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September 13, 2007

Okay, You Can Stop the Ride Now

The nuclear news and people’s response to it these days is straight out of the Twilight Zone. It’s like our nation is on a wild roller coaster ride without a seat belt and nobody has noticed. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so nervous if it wasn’t for last week’s "accidental" transport of nuclear weapons across the country (please go read the link if you don’t understand how terrifying this incident really is or why it is so terrifying). Why is something so insanely serious not on everyone’s lips? Particularly in a state like Oregon, where not so long ago we voted to shut down the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant?

And now today we learn that a stockpile of plutonium and other nuclear weapons materials that have been stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory “ hasn't been fully accounted for in 13 years or more.” In other words, nuclear weapons materials could have gone missing from the lab and we would never know it. In a nation where five or six (depending on which news story you read) nuclear bombs, each with more than ten times the explosive force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, could “accidentally” be flown across the country despite numerous safety procedures designed to prevent such an occurrence, do we really believe uninventoried nuclear bomb making material is secure?

Can we please stop the ride so I can get off? I feel like I’m going to throw up.

Posted by Becky at September 13, 2007 10:10 AM