A nuclear waste of tax dollars – Ventura County Star

Robert Dodge, Special to The Star 8:05 a.m. PT April 15, 2017

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the hills outside Simi Valley, site of a 1959 partial nuclear meltdown.(Photo: STAR FILE PHOTO)

"Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value."

Former Vice President Joe Biden, quoting his father, knew that a budget reflected the values and priorities of anation. Each April, our country funds its priorities. Ultimately, as the Rev. Jim Wallis has said, "Budgets are moral documents."

At this time each year,Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles calculates how much money the United States spends on nuclear weapons programs for the current tax year. The Nuclear Weapons Community Costs Project has identified that for tax year 2016, the United States will have spent $57.6 billion on nuclear weapons programs.

California contributed more than $7 billion to this amount, while Ventura County will have spent over $174 million andneighboring Los Angeles County about$1.8 billion to fund weapons that can never be used.

Every dollar spent on nuclear weapons is a dollar taken from programs that support the health and well-being of our country, our communitiesand our loved ones. These are critical funds that we can never get back.

The Trump administration is proposing a dramatic increase in the budget for nuclear weapons while simultaneously proposing a dramatic decrease for social and environmental programs. This is in addition to the nuclear grand bargain of the Obamaadministration's proposed buildup of our nuclear arsenal to the tune of $1 trillion over the next three decades. This is the opening salvo as other countries follow suit in this new nuclear arms race.

While nuclear weapons are unseen their threat seemingly hypothetical and unimaginable they are causing tremendous harm to our health and the environment right now, even without a single detonation. Vast quantities of deadly radioactive waste and contamination from Cold War production continue to threaten the health of communities and vital ecosystems throughout the country.

The human health and safety impacts of nuclear weapons will grow exponentially through the proposed buildup. There is no safe, long-term storage for nuclear waste, which can remain hazardous for millennia.

Our own Ventura County is a victim of the Cold Wars nuclear legacy. The Santa Susana Field Lab site in the hills above Simi Valley remains radioactively contaminated to this day following the partial meltdown of an experimental nuclear reactor in 1959.

Probably one of the most contaminated locations in our state, this radioactive and chemical contamination will continue to threaten the health and well-being of surrounding communities as it has done over the past 58 years until it is fully cleaned up. Who among us wants to live with the possibility that the next childhood or adult cancer case might have been prevented if only the site were cleaned up as it was promised so long ago?

Internationally, the non-nuclear nations of the world have grown weary of the actions and failure of the United States to meet our legally binding commitment to work in good faithtoward the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Taking their future into their own hands, the vast majority of the non-nuclear nations will complete negotiations at the United Nations this July on an international nuclear ban treaty that will outlaw nuclear weapons just as all other weapons of mass destruction have been banned. This will leave the United States and other nuclear nations once again in breach of international law.

Fortunately, a world under constant threat of nuclear apocalypse, either by intent or accident, is not the future that has to be. But change will not happen on its own. Each of us has a role to play.

Ultimately it will take the people of the United States and of Ventura County to awaken from our trance and join the rest of the world in demanding that our leaders work to abolish nuclear weapons and redirect these expenditures to secure a future for our children and address the real needs of our country and community.The time for action is now.

Robert Dodge, a family physician in Ventura, serves on the boards of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions.

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A nuclear waste of tax dollars - Ventura County Star