Bulletin 271: Reminder: Thursday, June 11 Zoominar: Plutonium pits, failures of reform, and the war on the poor, RSVP required

June 10, 2020

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Dear friends and colleagues --

This is a reminder that tomorrow, Thursday June 11, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm we will have a Zoominar on "Plutonium pits, failures of reform, and the war on the poor." There will be plenty of time for Q&A.

Everyone is welcome but if you have not already done so you must RSVP by writing us. Then we'll send the invitation to you, so you can register with Zoom.

Please do ask any others whom you think might be genuinely interested to write us for the Zoom coordinates, but please do not share the Zoom link we will send to you, especially on social media.

So far we have about 40 RSVPs and we have space for another 60 or so. 

After the meeting, we will post the briefing slides but not the audio. So what will be available on-line will be the "skinny" version only.

Slides from a related May 19 Zoominar for a mostly New Mexico audience are available here: "LANL’s proposed expansion and plutonium warhead core (“pit”) plans in context."

As we will discuss tomorrow,

• Contrary to what you might think, there is currently no significant pushback from either major party in Congress on any proposed nuclear weapon system, proposed surrogate testing facility, or proposed nuclear weapons factory.
  

• Is reform even possible within the current national security paradigm? If so, what specific nuclear weapons reforms do we see as possible, and how might we approach them?
  

• To the extent reform is not possible, what then?

• On pit production -- i.e. making new atom bomb cores -- there was a kind of pushback, led by the pork-oriented New Mexico senators, against taking the industrial pit production mission away from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and sending it to the Savannah River Site (SRS).
  

The result is the current "two-site" plan in which both LANL and SRS are attempting to build large pit production facilities, which has led to tremendous planned spending increases. Note the difference between the FY19 request (for one production site at 80+ pits per year, ppy) and the FY21 request (for two production sites, each seeking 80+ ppy):

Alas, Democrat-led interventions in the Senate and House are leading toward larger pit production, starting sooner, than even the Trump Administration planned in 2017. The new plan also better enables production of the Air Force's new warhead, much the same warhead as the "Reliable Replacement Warhead" (RRW) that was defeated under G. W. Bush. Oh no!

• This pattern has repeated itself for decades: cheap attempts at reform and triangulation have led to an opposite result than many have intended, with nuclear contractors and their government allies gaining ever more power and narrative control with each failed compromise.
  

• Neocons in the Trump Administration are adept at offering posturing opportunities for Democrats, who readily gobble them up (e.g. "the planned resumption of nuclear tests"). This allows Democrats to save face and appear "responsible" -- while they authorize and fund every single warhead, bomb, and factory on offer.

• Is it a) possible or b) realistic to re-use old pits (of which there are thousands) in new warheads?
  

• Why delaying the advent of pit production is necessary (almost inevitable, in fact), safer, cheaper, and has only national security benefits. Conscious delay is however politically different than accidental delay due to overwhelming external factors -- let alone delay by unfortunate accident(s).
  

• Can LANL, realistically, make pits? Not so far, not soon, not safely, not reliably, not with any measure of justice to neighboring tribes, not cost-effectively, not compatibly with the removal of legacy waste, and -- not for long. The Pentagon knows this; the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) knows this also. Can Air Force desires for a new MIRV warhead "trump" all this?
  

• Most importantly, is any major part of the Obama-Trump nuclear agenda, or the arms control narrative that pretends to oppose it, actually compatible with human and national survival?
  

Thank you and please write if you want to join us tomorrow!

Greg Mello, for the Los Alamos Study Group