Critics at hearing speak out against expansion plan, pit production at LANL

By Nicholas Gilmore ngilmore@sfnewmexican.com

Feb 11, 2025

Angelina Crowley is escorted from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s public hearing Tuesday at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. Crowley, who identified herself as a member of the Albuquerque Party for Socialism and Liberation, yelled, “No nuclear aggression. We need housing and health care.” Members of the audience cheered and chanted, “No more nukes,” after she left. Michael G. Seamans/The New Mexican

Angelina Crowley criticizes nuclear weapons during the National Nuclear Security Administration presentation Tuesday. Michael G. Seamans/The New Mexican

The federal government’s plan to ramp up production of plutonium pits at Los Alamos National Laboratory is “extreme military and nuclear aggression,” Angelina Crowley yelled from the crowd.

The outburst interrupted a presentation by a National Nuclear Security Administration staff member.

“No nuclear aggression,” the young woman said. “We need housing and health care.”

Crowley, who identified herself as a member of the Albuquerque Party for Socialism and Liberation, was one of several people escorted out of the Santa Fe Community Convention Center by police and security guards Tuesday evening during a public hearing on a sitewide environmental impact statement for LANL operations.

Several in the crowd erupted in cheers for Crowley as she was led out of the room; minutes later, crowd members began chanting, “No more pits.”

Though, a moderator told those in attendance “disruptions will not be tolerated."

The public hearing — which got off to a rowdy start — was the second of four events planned in the next few days to gather input on the draft environmental assessment, required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The vast majority of the nearly 100 attendees — young and old — expressed fierce opposition to expanded production of pits, the bowling ball-size bomb cores that trigger nuclear warheads.

Archbishop John C. Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe spoke first at the event, saying plutonium pit production is “immoral.”

“We are currently in a new nuclear arms race made more dangerous by multiple nuclear actors, new cyber- and hypersonic weapons and artificial intelligence,” Wester said. “The Los Alamos National Laboratory now plays a key role in fostering the new nuclear arms race, which is an affront — in my view — to God and to humanity.”

Many people at Tuesday’s hearing lined the back of the room holding signs: “Ban the bomb” and “Keep uranium in the ground.” Two men held a red banner saying, “Stop the new bomb factory.”

The hearing presented one of few opportunities for those who strongly oppose nuclear proliferation to speak out against it on the record, said Greg Mello, executive director of the anti-nuclear Los Alamos Study Group.

Mello said he believes the public hearing was merely a “spectacle” for the federal agency, saying, “We don’t expect the NNSA to listen to us.”

An NNSA official said the agency “will consider all comments received” when preparing the final environmental impact statement, which she said was expected to be published later this year or in 2026.

The agency also is accepting public comments on the draft report until March 11, via email and mail.

No one could be heard at Tuesday’s event sharing comments in favor of the draft report.

Published by the agency in January, the report analyzes the environmental effects of lab operations for the next 15 years under three scenarios — no action, modernized operations and expanded operations — all of which would involve some amount of expansion.

The “no action” alternative would continue the lab’s current operations as well as 23 new construction projects for which environmental approval is done or underway, according to the NNSA presentation. The “expanded operations” route — which the report notes is the agency’s “preferred alternative” — would include dozens of new construction projects and upgrades, expanding the physical footprint of the lab by 31%.

Attendees from a range of grassroots organizations criticized the plan for hours, arguing against increased investments in the nation’s nuclear weapons program and bemoaning its environmental effects.

Dylan Spaulding, a scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, accused the NNSA of taking a “performative approach” to fulfilling the environmental requirements and pushing ahead for expansion despite “the huge number of opposing comments.”

“These analyses are the lab’s opportunity to demonstrate thoughtful and considered practices, a responsibility to surrounding communities and actions to remediate existing environmental damage,” Spaulding said.

He said the plans outlined in the draft assessment “only serve to increase risk for workers and insufficiently consider protection of the public in the event of a severe accident.”

NNSA staff said the proposal to expand operations and missions at the lab is meant “to respond to future national security challenges and meet increasing requirements.”

Some who spoke from Tesuque Pueblo and Laguna Pueblo decried the impacts — such as uranium mine contamination — on tribal members and questioned the characterization of land around the national lab as “undeveloped.”

A resident named Meredith Maines directed her comment to NNSA staff.

“I honest to God hope that you’re listening,” Maines said. “My heart really does go out to you, for all the painful dissociation that you must be experiencing right now, to have to hear all of this and then go back to work in the morning.

Published comment by Greg Mello:

There is no statutory basis for such a referendum on pit production, nor will there ever be. If states and locales were to be able to directly veto decisions related to national defense by popular referenda -- which would not be constitutional -- the United States would disaggregate. So other forms of democratic participation must be learned and practiced. This is as true overall as it is true regarding the vastly corrupt business of nuclear warheads. As many of the speakers yesterday said, our democratic processes have eroded so far that New Mexico cannot be called even a real state, but is instead a "colony," or "territory." Our economic and social performance indicates exactly that, if the visible toadying and career alignment of our congressional delegation were not proof enough. Nevertheless the spirit of your suggestion is positive. We have so far a register of 1,125 individuals and 245 businesses, organizations, and religious communities opposing pit production at LANL. Those wishing to join this vanguard of opposition can do so by endorsing the Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production, at https://lasg.org/wordpress/we-call-for-sanity-no-nuclear-production/, or more simply by typing stopthebomb.org into a search engine. We hope you will.

More ways to participate are outlined at https://lasg.org/what.htm. The unlawful expansion of LANL prior to required environmental analysis for the purpose of goosing nuclear warhead design and production nationwide is a scandal. LANL is currently in the process of failing at this mission for the fifth time, while our political leaders nervously hitch their wagons to it. They need to recognize that the world has already changed. People want the fruits of genuine peace, which can only come through mutual security. LANL's mission of threatened mass destruction serves instead a paradigm of "peace through strength," an imagined Pax Americana which really means domination. Like it or not, that's over, to the extent it ever existed. We have to get along with others now, and if we want to avoid national bankruptcy -- economic and spiritual -- we need to lead the way. We face severe, converging crises -- existential crises, as many pointed out yesterday. We can't idly wait around for our federal administrators and bought-and-paid-for congresspersons to change their minds all on their own. Perhaps you are saying that if the people genuinely lead, they will follow. Amen to that.