By JUDITH MOHLING

The Department of Energy has a sinister plan to ensure that nuclear weapons will be the capstone of U.S. foreign policy forever. We'll be the empire over all. The king of the hill. The plan is called, “Complex Transformation,” and it is the latest scheme to “revitalize” and rebuild the U.S. nuclear weapons research, development, testing and production complex of the future. It involves eight locations across the nation, and will result in new facilities to build new nuclear weapons.

This scheme is being commented on by the public at 19 hearings near nuclear weapons production sites from now through April. Trouble is, people around all of the nuclear sites depend on the work at these sites for jobs and economic stability in their areas. Most sites date from the 1940's and 1950's and have shaped the lives of countless scientists, engineers and the thousands of support workers, families of all of them, the infrastructure of their towns-hospitals, schools, police, fire, everybody. The people who are impacted directly by any change in their facility naturally have a tendency to cling to the status quo of their sources of livelihood and pride. These people have made plenty of money making bombs-hard to give that up. Isn't there a way to preserve jobs and bow to the inevitable?

Nukes are dead. Over. Too costly. Barbaric. They increase proliferation. They make life less safe-everywhere. They're against international law. They tempt all other countries to have them too. They are totally unfair. They are sooooo over.

It is my sense that the general U.S. public is sick of these weapons and a majority would say No! to new nukes or a “revitalized” nuclear complex, according to current polling.

The “preferred alternative” of DOE's four alternatives that they are asking the public to comment on, is to consolidate weapons work at five sites - the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Nevada Test Site in Nevada, the Pantex plant in Texas, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Read on for another “preferred alternative.”

Activists with the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a national coalition of more than 30 grassroots anti-nuke groups are putting forth another alternative that they prefer: “The No Production Alternative.” Under the No Production Alternative, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would continue to operate only those facilities required to achieve the safe, secure, efficient disassembly and dismantlement of nuclear weapons and the disposition/disposal of their constituent parts. Some facilities at each of the eight main sites will be retired and infrastructure and funding will be required to assure their safe, secure and complete decontamination, decommissioning and destruction. Some sites may be closed entirely; others may require new construction to achieve efficiencies and improve safety. The “no production alternative” would effectively turn the complex into a warhead-dismantling enterprise.

There are major benefits of the No Production Alternative to the U.S. and to the world. The No Production Alternative minimizes environmental impacts and joined together with effective political leadership, can be the most effective way to reverse or at least remediate the myriad of enormous and toxic environmental impacts created by years and years of attention to production and almost no attention to, “what do we do now with the lethal mess we've made?” which resulted in some cases in increased deaths, inadequate cleanup and even “coverup.”

The No Production Alternative can enhance the economic status of the communities in which facilities are located, directing the energy and efforts of the workforce toward dismantlement of warheads and of the apparatus and infrastructure of design, production and testing. With competent political leadership and an involved public, positive benefits will be realized and negative impacts will be minimized or eliminated.

The No Production Alternative is the only alternative that corresponds fully with the United States' obligations under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the finding of the World Court in 1996.The No Production Alternative provides the leadership called for by arms control, diplomatic and military leaders. The No Production Alternative enhances security for the United States by breaking immediately the global momentum toward nuclear proliferation and will increase security for every country.

At the Y-12 hearing yesterday a speaker, Bill Hickey, said that the issue is bigger than any of the specific sites, “We know that mushroom cloud potentially covers the whole planet.” Indeed it would. The bombs that the U.S. has now have the power equivalent of 150,000 Hiroshima blasts. No. We need a new nuclear policy that focuses on safety, security and compliance with international law, not new nuclear bombs. Let's once and for all get rid of them.

This column was published in the Colorado Daily on February 28, 2008.