March 10, 2018

Dear friends --

As we mentioned in Bulletin 245 two days ago, Senator Heinrich will be questioning the newly-confirmed National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty in a Senate Armed Services hearing this coming Wednesday, March 14, on the future of US plutonium warhead core ("pit") production.

Translation: Heinrich (before, during, and after Wednesday's hearing) is putting as much pressure as possible on Gordon-Hagerty to make sure as much money as possible is spent at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) on pit production.

With the possible exception of Rep. Lujan Grisham, Heinrich has the backing of the entire rest of the New Mexico delegation, and all the concentrated power that the LANL contractors (current and anticipated) can muster.

But listen: all this may not be enough to make up for the obvious deficiencies and poor track record of LANL itself, the topographic and seismic defects of the site, the aging facilities involved, the isolation from supporting industries, the poverty, inequality, and high levels of drug abuse in the region, the relative lack of nearby educational institutions, and so on.

As we said, previous senators and congresspersons, including Rep. Tom Udall, did not think LANL was the best place for industrial pit production.

We would like you to write letters to editors about this, as soon as you can. You can draw on recent Bulletins and letters and the links they contain. Don't worry about any deadline, but please do it soon if you can. Such letters can influence many parties, not least the reluctant press itself.

Oddly enough, New Mexicans have been and continue to be very powerful on this issue. The Study Group really has a unique position in this debate. You are not alone. Our professional relationships on weapons issues span decades in Washington, DC and elsewhere. We are working in solidarity with your efforts large and small.

As we mentioned in a December 26 letter, there are many many other ways (besides letters to editors, so simple!) to bring one's values and hopes and fears and commitments and knowledge into the public realm, starting with actually meeting and talking!

We hope you will write short letters (no more than 150 words if you want them published, and you do!), and consider it just one transformative step.

For you, dear readers, there is no need to explain how important it is to not build a factory for atom bombs. And why our silence is permissive for the kleptocratic corporations which make tens of millions each year with no investment of their own, just for showing up.

And why all our social goals and environmental hopes will be dashed if the US military/industrial/congressional complex (as Eisenhower had it in his first draft, before "congressional" was taken out) continues to suck the country dry?

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Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham was mentioned above. She has not joined the rest of the delegation in promoting industrial pit production, but neither has she opposed it. She needs to hear about this in public places like newspapers, and on the campaign trail. We would like Rep. Grisham to stand up and be counted.

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As most of you may already know, the Holtec Corporation, together with the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, has submitted an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to temporarily store (for a century or more) what they hope will be eventually 120,000 metric tons (MT) of spent nuclear fuel (SNF), at a site about 12 miles north of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). That's roughly 50% more SNF than is now at US reactors. This spent fuel contains more than 350 times as much radiation as was released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests ever conducted. It contains over 700 MT of plutonium, more than 3 times the quantity made for nuclear weapons globally. (For this and other important background in a short slide show please see "

Spent Power Reactor Fuel: Pre-Disposal Issues," Robert Alvarez, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Los Alamos Study Group, Apr 29, 2017, posted Jul 28, 2017). A single reactor spent fuel storage pool may typically contain vastly more cesium-137 than was released in the Chernobyl accident.

It is virtually certain, we believe, that if spent nuclear fuel comes to any desert site -- in this or any state -- for "temporary" storage, before a disposal site is open for that waste, it will never leave. It will be the worst of all worlds -- no accountability, no disposal, no nothing. If you think somebody will be taking good care of this waste in, say, 2050 -- well, I have a bridge to sell you in Manhattan.

The economic and social damage this waste site would wreak would begin the day such a facility became a near-certainty, long before it even opened.

We want all the Democrats at least in the New Mexico delegation -- Rep. Pearce being something of a lost cause on this matter -- to publicly express firm disapproval to this plan now, before it gathers any more steam. We want you to ask them publicly, in any way you can, to do that. For more background see Bulletin 233 and the subsequent open letter to our delegation.

(So what's the answer then, for spent commercial nuclear reactor fuel? Are we just NIMBYs? Not at all. Though we don't work on this issue much, we gave an outline of one answer in Bulletin 233. We think it is far from enough to just say, "No, don't store (or bury) it here!" Or, "Just store it at the reactor sites; we'll figure out what to do with it later!" It is not enough to oppose radioactive dumping.

Yes, the decisions will be difficult. Real answers to all the problems that have been ignored for decades are seldom going to be convenient. If this or any consolidated interim storage site far from reactors were a good idea, we'd be for it. But it's not.

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That's it for tonight. We look forward to seeing many of you in the coming weeks!

Best wishes to all,

Greg Mello