Meeting in Santa Fe 5:30 pm this Friday Jan 11; why LANL cannot host a plutonium pit factory; will Governor Grisham’s energy policies help, or hurt?

January 7, 2019

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Previous letter (25 Dec 2018): "All I want for Christmas is a Green New Deal which is actually green and actually a new deal."
Previous Bulletin (252, 1 Jan 2019): "Fundraising reminder; why LANL cannot be any kind of plutonium factory, in a nutshell."

This letter:

1. Meeting this Friday January 11, in Santa Fe, 5:30-7:30 pm, St. John's United Methodist Church, 1200 Old Pecos Trail (map): a) nuclear weapons, pits, LANL update; b) whither energy and climate in the coming legislative session
   
2. Why LANL cannot host a plutonium pit factory (op ed), and why this is urgent right now
   
3. Will Governor Grisham’s energy policies help, or hurt, New Mexico and the climate? (op ed)
   

Dear friends on our New Mexico activist list --

Happy new year, everyone. By which we really mean an authentic, engaged, productive new year, in which we cultivate joy and solidarity despite the conditions which prevail, and despite what grief may come.

Thank you all for your generous support during our end-of-year fundraising period. You make our work together possible.

Call on us, and work with us.

1. Meeting this Friday, January 11, in Santa Fe, 5:30-7:30 pm, St. John's United Methodist Church, 1200 Old Pecos Trail (map): a) nuclear weapons, pits, LANL update; b) whither energy and climate in the coming legislative session

We'll have plenty of time for discussion in each of the two topic areas. Both are urgent right now and offer puissant opportunities. Depending on his schedule we may have a second speaker, or "panelist" we should then say, in the energy and climate part.

Please help us with outreach for this event! Feel free to forward this letter in whole or in part.

2. Why LANL cannot host a plutonium pit factory, in brief (op ed); why this is urgent right now

Two engineering reviews of where (not whether, when, or how much) to manufacture plutonium warhead cores ("pits") are due in Congress in April.

Even prior to that, the White House will request funds and offer some kind of plan on 4 Feb. After that request and especially the engineering reviews, there will be congressional debate, passage of appropriations bills (including for pit production with detailed requirements), possibly new legal requirements or prohibitions in the fiscal year (FY) 2020 defense authorization act, and then the White House will prepare the FY2021 budget request, maybe with pit factory construction in it.

All these are "station stops" on the train to pit production hell. They all (at the moment) assume there is no serious opposition to pit production in New Mexico.

The sooner we can stop this train, the easier and better.

Let's get our cities and towns, tribes, and counties out of the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities (RCLC), with prejudice as the lawyers say. This winter or spring, please.

Unlike other states which are rushing to federal court to block plutonium shipments to them or get plutonium out of their state ("S.C. files emergency motion to intervene in Nevada's plutonium-related lawsuit," Aiken Standard, 4 Jan 2019), our congressional delegation loves plutonium and has been telling everyone in Washington that New Mexicans like plutonium almost as much as green chile, and that we want to process tens of tons of it in our plutonium roasters, and make piles of pits (which are like jetliners, don't you know).

Déjà vu you say? The same thing happened last year (see entries starting April 2018 here) but the New Mexico delegation was not satisfied with the result. (Splitting pit production with a non-New-Mexico site! Oh no!)

So by July 2018 a new law requiring another set of studies was well on its way to passage. The previous two studies (top box) conspicuously did not advocate building new factories or underground "modules" at LANL. "This time NNSA and its contract engineers had better get the message that New Mexicans deserve all the plutonium they want! We need to make American pits great -- or at least young -- again!" (We prefer sterilization.)

Meanwhile we need to stop the push for new, pit-requiring warheads. We will be writing about that more, ASAP. Also I will go to DC for two weeks in February to work on that among other things.

Meanwhile, hopefully this op end will run this week. It has already been sent to various responsible parties in Washington.

      At the end of the Cold War it made sense for the Department of Energy (DOE) to consolidate and temporarily preserve pit production technology at LANL. Given the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) mandate, it still does.
      However, hopes for a reliable, small, pit production capacity at LANL – let alone an enduring one that could quantitatively contribute to maintaining the nuclear stockpile over decades – didn’t pan out.
      In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down and the Rocky Flats Plant made its last pit, PF-4 was only 11 years old. The extent of LANL’s seismic hazard was then unknown, officially at least.
      Likewise the poor geotechnical properties of the unconsolidated volcanic sediments at LANL’s TA-55 were unknown then. They were certainly plain to see in the surrounding terrain and in records of TA-55 borings. When LANL was chosen for the pilot pit mission in late 1997, no further construction at TA-55 or elsewhere at LANL was thought necessary. Or at least that was the story. So the presence of an 80 or so foot thick layer of poorly consolidated volcanic ash – dust, more or less – beneath TA-55 seemed of no particular relevance. It was apparently not brought to management attention. Institutionally it was forgotten until 2010, when engineers discovered that this problematic stratum would have to be entirely removed to build a nuclear facility on the south side of TA-55.
      Likewise LANL's dissected, steep topography, which dramatically increases costs and places firm limits on construction at TA-55 and elsewhere at LANL, was not a factor in 1997, when PF-4 was in mid-life and no new construction was envisioned.
      The situation is much different now, 20 years later. Originally designed for a 50-year operational life, PF-4 is now 40 years old. By the time pit production is supposed to start in earnest in the late 2020s it will be 50. PF-4 was not built to modern nuclear facility standards. It also was and is an R&D facility, not a factory. Its structural integrity in the event of a design basis earthquake, and the adequacy of its safety systems in routine operation and more so in a design basis accident, have been under constant review, critique, negotiation, upgrade, and repair for the past decade and more. It does not have safety-class ventilation or fire suppression systems. Safety is a perennial “work in progress.”
      NNSA has said it expects PF-4 to last until 2039 (p. WA-211), but with what confidence, or operational reliability? With what safety risks? No one really knows.
      In June 2017 the NNSA determined (p. 76) that continuing to rely on PF-4 for enduring pit production capability presented "unacceptably high mission risk," for two reasons: a) efforts to install equipment in PF-4 beyond what is already planned under the Plutonium Sustainment program present unacceptably high risks to achieving 30 ppy production by 2026; and b) PF-4 is much smaller than is required for stockpile pit production, even if missions such as plutonium dioxide production and plutonium-238 manufacturing were somehow relocated.
      Could a suite of single-story underground production “modules” provide enough increased program capacity, either to expand LANL pit production or to replace PF-4?
      In a word, no. No matter how many safety and operational corners are cut to save space – current plans involve cramped underground facilities and access, lack safety-class systems, and do not meet nuclear design regulations – there just isn’t room.
      NNSA and DoD have little choice but to use LANL for “technology transfer” of the pit production mission to the Savannah River Site (SRS). For industrial pit production LANL can only be, at best, a training site.
      In objective terms, NNSA’s only decent option for a reliable pit factory for the coming decades lies with the brand-new, largely-built, unused, uncontaminated and therefore easily reconfigured, heavily-constructed, “plus-sized” Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at SRS in South Carolina, built to process tens of tons of plutonium for another (now defunct) program. Nothing at LANL or at any other NNSA or DOE site comes close to MFFF’s relatively high feasibility, low cost and risk, and relatively “rapid” schedule for starting up pit production.
      That said, nothing about making a pit factory is easy, cheap, low-risk, or quick – or necessary any time soon to maintain any US nuclear weapon system for decades to come. The US has more than 10,000 long-lived pits of modern, usable types that will last several more decades.
      Barriers to industrial pit production at LANL are many, intractable, synergistic, and largely independent of anything Congress or the Triad management team might do. It will be more than just “difficult,” or “risky,” for LANL to establish reliable, enduring industrial plutonium missions, including industrial pit production at any scale. For many reasons -- far more than fit in this column -- it will be impossible.
      The sooner this is realized, the better – for LANL, the nation, and this state.

3. Will Governor Grisham’s energy policies help, or hurt, New Mexico and the climate? (op ed)

The coming legislative session, which starts in a week, will be a very important one for climate and energy policy.

We urge you to get involved in climate issues however you can and think best.

The clearest policy call coming from the Governor on these issues so far is for an increased renewable portfolio standard (RPS) for electricity.

We don't think her proposals are going in the right direction, generally speaking.

Under current law, an increased RPS will be a sort of enclosure or privatization, as happened (and is still happening) with the New Mexico land grants, and with the land given to the railroad barons. Only now the process involves the sun and wind, with great monetary value created by an RPS and then given to monopoly corporations by the same means.

The point is that the monopoly investor-owned utilities (IOUs) currently control whether you or I can get solar power, how much we can have, and when. In most cases, they do not pay for the renewable power you generate. And they can sell that too. As someone said the other day, they only like renewable energy (RE) if they own it. Incentives are far from what they need to be, especially for lower-middle income and poorer households and communities.

By far the cheapest way to fulfill an RPS is with utility-scale RE. As many of you know better than I, keeping electricity cheap is a legal requirement. Increasing the RPS, by itself, will fill the RE "demand space" largely with utility-owned generation. And that will be that, as they say.

     The incoming administration may not sufficiently grasp the opportunities, and the dangers, inherent in the climate, energy, and economic crises breaking upon us. We are in an emergency situation.
     It is all too easy to see energy issues through a neoliberal lens. Disaster for New Mexico lies that way.
     We need instead a human-scaled, democratic vision of energy production, one where state and local government, tribes, citizens, and businesses – not corporations and financiers – are the ones investing in and owning it. Government should clear the obstacles and provide the incentives to make that happen, fast.
     Localize, don’t globalize.
     Unless locally financed, owned, built, and managed – unless designed to meet demand in our own communities and industries but not elsewhere – unless social goals remain uppermost, renewable energy will neither help New Mexico nor lower greenhouse gas emissions.
     To lower emissions we must produce and consume less fuel. Adding renewable energy doesn’t do that exactly. There are good ways to do it, with strong conservative appeal -- like greenhouse gas taxes and dividends, among other possibilities.
     Would increasing the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) for electricity generation from the present 20% to 50% by 2030, as requested by the governor and environmental groups, lower emissions, create jobs, and strengthen communities?
     Not much, no, and no.
     Last fall New Mexico utilities produced, purchased, or simply took from customers enough renewably-sourced electricity to provide 22.5% of generation. Yet after 15 years of an RPS, only about 2% of New Mexico’s overall energy production is renewable. Our energy consumption is still about 90% from fossil fuels.
     With a fourfold increase in oil production over the past decade, New Mexico’s energy portfolio is getting browner, not greener. Democrats and Republicans alike are celebrating. Will environmental groups withdraw support for Democrats over this? Are they serious about the climate, or do they just want to play the game?
     Electricity accounts for less than half of energy consumption. Were New Mexico to magically reach 50% or 80% renewable electricity tomorrow, the state would still be a major contributor to climate collapse, both from fossil fuel production, and from consumption in our wasteful buildings and transportation system.
     Utility-scale renewable energy creates few jobs, which is why it is cheap. Once built, even fewer jobs remain. With a least-cost RPS New Mexicans would not even inherit the wind, or the sun. Those would be privatized and sold for a mess of cheap energy porridge and naïve environmental votes.
     We are poised to entrench existing monopolies, build inappropriately-scaled projects with substantial out-of-state labor, and continue suburban sprawl that will plague us forever. Meanwhile we require little energy efficiency and offer few transportation alternatives.
     Helping California grow by adding New Mexico renewable energy, which is basically what Governor Grisham proposes, will only add to our collective delusions and greenhouse gases. Nothing which facilitates growth in overall energy use, as this would, can be green or socially conscious.
     We could use energy production and efficiency, sustainable transportation, and education at all levels to build skills, careers, and resilient communities. A long policy menu is available.
     We could foster empowered, self-respecting citizens, the sort required for what we used to call “democracy.”
     We could be producers, stewards, mayordomos, not just consumers – which is to say, peasants.
     We could opt for a different kind of prosperity, one that puts people and the living landscape over profits for banks and hedge funds.
     We could cut our energy use substantially, creating thousands of accessible jobs while lowering emissions, improving our building stock and quality of life, and saving money.
     We could maximize solar production on most public buildings and offer not just some, but sufficient, incentives for a massive build-out of distributed and on-site solar power.
     If we let government give away even more renewable energy to investor-owned corporations, and even more land and water for new suburbs, what will be left here? Why would young people stay?

Conceptually, one way to start reconciling proposals for an increased RPS with the goals in this guest editorial is to require IOUs to fulfill essentially all the increment of new RE -- e.g. for a 50% RE total, another 27.5% of RE generation -- with distributed, locally-owned RE generation, which would be enabled by other, separate policies (tax credits, training, requiring solar on state, local, school buildings, providing funding to do so, etc.).

How can we get our legislators and supporting experts to move in this more fruitful direction? Demand our environmental groups to do so, for starters.

This editorial does NOT talk about means to actually protect the climate, which frankly are nearly MIA in progressive proposals these days, e.g. in most of the "Green New Deal" (GND) proposals we see. GND proposals are generally (with exceptions) offered in lieu of measures to rapidly decrease fuel production and use, e.g. with greenhouse gas taxes/dividends and tariffs. That is a big mistake. Oil and gas production has to wind down, quickly, in a context of energy descent. That descent is coming, like it or not (most won't). Our communities need resilience and we don't have it, not at all. Not mentally, socially, politically, or materially. We are going to need, and get, many different approaches, governmental and not. (More on that another time.)

My purpose here is to get you to question the proposals of the environmental groups who are leading lobbying efforts in the legislature. What is really going on here? What good is an increased RPS? Who benefits? Given the governor's neoliberal advisors, can such proposals be fixed, or supplemented with sufficient other legislation to create rapid, locally-owned renewable buildout and achieve the other goals listed above?

I may be mistaken -- the actual agenda of the environmental community in this regard is tightly-held and unknown to me; apparently they think the public are all NPCs ("non-player characters") -- but from what I see we need stronger, but most importantly different, policies than what is about to being requested by our environmental groups.

In this connection I want to again thank the good people at 350.org for asking me to speak, twice, to their group here in Albuquerque about some of these issues. They are a sophisticated group, and the reality of our present situation is that, with extinction staring us in the face, we have a very confusing situation. There is plenty of common ground, as I am sure there is with others also, but no room at all for complacency.

Given the enormous ignorance in the public and legislature (in part because we have just one full-time environmental reporter in the state), and in part because the policies we need are so dramatically different from those generated by the usual earth- and civilization-killing assumptions, we are not going to get very far in this or any legislature -- or any court for that matter.

That is why we need the Extinction Rebellion (XR), right now. The great danger for us is thinking that environment groups, politicians, and political parties can supply answers without first changing, by nonviolent force, the context in which the problem is thought about.

We are seeing, in real time, the co-optation, re-direction, and neutering of the fight for life.

We would like to attend or host a panel discussion on these topics ASAP, as soon as we can. If you want to help, please do.

Greg Mello, for the Study Group