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August 18, 2020
Zoominar this Thursday 4 pm; big increase in pit money coming; news & views
Permalink for this letter. Please forward as desired. Prior letters to this list.
Please endorse the Call for Sanity not Nuclear Production
Previous letter, 08/12/20: What you can do; zoominar moved to Thurs, 20 Aug, 4 - 6 pm MDT.
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Dear New Mexico activist leaders –
1. This week's zoominar will be on Thursday, August 20, from 4 - 6 pm MDT
If you haven't registered you must do so in advance here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcucOmqqj0tH9TJfzVssK0AcQdZ4rdu0hhQ. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email.
To repeat from prior announcements this meeting will feature:
- Slides with basic information and references for newcomers;
- Plenty of time for questions with real-time answers in the chat box, supplying key references as part of the answers so you will have those references to use;
- A progress report; and
- Some strategic comments and discussion.
Come one, come all! Invite your friends!
2. What we think are the most important things to be done for disarmament this month in New Mexico
Please refer to the list in last week's letter!
On the surface, nothing much has changed; August is in many ways a slow month. But Congress will return in September and is very likely to authorize and appropriate more than $1 billion at LANL alone for pit production construction, training, operations, and hiring for the coming fiscal year (starting October 1). While the exact sum and the language of any reports required, etc. are still to be determined, a vast increase in spending on nuclear weapons and a vast increase in spending on plutonium pit production, especially at LANL, are certain outcomes for FY21.
Unlike in past decades, New Mexico is now nearly silent about this major new mission. Among New Mexico politicians and opinion leaders there is eagerness, resignation, paralysis, and bewilderment. Unprecedented official secrecy, growing since the second Clinton Administration, fosters denial. The Democratic Party, which directly and indirectly controls most political activity in northern New Mexico, is very much in favor of building a new mid-sized substitute for the Rocky Flats Plant at Los Alamos. Moral courage -- the willingness to take an unpopular stand -- is scarce.
For these reasons we hope you ask others to join you on Thursday's call. In general, you have avenues for New Mexico outreach we do not.
I for one appreciated these words from Julian Assange, republished this morning at The Automatic Earth:
"We need to keep things in perspective. The risk of inaction is extremely high. And every day you live your life you lose another day of life. That's the risk of just sitting there: you just lost a day. You just died for a day. You don't have that many; so if you're not fighting for the things you care about, and every day is disappearing, then you are losing."
3. News & views
- Space" -- that is, not-earth -- gets a lot of attention in New Mexico. Not-earth, which mostly comes in military flavors, is considered wonderful in whatever flavor, "above all" as economic "development." The Albuquerque Journal recently ran four celestial articles (and a capstone editorial, in case we didn't get the point):
- Report calls for “whole-of-government” approach", Aug. 10: "As global society reaches for the stars, top U.S. military brass, government leaders and industry representatives are discussing launch of a new space commodities exchange that could facilitate trade and grow the nation’s technological prowess to maintain U.S. leadership in space..."
- Space race redux," Aug. 10: "New Mexico is front and center in a new global race to dominate space, and it’s creating huge commercial opportunities for the emerging space industry here and elsewhere..." Also this gem: “The basic principle is to mine industry for innovation,” Beauchemin said.
- New Mexico in running to land Space Command," Aug. 14: "Albuquerque is one of 31 locations nationwide that the U.S. Department of Defense is now considering to set up a new headquarters for the U.S. Space Command...."
- Editorial: Outer space could be NM’s newest economic frontier," Aug. 15: "N.M. leaders have been talking about diversifying the economy for years, pushing green-energy initiatives, tourism, professional sports and larger and larger subsidies for the film industry. However, the most far-reaching opportunity may have been looming overhead all along – outer space...."
Oops, here's another just now:
Like plutonium pit production, this vision of "economic development" is based not only on the fantasy of a continuing "American Century" but also a deep alienation from nature. Much of the space "vision" is also a technological fantasy, more pathetic than powerful.
But as is the case with pit production, this vision is already profoundly harmful to New Mexico and it could get much worse. A lot of people think the main problem with pit production has to do with physical pollution. It doesn't. It's mental and political pollution that are the main vehicles for social and environmental destruction.
New Mexico has got to choose between being a military-nuclear-waste-disposal zone -- a "polygon," in Soviet usage -- and taking a real turn toward the green.
- Jean Nichols penned a useful op-ed ("Accidents Happen: Northern New Mexico Needs A LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement," Jean Nichols, Los Alamos Reporter, Aug 12, 2020). (I should say that the figure Jean uses of 60,000 drums at Area G at the time of the Cerro Grande Fire looks a bit high to me, but I haven't had a chance to talk to Jean or otherwise check it.)
- We are aware of 6 or 8 interesting potential news stories about LANL and other sites -- some ripe and some not, some simple and some more technical. Here is one, which is all we can do today:
- As of July 2015 there were 1,599 LANL worker deaths for which the Department of Labor (DOL) paid death benefits ("As U.S. ramps up nuclear production (again), the human toll of past work continues to mount, including at LANL," Feb 5, 2020). The comparable number of Rocky Flats worker deaths through the same date is 3,909. Given that Rocky Flats was in business approximately half as long as LANL/Site Y/LASL, and employed on average let us say about half as many workers, we can say that the number of DOL-approved occupationally-related deaths per worker-year at Rocky is approximately 10 times that of LANL. This was the "heroic mode of production" (Joe Masco). We hope LANL never goes there.
Total compensation paid at LANL, including medical benefits, to the 6,546 workers who have been hurt or died as a result of working at LANL, according to DOL, is (as of 8/16/20), $1.097 billion. At Rocky Flats, as of 8/16/20, total compensation of $717 million has been paid to 5,155 sick or deceased workers and their families.
Graphical representations of the growth of these benefits over time at the two sites are available (for LANL, for Rocky Flats).
We will try to develop the other stories in subsequent letters, assuming the news media doesn't do so.
A very sincere "thank you" to all who have endorsed the Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production!
Stay safe, be encouraged.
Greg, Trish, and Lydia for the Los Alamos Study Group
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