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March 18, 2025 Turning point: Whither LANL pit production and the new nuclear arms race? It depends on all of us -- please help! Permalink for this letter. Prior letters to this New-Mexico-oriented list. This is a letter to our New Mexico-oriented activist mailing list, a subset of our whole mailing list. If you missed our most recent emails, they come in three forms:
Dear friends -- Although the overall situation is highly volatile and could go either way, there are very real possibilities for lowering nuclear tensions and yes, halting the new nuclear arms race. We believe it is the most promising time for nuclear disarmament since 2010, when Obama turned away from disarmament, striking a "deal" to modernize or replace every single nuclear warhead, delivery platform, and factory in return for Senate ratification of a treaty (New START), which did not disarm anything. Later, Obama rejected a tremendous opportunity, handed to him on a silver platter as it were, to negotiate real cuts to the stockpile. Then came Russiagate, the Ukraine coup d'etat, and all that has followed. Now a fresh wind is blowing. There are new opportunities. Some flow from long-standing problems in the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA)'s warhead complex and the massive Department of Defense nuclear procurement programs. These programs face forces majeure from workforce and supply-chain challenges (to pick the top two), as well as fundamental infrastructure and geographic problems for which there are no easy fixes and therefore are less talked about. And then there is President Trump, who actually wants to make peace with Russia and is trying to do that as I write. Trump has himself highlighted the waste of money involved in nuclear weapons on multiple occasions, without journalist prompting. This is far from a guarantee that nuclear weapons programs will be cut -- they could be strengthened -- but it is not nothing either. Trump's domestic agenda cannot survive an arms race and he knows it. Trump's comments aren't random for another reason as well. He will clearly remember being manipulated -- blackmailed, under threat of impeachment -- into a higher NNSA budget than the Department of Energy (DOE) and his own White House staff wanted by a tiny cabal that included then-NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon Hagerty. Afterwards, she was placed under surveillance by the DOE Secretary and then just after the 2020 election, she was summarily fired. Peace with Russia may be breaking out, but here in New Mexico spending on plutonium warhead core ("pit") production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is running full steam ahead. Despite decades of successful opposition, New Mexico is running the risk of normalizing pit production at LANL -- even as LANL struggles to actually do it. The entire New Mexico congressional delegation certainly wants as much spending and therefore as many pits per year as possible. Santa Fe County apparently wants pit production too. In its draft comments on the LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS), the County says it likes the "No Action Alternative," which includes LANL pit production (right on up to 80 pits per year, as is still required by law). (Perhaps we can convince them to change their minds -- we'll write about that later.) Many liberal NGOs want also pit production at LANL -- not too much, but not too little either. (Some of these groups often say they don't want "expanded" pit production, as if there was some production going on. There isn't. LANL has produced exactly one (1) certified pit since 2011, and only 31 since 1949.) So how is LANL doing at its huge new job, which the new arms race requires? Answer: Terribly. In 13 days, we will reach the half-way mark in fiscal year 2025. Where are the 20 "War Reserve" pits LANL is required by law to make this year? Answer: So far, nowhere to be seen. And what ever happened to NNSA's commitment to produce "a minimum of 50-80 pits per year in 2022 at LANL?" Long story short, LANL has failed in this mission four times so far. The fifth failure is in process. Acquisition (by 2026) of LANL's 30 pit per year mission was budgeted at $3 billion (B) as recently as 2018. What happened to that? That cost is $22 B now -- assuming it ever happens, which is a big assumption at this point. We need to push back harder. "Once more, into the breach!" Please, please, help us! By signing up businesses and organizations (nonprofit and religious) to the Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production, you can make a really huge difference. Individual signers help too! We now have 254 institutional endorsers and 1,172 individuals. We will change official minds here in this state and in Washington DC but we want to do it faster, so this state can begin to heal. The outreach you do, and the endorsements you help us get, are foundational. You have contacts we do not have. A few minutes reaching out to them would make a wonderful difference. That's what we want you to do, if you can. Very best wishes, Greg, Trish, and Bex |
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