Citizen Review and Inspection, August 4th & 5th, 2004
Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories

Invitation Letter

June 28, 2004

Re: Citizen review and inspection of U.S. nuclear weapons facilities and programs

On behalf of the Los Alamos Study Group, a New Mexico based disarmament research and education non-governmental organization, I would like to invite you to participate in a fact-finding inspection and review of activities at Sandia National Laboratories (located in Albuquerque, New Mexico) and Los Alamos National Laboratory on August 4 and 5, 2004.

This review and inspection will focus on two key aspects of the U.S. nuclear weapons program:

• " the on-going acquisition of large-scale manufacturing capacity for key new weapons components at Los Alamos, specifically plutonium weapon cores or "pits," and
• " the development of new "bunker buster" and other new nuclear weapons, likewise a growth program.

These programs are central to the aggressive investment in nuclear weapons capabilities now underway in the United States. Subsequent reviews and inspections will take place quarterly, focusing on these and other programs and projects. A schedule for the inspections is attached.

Los Alamos and Sandia are, in dollar terms, the two largest nuclear weapons facilities in the world, with combined 2004 budgets of $4.44 billion. Of this, $2.86 billion (64%) is devoted directly to nuclear weapons. If other nuclear weapons spending adjacent to Sandia is included, more than $3.1 billion - almost half - of the U.S. budget for nuclear warheads is spent in Los Alamos and Albuquerque. These facilities are located on some 79 square miles (20,460 hectares) of land and include more than one thousand significant buildings, including design, testing, production, and waste disposal facilities.

In these inspections we aim to accomplish three things. First, these inspections will provide in-depth education for you and the other inspectors about U.S. programs for weapons of mass destruction, making you a more effective leader in all your peace-making work, whether that peace-making is directly related to nuclear weapons or not. The scope of U.S. nuclear weapons programs is vast and growing; budgets for nuclear weapons design, testing, and production now exceed average Cold War levels in constant dollars, and nuclear weapons programs at Los Alamos in particular have more than doubled in the last eight years. There are no better vantage points than these New Mexico facilities from which to appreciate the scope of U.S. nuclear ambitions and the physical realities behind the U.S. nuclear posture. We will provide you with detailed, accurate information as well as provide the opportunity for you to gain first-hand knowledge from your own observations.

Second, your participation in these inspections will help, in a small but important way, to bring these realities to the attention of the world. There will be media interest and involvement - local, and we hope national and international to some degree. These inspections will help focus and express the collective moral force of humankind toward the goal of nuclear disarmament and will serve as a reminder of the legal disarmament requirements of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Your presence will help inspire activists as well as elected officials, help the U.S. disarmament movement as a whole, help inspire similar independent and coordinated efforts at other sites, and help awaken the latent interest of journalists. In short, the inspections in August and the ones to follow later will, gradually but authoritatively, help anathematize nuclear weapons before a wide audience.

Third and finally, these on-going inspections will provide a focus for disarmament education. Here at the Study Group, we are building a internship program for college students, primarily around these inspections. Future inspections by our organization and others, both here and abroad, will foster education at other U.S. nuclear sites as well as elsewhere in the world.

Past inspections conducted by the Los Alamos Study Group - there have been three - have been quite successful. In December of 2001 the Study Group and two visiting experts led more than 80 people on a fact-filled tour of Los Alamos Lab. Earlier inspections included visiting experts, journalists, international dignitaries and activists, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as local businesspersons and academics.

The August 2004 inspections are designed to kick off a new and intensified series of inspections, stimulated by the threatening nuclear "renaissance" now underway in the U.S. Therefore if you cannot accept our invitation at this time, please sign up if you can for one of the inspections that will take place during the week beginning November 7, 2004, the first week of February, 2005, the week of May 29, 2005, and again in the first week of August, 2005.
As a member of the citizen's inspection team you will accompany us on on-site and aerial inspections at Los Alamos. Our inspection of Sandia must be entirely "virtual" on this occasion, and will be folded in with a "virtual tour" of the nuclear weapons complex as a whole. You will be briefed by our organization, visiting non-governmental experts, and possibly by cognizant laboratory managers. At the conclusion of each site's inspection, the team will report as a panel to the press and public about the U.S. nuclear programs, with each team member speaking from his or her own perspective.

As for expenses, the Study Group will provide for your hotel lodging (August 3, 4, and 5), food, and transportation in New Mexico. We hope you will be able to cover your own travel to and from Albuquerque. We will provide copies of all written and audiovisual materials for your use.

In closing, let me say that these inspections will be dignified in every way. They will not be demonstrations nor will they be mere theater. We hope you will accept our invitation to take part in them. Please call us with any questions you might have, or if your August schedule does not accommodate this particular inspection, please consider participating at one of the later dates.

Sincerely,
Greg Mello, Executive Director