July 13, 2020

Please come to the State Capitol Thursday, July 16, at 10 am for a demonstration and press conference: we want an EIS for LANL; we don't want a new Rocky Flats; and we desperately need green jobs and training

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Dear New Mexico activist leaders –

    1. First, thank you to all who have endorsed the Call for Sanity not Nuclear Production and asked others to endorse.

(For some users, but not all, this buggy commercial software requires two clicks on the "submit" button for the endorsement to go through. If successful, a "thank you" message appears as is explained on the button. We are moving the Call to a better platform as fast as we can. Meanwhile please use this slightly kludgy one as heavily as possible!)

Signatures are coming in. Please don't wait to continue your outreach. Events are moving quickly.

    2. Please come, and encourage others to come, to a socially-distanced, masked demonstration and press conference on the East Side of the State Capitol on Thursday, July 16, at 10 am.

Thursday is the anniversary of the first nuclear explosion ("Trinity"), which Lisa Gordon-Hagerty (LGH), Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), is celebrating by a visit to V ("Victory") Site at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where the first implosion bombs were assembled.

She is also going to LANL's plutonium facility, where the cores for future warheads are to be built.

We have asked and will be asking again Thursday, for Governor Lujan Grisham to request from LGH an environmental impact statement for LANL's proposed expansion -- a Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS).

We gave a long list of strong reasons.

Of interest, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) has said that current analyses are inadequate but has not -- yet -- asked for a SWEIS.

Apologies for the sudden notice, but we only recently learned of LGH's visit, but we can't let LGH and NNSA take over this anniversary, and we need to make sure the Governor understands the need for a SWEIS. We will of course invite her.

Bring your own signs, or use one of ours. We will have multiple speakers, to be announced. We will make sign suggestions tomorrow.

We are going to emphasize the need for better national security priorities, including serious efforts at mitigating our unfolding climate and environmental catastrophe, the importance of building community resilience and providing education, training, and jobs. None of this is compatible with a nuclear arms race, which serves only weapons contractors like LANL.

We will make sure this is a covid-safe event. We don't want you there if you don't wear a mask and don't keep two meters from others.

We also need to reach local government leaders ASAP, as explained in the previous letter.

    3. News bits

First, the Los Alamos Reporter discovered ("House Appropriations Committee Wants NNSA To Submit Plans, Schedules For [plutonium] Pit Production") that LANL's gigantic ($6.4 billion over FY21-FY25) pit production effort --

1. rests on a "proposal" authored by LANL, not any plan approved by NNSA, and
2. is stamped "UCNI" to make it unavailable to state and local governments, tribes, and citizens.

We have known for some time from government insiders that NNSA has no signed plan for warhead core ("pit") production at LANL despite clear statutory requirements. (Other requirements.)

Yesterday the House Appropriations Committee said so on the record (p. 140), as the Los Alamos Reporter also reported.

Someone asked what the LANL pit production effort will cost. Well, no one has bothered to provide an estimate. The estimated cost of pit production -- preparations and operations, both -- at LANL remains open-ended. There is no total, and nobody at the top has taken responsibility for the details. As we said two days ago, they are winging it.

Second, and no doubt related, the House proposes to cut pit production by $157 million (M) at LANL (19%) from NNSA's request, and $135 M at the Savannah River Site (SRS) (31%) from the request.

Anticipating failure to meet the 2030 pit production deadline, the Committee also requires a contingency plan (p. 140) that includes the option of moving the production deadline back some years.

The W93 (Navy) warhead NNSA requested -- almost certainly a LANL-led program -- is also not funded at all.

It isn't great but it's not as bad as I expected. We are making some progress. The proposed cuts from the request and the new reporting requirements must be negotiated with the Senate Appropriations Committee, which has not released its markup, and then passed by both houses of Congress.

That's it for now. Stay safe, be encouraged. We are.

Greg, Trish, and Lydia, for the Los Alamos Study Group