April 2, 2023

Important public town hall in Santa Fe Tuesday, April 4: "No pits. Not here, not now, not ever."

Good evening friends --

As we noted on March 27 and before that in our March 22 press release ("Schedule for Nuclear Warhead Core ("Pit") Production Slipping, Costs Increasing: NNSA's Strategy is Failing,"), there have been dramatic developments in federal plans to construct, equip, and operate a plutonium warhead core ("pit") production plant at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) -- namely, 5-7 years of delays to full production at LANL. NNSA also expects costs to rise even further than previous estimates.  

These developments, combined with delays elsewhere, hold the potential to curb the U.S. appetite and ability to conduct a nuclear arms race. They also create, in northern New Mexico, a superb and unique opportunity not shared with any other locale in the U.S.

Santa Fe County's Town Hall this coming Tuesday is an outstanding opportunity to reach multiple audiences nationwide as well as locally with the message that many of us do not accept LANL's new pit production mission. Contrariwise, the absence of visible and audible opposition will be taken as public assent to that mission.

The Town Hall has been arranged by Santa Fe County Commission Chair Anna Hansen, who deserves credit for doing so.

There will be a number of environmental issues raised at this meeting, briefly discussed further below. Nearly all of these issues originate from pit production past, present, and future (plutonium-239, in all its forms, has really only one use) and every one of them will be exacerbated tremendously by pit production at LANL.

Some people hope that pit production at LANL can be done "safely." This would be difficult anywhere but in LANL's old, crowded buildings, situated near active earthquake faults on poorly-consolidated volcanic ash sediments, in relatively close proximity to residences in Los Alamos, with an impossible schedule to meet and the necessity of working 24/7 to do so with an inexperienced commuter workforce, it is a vain hope. New Mexico political leaders used to understand that.

In 2017, DOE and NNSA ruled out using LANL main plutonium facility for permanent production work. As the agency wrote then, "...after a new 80 WR ["War Reserve," i.e. acceptable quality] [pit per year] capability is established, PF-4 [LANL's main plutonium facility] can return to the research and development mission for which it was built."

Dr. Hruby's "predecessor-plus-one" General Klotz, appointed by Obama, led a rigorous analysis of alternatives which concluded among other things that a) it made no sense to build two pit factories, something nobody had ever taken seriously anyway, b) LANL's old PF-4, in which a number of non-pit-production missions are also done, would be unable to house a reliable pit production mission and shouldn't have one, and c) the best (cheapest, least risk, fastest) overall plan would be to utilize an unfinished new plutonium facility at the Savannah River Site (SRS) for pit production.

Naturally, this plan was attacked by the New Mexico delegation. A new NNSA Administrator was meanwhile appointed who had little background in the field, and the highly-political result was a 2018 recommendation to build two pit factories, contrary to NNSA's own technical and managerial judgment of the year before. This recommendation was legally ratified in September 2020 (here and here), despite the far greater costs and competition between the two sites for scarce skills and equipment, which is now a problem for NNSA.

The only advantage of re-tooling PF-4 as a production facility was the supposed speed in which this could be done. That advantage is now evaporating, as the problems NNSA and independent examiners warned about have come home to roost. Meanwhile the tremendous impacts of this mission on our region are just beginning to be felt -- environmental impacts, social impacts, political impacts, cultural impacts.

As we have repeatedly explained, the pits LANL is supposed to make aren't needed for anything but new warheads. DoD already has enough modern, "safe" warheads, with relatively "young" pits (they slowly age), to arm all the new silo-based missiles they want.

Dr. Hruby has inherited a stupid plan. Congressional hawks teamed up with the then-New Mexico delegation to push this nasty monstrosity, which is now failing.

There are quite a few other issues that will come up at this meeting. I want to keep this brief so I am not going to bring them up here, which will only complicate what needs to be a very simple and clear message.

LANL is an extremely expensive place to make pits, by the way. The new schedule and cost increases at LANL will make LANL pits cost $91-106 million apiece, as much as a brand-new 400,000 square foot high school. What are we doing? This is a public policy nightmare, which you can discuss in your comments.

Don't expect too many answers to big questions, by the way. We have already asked. NNSA doesn't have them.

April 4 is just the beginning. We have lots of ways to fight this and we are confident we will win.

Please join us, at this critical juncture.

Please come on Tuesday and bring as many others as you can. Please bring a sign opposing pit production. A simple one will do. Not everyone there opposes LANL pit production, so we have to be clear about this, visually and audibly. 

Best wishes,

Greg, Trish, and the rest of the Study Group