Plutonium won’t bring prosperity, just ruin

By Greg Mello

June 29, 2019

It’s a shame to begin a discussion of President Donald Trump’s rush to build more nuclear weapons by debunking our senators’ pork-barrel interests. But that’s what’s driving them, as they have plainly said in hearings, so that is where we must begin.

Let’s look at the record.

Since 1963, spending at Los Alamos National Laboratory has more than tripled in constant dollars. Spending at Sandia National Laboratories has risen comparably. Is this tsunami of money and “innovation” visible in the state’s economic performance?

No.

Over this period, New Mexico’s per capita income rank among states fell from the high 30s, where it had been since 1929, to near the bottom. In terms of human development it’s worse, as the recent “Kids Count” data shows. New Mexico has become the worst U.S. state in which to raise a child.

The LANL hinterland became haunted by an “aura of apartheid,” with morbid social symptoms we have come to know all too well. Causes are many, but one thing is clear: There’s nothing to suggest growth in LANL spending has improved the quality of life in the region or the state. And why, given LANL’s mission, should it have?

What hasn’t happened over 70 years is even less likely to happen should LANL begin the dirtiest job of all: manufacturing plutonium warhead cores (“pits”). This was the mission of the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, which will never be fully remediated.

Our senators not only support Trump’s grandiose plan for building more plutonium pits (on top of the 11,000 long-lived, usable pits the U.S. already has), they want them all built at LANL.

Our senators are sure they want a brand-new industrial pit mission for LANL but are silent when it comes to requesting environmental analysis of that mission. As a result, the Department of Energy has made no commitment to do such an analysis, or even to conduct any public process as to whether it should conduct such an analysis.

Both senators are in powerful positions to request an environmental impact statement. They haven’t.

Damn the environment, full speed ahead.

Regardless of scale, production would sooner or later require a new factory given the age, inadequate condition and original research and development purpose of LANL’s only high-hazard plutonium facility, Plutonium Facility 4, or PF-4. In 2017, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees LANL, wisely decided it could not count on PF-4 for “enduring” production.

Given LANL’s new production mission, the House-approved version of the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act calls for a study of PF-4’s longevity, which is reasonable, and possible replacement. Assuming replacement is possible at all, which is doubtful, comparable projects suggest it would cost at least $10 billion and take two decades. Meanwhile, disaster awaits any and all attempts to shoehorn industrial production into LANL’s old research and development facility.

Previous attempts to build new plutonium facilities failed, largely because they did not adequately address the intractable realities of LANL’s topography, geology, seismicity and location.

In 1996, LANL was awarded the job of creating the capacity to produce 50 pits per year. LANL never came close. Its capacity is zero, and will remain so until essential repairs, installations and safety enhancements are complete. According to the NNSA, this will take five years and cost $3 billion, on top of the billions already spent.

Multibillion-dollar plutonium projects invariably have great environmental impacts and incur great risks. Seen through the pork barrel’s inverting lens, costs, risks and impacts can mistakenly look like benefits.

Please, senators, rethink your support for this unnecessary mission. In the meantime, request a fresh environmental analysis, with public input.

Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group.