2024 NUCLEAR DISASTERS DAY

For UPDATES on Nuclearism in New Mexico see TBDC or SRIC or CCNS or LASG or NukeWatch.

Protesting in the face of Oppenheimer & Groves (2015)
Youth Movement Protests Nuclearism (2010)

Trinity Nuclear Abolition (TNA) held peace vigils at Los Alamos for 5 years before "Think Outside The Bomb" came to New Mexico to support the same cause of nuclear abolition [with similar tactics to TNA, yet with hundreds of people].


Nuclear Disasters Day
An Abbreviated Nuclear History for New Mexico



The Uranium mining boom started near Grants, New Mexico in 1950. In Los Alamos eight years earlier, the top-secret Manhattan Project pushed nuclear science to the limit. Its 1945 climax of three nuclear detonations (the Trinity Bomb near Socorro, Fat Man in Hiroshima and Little Boy in Nagasaki) truly set in place New Mexico's industrial nuclear fate for the second half of the 20th century. The uranium mining industry and the post-Manhattan Project era in Los Alamos are two enduring ways our state's nuclear legacy have not faded. Opponents of nuclearism vigilantly oppose further uranium mining and push for an end to the nuclear weapons work of Los Alamos.


The Trinity Site was the first nuclear bomb site, but Farmington and Carlsbad have also hosted underground nuclear explosions in New Mexico. As Los Alamos sped up its work in designing bigger bombs to be detonated in  Nevada during the Cold War, the mining companies continued to pull uranium from the ground to feed nuclear  reactors and the nuclear weapons industry. The uranium mining industry peaked in the 1970s but people in the Gallup area were sickened and worried after a horrifying  accident at Church Rock near Gallup in 1979. This accident, which  spilled tons of uranium tailings into the Rio Puerco, was exactly 34 years after the Trinity Bomb was dropped, BOTH at 5:30 AM on July 16th. The 1979 incident symbolizes the reckless folly of mining and waste products in the nuclear age. The 1945 incident symbolizes the violent arrogance of nuclear weaponry.


Los Alamos, New Mexico  is only one ad hoc storage ground for leaking radioactive waste while Kirtland Air Force Base (in Albuquerque) now stores more nuclear weapons than any other city on earth. The U.S. government began storing radioactive wastes at another site in 1999, the WIPP site, near Carlsbad in southeast New Mexico.


These contaminating projects and dumps are just a few reasons for New Mexicans in this century to expedite a peaceful end to the nuclear weapons age.



For More Info on Nuclearism in New Mexico, see The Forgotten Bomb (movie)






Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in Japan: What To Do?

Trinity Nuclear Abolition and others were extremely concerned about the aftermath of these TEPCO explosions, meltdowns, and spreading contamination of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 and 2012. The horribly avoidable disaster of radioactive poisoning of Japan and the other populations on earth is a sacrifice made in Asia to warn folks elsewhere, especially in the United States, that ALL NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS MUST BE SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY with all resources currently on-site helping to safely shut the operations down and contain the toxic troubles on-site for the next 50 years (at least). During the coming global warming crisis humanity must continue to contain the radiological hazards of all nuclear power stations. More earthquakes and extreme weather will continue to threaten the peace at nuclear power sites. The USA currently hosts 23 General Electric Mark I reactors--the design that exploded at Fukushima. Mother Earth can always shift her tectonic plates in more dramatic ways, and California (among dozens of other regions) hosts at least 3 coastal nuclear power plants which could be similarly destroyed by natural causes, contaminating more people along the way.

The obvious intelligent choice for Californians and the USA is for decomissioning all nuclear power plants immediately and preparing for long-term SAFE storage of the wastes. During the next 50 years we may discover ways to transport the contained contaminants off-site and to safer locations, but the current human technologies are unable to ensure ANY safe transportation during the foreseeable future.

See NIRS for the best coverage.