Project Velocity: The name alone should be enough to strike terror into the hearts of New Mexicans, After, of course, they understand that it is a call for, among other things, speeding up Los Alamos National Laboratory’s production of devices that trigger nuclear weapons.
Santa Fe New Mexican | September 24, 2026 santafenewmexican.com
The Trump administration and the Department of Energy apparently feel the need. The need for speed. Even in a situation where extreme caution should be a top priority.
A particularly troubling symptom of the administration’s disregard for public safety is the status of an organization called the U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The body, created by Congress to oversee the safety of nuclear operations managed by the federal government, is supposed to have five members. It has one.
That one, Patricia Lee, has told Congress that her agency’s operations are being stonewalled on at least two fronts. The president has not nominated anyone to fill the vacancies on the board and, without a quorum of at least three members, it has no power to act.
Even if the board’s seats were full, it can’t do its job without more information from DOE, LANL and other federal agencies that handle, produce and dispose of nuclear devices and materials.
It seems clear that the administration is keen to push LANL and other federal nuclear labs to work faster.
The New Mexico facility, particularly, is being tasked with making more so-called plutonium pits, the internal triggers for thermonuclear weapons. And one way to do anything faster is to decide that safety protocols are for wimps.
Members of the New Mexico Legislature are appropriately worried and angry.
State Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, is chair of the Legislature’s Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee. He recently called the lack of concern for safety at LANL a “four-alarm fire moment,” a situation that is “putting New Mexicans’ lives directly at risk.”
Steinborn is rightly concerned, and he could use some help from New Mexico’s congressional delegation, from the governor and the next one with a push from constituents.
What the government has not explained is why there is a need for haste in the creation of new nuclear weapons. Don’t we already have enough of those to destroy the world many times over?
Even if we need more, or better weapons, there’s no need to set aside reasonable safety concerns in the process.
The last time the Trump administration created a project with such an accelerationist name, it was Operation Warp Speed, the push to create and distribute a vaccine for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Given that millions were dying of that disease all over the world, the metaphor of a faster-than-light vehicle was appropriate. And successful.
And, of course, the origin story of LANL is the Manhattan Project, a rush to create the world’s first atomic weapon, with what would now be considered far too little concern for safety. But that made sense, as some of the smartest people on the planet were then reasonably worried that, without haste, the Nazis would get to the bomb first.
No such threat exists today. We are smart enough to deliberate over whether the United States really needs more thermonuclear triggers. And, if so, to figure out how to make them with proper concern for the safety of those working at the lab, and all the rest of New Mexico. No need for speed.