Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Citizens group makes demands to inspect Livermore nuclear lab

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- About 75 activists gathered Monday outside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory demanding to inspect its facilities.

Highlighting the ongoing controversy surrounding inspections of weapons facilities in Iraq, the group called on lab director Michael Anastasio to allow its Citizens Weapons Inspection Team to investigate what it called "clandestine activities" related to weapons development.

Jackie Cabasso of the Oakland-based Western States Legal Foundation said the investigations team wanted to examine the lab's plutonium, tritium, uranium and ignition facilities, among others.

"While the Bush administration calls on other countries to disarm, we call on the United States to disarm," Peter Ferenbach of the group California Peace Action said.

President Bush and members of his administration have been working to build an international coalition against Iraq and its president, Saddam Hussein. Bush has fought to put weapons inspectors back to work in that country.

But to the coalition of peace activists outside the lab, the move is hypocritical.

"If we want other countries to have weapons inspections, let us start here at home," said Tara Dorabji of Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment.

There were no problems or arrests, said lab spokesman David Schwoegler.

Monday's demonstration came three months after a Defense Department adviser said the United States will probably need to resume full-scale nuclear tests in five to 10 years to check results of materiel experiments on how the stockpile ages.

Dale Klein, assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear and chemical and biological defense programs, made that prediction at Nellis Air Force Base, before visiting the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

From 1945 through 1992, the United States conducted 1,054 nuclear tests primarily at the test site and in the South Pacific.

Review-Journal writer Keith Rogers contributed to this report.