On a recent Wednesday, ten students filed into a classroom at Northern New Mexico College, in the town of EspaƱola, to learn about the dangers of nuclear radiation. The students ranged in age from nineteen to forty-four. Most of them were in a program designed to train radiation-control technicians to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, which is once again rapidly expanding to supply the nation with nuclear weapons.
Los Alamos was built in secret during the Second World WarāJ. Robert Oppenheimer directed the lab there as part of the Manhattan Project. The town hovers high above the EspaƱola valley, on a handsome mesa called the Pajarito Plateau. Originally, the only way to access the enclave was through two gates. Today, it accepts visitors but remains a company town, housing many of the labās scientists and high-level staffers. The community has a population of about thirteen thousand, and boasts one of the nationās densest concentrations of millionaires. In New Mexico, such wealth is rare. EspaƱola, which sits on the Rio Grande and is a twenty-five-minute drive away, has a median household income of fifty thousand dollars, a poverty rate approaching twenty per cent, and an entrenched fentanyl crisis.