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LANL director optimistic about future despite federal tumult December 4, 2025 As a tumultuous year of geopolitical strife and congressional deadlock comes to a close, Los Alamos National Laboratory director Thom Mason gave an update Wednesday night on the Northern New Mexico laboratory. More than 200 people joined a virtual town hall Wednesday to hear from Mason, who mostly put an optimistic face on the lab's status, noting strong federal support for LANL's national security mission. He also addressed some matters of specific local concern, including struggles with traffic and housing connected to the lab and the recent spread of a chromium plume connected to Cold War-era contamination onto nearby Pueblo land. Here are five takeaways from Mason's update: Pit production continues Earlier this year, operations at PF-4 — the lab's plutonium facility — became a 24/7 endeavor. "We need the extra time just because of the large volume of work we have," Mason said. LANL is charged with producing plutonium pits — the cores of nuclear weapons — as part of a nationwide modernization of the nuclear arsenal. The draft National Defense Authorization Act — passed by the Senate in October but awaiting House approval — mandates that by 2032, the U.S. produce at least 80 pits per year. In 2025 at least 10 pits should have been produced, the legislation states. By while the production of LANL's first diamond-stamped pit in October 2024 was announced with some fanfare, Mason said the public shouldn't expect the same for future production. Now that the lab is producing war-reserve plutonium pits, he said, the exact number is classified, although he said the lab had met "production goals." "They meet all the requirements for the deterrent," Mason said. "And since the number of weapons is classified, we can no longer tell you how many pits we made." Budget hike expected Although Congress has yet to adopt a budget for the lab, Mason said it looks like LANL may get more money next fiscal year. Based on requests, the lab is looking at a potential $5.8 billion budget, an increase of roughly 12% over the last year. While battles over federal spending and a lengthy shutdown earlier this fall caused turmoil among federal programs, the lab escaped the funding lapse largely unscathed, Mason said. Unlike the National Nuclear Security Administration, which furloughed roughly 1,400 workers nationwide and more than 150 in New Mexico, the lab was able to avoid reducing workforce using leftover funding. "There were no significant impacts in terms of our important mission," Mason said. "Although, to be honest, it's the kind of disruption that we could really do without." Federal support 'strong' Mason said support for the lab remains strong, which he attributed to a fraught geopolitical environment. "National security is very front of mind for our leaders in Washington," Mason said. "... That means that the support that we need to do our work has been strong through all of those political changes." He added, "And certainly, I see already with the new administration a continuation, and in fact, probably even growth in that support and emphasis on the importance of what we do." Traffic woes 'less acute' Mason said hiring has slowed down compared to recent years, and highlighted road improvements on N.M. 4 as well as enforcement actions taken against employees on property that, he says, will help reduce traffic problems related to the two-thirds of lab employees who commute. Data obtained by The New Mexican shows incidents tracked by government vehicles declined between 2024 and 2025. A lab spokesperson previously confirmed more than one employee had been terminated due to driving concerns. Mason said he feels the problems with traffic and the shortage of housing for lab employeeshave gotten "less acute" and that traffic enforcement, at least on-campus, is working. Additionally, the hiring frenzy has tapered off, Mason said, and developers are starting to respond to demand. "We're not going to repeat that level of growth again," Mason said. Chromium plume spreads The town hall came after news in November that a plume of hexavalent chromium had spread onto San Ildefonso Pueblo land. The cleanup falls on environmental remediation contractor N3B, Mason said, after the U.S. Department of Energy in 2015 established a program at Los Alamos to handle legacy environmental contamination. "Chromium, along with other kinds of legacy environmental issues, is something that's managed not actually by the lab and the NNSA, but by DOE Environmental Management and their contractor," Mason said. The chromium was used in the cooling towers for a power plant as a corrosion inhibitor and dumped into Sandia Canyon until 1972. In 2004, the plume of carcinogenic hexavalent chromium was discovered in the regional aquifer, Mason said. A treatment system has been pumping, treating and reinjecting water into the plume in an effort to mitigate its spread. But final remediation is likely to be costly and time-consuming: A 2023 Government Accountability Office report estimated a final remedy could cost around $100 million and take until 2040 to complete. Greg Mello published comments:
This was a full-on Orwellian event, with either cherry-picked questions from the public or, as is more likely, questions generated by a public relations team. There was no "town hall." LANL is more opaque than at any time in its post-Cold War history. Regarding pit production, LANL's largest single program and the source of so many regional impacts, Mason did his best to pull the wool over all eyes by saying that pit production was meeting LANL's "goals," whatever they may be this year. He also said actual production was being de-prioritized to allow more equipment installation! In other words, don't hold your breath for a bunch of new pits. Both LANL and NNSA management have been careful not to make any firm pit production commitments since 2024. While it is possible NNSA has classified pit production success and failure, this information was public throughout recent decades. If it is now classified, I have been in this business long enough to know that this classification is purely political. It's an embarrassment. Mason's reference to LANL's own production goals is also jarring legally, because as this article partially notes, there are statutory requirements. By September 30, 2026, LANL must have made a total of 60 War Reserve pits (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/2538a). We only know for sure of one such pit having been made, and with LANL de-prioritizing production it is highly unlikely that LANL's performance will be anywhere near this requirement. Pit production has been a receding mirage at LANL. We have collected the full open-source picture of LANL's pit commitments, vs. results, at https://lasg.org/MPF2/documents/Table1-pits_15Aug2025.pdf. All this about accountability is just the tip of the iceberg. Neither the pits nor the growing factory are needed for the U.S. nuclear deterrent, so-called, and this program is aimed at breakout from current nuclear arms limitations, not toward good-faith negotiations toward, and the achievement of, full nuclear disarmament, which is another legally-binding requirement LANL ignores (Article VI, NPT). Employees at LANL who read this need to understand that they are working for a rogue institution, a "separate sovereignty" in the phrase of Herbert Marks, the first Atomic Energy Commission General Counsel. Or more simply, as Nobel-winning physicist I.I. Rabi put it in 1983, "an abomination." You don't have to be smart to work at LANL. But you do have to be tractable. Full human beings, who think and have a conscience? Not so much. As Oppenheimer's deputy director John Manley put it years later, the mark of a true scientist is to be mentally engaged with the moral aspects of one's work. In our long experience, this is rare to the vanishing point at LANL today. It was far less so in the early 1990s. Get out and get a real job that serves humanity and yourself if you can. |
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