https://www.abqjournal.com/1176862/nm-senator-reps-fight-back-on-pits-plan.html
Comment:
Nuclear Watch, as usual, at least SEEMS to not understand what is going on. Coghlan misrepresents the situation. The amendment in question will NOT generate “independent expert review of the government’s headlong rush to expand plutonium pit production at both the Los Alamos Lab and the Savannah River Site.” That is precisely what it will NOT do.
The “headlong rush” is written into statute, thanks to Mr. Heinrich, Mr. Udall, their allies in the Trump administration and among congressional hawks, and to a lesser extent the New Mexico House reps. It is only WHERE this rush would take place — WHERE the billions would be spent — which would be (partially) re-examined. Meanwhile there would be no pause in the billions in construction toward an expanded pit factory at LANL which is already programmed and underway.
Nuclear Watch’s comments only help obscure these realities in a mock-sophisticated, passive posture that “watches” and “predicts”, allowing cozy relationships with some of the main perpetrators of the “headlong rush” — the New Mexico delegation, which bows and scrapes for the nuclear weapons industry instead of working for the people of New Mexico.
“We predict the wheels will come off once it’s under deeper public and congressional scrutiny.” Which wheels will come off, precisely? Not those of a new pit factory at LANL, the promotion of which is the sole purpose of this amendment.
This is hardly the first time Coghlan & Co. have aligned with, or attempted to foster, more nuclear missions at LANL and in New Mexico. At the beginning of the Obama Administration, they were centrally involved in a secret effort to relocate the entire nuclear weapons complex to Los Alamos, Albuquerque, and Amarillo, a well-funded plan belatedly revealed to New Mexicans after Trish and I attended the big roll-out in Washington, DC. You can read about it here: http://www.lasg.org/ConsolidationRemarks2009.pdf.