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December 21, 2023 Bulletin 337: Please oppose producing new-design ICBM warheads and the new arms race, by (at least) endorsing the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production" Permalink for this bulletin (please forward). Simple home page. Detailed home page.
Previously: Bulletin 336: Precis on pit production for NM newspaper; Zoom seminars last week (video) and next week (scheduled); Sentinel missile warheads; Santa Fe resolution against pit production; impeachment, Dec 12, 2023 Dear friends and colleagues -- We hope you all are well and enjoying this, the Winter Solstice. We are fortunate to have the opportunity, and responsibility, of embodying a vigorous hope in this dark time. Let's do that. This is a simple Bulletin, with one action item we hope you will embrace. It may take as little as 5 minutes. First, we'd like to commend to you these two recent, detailed double-page ads in Santa Fe Reporter:
These ads are the only cost-effective way we know to get this critical information into the hands of tens of thousands of people in northern New Mexico, including Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) employees -- and now, into your hands as well. Will the U.S. be able to conduct, or pretend to conduct, a nuclear arms race?That question is embedded in the issue of whether LANL will be, or or will not be, a plutonium warhead core ("pit") factory. As mentioned last time, there is both a quantitative and qualitative aspect to the stockpile augmentation enabled by "early-to-need," accelerated -- i.e. LANL -- pit production. If pit production at LANL is successful on the current schedule and scale, roughly 200-300 highly-accurate W87-1 warheads will be provided for the "Sentinel" silo-based missile system through 2036, before the Savannah River Site's pit production facility could begin production. Absent LANL pit production, the W87-1 warhead will be substantially delayed or (as is more likely) canceled altogether. As NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby has said, LANL pit production is "key to meeting military requirements and production." This was briefly discussed in the Dec. 20 ad above and in our comments to a recent AP article ("A gigantic new ICBM will take U.S. nuclear missiles out of the Cold War-era but add 21st-century risks", Tara Copp, AP, Dec 10, 2023; see attached comments). The greater accuracy of the new W87-1 warheads over the retiring W78s makes the former a potent "force multiplier," allowing far greater probability of hard-target "kill" for a given warhead. There is a great deal more to say on this topic but for now we will leave it here. Will the arms control community have the gumption to oppose these new warheads? We aren't seeing that yet. If you are in a position to help them, please do. Second, we had to delay our second planned Zoom seminar on pit production this month. My apologies. We will schedule this again early next year, and meantime try to get out some "myth-busting" to this list and elsewhere. Third and most important, if you don't want a nuclear arms race please endorse the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production" and help us recruit others to do so as well. We are particularly interested in organizational and business endorsements but by all means please endorse as an individual if you wish. (You can easily check to see if you have already done so by searching the lists of endorsers provided.) We can and will use this registry of resistance and solidarity in many ways -- for example, in working to pass local government resolutions against pit production, as we are doing. These resolutions are themselves then useful in other, more powerful ways. If there are specific reasons you or your organization can't endorse this Call, please write or call one of us -- let's talk! Fourth, if you can, please help our work financially. If you are a supporter -- thank you. We hope that most of you will be a part of our practical disarmament program in the coming year, one way or another. Best wishes, Greg, Trish, and Bex |
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