particular.     It has everything anyone has ever needed to
hear (and would be totally outraged about) about the Livermore (and weapons
lab complex) nuclear weapons design and oher issues, and it is written very
readably.    

The "Lab" has been nicknamed "The house that Teller built," started in the
early 1950s by Edward Teller, who is often called "the father of the
hydrogen bomb." .  To my knowledge, he's still there 

Our son Erek (who many of you know) is interning at Tri-Valley CARES as he
does every fall.    We used to live there, and Tri-Valley CARES has done
very inspiring work  -- many victories  have been won and many more are to
happen, and they've doen well organizing/mobilizing in a community where
many people's jobs depend on the lab.

Rather than rattling off zillions of scary (and true) facts, I will just
mention the website, but will post a little from what I know.

Thanks to Manni for posting this.  Weapons designing is  happening, and has
for some time.   The weapons are being designed via computer modeling as
well as various non-benign (dangerous) procedures under the umbrella
"stockpile stewardship."   The "National Ignition Facility" is one example
of proposed (and under construction) weapons research done under the guise
of "research," and involves a megalaser that, in addidtion to having
nuclear weapons proliferation impllicdations, has gone over-budget and may
emit tritium.    

 This "stewardship" is far from just the safety-oriented "care" of the
stockpile while waiting to scuttle it.  It is taking older weapons and
making them "new and improved."  It is akin to "taking a Chevrolet into a
repair shop and having it come out a Porsche-" -, as Marylia Kelley of
Tri-Valley CARES aptly described  it.

And the other aspects of the lab-- the possible expansion to bio-weapons
work, etc., is scary.   Too numerous to detail here-- it's all on the website.

Plus, there is incredible contamination of the environment, to the point
where plutonium (dangerous, with a half-life of over 200,000 years) was
found three inches under the surface in the sand AT A CHILDREN'S
PLAYGROUND in :Livermore, and more ended up in the sludge people used to
fertilize gardens, and the rainwater at one time could have been labeled
radioactive if bottled.  I kid you now.  It is a very glaring example of
how the nuclear postures towards "other countries" are also an assault on
our "very own" population. 

I think it's so important that we all know about the "infrastructure" that
has 

That's it for now-- just some more background.  

Thanks,
Barbara

P.S.  If anyone would like to receive the newsletter "Citizen's Watch" from
Livermore, please let me know-- it's an exellent info source.  It's also
posted on the website.

ALSO -- last year (around Valentine's Day) the Livermore Lab came to
recruit promising young scientists to a "rewarding" career designing
nuclear weapons.  A few of us from AWARE came out and also interviewed the
students after their interview with the weapons-mongers, and it was quite
effective.