For immediate release May 6, 2021

Permalink * Prior press releases

Los Alamos National Lab seeks up to 100,000 sq. ft. of laboratory space somewhere within 50 miles

Request would add to 470,000 sq. ft. in off-site space already leased

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-577-8563 cell

Albuquerque, NM -- As revealed earlier today by the Los Alamos Reporter, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is seeking up to 100,000 square feet of additional "light laboratory space" within 50 driving miles of LANL, plus supporting office space and parking. This space may be leased or purchased. Proposals for new construction are also being considered. No required occupancy deadline is specified.

Cities within the required 50-mile driving radius include Los Alamos, Espanola, and Santa Fe.

LANL also announced -- and also reported today by the Los Alamos Reporter -- its lease of a 49,000 square foot facility at 195 East Road in Los Alamos, which will open as an in-person "Employee Training Academy" on May 17. Once covid restrictions are lifted this facility will reportedly accommodate more than 120 employees.

LANL has recently leased three office buildings in urban Santa Fe totaling 106,000 sq. ft. These three facilities are expected to eventually house 575 employees. (See also "LANL leases second office complex in Santa Fe as nuclear weapons growth pushes admin staff off 'The Hill'" Mar 8, 2021 and "Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab to open offices in Santa Fe; Shift in identity, values feared for "Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis", Feb 10, 2021).

The intent to lease these properties and potentially other properties was announced in July 2020, along with a Categorical Exclusion (CX) from environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Prior to these new leases LANL was leasing some 26 properties in Los Alamos totaling 315,000 sq. ft. (p. 5, New Lease Space Acquisition Process: A key tool in solving LANL's critical office space issues, LA-UR-21-23470, 4 Apr 2021).

According to a partially-redacted site plan presentation from December 2019 obtained by this organization under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), NNSA advised LANL that LANL's need for new or leased office space was, as of that date, already over 500,000 sq. ft., and could easily exceed over 1,000,000 additional sq. ft. in the present decade (p. 4).

NNSA plans for Santa Fe recently also included a national "innovation campus" that would serve "the operators of all our DOE/NNSA facilities" and transform "the entirety of St. Michael's Drive" in Santa Fe, requiring "additional housing, entertainment, business, and retail development." Regional schools and universities would be engaged as partners to strengthen a "pipeline initiative" to recruit and train additional nuclear weapons employees. This conceptual plan, also obtained by the Study Group under FOIA, and other competing plans for the City's Midtown campus, have never been made available either to the public or even to city councilors, a closed process recently criticized by developer Alan Affeldt, who has now made his team's plan -- which was rejected by the City of Santa Fe -- public.

While this particular NNSA plan appears dormant if not dead, private development may take its place ("Innovation Village aims to combine tech sector, housing in Santa Fe," Santa Fe New Mexican, March 29, 2021.) Developer John Rizzo envisions some 25,000 new "innovation"-created jobs in the region over a 10-year period. (For further background on developer John Rizzo's "innovation villages" and their dependence on NNSA, see for example this 12/12/19 letter and its links.)

Triad LLC, which runs LANL for NNSA, uses the same "innovation triangle" meme as Rizzo in its own region-wide site plan, which the Study Group has also obtained in redacted form (for an overview see LANL Future Campus video of Aug 27, 2019). From information requests to the City of Santa Fe we know Mr. Rizzo met privately at his home in May 2019 with a number of top city, state, university, and federal officials as well as some local corporate leaders on the topic of "triangles and villages."

LANL expects to add some 2,800 staff members to meet anticipated mission requirements. Approximately 2,000 of these new employees will be employed in round-the-clock plutonium warhead core ("pit") production, a requirement first revealed only last year (see this October 1, 2020 workshop presentation for background and references). (Recent privileged information obtained by the Study Group has largely confirmed these figures. We await the president's budget request, expected this month, which will allow us to update this analysis.)

Study Group director Greg Mello: "Transformative plans for increasing the role of nuclear weapons in northern New Mexico are right now being hatched in secret by the New Mexico congressional delegation, NNSA, Triad, and others. These plans are far more ambitious and transformative than most people imagine. Local governments are being kept in the dark, as are citizens. Our future is being decided by national security bureaucrats and syndicates of private interests who meet in secret. The portions of these plans which require approval are to be rubber-stamped by elected officials at the appointed times. At no time do local citizens or tribes have any meaningful say. Still less can caring people truly 'change the subject' to what really matters. It is a complete charade.

Pacifiers like the "Regional Coalition of LANL Commmunities" are instead offered to provide a fake forums to make local leaders feel like they have that famous 'seat at the table." It is, as former Mayor Coss said, the 'kiddy table.' He should know. He was there.

"LANL's proposed missions -- especially the new nuclear production mission given to LANL last year -- exceed the capacity of the LANL site in every way. These new leases, and others to follow, represent a new model for LANL wherein the weapons program's cancerous growth metastasizes into nearby communities, taking over hearts and minds and governments.

"Obviously leasing is the most expensive way to acquire space in the long run. That is why federal leasing is on GAO's "high risk list" for waste, fraud, and abuse. In this case federal officials and LANL leaders have met in secret with developers, elected officials, and other interest-conflicted 'movers and shakers' to develop an overall plan which will benefit all of them and their institutional and private interests. At the same time they deny citizens any opportunity for input. Shame on them! These are not stupid people. They know better.

"These officials, leaders at the University of New Mexico, and many others are complicit in selling out the state to national security agencies and private interests who seek to profit from the power these agencies have over our former democracy. Politicians bow to them in the name of "economic development," but there never is any economic, let alone social, development from these efforts. Inequality increases. Traditions are lost. The people are uprooted. Young people leave -- and they should leave if the alternative is going to work for LANL, which offers plenty of money but no redeeming value to society. What LANL mainly offers are careers in making weapons of mass destruction disguised by slick public relations -- or for the lucky few, cleaning up nuclear waste while the weapons program makes more and more of it. If you want to be a nuclear janitor, LANL has got a job for you.

Wake up New Mexico! What you see here is a nightmare unfolding, and this is just the beginning. If "jobs" and "growth" are what you want at any cost, you will find that the cost turns out to be very high indeed. But by then, it will too late."

***ENDS***