{"id":2006,"date":"2022-01-18T09:20:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T16:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/?p=2006"},"modified":"2022-01-20T10:14:43","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T17:14:43","slug":"can-santa-fe-survive-as-a-nuclear-weapons-suburb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/2022\/01\/18\/can-santa-fe-survive-as-a-nuclear-weapons-suburb\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Santa Fe survive as a nuclear weapons suburb?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Santa Fe New Mexican<\/em><\/a>
My View<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By: Greg Mello
Jan 16, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many Santa Feans understand that Los Alamos National Laboratory, the most lavishly funded nuclear weapons facility in the world, has embarked on a new mission: making plutonium warhead cores (\u201cpits\u201d) on an industrial scale, to involve 4,000 full-time personnel and 24\/7 operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s among the dirtiest and most dangerous missions in the nuclear weapons complex, not seen at LANL since the 1940s. It\u2019s centered in an old facility built for research and development, now to be driven far beyond its original capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LANL predicts it will spend $18 billion to start up production over this decade. In constant dollars, this is 15-fold what the Manhattan Project spent in New Mexico \u2014 indeed it dwarfs the cost of every other project in New Mexico history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pits will cost at least $50 million apiece, 200 times their weight in gold. A single LANL pit, assuming all goes well, will cost as much as the combined annual salaries of 1,000 New Mexico teachers, or the equipment for 5,000 residential solar systems. A major reason our society is failing is because it is kept on a war footing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This huge program has nothing to do with national security, except in the negative sense. It is not needed to maintain any stockpile weapon. As military planners say, it\u2019s (very) \u201cearly to need\u201d and there are now perfectly sound, cheaper plans to do without LANL\u2019s production should something go wrong. Why wait?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After extensive analysis under both the Obama and Trump administrations, the National Nuclear Security Administration in 2017 firmly rejected what is now LANL\u2019s pit plan. The New Mexico delegation fought back, enlisting congressional hawks to help blackmail the Trump administration into building an unheard-of two pit factories. Up to now, a barely functioning Congress has gone along with the game. Time will tell just how long this scam holds up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LANL\u2019s pit production, for all its cost and danger, just isn\u2019t enough to support any foreseeable U.S. stockpile. If LANL is a pit factory, there will be two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about Santa Fe, then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On July 18, 1945, Harry Truman wrote in his diary, \u201cBelieve [Japan] will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will Santa Fe \u201cfold up,\u201d democratically and spiritually, when this new \u201cManhattan\u201d fully appears? Is the faith of that man of peace, St. Francis \u2014 the very name of this city \u2014 obsolete to political leaders in the city and the state?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What exactly would Santa Fe stand for or mean if nuclear weapons \u2014 the ultimate in human disposability \u2014 became its main tangible product? When our schools and community colleges direct our young people into LANL\u2019s \u201cpipeline\u201d of plutonium minions? Or do you suppose their potential for creativity, compassion and wisdom could be better developed in other ways, as the region faces the towering crises of the 21st century?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can Santa Fe survive as a nuclear weapons suburb? It certainly can, as a kind of nuclear \u201cPottersville\u201d \u2014 a sprawling, increasingly ugly \u201ccity\u201d with growing inequality, a vacuum where shared ideals should be, with no real urban center or shared human purposes, its most cherished traditions washed away by too much money given to too few people doing \u201cwork\u201d society doesn\u2019t need or want. It would be a city divided against itself to be sure, with plenty of poverty, human tragedy and crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Santa Fe could be a city that aims for justice and peace, where the obligation of respect binding us together is fostered, where the potential of every child is honored. Those political values are incompatible with manufacturing more nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Santa Fe New MexicanMy View By: Greg MelloJan 16, 2022 Many Santa Feans understand that Los Alamos National Laboratory, the most lavishly funded nuclear weapons facility in the world, has embarked on a new mission: making plutonium warhead cores (\u201cpits\u201d) on an industrial scale, to involve 4,000 full-time personnel and 24\/7 operations. It\u2019s among the… Read More »Can Santa Fe survive as a nuclear weapons suburb?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[6,18,48,4,27,31,29,25,19,77],"class_list":["post-2006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-greg-mello","tag-lanl","tag-los-alamos-national-laboratory","tag-los-alamos-study-group","tag-national-nuclear-security-administration","tag-new-mexico","tag-nnsa","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-pit-production","tag-plutonium-pits"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ZtEt-wm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2006"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2008,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006\/revisions\/2008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}