Plutonium pit production site in New Mexico.

Nuclear Madness Gets a Hearing in New Mexico
Greg Mello / Los Alamos Stud Group

(July 22, 2024) — Tonight in Pojoaque, New Mexicans will be offered a rare referendum on whether the US should pursue a nuclear arms race and further attempt to dominate the world, at enormous cost to its own people.

This Is Not the Usual Bit of Fake Democracy.
This Time It’s Real. 
Nobody is going to count votes, but the news media, federal decision-makers, and observers around the country will count heads, and they will listen to what is said, and what they see in the signs people carry.

We gave everybody a heads-up about this on July 10th and 18th, and have been getting the word out assiduously via social media. Even if this is the very first time you are seeing this, please consider taking part!

Here’s How to Participate in This Rare Event:
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Jill Hruby and Department of Energy Environmental Management’s (DOE EM’s) Candice Robertson will host a Town Hall Meeting from 6-7:30 pm MDT Monday, July 22, at the Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder (map), 13 miles north of downtown Santa Fe on US 84.

Join us there, and bring as many others with you as you can, to protest the creation of a plutonium warhead core (“pit”) factory at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). This is a really, really important opportunity!

In addition to other people, please bring signs (cloth may be best, as sticks may not be allowed inside). The single, core message we want to get across to national and local audiences alike is the depth and breadth of opposition to pit production at LANL. It is likely that very few people will be allowed to ask questions or make comments at the microphone, so we must communicate effectively in other nonviolent ways.

We will have extra signs, but your own signs will be the best!

If you can’t come in person, you can semi-participate virtually by first registering here: Zoom Registration Link.” Questions can be submitted ahead of time by email to external.engagements@nnsa.doe.gov, but there will be little time for questions and comments and we must assume that the questions will be filtered according to NNSA’s tastes. If you change your personal profile for this meeting to “Stop the Los Alamos Bomb Factory” or something like that, others MAY be able to see that. But going to Pojoaque in person would be far, far better.

Pit production at LANL.

Without LANL pit production, the US cannot pretend to continue a nuclear arms race. The sole production mission of the LANL factory complex is to make pits for the all-new “W87-1” warhead, which will be used to augment the existing stock of (roughly 530) modern W87-0 warheads available for the proposed “Sentinel” intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

According to Dr. Hruby, the factory under construction at SRS will not be tasked to make pits for W87-1 warheads (it will make other warheads, starting in 2035 at the earliest). Only LANL will do that. A decade’s delay in making pits, at this juncture, would be decisive in the future of nuclear weapons.

At the moment, many experts including us believe the threat nuclear war is greater than at any time since the early 1980s, and that threat is rising.

It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the world may be depend on whether there is real resistance to pit production in Los Alamos, right now.

Every year the US spends more than a trillion dollars — more than $7,600 per household — on so-called “defense,” most of which is devoted to, or excused by, a futile attempt to maintain global hegemony. People need to rise up in resistance, because the contractors and pork-barrel politicians who promote this folly for their own self-interested purposes will take all they can get. Absent a robust, growing nuclear arms industry, the global empire business begins to look shabby very fast.

The Los Alamos program is troubled, dogged as it is by a welter of logistical and workforce problems. It is over-budget by a factor of roughly six, and we won’t yet see the costs of all the new facilities needed to flesh out LANL’s factory. Which, it needs to be said again and again, is centered in an admittedly somewhat substandard old building that was already nearly full of missions before the pit mission got started.

According to NNSA, that building was originally designed [to hold] about 100 people; by 2022 there are over 1,000 people working there.

This is not just a NIMBY (“not in my back yard”) issue, although it certainly is that, and a cultural survival issue with it. If LANL pit production can be halted, there can be no nuclear arms race over at least the coming decade. For compelling reasons we need not get into here, a decade’s delay is likely to be essentially permanent.

Each new LANL pit will cost about $100 million. Each of these pits is designed to be the core of a 300-kiloton warhead. That is 20 times the explosive yield of the Hiroshima bomb. LANL has promised to make at least 30 of these per year — in energy terms, the equivalent of at least 600 Hiroshima explosions.

Do you think the US, or the world, will seriously address climate change WHILE ALSO conducting a nuclear arms race?

Mobilize, for survival. Tonight.

ACTION:
Sign the Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production

New Mexico’s two nuclear weapons labs lead the world in spending for weapons of mass destruction. But as the labs have grown, our state’s relative economic standing has declined and now trails almost all other states. We are consistently ranked at or near the bottom of all states in overall child well-being.

We cannot build our society, nurture our children, inspire our youth, or improve our communities by investing in apocalyptic nightmares.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), plutonium warhead core (“pit”) production is slated to begin in about 2024 (one pit) and slowly ramp up to about 30 “war reserve” pits per year through in the early 2030s, long before any “need” for new pits.

No new pits are needed during this period to maintain US nuclear weapons. LANL’s pit production program is required only for producing new warheads as soon as possible.

We call upon our elected officials to:

• Oppose plutonium warhead core (“pit”) production at LANL first and foremost, but also elsewhere.
• Oppose the design, testing, and production of new and “upgraded” nuclear weapons.
• Prioritize removal and disposal of legacy plutonium waste from LANL over production of additional nuclear waste from nuclear weapons.
• Choose human security, community resilience, and environmental protection over nuclear weapons production and our bloated military. We can no longer delay. We must use every opportunity, at every level of government, to prioritize human needs, invest in our communities, and build a more just and sustainable society.

We call for sanity, not nuclear production

Los Alamos Study Group
2901 Summit Place NE
Albuquerque, NM 87106