Permalink for this bulletin. Please forward to your lists!
Subscribe or unsubscribe to these bulletins.
Contribute!  Contact us.  Volunteer!
Facebook: Los Alamos Study Group; Twitter: @TrishABQ; Blog: Forget the Rest
Local letters to members (ask if you want to receive these); bulletins; home page
Key resources: nuclear weapons ban, plutonium pit production

June 26, 2018

Bulletin 248: Santa Fe "Atomic Summer;" monument celebrating plutonium bomb installed at Convention Center; if local please come to SF City Council tomorrow evening to protest

• Background
• If local, please come and speak up at the Santa Fe City Council tomorrow, Wednesday, at 7 pm, not at the regular Council chambers but at the Santa Fe Public Schools Educational Services Center Board Room, 610 Alta Vista St. (map). Bring a placard if you can.

Dear friends and colleagues –

It's not every city that can proudly sport a Styrofoam replica of the basalt monument at the Trinity Site near Alamogordo, where the Nagasaki bomb prototype was exploded, with terrible consequences for people downwind.

Santa Fe's motto is "The City Different," however. So go figure.

Founded as the "Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis," Santa Fe's cultural anchor may be drifting a bit farther and faster than usual. Given what some are billing as an "Atomic Summer" of nuclear-themed cultural events (including the 12-foot fake Trinity monument), a visitor might be forgiven for wondering if J. Robert Oppenheimer is the town's new patron saint.

This summer, vacationers and locals alike will be treated to a convergence -- or should we say "implosion" -- of nuclear-themed events in and around Santa Fe, from the Santa Fe Opera ("Doctor Atomic"; sample aria here) to the New Mexico History Museum’s "Atomic Histories" exhibition to a "Disruptive Futures Dialogue: Doctor Atomic: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons in New Mexico" at the Lensic theater, to a two-day "Tech in the West" Symposium, to special history (and current policy) lectures arranged by the daughter-in-law of long-time Los Alamos director Norris Bradbury, Ellen Bradbury Reid. Norris Bradbury was the one responsible for assembly of "The Gadget," the first of hundreds of atmospheric nuclear explosions conducted under his direction.

As an aside, it's quite possible, even likely, that as many Americans were killed by fallout from these tests as were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (More on this important study another time.)

Just here at LANL, 1,599 occupationally-related death claims have been paid by the Department of Labor so far. Complex wide, $15.2 billion has been paid for medical and supportive care, and to survivors. This story too must wait for another time -- if you are local, come to one of our meetings -- but the point is that the nuclear weapons business has a tremendous, multi-faceted public relations problem, even right here where the natives are supposed to be grateful.

In addition to the "Atomic Summer" events listed, the local branch of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park and the contractor-run, taxpayer-funded Bradbury Museum in Los Alamos will also be atomic-themed tourism "hot spots" this summer, along with the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque.

The central raison d'etre and indirect prime mover of these events is Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the world's most lavishly-funded laboratory for designing, testing, and building weapons of mass destruction. LANL's nuclear weapons programs are now growing like watered corn in the night. Billions in new construction are planned. Thousands of new workers are being hired. The New Mexico Democratic delegation is fighting like hell to keep and expand LANL's plutonium processing and warhead core ("pit") production missions, as we have written (background here).

We all know what happened three weeks after the Trinity shot, with a second pit in a bomb (also assembled by Norris Bradbury): a large portion of Nagasaki, with its inhabitants, was erased.

This history and prospect, and the very real morbidity and mortality histories in local families, lie uneasily in public consciousness in and around "The City Different," where, for example, a quite different Trinity is still worshiped every day in a cathedral dedicated to Saint Francis.

There have been nineteen local government and tribal resolutions questioning or opposing LANL's nuclear missions and environmental impact. Previously, New Mexico senators, congresspersons, and a governor opposed industrial plutonium missions at LANL, as did the University of California faculty and even LANL itself.

In the midst of the battle for acceptance of the new industrial pit mission comes the "Atomic Summer," anchored by the Santa Fe Opera.

In making the announcement, Santa Fe Opera General Director Charles MacKay was joined by Dr. Charles McMillan, director of Los Alamos National Laboratories, who said, “The ethics of 1945, which I think are very graphically portrayed in Doctor Atomic, are not that different than the ones that we face today.”

This is a remarkable statement, you may agree, considering the source and what he did (before his company was fired he quit).

In a news release, Santa Fe Opera offered this cheerful observation: “No matter how great its impact elsewhere, Doctor Atomic promises to be overpowering when performed at a place where you can gaze out at the lights of Los Alamos and at a time when we are all just minutes away from possible destruction.”

Yes, come experience the fatuous thrill of god-like destructive powers and a frisson of inauthentic guilt, while the glittering lights of LANL form a necklace across the dark Jemez. See tents of transuranic waste glowing in the sunset!

In a letter to local members about all this we quoted a recent piece by Inder Comar:

It is time for America to stop relying on its weapons, and to start relying on ethical and civilized principles.

The fate of the U.S. and perhaps the world, rests on it finding a better way to deal with itself, and with others. There will be no meaningful response and preparation for climate change, species extinction and the great refugee crises to come unless the U.S. uses its power in a positive way, and contributes to a world where dialogue, cooperation, and the promotion of peace are the foundation blocks of a civilized order.

If you are local, please come and speak up at the Santa Fe City Council tomorrow, Wednesday, at 7 pm SHARP (agenda). Be early if at all possible! Don't go to the regular Council chambers but rather to the Santa Fe Public Schools Educational Services Center Board Room, 610 Alta Vista St. (map). Bring a sign if you can (no sticks please).

Greg Mello, for the Study Group