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Bulletin 273: New resources on pit production; more November 10, 2020 Permalink for this bulletin. Please forward! Reminder to New Mexicans: There are important local government meetings today, per yesterday's letter! Please attend and speak out against nuclear weapons and pit production, and in favor of a life-sustaining investments in our communities and environment. Bulletin 273: New resources on pit production; more
We hope you are keeping well, in body and in spirit. It's been much too long since Bulletin 272, so some of you haven't much heard from us for a while. We have been very much under a kind of nuclear weapons siege here in New Mexico, struggling to bring some salient facts to light in useful places and to inspire greater awareness and participation here in New Mexico under difficult political circumstances. 1. $14 B warhead core ("pit") production complex underway in New Mexico What we are seeing here is a further takeover of much of our political and cultural life by institutionalized nuclear militarism, facilitated by an almost-universal active or passive support from all parts of the political spectrum and the nonprofit community. That's a big subject and one that may not resonate much outside the state, but all parties should be aware that the nuclear weapons establishment is seeking a fully-supportive, politically-secure refugium here in New Mexico to a much greater extent than has existed up to now. At the present time, not one single elected official actually opposes this in any public, consequential way. It's tempting to explain further, but if you really want to know more about this, come and work with us. The scale beggars description. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is in the beginning stages of what its managers hope will be a $13 billion (B) capital investment program through 2030 (for a glimpse of the envisioned main LANL campus see this video, which we recently obtained by FOIA; one or more new LANL campuses in other counties are also envisioned). This is more than six times what was spent in New Mexico on the Manhattan Project, in constant dollars (Atomic Audit). Partially overlapping with this, LANL is also trying to build and start up a plutonium warhead core ("pit") production complex that will cost about $14 B over the same period (slides 23, 29) (This overlaps but is distinct from the $13 B construction program mentioned earlier.) Few grasp the magnitude of what is being proposed, or how important it is to halt this particular, immediate, expansion (as opposed to some notion of expansion in general*, or expansion later) and the first production of brand-new warheads (the W87-1, with all new components and some new features) that would result. (*In this regard, it may be useful to remark that it is easy to fall under the spell of the abstract and ideal -- "Plato's honeyed head" (Melville). Many are all for "nuclear abolition," i.e. against nuclear weapons in general. We are too, but that and $3.00 will buy a cup of coffee. Many want the U.S. to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which -- please face this -- will never happen. (The TPNW is indeed very important, but not for that reason.) There is great danger in fantasies, which might be good for fundraising but are definitely not good for mustering real political power resulting in concrete disarmament. Friends, forget trying to change "public opinion." That is a fool's errand (pp. 15-21). There is a lot of danger involved in creating attractive means for political leaders, nonprofits, and others to signal nuclear virtue without making real political commitments.) For those of you who want to catch up on recent developments relating to LANL expansion, pit production, and related warhead modernization, you can review recent publications and presentations as well as some useful news articles and notable published letters from some of our associates on our home page and "pit page," recent press releases, and local activist letters (if you want to subscribe to these send a blank email here). For most readers, Letters, Bulletins, & Press Releases will be the most accessible and important parts of our sprawling web site. If you want more detail, follow the links and references those contain. 2. New detailed resources on pit production We recently put together a richly-resourced (if also abridged and dry) update on the status of federal pit production decisions for the International Panel on Fissile Materials. Prior to this, we and the Princeton Program on Science and Global Security sponsored a pit production workshop for congressional staff and federal officials. Our contribution: NNSA pit production strategy: no clear goals, plans, or likelihood of success; Production at LANL has high risks and costs, few or no program benefits, Oct 1, 2020. Brevity was necessary and acronyms were used. Another important presentation in that workshop was that of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). Our main conclusions are at slides 1-5. The most important new information provided in that presentation is probably the arbitrary, ideologically-driven schedules for warhead modernization (slide 8), and the cost analysis on slides 23-31. There is no scenario in which LANL pits will cost less than $40-60 million per pit. This is more than twice the total cost of a brand new W87-1 warhead, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (slide 30), and roughly 7-10 times the marginal cost of pits at the much larger, new facility that must be repurposed at the Savannah River Site (SRS) if the United States is to have an enduring pit production facility. Please read that last sentence carefully. It expresses not what we want, but rather what is -- the reality of the situation. (None of us get to make up our own facts. Sometimes the federal government -- especially, in our business, Congress -- thinks it can, an "administrative fallacy.") There is no realistic option for a smallish, "Goldilocks" pit factory, at LANL or anywhere else. The usual arms control compromises won't work. They have no engineering or management basis in this case. The smallest enduring pit factory realistically available to the U.S. is the proposed Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF). The policy choices that remain focus on the size and nature of the nuclear arsenal, the resulting need for pits, and therefore if and when production needs to start, at what rate. This is just the latest indication, in this seemingly-narrow subject, that we have reached a real turning point in history. Neither the U.S. nor the world can afford to kick the nuclear weapons can down the road any further. If we do we will perish, not least from the further collapse of our climate into a "hothouse earth," which is our almost-certain fate if we do not radically change our conception of national security very quickly. Sooner or later we in the U.S. must reset our relations with other states and our common environment, abandoning our foolhardy attempted empire over both. We don't need new warheads and we don't need new pits for them. On the contrary, we very much need to not need them. As we have previously noted, many erstwhile "antinuclear" and arms control parties still want to make LANL the U.S. pit production site, explicitly or implicitly allowing immediate pit production for new warheads. This policy has no technical or moral foundation. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and DoD are not stupid. If pits are needed, and if LANL is to be a pit factory, NNSA and DoD will have to build two pit factories, because LANL -- as NNSA has frequently testified -- does not provide operational confidence, lasting capability, or adequate capacity. 3. The election, and a new administration? Unlike many, we are not overjoyed by the outcome of the recent national election. As we said yesterday, we do not yet know what it means, and any Biden-Harris administration is very likely to be hawkish, especially toward Russia. The belief and practice of Russia-as-enemy has deeply penetrated the Democratic Party, even more than the Republican Party which as of this moment still controls the Senate. Max Planck: "It rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul." It is certainly possible that the Biden team will entertain cuts in nuclear weapons investments, and we will be working very hard to help catalyze that. But nobody should think that 4+ years of hating Russia, and now a promise to be tougher on Russia, is going to make it easy to make deep cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Most of the talk about this before the election was understood by defense contractors as an appeal to voters in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, without -- to judge by their satisfaction with Biden -- much substance. However, there will sooner or later be some sort of metanoia or awakening about the parasitic role of the military, and the associated madness of nuclear weapons, in American life. Will it be under Harris-Biden? Could it be? Catastrophes are likely needed. Are the current pandemic and associated economic decline, both of which have a long ways yet to run, enough? 4. Please endorse The Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production It seems simple enough, but why don't more people do it? It takes a very short time and costs nothing. The Call is now open to individuals as well as businesses, NGOs, and religious organizations. We have not sent this Call to people outside New Mexico before, though some have already endorsed. Some of the content is local, some not. We will publish the growing list of endorsers' names but not any contact information. We keep all such information confidential. Please stay safe everyone, Greg and Trish, for the Study Group 5. Other new resources:
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