Bulletin 290: Please help support our work in the coming year; positions available; good news for 2022

December 31, 2021

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Previously: Bulletin 289: NNSA lukewarm about plan to produce plutonium pits at LANL; new NDAA requires reporting on changing costs, risks, pit requirements, and a real waste plan, Dec 23, 2021

Dear friends --

I am writing from Amarillo, Texas, a few miles west of the Pantex nuclear weapons plant. Trish's children (now mine as well), and our grandchildren live here. Covid dramatically abridged family visits over these past two years and we are grateful for these past few days with them, even though the result is that this note comes to you on literally the last day of the year.

If you can, please help support our work financially now and over the coming year. There are many ways to do this. All support helps, whether large or small, one-time or monthly, directly by PayPal (secure, no fee), by mailing a check, or by transferring stock prior to taking capital gains, or by donating other assets. The Study Group is a fully-accredited 501(c)(3) charity under US tax laws, with the highest ("Platinum") transparency rating by Guidestar.

We have concrete plans for the months ahead but in general it is better to not send our detailed plans directly to our dear adversaries.

These two covid years have been tough, more because of fear than because of covid itself. Many government offices and functions shut down most public engagement; internal deliberations were also abridged and only bare-bones work was done in many cases. Many people were afraid to leave their homes (e.g. to come to an event). Beyond these phenomena, fear and coercion from government and the State began to fundamentally change our society, not in a good way.

Despite these circumstances, we persevered. You can find a public record of what we accomplished (and didn't accomplish) over the past year on our main web page, plutonium warhead core ("pit") production page, and in Activist Letters, Bulletins, & Press Releases.

Beyond these public traces, I can tell you there is now ferment in geopolitics and nuclear weapons. There is movement. In the last Bulletin, I mentioned two bits of evidence for this. There are others:

• Congress has recently been provided with contingency strategies in case pit production doesn't work out as planned. Implication: pit production isn't really necessary right now. Stay tuned for more on this.
  

• Russia's draft treaties, which have been tabled with a short deadline, are serious business. Failure of the US and NATO to negotiate sincerely (which is very likely) will have serious consequences. We have been following these developments closely and they are very promising, although also dangerous. Time is short for me today so I will not try to summarize this. We hope to host an international panel discussion or teach-in about this soon. Patrick Lawrence's terrific essay of Dec. 28 may provide some overall background on US-Russian interactions. For details see for example Moon of Alabama. Suffice it to say that among the Russian demands is removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe, which we (and many, many others) have long considered illegal. Russia's demands are the biggest good news in disarmament and peace we have seen in a long time. Are you frightened by this situation? You should be. Russian demands imply nothing less than a new security architecture in Europe. Declining empires like ours tend to overestimate their power and do stupid things, and that's mostly what we have seen from Biden's people all year. My take is that either the US and NATO are going to find a way to back down, or there will be increasing tension and eventually some kind of war. All of you reading this can find ways to get involved, say with your congressional delegation or in other ways. Grandstanding congressional chickenhawks are a big problem, as are cowardly liberals who turn their backs on peace.
  

• If you shop for anything you know that inflation is real and much higher than official estimates. For fundamental reasons related to the cost of fuels, and exacerbated by bad decisions, high inflation is not going away any time soon unless the Fed and the US government choose economic depression as the alternative. For our purposes it is enough to know that days of reckoning for bad federal priorities, such as another nuclear arms race, are at hand. The triple impacts of inflation, skilled labor shortages, and supply chain instabilities fall heavily on giant, complicated projects with poor justifications. Yes, they also fall on all of us. Overall, it is too late to entirely avoid economic collapse. It is how it occurs that will determine the quality of our lives and the future of this country within newly-constrained limits.
  

• This is the year in which Congress will learn what pit production will really cost -- or at least will get a snapshot of those rising costs. At LANL, estimated start-up costs have increased by a factor of approximately four since 2017. There will be choking sounds. What will Congress do? Double down on error? Or chart a path toward sanity?

• Local as well as DC reports tell us LANL is having a hard time filling pit production positions. Triad (the contractor running LANL) has been quite up-front about this in DC circles, as were LANL managers at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit I attended in August in Virginia. Often people ask us, "What can I do?" If you live in New Mexico, work against LANL's "pipeline" of youth indoctrination! It's everywhere, so you can start anywhere. Call us -- and see below. We need help.
  

• The covid pandemic might be said to comprise three aspects: a) public health and medicine (the science part); b) government policy; and c) public and business actions, attitudes and emotions. Despite all the current fear-mongering over omicron, the pandemic is going to fade soon as a center of public attention, because omicron -- rapidly becoming the dominant strain -- is proving to be just not that dangerous to healthy people of most ages. What will happen exactly in terms of policy, law, and public response is far from clear, of course, but we can be pretty sure that most healthy children and adults will soon be thinking about a lot more than the daily case rates. Mental health will increase.
  

• We will see increasing consciousness of climate change and the necessity of adaptation efforts (and perhaps mitigation efforts, at least fake ones) as top national security priorities. We can all help nuclear weapons drop in national priority. As things stand, nuclear weapons are primarily relevant to those who profit from them.
  

• Barring covid-related cancellation, the first meeting of the States Parties to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will take place in March. There will be rhetoric. Will there be anything else?
  

• We expect the present global energy crisis to continue and intensify in 2022. Prices are currently a bit too high for the economy and a bit too low for the industry. The Goldilocks price window is gone and with it, economic stability. Nuclear weapons do not make oil, or electricity. Big complicated projects prefer stability.
  

As you can see, these tend to be "good news/bad news" situations.

Finally I want to say that we are hiring. We are looking for a research associate, for interns (whom we always pay, by the way), and for committed volunteers. If you work for us, we will find a way to take care of you. I could put a list of specific projects and responsibilities here but won't. Write us -- with your resume, preferably. Those of you who know us, please reach out on our behalf.

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year. We are deeply grateful to those with whom we have traveled for parts of these past 32 years, and to those towering figures we knew who inspired us. 

Be well everybody,

Greg and Trish, for the Study Group