Wrap up: ...Antis denounce LANL pit production

October 13, 2023
By Dan Leone

Anti-nuclear activists on Wednesday implored the Santa Fe, N.M., City Council to denounce National Nuclear Security Administration plans to produce plutonium pits at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the Santa Fe New Mexican reports.

About two dozen people, including members of the Los Alamos Study Group participated in the protest outside the council’s municipal headquarters and spoke during a public comment period before the council.

“The planned addition of a plutonium warhead factory to LANL poses serious problems to the region, and is entirely unnecessary from any sane perspective,” Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, said in a statement. “The pits it would make aren’t ‘needed’ for a long time, even assuming the U.S. retains a large arsenal, which binding international law requires the U.S. to negotiate away. LANL’s Rube-Goldberg, Jerry-rigged pit program is driven by greed and the mistaken idea that more and different warheads will help bring peace into the world. Los Alamos is metastasizing into a more virulent global menace than ever, as well as an increasingly intrusive local headache.”