That is no need for speed other than the National Nuclear Security Administration’s and LANL’s aggressive agenda to get unneeded plutonium “pit” bomb core production established as a fait accompli by stripping safety standards and blocking independent oversight before the lack of true need and the astonishing costs are publicly recognized.
There is no need for speed because no future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, it is all for new-design nuclear weapons for the new nuclear arms race that threatens us all. Further, these new-design nuclear weapons could prompt the U.S. to resume nuclear weapons testing, which Trump has already threatened. This would have disastrous international proliferation consequences (Putin has already said Russia will test if the U.S. does).
The Department of Energy and the NNSA have been on the independent Government Accountability Office’s High Risk List for project mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ dollars ever since the GAO started the List in 1991. The NNSA is going to spend $4 billion at LANL and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina for pit production over each of the next six years. Yet the GAO has repeatedly stated that NNSA has no credible cost estimates for its most expensive and complex program ever.
Plutonium pit production at LANL will cause more contamination and radioactive wastes.
NNSA assumes it can use the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southern New Mexican as the dump for future bomb-making wastes until ~2080, fundamentally changing WIPP’s mission from cleanup to supporting expanded production of new-design nuclear weapons. This is in direct conflict with the New Mexico Environment Department, which wants disposal of LANL’s Cold War legacy wastes prioritized over new radioactive bomb wastes.
LANL wants to “cap and cover” some half-million cubic yards of radioactive and toxic wastes, leaving them permanently buried in unlined pits and trenches as a perpetual threat to groundwater. LANL used to deny that groundwater contamination was possible. Last year it was confirmed that the Lab’s mile long, half mile wide, 200-feet deep toxic chromium plume had migrated unto San Ildefonso Pueblo.
NNSA and LANL aggressively rushed into expanded plutonium pit production without undertaking public review required under the federal National Environmental Policy Act. Nuclear Watch New Mexico forced them to do so with a successful lawsuit. However, the resulting draft programmatic environmental impact statement completely failed to mention Project Velocity and its potentially dangerous impacts. Moreover, there was no discussion on how they are illegally restricting the access of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, our only source of information on LANL’s chronic pattern of nuclear safety incidences.
It is wonderful that members of the New Mexico State legislature are concerned (I salute them). But ultimately these are federal issues. Where is Fernandez, Heinrich and Lujan in all this? Given that they support unnecessary, exorbitant, polluting plutonium pit production at LANL, the least they could do is to help ensure that it is safe. They should be strongly pushing back against Project Velocity and illegal efforts to restrict the access of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
