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Bulletin 296: The troubled logistics of LANL pit production: how will LANL staff and contractors get to work? March 26, 2022 Permalink for this bulletin. Please forward! Previously: Bulletin 295: "The core debate," Mar 23, 2022. This Bulletin: Keep reading or skip directly to "How Will LANL Staff and Contractors Get to Work?," Savannah LaRosa-LoPresti, Mar 11, 2022
Traffic jam on SR 4 north of White Rock, NM, 3/24/22 circa 5:00 pm (bigger); Ground-level video, drone video Friends -- General Omar Bradley famously said, "Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics." (Many of you may remember Bradley for his timeless remarks pertinent to nuclear weapons issues, such as, "Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.") As it turns out, logistics play a major role in the feasibility of industrial pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). During World War II, LANL ("Site Y") was selected for atomic bomb design and assembly in large part because of its isolation. The existing Los Alamos Ranch School infrastructure was thought to provide a significant part of the necessary infrastructure. It was originally estimated that probably no more than 150 scientists, their dependents, and supporting military “housekeeping” troops would be required. However, the technical work required an ever-growing population that quickly out stripped all original estimates. In January 1943, there were 1,500 persons living here. At year’s end, there were 3,500. By late 1945 the population had burgeoned to more than 8,000 persons. There were few amenities of normal American life other than those provided by the residents themselves, but these inconveniences were accepted by civilian and military residents alike as part of their contribution to winning the war. Wartime crowding was an ever-present problem because Laboratory facilities, barracks, temporary quarters, trailers, mess halls, and all other facilities competed for the limited space on the Los Alamos mesa. ("Notes on Los Alamos, as it was in 1953," 1954, LA-UR-17-22764.) While many left after the war, in early 1947 the newly-formed Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) took control of the site, stabilizing its future. By mid-1947 some 7,500 people were living in Los Alamos, a figure which rose to 9,513 by 1949 and 12,717 by 1954 (Ibid). Adequate housing was an ongoing struggle, as it is today. Transportation to and from "The Hill" for local workers was difficult then, as it is today. Construction and overhead costs were always high in remote Los Alamos, and remain so today.
Plutonium processing and pit manufacturing facilities at DP Site (TA-21) in late 1940s, with buses for workers. (bigger) In a memo curiously dated August 9, 1946, exactly one year after the Nagasaki bombing, a group of laboratory leaders convened by lab director Norris Bradbury cited the lab's remoteness as a contributing reason for ending all bomb production at Los Alamos: All routine production and testing should be farmed out as a continuing responsibility. The hastily designed and built plant is not satisfactory from [a] point of view of health or of permanency, and it is not likely that it can be adequately staffed and operated as production unit at such a place as Los Alamos under the sponsorship of a research organization. (p. 4) Even after pit production was transferred to Hanford in 1949, not everybody was happy with the AEC's decision to continue to invest in remote Los Alamos. AEC Commissioner Walter Hamilton was one (Memo from Walter A. Hamilton, Atomic Energy Commission, re: Los Alamos, Jun 29, 1950). Fast-forward to now. We have often written about the uncertainties in LANL's plans to get workers to the site, variously involving a new bridge over White Rock Canyon, with connecting highways to Santa Fe and Albuquerque -- a plan seemingly abandoned for now -- or, last year, a fleet of 40-60 coach-class buses, with "man camps" on Pueblo lands. And of course there is the perennial housing stop-gap, when money isn't very limiting: local hotels. So what's the answer? How will LANL staff and contractors get to work? If LANL and NNSA know, they aren't saying. So in the absence of any official plan (let alone with public discussion), our new Research Associate Savannah LaRosa-LoPresti has put together a review of some of the major issues involved. These issues include not just transportation but also the related housing crisis, the expansion of LANL itself into leased facilities in other counties, and LANL's hope that telecommuting will provide a major reduction in traffic and need for office space. NNSA has described LANL's pit production plan as "a work in progress" (p. iii), and apparently so are their transportation plans. No matter how much money NNSA gets from Congress, LANL's location is not going to change. As LANL Director Thom Mason put it rather plaintively in August 2021, "We are at the end of the world’s longest cul-de-sac." That about sums it up. Stay well, be encouraged, work for peace, Greg and Trish, for the Study Group |
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