Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)

Description

About Tri-Valley CAREs

Tri-Valley CAREs works to strengthen global security by stopping the development of new nuclear weapons in the US and promoting the elimination of nuclear weapons globally. Nuclear weapons decrease rather than increase human security. Nuclear weapons pose one of the great social, economic and ecological challenges of our time.
Tri-Valley CAREs was founded in 1983 in Livermore, California by concerned neighbors living around the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of two locations where all US nuclear weapons are designed. Tri-Valley CAREs monitors nuclear weapons and environmental clean-up activities throughout the US nuclear weapons complex, with a special focus on Livermore Lab and the surrounding communities.

By engaging in solid research, public
education, community organizing, media
outreach and legal advocacy, Tri-Valley
CAREs has won significant victories. For
example, we have:

â ¢ Mobilized the public and worked closely with Members of Congress to stop the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a new nuclear weapon that was under design at Livermore Lab.

â ¢ Sued the government eleven times during the past two decades â and we continue to prevail. Recently, we won a legal victory that stopped the Department of Energy from shipping plutonium from its Rocky Flats plant in Colorado to Livermore Lab in unsafe canisters that could not pass a â crush test.â Our victory forced the government to stop using those containers, and none of the plutonium was shipped to Livermore Lab.

â ¢ Conducted advocacy and secured federal funding to establish a resource center for Livermore Lab workers made ill by on-the-job exposure to toxic and radioactive substances.

â ¢ Shut down a radioactive and toxic waste incinerator at the Livermore Lab and stopped the construction of a second, larger incinerator.

â ¢ Been awarded a US Environmental Protection Agency Superfund technical assistance grant to monitor cleanup activities at Livermore Lab, the first such award given in EPA Region 9. Further, we were the first non-governmental organization to win a national recognition award from the US EPA for our environmental work.