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April 26, 2023 Bulletin 326: Update, fundraising, town hall, Ukraine, pit production now to cost more than the whole Manhattan Project Permalink for this bulletin (please forward). Simple home page. Detailed home page. Previously: Bulletin 325: Understanding the Nordstream sabotage and punishing those responsible, Feb 18, 2023
Dear friends and colleagues -- It's been a while since Bulletin 325 (still highly relevant). We are now overflowing with news we'd like to share. You got these press alerts:
Most of you did not get the ten letters sent to our more locally-oriented mailing list over this period, discussing issues and announcing local meetings. If you want to get these letters, including invitations to local meetings please send a blank email here. We'd love to see you face-to-face if you are local. There's been a fair bit of local press activity regarding nuclear weapons over these two months. You can see some of it in the right-hand column of our home page, including press reports about what turned out to be the largest disarmament and anti-nuclear-waste event (discussed at 3. below) for many years in this state, with National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Jill Hruby in attendance. There's a lot we could highlight in that media coverage and the comments we published about some of it (posted along with the articles on our home page). We aim to start up virtual nuclear weapons seminars and discussions in late May. The arms control and disarmament field (lumping these together for the moment) is largely paralyzed here in the U.S. We seek to reinvigorate it. Those meetings will be advertised on this list. In the meantime we must focus on Congress directly, given it's schedule. 2. Fundraising and outreach request Thanks to many of you the work of this organization continues. In addition to the purely material aspect, we are deeply touched by your notes and letters of support. Our work together is bearing some visible fruit locally and to a small degree in Washington as well, as for example in a recent congressional hearing (see 5. below). More success will follow if we are faithful. The present historical moment presents all of us with opportunities we haven't seen in many years, despite or rather because of the visible challenges that are the other side of the coin, the difficult side we usually see first. The nuclear weapons industry faces many problems as well, and as a result there's a lot more "low-hanging fruit" right now than we can "harvest" with our present staff. We'd very much like to bring others -- younger persons -- on board to help us, and to do this funds are required. Your help, including your thoughtful outreach on our behalf -- would be very helpful. The interest is there, in young persons we know (and others we ought to know!), but right now the funds are not. That said, "where there's a will there's a way." There are concrete opportunities here in Albuquerque not found in most other U.S. places, given the huge footprint of the nuclear weapons industry in this state and the support available in and through this office. The groundwork has been long laid; the fields are planted. Join us for the harvest, if you want to work. We are having a pretty good time, all things considered. Most institutional funders have been "herded" into support for U.S. government policies, or else into distractive cul-de-sacs. Many in our generation who care deeply about these issues, and are financially comfortable, don't realize the extent to which the mantle of leadership has fallen on them, as it has on our own shoulders. We can all ask ourselves, what do we have to lose? Why, when we have gained so much experience, would we want hold back now? There are many ways to contribute, not the least of which is making others aware of our work. To the extent you can act as ambassadors for us, whether as regards joining our work or as regards financial support, please do so. Thank you. 3. The April 4 Town Hall in Santa Fe With at least 250 people attending in person and another 200 on-line, this Town Hall was the best-attended "anti-nuclear" event in New Mexico in recent years -- in Santa Fe, since the early 1980s. News media reported on the event (e.g. "NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby Offers Frank Answers On LANL Plutonium Pit Production And More During Hybrid Town Hall Meeting In Santa Fe," Los Alamos Reporter, Apr 11, 2023 and 'Stop making nuclear weapons': Activists press federal chief on LANL pit push, Santa Fe New Mexican, Apr 4, 2023). Thanks to many of you, opposition to plutonium pit production was a strong emphasis at the meeting. Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hansen deserves a great deal of credit for organizing this meeting. The word went out through several other local NGOs as well through us. We played a significant role in the relative emphasis on halting the push for pit production at Los Alamos in this decade, as reflected in the titles and articles above. Thanks to our colleagues in the ANSWER Coalition and Party for Socialism and Liberation who made the trip up to Santa Fe from Albuquerque, there were a significant number of articulate, dedicated younger people present. Our impression is that they were the only young people present, apart from government staff. There were no young people present from Santa Fe. Collectively the comments these young persons offered did perhaps the best job of any speakers in linking pit production specifically, and nuclear weapons in general, to the wider economic and social issues affecting the country. They provided much-needed "leaven for the loaf." If you are interested you can see and hear NNSA's 2-hour video of the meeting (a narrow view taken from the back of the hall) here. 4. Ukraine War developments We've had to confine our anti-war activities to sharing a daily selection of a few of (what we think are) the best (i.e. most accurate and/or thought-provoking) and accessible analyses of the war and some of its wider implications. We think this selection is a valuable resource that could serve as the foundation for anti-war study and discussion elsewhere in the U.S. around the world, given the propaganda stream most people face. We are asking you to investigate and if you like, forward this page to your friends and lists. Make no mistake: this war is upending international relations as well as domestic politics (to the extent we have any true politics left in our heavily-propagandized, censored country). It is a hinge of history. What "happens to us," subjectively, depends on what "we" do. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wisely said,
You won't find much of what we post on that page in the mainstream media (MSM). We don't agree with every word we post, to be sure, but it's a hell of a lot better than the toxic swill in the MSM. Obviously, there can be no arms control or disarmament until a modus vivendi is worked out with "America's enemies." Peace is the last thing on the minds of the neocons currently running this country, which is also why we urge you to re-read and discuss Bulletin 325. Loss of hegemony, economic decline, and fiscal exhaustion lie ahead. Will there also be increasing social division, and other forms of national decline? Will the U.S. become even more militarized, censored, propagandized, and controlled? Whither nuclear weapons, in all this? We need to pay attention and engage now, while we can. At the founding of this country Thomas Paine said, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." Amen to that. 5. Nuclear weapons, and plutonium "pit" production specifically
Perhaps the biggest news here is that, extending NNSA's own cost projections through its projected pit production start-up dates, reestablishing pit production is going to cost more than the entire Manhattan Project, in constant dollars. By Dec. 31, 1945, the Manhattan Project had spent a total of $1.89 billion, which is $31.34 billion in 2023 dollars (see Atomic Audit, p. 60). The expected startup cost to reconstruct an 80 War Reserve (WR) pit per year (ppy) capacity is significantly greater than this. We add it up to somewhere north of $42 billion (B). The $42 B includes costs at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) through 2033 only, which is the earliest start-up date NNSA indicates for "reliable production" (see the references here) and costs at SRS and elsewhere through 2036 only, again the earliest start-up date for full production at that site (Ibid). We have not posted the detailed work behind this assertion but will in the coming days. It's arithmetic, not rocket science. Last year's version is here. Of this $42 B, $10 B, including $2 billion in pre-2019 costs in three line items NNSA says are part of the "Plutonium Modernization" program, has already been appropriated. The remaining startup costs -- $32 B -- are roughly equal to total Manhattan Project costs. These costs do not include various additional capital and program costs at LANL funded outside the "Plutonium Modernization" program. Most of the overall pit production costs under the current two-site plan will occur at LANL, for modifying and then using an inadequate, unsafe, and ultimately temporary facility for pit production, and all the supporting work required. LANL's outsized costs and undersized production capability make for a very bad deal. It gets worse: if LANL is to be a pit factory, there have to be two factories to support U.S. nuclear weapons. The alternative is unilateral disarmament -- which might be fine with some of us, but Congress will never support it. In January, GAO released its year-long study of NNSA's pit production endeavor ("GAO: NNSA's Huge Program to Build New Warhead Cores ("Pits") Lacks Detailed Schedule, Budget, and Scope of Work;" "GAO to Release Year-Long Review of NNSA's Largest Warhead Endeavor: Plutonium Pit Production," Jan 11-12, 2023). As worthy as that report was, basically as soon as it was finished NNSA increased its expected capital costs by up to 40% and lengthened its start-up schedule by up to 4 years. These two factors approximately doubled expected start-up costs. Ballooning schedules and budgets are hallmarks of incipient failure even in normal times. This is not a normal time. The country is facing an economic tsunami. There will be no more normal times. This is the other reason why NNSA has refused to provide a schedule and budget for pit production. It's just too terrifying to Congress to absorb at one go -- too revealing. At LANL, Manhattan Project expenditures amount to $1.228 B (Consumer Price Index, Atomic Audit, p. 60 again). Expected pit production start-up costs at LANL are now at least eighteen times this much, assuming a 2033 start to "reliable" production. Per-pit costs at the Savannah River Site (SRS) are expected to be several times less than at LANL, due to the expected smaller staff (about half as many) and higher output. Thanks to choosing a two-site pit strategy that privileges the costly, inadequate LANL site, pit costs now far exceed all other components of warhead cost, increasing those costs many-fold. We will present some of those costs along with the spreadsheet cost model as soon as we can.
That happened on April 18 in the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee (excerpted here: Senator Warren questions NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby). As you can hear, Senator Warren would prefer that NNSA not receive further funding until the agency can produce a credible estimated cost and schedule. A moment ago, the Associated Press summarized Sen. Warren's concerns in its usual crisp, to-the-point, just-the-facts-ma'am manner. We are very pleased and hope the story goes far and wide.
This is a pretty good article, one which brings into print some things most people active on the issue don't know, and one or two things we didn't know! We will be commenting on it in detail elsewhere.
We likewise commend this article to you, which highlights just one part of the long twilight struggle by many parties, especially the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), to bring LANL's main plutonium facility into the modern safety era. The chances of success in that endeavor are at best low, because NNSA has elected to thumb its nose at some of its own safety regulations. (That is a long, technical discussion that needs a separate detailed treatment.)
There's more to include but as is usual for us to say at this point in a Bulletin, let's save it for another day. Thank you for your attention. Greg Mello and Trish Williams-Mello, Los Alamos Study Group |
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