For immediate release October 6, 2017

National Museum of Nuclear Science and History Erects Trinity Nuclear Tower Replica

Called “death fetish,” “glorification of mass murder” by local peace groups

Contact: Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group 505-265-1200 (office), 505-577-8563 (cell)

Stop the War Machine: Bob Anderson 505-858-0882 (cell)

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Albuquerque – This evening the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History will be dedicating (press release) a near-full-scale replica of the tower that was used at the Trinity Site test range on July 16, 1945.

The Museum is located at 601 Eubank Blvd SE (map).

Local anti-war group Stop the War Machine (SWM) has called for a protest at 5 pm, which Study Group members and staff will attend. SWM calls the new exhibit “glorification of mass murder.” We agree.

Study Group director Mello: “This exhibit fetishizes utter destruction. Lifting up the Trinity “Gadget,” the first plutonium bomb, is visually akin to a nuclear Black Mass. It celebrates the inversion of human values which was the principal moral and political inheritance of the Manhattan Project. It celebrates a death cult.

“New Mexico has at least four nuclear weapons related museums (counting the Los Alamos Historical Museum). None can be said to present a balanced and complete view of history, or of nuclear weapons. All are promotional. They glorify nuclear weapons and the Manhattan Project. They help condition New Mexico to be a “nuclear sacrifice zone,” to do the nuclear “dirty work” for the country.

“The myth of heroic scientists toiling away to help America win the war persists to the present day, despite mountains of historical evidence that the Manhattan Project did not contribute materially to ending the war, and the fact that it was engineers, chemists, and laborers, mostly located in places far from New Mexico, who did the lion’s share of the work in the Manhattan Project.

“Nuclear weapons have grievously harmed New Mexico not just physically, in terms of health as in the case of the Tularosa Basin downwinders, but also politically, morally, spiritually, and economically. It continues to do so today, and attracts similar and potentially even more locally dangerous industries, such as the proposed consolidated "interim" (i.e. for a century) on-and near-surface storage of commercial spent nuclear fuel.”

The Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium will be present tonight, seeking compensation for the harms their communities and families experienced as a result of the Trinity test, as well as other groups.

While generally supportive of those goals, this organization’s focus will be on the present and future of New Mexico. But all these issues and histories -- past, present, and future -- are closely linked.

Mello: “The world does not support glorifying nuclear weapons. This was the message of the Nobel Committee this morning.”

***ENDS***