[NukeNet] USA Prepares To Make More Nuclear WMD Warheads With No Media Attention

[Bill Smirnow]

 ----- Original Message ----- 
From: Greg Mello

   This is a guest editorial version of some
remarks I gave at three of the Complex 2030
hearings in New Mexico.  The text of a little
flyer handed out there is also appended below.

As you can see, I think "Complex 2030" is not
quite the right thing -- something like planning a
traffic safety meeting while watching a toddler
play in the street right in front of us, with
trucks coming.

Best, greg m

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Break the silence

It's an eerie moment in U.S. nuclear history.
Policy teeters on a knife-edge between disarmament
and rearmament, but silence largely reigns.  The
attention of policy-makers, the public, the
nonprofit community, and the foundations that
largely fund and direct them has not caught up
with events, leaving the real policy decisions
chiefly in the hands of autonomous, largely
unconscious, nuclear bureaucracies.

The National Nuclear Security Administration
(NNSA) hopes to begin producing plutonium warhead
cores ("pits") next year at Los Alamos.  If that
happens, it will be the first time the U.S. has
produced pits in 18 years.  With new pits, the
production of new warheads can also restart,
lighting up all ten warhead factories, labs, and
NNSA administrative centers with new work and a
fresh sense of importance.

Of course these events will echo around the world,
reinforcing those who say their nation too should
have nuclear weapons.  Security will decline for
everyone.

Without new pits and the new production that goes
with them, the warhead enterprise faces serious
internal crises related to an aging workforce,
declining practical skills, poor morale, and a
fading ideological commitment to nuclear weapons,
among other problems.  The apparent social
consensus that once supported U.S. WMD in the face
of bedrock moral values and sound safety, fiscal,
and environmental practices has long evaporated.

For at least the next 16 years only Los Alamos can
make pits.  Yet despite the expenditure of $2.5
billion (B) here so far on pit production numerous
problems remain, including serious safety and
infrastructure deficiencies.  To review some of
these problems, look under "LANL" at the Defense
Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) web site,
www.dnfsb.gov.

The DNFSB has no enforcement powers and relies on
NNSA's voluntary compliance, Congress, and
knowledgeable public outcry to keep LANL and other
sites safe.  Unfortunately NNSA is in the process
of implementing a contractor "self-monitoring"
system at LANL which is virtually guaranteed, in
my view, to produce accidents.  One of NNSA's
stated goals is to overcome what it perceives as a
"risk-averse" culture in order to "get the job
done."

The situation is grotesque.  The U.S. has almost
10,000 nuclear warheads and bombs.  Thousands are
backups, part of a multi-tiered redundancy that
puts the "assured" in "mutual assured
 destruction."  This is too many even for Mr.
Bush, who wants to drop the arsenal to 6,000 by
2012.

Behind the backups and the backups' backups are
extra pits, 13,000 or so of them stored at the
Pantex warhead assembly plant near Amarillo.

Pits last a long time.  Results of long-awaited
accelerated aging studies show that all the pits
in the U.S. arsenal have at least six decades of
"service" left.

So why make them?  Aside from the need to create
"end-to-end" work so the enterprise can feed and
sustain itself, the other reason for pit
production is that even a small production line
allows the prompt ("responsive") production of
"boutique" warheads that might be needed for
special occasions.

This is not solely a Bush Administration idea.  In
1999, when Bill Richardson was Secretary of
Energy, LANL gave Congress a detailed briefing on
the idea.

As pit production moves toward startup, some $2 B
in new LANL plutonium-related facilities is also
in the works.  The flagship project is a $1 B pit
production annex called the "Chemistry and
Metallurgy Research Replacement" facility, but
several other projects are also involved.  NNSA
hopes these projects will increase LANL's pit
production capacity enough to build large numbers
of new warheads over a multi-decade period,
including "small builds of special weapons."

The CMRR, widely understood to commit NNSA to pit
production at LANL indefinitely, is controversial
in Congress.  The Republican-led House
Appropriations Committee wants to kill the
project, calling it "irrational" and "stupid."
Republican Pete Domenici promotes it.

What's eerie is the silence from the arms control
community, the Democrats, and the public.
Testimony at "Complex 2030" scoping hearings,
however heartfelt, is irrelevant to policy
decisions - and doubly irrelevant as regards pit
production at LANL.

Some arms controllers and Democrats actually want
pit production at LANL; others simply don't know
what's going on.  Public debate is led away from
these sensitive subjects by powerful foundations,
by peer pressure within the nonprofit community,
and by career concerns.  Most churches fear losing
members and contributions.

Practically speaking, the New Mexico congressional
delegation holds veto power over pit production
and the new "CMRR" pit factory.  They need to hear
from us in clear, specific terms: stop pit
production before it starts, and cut funding for
the CMRR.


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[text of Study Group handout from hearing]
You've come to NNSA's "Complex 2030" NEPA scoping
hearing.  Great!  Speak up - but be careful!

Why?  Because long before this "supplemental
programmatic environmental impact statement"
(SPEIS) ever sees the light of day in 2008, the
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
will already be implementing the single most
controversial element of this plan by other means.
    NNSA has already made a decision to invest $1
billion (B) in new plutonium infrastructure at Los
Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).  About another
$1 B will also be necessary to renew existing
facilities.
    Powerful members of Congress are fighting this
semi-secret agenda. They need our New Mexico
representatives to help them.  But so far our
delegation is silent on the key issues - except
for Senator Domenici, who favors it.  We must help
them focus on the here and now and not on Complex
2030, which won't be implemented for many years if
ever!  It is a distraction!
    Further, this hearing has nothing whatsoever
to do with stopping plutonium bomb core ("pit")
production at LANL, which is the only place pits
can be made for the next 16 or more years.  This
hearing deals only with the scope of a document
purporting to analyze environmental impacts of,
among other things, various pit production options
after 2022.
    NNSA doesn't want you to notice what's going
on right now.  They don't want you to organize
effectively to stop it.  A strong letter from
either New Mexico senator, or intervention from
Congressman Udall, could stop this.
    The U.S. hasn't made nuclear warheads in 17
years.  Pit production at LANL is essential for it
to start up again.  It hasn't happened yet and
there are a lot of reasons why it shouldn't.
There's no reason to make pits - even if you
should happen to want to keep all of nearly 10,000
U.S. nuclear warheads for a long time.

What you can do: a few suggestions

  a.. Support your favorite anti-nuclear
organization in every way!  Get involved, and help
bring focus on these key issues:
    a.. Stopping pit production now before it
starts;
    b.. Halting funding for the so-called
"Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement"
(CMRR) facility (two big pit production support
buildings, adding to the current one);
    c.. Ask them to join the 219 other
organizations now endorsing the Call for Nuclear
Disarmament (at www.lasg.org ).
    d.. Get other organizations, businesses, and
churches involved:
      a.. Get these organizations to call for
meetings with congressional staff; and
      b.. Encourage them to sign the Call for
Nuclear Disarmament.
    e.. Organize a public or organizational
meeting (we will come if you ask).
    f.. Stage a "wildcat" demonstration - be
creative!
    g.. Host a yard billboard - contact us!
    h.. Help with research if you've got the time.
These projects and programs have problems.  We
need to find them.

    i.. Reach out to LANL scientists - encourage
dissent.  Work in the Los Alamos Disarmament
Center.
    j.. Write letters to the editor & guest
editorials and recruit others to do the same.
    k.. Help support our work financially -
contact us or use the secure portal at
www.lasg.org .

Democracy is not achieved by "cookie cutter"
methods.  There is no "one size fits all"
technique.
-- 
Greg Mello * Los Alamos Study Group
2901 Summit Place NE * Albuquerque, NM 87106
505-265-1200 voice * 505-265-1207 fax *
505-577-8563 cell
www.lasg.org

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