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21st Century Open Space Vision Map for Sacrameno Valley – Sacramento Valley Conservancy

Defusing Armageddon: A History of NEST
written by Steven Aftergood
January 12, 2009 | Secrecy News Blog
Federation of American Scientist

“In May 1974, the U.S. government received its first serious nuclear threat”,recalls author Jeffrey T. Richelson. A letter demanding that $200,00 be left at a particular location arrived at the FBI. Failure to comply, it claimed, would result in the [detonation] of a nuclear bomb somewhere in Boston.

The threat was soon exposed as a hoax, but it prompted the creation of a then-secret organization originally known as the Nuclear Emergency Search (later: Source) Team, or NEST, which would be responsible for the “search and identification of lost or stolen nuclear weapons and special nuclear materials, bomb threats, and radiation dispersal threats.

The history of that organization is unveiled by Richelson in his new book “Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America’s Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad” (W.W. Norton, January 2009).

Earliest weapons-grade plutonium found in US dump
21 January 2009 – New Scientist

An old glass jar inside a beaten up old safe at the bottom of a waste pit may seem an unlikely place to find a pivotal piece of 20th century history. But that’s just where the first bulk batch of weapons-grade plutonium ever made has been found – abandoned at the world’s oldest nuclear processing site.

And this….

Update: Since publication, Jon Schwantes has discovered that a microgram sample of plutonium produced in 1942 by Glen Seaborg’s group at the University of California in Berkeley is also plutonium-239. The sample discovered at Hanford is technically the second oldest sample of plutonium-239, but remains the earliest produced during the Manhattan Project and the first bulk batch anywhere.

This reads like a Simpson’s episode. I can’t help but wonder what else we’ve waylaid, and where. The ocean? A watershed that supplies water to millions of people? The Arctic/Antarctic, where ice caps are receding? Some of the hair-brained schemes they hatched up in the 1950′s to dispose of nuclear waste, it just leaves me wondering where these nuclear easter eggs will pop up next. And what of the Russians? The French?

Other news source:
Old plutonium found in dump
Weapons-grade material discovered at Hanford nuclear site.
Nature | Geoff Brumfiel
Published online 22 January 2009

Green Party activist Peter Camejo, 68, dies – sacbee.com

Civil rights activist Peter Miguel Camejo, an advocate of third party politics, died early today at his home in Folsom, according to Ralph Nader, who notified The Bee in an e-mailed tribute.Nader said Camejo’s wife, Morella, was at his side.Camejo, 68, had been battling lymphoma cancer. Nader said Camejo’s condition had deteriorated over the past few days.Camejo was a third party candidate for state and national office. He was Nader’s running mate in the 2004 presidential election, and attempted three gubernatorial runs in California for the Green Party. In 2002 he garnered 5.3 percent of the vote. In the 2003 recall election, he debated Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis.”Peter was a friend, colleague and politically courageous champion of the downtrodden and mistreated of the entire Western hemisphere,” Nader said in his e-mail. “Everyone who met Peter, talked with Peter, worked with Peter, or argued with Peter, will miss the passing of a great American.”