Reminder; alert your networks: town hall meeting Tues Sept 17, noon, Capitol Rotunda; Heinrich, Udall embrace and increase Trump nuclear weapons funding

September 14, 2019

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This letter: Reminder: town hall meeting Tues Sept 17 Capital rotunda, noon, Capitol Rotunda; Heinrich, Udall embrace and increase Trump nuclear weapons funding

Preceding letter (09/03/19): Town Hall meeting Tues Sept 17 in Santa Fe, noon, Capitol Rotunda; letters & calls needed to stop "$13 billion plutonium construction plan"

Also see: Los Alamos Study Group to host town hall meeting on Los Alamos lab expansion, press release, Sep 6, 201.

Dear friends –

We hope you can come on Tuesday, Sept. 17 at noon to the Capitol Rotunda in Santa Fe, and that you will alert your own networks to come as well.

We cannot bring signs into the Capitol but we certainly welcome them outside, before and after the noon event. We will convene outside afterwards if there are enough questions.

There will be news media and a film crew present. The more people and visibility the better.

Many people ask us, "What can I do?" Right now the answer is: please come on Tuesday and please bring as many friends as you can. Bring signs, come a bit before noon, stay as long as you want or you can.

We will discuss the proposed new industrial plutonium warhead core ("pit") mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the catalyst for what LANL hopes will be a $13 billion (B) capital investment program at the lab, not counting proposed new highways to connect SR4 near White Rock directly with a) I-25 at the Waldo exit and b) SR 599 north of Santa Fe. This would necessitate a major highway bridge over White Rock Canyon.

Further details -- as much as we know of them -- can be found in and are linked to the preceding letter. So far LANL and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have been keeping the public, local officials, state legislators, and congressional committees in the dark about their plans.

We know that last bit because we are just now returning from Washington, DC, where we have spoken to members, congressional staff and many others.

NNSA and LANL must follow Department of Energy (DOE) site planning rules, which mandate a public process, but they haven't.

NNSA must produce detailed pit production plans, but it hasn't.

Federal agencies must analyze the environmental impact of their proposed actions, but NNSA hasn't and isn't planning to.

We have asked a range of elected officials to attend and to speak on Tuesday if they wish, with what success we do not yet know. There will be time for as many public questions and comments as we can fit in our two-hour window after a brief presentation, comments by officials, and questions from the press.

In Congress, the joint effort by Senator Heinrich with Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina to place the Trump pit requirement (basically, start producing at least 80 pits per year [ppy] by 2030) into statute may well succeed. It has passed the whole Senate and is currently being negotiated with the House.

Meanwhile Senator Udall's appropriations subcommittee, quickly followed by the whole Appropriations Committee, has reported a bill that also supports the 80 ppy requirement and adds even more money than the Trump team requested. House Democrats tried to limit pit production to only 30 ppy, and only at LANL, and tried to cut pit funding by a third. But with the Heinrich-Graham amendment and now the Senate Appropriations Committee adding even more money while also supporting 80 ppy, it's an uphill struggle to limit pit production requirements. 

What this is all about is providing pits for the new warhead now under design for the Air Force's proposed new land-based missile. Democrats are divided as to pace and funding, with only a few voices saying we don't need it. So the plan is going forward so far. Nobody can say what it will cost but with the new warhead, not counting the pits and other expensive parts, the lowest possible figure is in the neighborhood of $100 B. This is but part of the circa $1.5 trillion, 30-year commitment to nuclear weapons deployment and modernization that began under Obama and is now expanding under Trump.

As we tirelessly repeat, these plans, in their totality, represent political values and costs that are incompatible with dreams of justice and with the survival of nature and civilization as we know them. The hour is late.

Some want a Green New Deal. What LANL wants is a Brown Old Deal, or maybe an Atomic Retro Deal -- for itself. For its own corporate Plutopia.

I know it's hard to believe anyone could take their grandiose plans seriously but believe me, Congress does. The Pentagon does. This is a very serious plan, not a joke at all. It is NNSA's #1 priority. They are ready to throw more than a billion dollars a year into making a new Rocky Flats, and many people want that money.

Come on Tuesday for more details.

Best wishes,

Greg