05/08/08
Leadership Council of Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati Oppose U.S. Department of Energy Plan for Nuclear Bomb Facility

Photo: National Archives

DELHI TOWNSHIP, OHIO – The Leadership Council of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati has joined 78 Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Protestant groups across the nation to reject the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plans to reactivate the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure and build new nuclear bomb plant facilities. In a formal letter to the DOE religious organizations instead called for the United States to end new nuclear weapons production and commit to multilateral disarmament.

The letter, submitted April 30 by the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers), stated, “We call on our political leaders to show the moral and political courage necessary to bring about a shift in our nation’s nuclear weapons posture. Today we have a historic opportunity to begin the journey out from under the shadow of nuclear weapons.”

The centerpiece of this proposal, called Complex Transformation, is a new nuclear weapons facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, located 25 miles northwest of Santa Fe, N.M. The new bomb plant facility would enable the mass production of plutonium pits, the primary detonators in modern nuclear weapons.

The Leadership Council of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati expresses concern that new and upgraded facilities would be used in the development of a new generation of nuclear warheads, despite the moral and legal obligations of the United States to reduce its weapons arsenal. In line with these beliefs, we propose a No Production Alternative to the proposed plan to include the following:

• Place a moratorium on new warhead designs.
• Do not expand plutonium pit production capacity.
• Consolidate and downsize the Nuclear Weapons Complex.
• Continue the nuclear testing moratorium.

This path toward nuclear disarmament will make the peoples of our world safer and is consistent with our moral values.

 

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