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Key resources: nuclear weapons ban, plutonium pit production

March 8, 2018

Bulletin 245: Bingaman, Domenici, Udall, Richardson, LANL, UC, and NNSA have all argued against Los Alamos becoming a larger, permanent plutonium "pit" production site

Dear friends --

This Bulletin will address just one small facet of one issue -- but one, we hope, that some of you will put to use as soon as possible. Why?

In a Senate Armed Services hearing this coming Wednesday, March 14, the newly-confirmed National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty will face questions from New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich (as well as, most likely, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham) on the future of US plutonium warhead core ("pit") production.

What's in play here is the future of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and northern New Mexico.

Martin Heinrich needs to hear from New Mexicans on this issue -- before this hearing if possible. The world does not need -- New Mexico does not need -- a new pit factory. Senator Udall needs to hear from New Mexicans as well. So do reps. Ben Ray Lujan and Michelle Lujan Grisham. Lujan Grisham is the only one of this group, by the way, that has not endorsed expanded pit production at LANL.

As always, public communications (and actions) are best. Private letters and calls are of dubious value (except from major donors).

Ms. Gordon-Hagerty has said pit production is NNSA's "#1 priority." The Trump Administration has requested a staggering amount of money to build the factories needed to start production again.

In relation to this, colleagues in the news media and in government have expressed some interest in what New Mexico's elected representatives used to say about the prospect of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) becoming a permanent center for industrial-scale plutonium processing and pit production.

For ready reference we gathered some quotes from them in one place on this web page.

Citizens may find these quotes useful in composing letters to editors, or for op-eds they may wish to write, or for any other (nonviolent) expressions of opposition against the promotional roles played by senators Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, as well as Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, for building up industrial-scale plutonium manufacturing at LANL.

As you know, these senators routinely promote nuclear weapons and spending for them, as well as any military spending that has a footprint in New Mexico. One congressional staff member remarked that Senator Udall "acts like he wants to be the second coming of Pete Domenici," referring to Udall's full-throated support for any and all laboratory spending -- meaning, nuclear weapons spending. These two senators are nuclear ueberhawks.

But that staffer was mistaken. Even Senator Domenici did not want industrial-scale pit manufacturing at LANL. Neither did Senator Bingaman -- consistently, in Bingaman's case, over many years.

Neither, "back in the day," did then-Congressman Tom Udall. Check it out.

Bill Richardson didn't think LANL was the right place for expanded pit production. Neither did NNSA Administrator Tom D'Agostino. LANL and University of California (UC) spokespersons repeatedly said it would never happen, from 1990 almost to the present day. LANL Director Sig Hecker, himself a plutonium scientist, said production activities all but wore out LANL's main plutonium facility, which was built for research, not production.

This is not complicated. Pits are the fissile cores of atomic bombs, the first explosive stage in US nuclear weapons. The US has about 23,000 pits in all, of which roughly 12,000 are either in warheads or could be. DOE and DoD have concurred that current pits will last at least 85-100 years from original manufacture, i.e. at least until 2063. These and other handy background bits can be found in our recent "Questions about projected U.S. plutonium pit production capability" and "US Pit Production: Background and Issues." Last fall's fact sheet may be helpful. Much more is available at this web page and in recent bulletins and press releases.

By the way, if you have a yen to see what the Rocky Flats Plant looked like in some detail, just to see what this program used to involve, check out the extensive photographic collection gathered from Rocky Flats under the auspices of the American Historical Engineering Record. Very readable plant histories are also available, such as Len Ackland's Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West.

Extensive facilities on the scale of Rocky Flats are not expected at a "small" pit factory today, in part because the production rate would be much less. But how "small" are we really talking about? It is all too tempting to "low-ball" the scale, cost, and extent of facilities required for pit production, nuclear and otherwise. Indeed that is what has been consistently done for more than two decades by facility planners, budgeteers, congressional committees, and public relations agents. Making the occasional pit is one thing. It takes hundreds of people and a considerable nuclear infrastructure, including extensive nuclear waste management. Making pits at significant scale, reliably, year-in and year-out for decades is altogether a different thing.  

In NNSA's 9-page summary of its "Plutonium Pit Production Analysis of Alternatives" (AoA), NNSA estimates the upper-end cost (always the best estimate in any range NNSA provides) for expanded pit production at LANL at about $9.5 billion (B). As far as we know NNSA did not include in its calculations the cost of replacing the seismically-unqualified Sigma Building, which is necessary for pits. NNSA certainly did not include the cost of replacing the aging, constantly-under-repair main LANL plutonium facility, which we believe would be necessary sooner rather than later under expanded pit production scenarios.

We believe the capital cost of building (and re-building) the facilities necessary for expanded pit production at LANL between now and 2040 would be more than twice NNSA's highest figure.

For reasons we cannot fit into this Bulletin, we do not believe LANL can manage the pit production mission at any scale. (We will explain that in a later Bulletin.) In Washington this past week, we discovered that some offices in government also doubt LANL can establish reliable pit production. 

With no new pits needed until 2063 at the earliest, why is any of this necessary in the first place?

The New Mexico senators are not expressing anything like the "will of the people" in their support for expanded pit production at LANL.

We're sure about this because local New Mexico governments have repeatedly expressed doubts (at least 20 times) about LANL's weapons mission, its environmental impact, and the pit production mission.

So have others. Over just a two or three year period, 329 New Mexico businesses, 118 organizations, plus the New Mexico Council of Churches and other churches, stepped forward in opposition to the pit production mission at LANL.

For its part the University of California (UC), the management and operating (M&O) contractor for LANL from 1943 to 2006 and since then one of the four partners in Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the current LANL M&O contractor, has repeatedly expressed its own misgivings about expanding the pit production mission. This is quite interesting because UC has again bid to manage or help manage LANL operations, which now explicitly include at least some degree of expanded pit production.

In 2008 the UC Faculty Senate learned that "the present contract...allows the government to increase the lab’s production of plutonium “pits,” the triggering mechanisms in both fusion and fission bombs, for weapons purposes beyond any limits UC may have envisioned." So the Academic Assembly

"voted overwhelmingly to endorse a resolution not only expressing those concerns, but also recommending that UC re-examine its involvement in LANL if pit production rises above current levels or if the University is unable to determine the number of pits being produced."

(Full text of the resolution at "Academic Assembly Resolution on Limiting UC’s Role in Manufacturing Nuclear Weapons").

"This was a compromise. A 1990 Academic Senate survey had found 64.6% of faculty favored severing UC's ties to the weapons labs altogether, with 34.6% opposed. (See "The University of Nuclear Bombs, Will Parrish, East Bay Express, Feb 28, 2018; republished today at CounterPunch).

There are other issues to bring forward but this is enough for now. Thank you for your attention and engagement.

In solidarity,

Greg and Trish for the Study Group