Five activists from PeaceWorks KC are headed to the fall meeting of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) fall meeting Nov. 21-23 in Las Vegas. PeaceWorks Vice-Chair Ann Suellentrop predicted, “We will learn skills and strategies to use in opposing the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC), which makes 80% of the mechanical and electronic parts for the nation’s nuclear weapons.” ANA is a national network made up of 30 organizations whose members live near US nuclear bomb plants and their waste sites. The fall meeting will include attending the renowned International Uranium Film Festival — https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/files/2025_iuff_las_vegas_program_final.pdf.
The local attendees going to the ANA fall meeting are Suellentrop, Bree Crawford, Kimmy Igla, Rose Roos, and Kristin Scheer (chair of the PeaceWorks Communications Team). Crawford and Igla are former members of the PeaceWorks Board. The ANA fall meeting will be hosted by the Shoshone Nation, on whose land are located the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain. Ian Zabarte, Principal Man of the Western Shoshone, will lead the ANA group to the Nevada Test Site Friday morning, Nov. 21, with banners opposing nuclear weapons and nuclear testing, which President Trump has threatened to resume recently. The last nuclear bomb test there was in 1992. There will also be a postcard campaign to elected officials on these same issues.
On Sunday, Nov. 23, participants in the meeting will learn how to build their own radiation detectors from Dr. Michael Ketterer. He is an analytical chemist and Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Northern Arizona University, known for his research on radioactive contaminants at nuclear sites. He specializes in the sources, transport, and environmental fate of long-lived radionuclides like uranium and plutonium. Ketterer often provides expert technical assistance to communities affected by nuclear contamination, such as near the Los Alamos, NM, and Rocky Flats, CO, sites.
PeaceWorks members are also preparing for the public hearing to be held in the spring of 2026 in Kansas City. At this hearing, the public can weigh in on the government’s plan to make 80 plutonium pits per year for the next 50 years. Plutonium pits are the core or trigger of all nuclear weapons. This plan would constitute a new nuclear arms race and likely lead to resumed nuclear weapons testing, says Suellentrop. The hearing is the result of a settlement this year following a successful lawsuit brought by ANA and other groups against the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the part of the Department of Energy that makes nuclear weapons. The hearing will result in a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) — a document used to assess the environmental impacts of a broad program, plan, or policy.
The KCNSC provides the triggering system, the guidance system, and operating parts for nukes. The KCNSC projects listed in the Department of Energy’s budget laboratory tables include parts for the “Enterprise Pit Production-Plutonium Modernization and Plutonium Disposition program,” as well as parts for six new nuclear weapons. This added work has led to a doubling of the size of the plant, the start of the new nuclear arms race.
The plant makes parts for weapons of mass destruction, which could lead to global extinction.
PeaceWorks opposes the new generation of nuclear weapons parts being produced at the KCNSC, 14510 Botts Road, facing MO Highway 150.
While essential aid is denied to USAID, SNAP, and to US health and education programs, taxpayer funding of over $1.7 billion dollars per year is used at KCNSC for the dangers nuclear weapons pose to our planet.
© 2025, Ann Suellentrop, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License.