Why is Congress funding plutonium pit production in the 2020s, and thereby squandering billions in yet another gigantic boondoggle at Los Alamos?

July 1, 2020

Dear colleagues --

What follows is incomplete. It grew far beyond my initial intent, yet it is not finished. It tries your patience, I know.

I am sending it now because it captures details, links, and explanations that are not clear or available to many people. If it prompts questions, or provides for you an index to resources you may have but are too busy to study, it will have fulfilled its purpose.

And of course, time is of the essence.

Please feel free to ask me about any of this, at any time. I will continue to try and explicate these matters in as clear and concise a manner as I can.

The introduction touches on some broader issues. Our government is very broken. The fault does not lie with either major party exclusively, or with any particular individuals.

I am not sure what any of you can do about that -- I am in a better position than many of you to act and speak freely -- but it is truly heart-breaking to see our government fail so badly.

Introduction: The NNSA spending hustle: amazingly successful so far this year, with possible structural changes to harm good government even more

It is remarkable that the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee and full Senate Armed Services Committee have authorized a budget for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that is $2.5 billion more than the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), using NNSA's own budget projections, said was required as late as December of last year.

With funding authorizations won't new "programs of record" such as the W93 warhead be created?

Since NNSA has approximately $8 billion in unspent prior-year appropriations in Weapons Activities (a major scandal in itself), I am not sure what, if anything, will stand in the way of using some of those zero-year funds for authorized programs even they are not funded this year -- unless specific language is successfully added somewhere along the line to prevent this.

We can only hope that the full House Armed Services Committee -- which is meeting as I write -- and members on the floor of both houses, will find appropriate and binding ways to question and decrease this sudden, entirely unjustified 25% increase in annual NNSA Weapons Activities (WA) spending and hold back on authorizing new WA programs.

If this proposed WA increase is authorized and funded, even more waste and organized fraud are the certain outcomes.

I just don't know who has the vision and political courage to limit the damage, at this point.

For a rational analyst who has followed these programs closely for more than a quarter of a century, what the Administration and Congress are doing is mind-boggling.

Let me soberly observe some of the obvious signs and portents at hand, since it goes against the unwritten rules for national security analysts at the staff level to do so.

This decade is opening with a pandemic and associated severe economic "recession" (as we may euphemistically call it), neither of which have known end points, and a runaway federal deficit. There are riots. Very soon, tens of millions who have lost jobs that will never return will be unable to pay their rent and mortgages. States, cities, and counties -- which cannot print money -- are now in serious trouble. Many face steeply increasing pension obligations, A wave of bankruptcies is enveloping businesses large and small. We have a trade war.

Political leaders assume that services like public education, the quality of which is often poor to begin with, will soldier on through distance learning and virtual classrooms somehow, but will it? For many children in poor districts (and whole states like New Mexico), a decent education is now more unavailable. Affordable health care -- unavailable to many -- is also more unavailable than ever for those who need it most.

In these ways and many others too numerous to mention, the already-tattered fabric of our society is being ripped apart.

At the national level, the funds needed to repair our society are being hustled by military-industrial interests, which absorb most of the money Congress authorizes and appropriates each year. The level of spending being authorized has nothing to do with national security, except in a negative sense. Today's House Democrats lie far to the political right of Eisenhower on this (his "Cross of Iron" speech, well worth reading again) as well as on tax equity.

As you may remember, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) questioned (pp.  9-10) the long-term affordability of the full suite of nuclear weapons modernization, well before the pandemic and its economic sequellae (and before the last three years of budget increases):

Pursuing nuclear modernization will be challenging in the current environment.... Even if the [2011 Budget Control Act] funding caps were lifted, nuclear modernization would compete with other defense priorities in those years, including proposals to increase the number of warships in the Navy’s fleet, modernize DoD’s fleet of aircraft, and expand the size of the Army. Beyond 2021, budgetary pressures may continue: appropriations for both defense and nondefense programs may be constrained in the longer term because of rising spending on the aging population (for Social Security and Medicare benefits), health care, and interest on the national debt.

Some of us who were at the 2019 (or 2018?) Nuclear Deterrence Summit will remember Everet Beckner cautioning NNSA managers against planning around an assumption of ever-increasing budgets. "You need backup plans" with lower budgets, he said. Earlier this year the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said much the same thing, under the rubric of "portfolio management:"

GAO continues to believe that presenting options to align its portfolio of programs to potential future budgets could help Congress and NNSA better understand NNSA’s priorities and trade-offs that may need to be undertaken in the future.

You can't say it but I can: NNSA's unprecedented budget request for Weapons Activities is a socially-engineered hustle. The highly-privatized warhead and related deterrence enterprise has promoted individuals who are good at promoting their programs and who have propagandized Congress -- lied -- shamelessly.

Even in the military, once the right slogans and narratives are fully internalized through decades of narrow experience in the field, selling optional new weapons and programs may feel like a patriotic duty -- especially if the Executive and Congress signal an abundance of money with a minimum of oversight, as is happening.

Unfortunately, the lack of an actual presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed individual as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters has only exacerbated the long-standing (and since 1996, increasing) lack of oversight of DOE nuclear warhead industry. (See: "Structural Features Making NNSA an Unusual Federal Agency," memo for VP Biden, 2016; "Stewards of the Apocalypse: an abridged history of U.S. nuclear weapons labs since 1989," 2016).

I wish I had time to review some of the elements in this year's draft National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), specifically the section which would give DoD oversight over NNSA's budget and programs. This is a terrible idea for many reasons, not least because it would separate executive power from the responsibility for proper execution. I think many people already recognize this. It would further limit accountability and oversight. I imagine there may be legal issues as well, but those are beyond my ken.

1. There are two new warheads said to require new pits in the 2030s: the W87-1 and W93. Neither are well-justified, especially with their current schedules.

We can find no defensible, rational basis for the development of the W87-1 warhead in the 2020s, followed by a first production unit (FPU) in 2030, the current schedule.

The W87-1 is not needed for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), as there are sufficient W87-0s for that fleet of missiles -- which themselves are poorly justified.

As you know, the W87-0 is a modern, highly-accurate warhead which has already been life-extended and which has insensitive high explosive (IHE). It also has a newer pit, although I don't think the age of the W78 pit has anything to do with the "need" to replace it.

The proposed W87-1 is said to have some new features. But would those features really provide anything genuinely worthwhile? And if so, are they worth the cost and overall executability risk to NNSA's programs? NNSA, driven by its laboratories, tends to value and sell new technology for its own sake.

Pit production is a major, but not the only, hurdle to successful certification and production of the W87-1. The artificial requirement to develop and produce a W87-1 with an FPU of 2030 places NNSA in the awkward position of contradicting its own internal experts, who said in 2017 that industrial pit production could not realistically be "up to speed," i.e. rise to at least 80 pits per year (ppy) until 2033 (p. 2) assuming work began immediately (it didn't). As GAO notes, it also contradicts the assessment of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), who consulted for the agency on this topic at Congress' behest in 2019.

As IDA and NNSA have both said in different ways, efforts to rush construction and installation of industrial pit production in the 2020s are likely to delay acquisition and operation of even a pilot pit production capability at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). As NNSA understood as recently as 2017, there was no point in trying to turn LANL's old, unsafe, crowded R&D facility into an temporary factory, when what is needed (if pits are required) is a reliable, permanent facility in which to make them.

The only reason for industrial pit production in the 2020s is the unnecessary, risky -- and when new pits and other special parts are included, very costly -- W87-1 warhead.

The obvious alternative to rushing into pit production in a second, temporary facility is to delay the W87-1 FPU, equipping a portion of the GBSD fleet with W87-0s, either temporarily or permanently. Even taking that minor step, which is likely to be forced on NNSA and DoD in some form anyway, would eliminate the need for billions of dollars of investment at LANL for the purpose of standing up a temporary pit production plant in PF-4. It is far from clear that such a temporary capability would even be possible in LANL's aging, small, conflicted, and currently unsafe main plutonium facility, supported by inadequate waste management facilities, located remotely from labor markets but adjacent to powerful earthquake faults, and embedded in an institution which has not had a nuclear production mission since the 1940s.

But why build the W87-1 at all? Isn't it -- as one administration official put it -- just a very expensive way to support Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)?

The JASONs have already pointed out the obvious: having two warhead types instead of one may not add confidence if one of those types is brand-new and therefore not-well-understood.

So why is NNSA doing this, and why is Congress authorizing and funding it?

If a warhead suitable for multiple independent reentry vehicle (MIRV) capability is the issue, why would the U.S. want this? It is clearly in the U.S.'s best interest not to MIRV land-based missiles.

Neither can we find any rational basis for a new Navy warhead in the 2030s, now dubbed the W93, especially one with an FPU arbitrarily moved forward four years as it has been, now closely following the W87-1.

Even assuming that NNSA's statutory mandate includes designing, certifying, and building portions of a new warhead for the U.K., we believe the British "Holbrook" warhead is expected to remain in service for several years longer than the desired W93 FPU.

(We do not think the U.S. should continue to shoulder so much responsibility for the U.K. nuclear weapons anyway.)

We believe the W93 is "early to need" by so many years it is not worth even discussing this warhead now.

You may have noticed that this year's Nuclear Matters handbook (at Table 4.2) suggests significantly later replacement dates for Navy warheads than the W93 FPU implies.

For these and other reasons we believe the W93 is being promoted and advanced, and FY21 funding requested, out of purely institutional and pork-barrel interests. One such powerful interest is the desire for LANL to have at least one warhead for which it is the primary design agency, to complement LANL's growing role as a production agency. Senator Heinrich has requested a new warhead for LANL (video, at 46:10).

In fact, as far as we can tell NNSA's entire post W80-4 LEP schedule is based on institutional interests, not stockpile considerations.

These two warheads -- first the W87-1 and then the W93, both with rushed schedules or (in the case of the W87-1) unnecessary altogether, are the only reasons for NNSA's current pell-mell rush to build not just one, but two, pit production facilities -- the smaller one of which has a high chance of failure and faces certain near-term obsolescence -- at a staggering cost and considerable added risk to its overall program.

Having two pit production sites does not create resilience and lower risk when one of those sites is LANL. It increases the risk of having at least one major failure, and it certainly will waste billions.

We can see why NNSA would not want to put old pits into new LEPs and warheads in the 2040s. What we don't see is why any new warheads need be on the table in the mid-2030s or even the late 2030s -- except to support and exercise a bloated nuclear warhead complex stuffed to the gills with new staff in order to complete earlier LEPs on their arbitrarily-compressed schedules.

We can understand a desire for younger staff, but not in the numbers NNSA seeks. NNSA's demographic challenges would be more easily managed at a more appropriate smaller scale, especially if the largely redundant physics laboratories were appropriately downsized while retaining their peer review function.

2. Since NNSA decided to build industrial pit production at LANL, and to "surge" production there in the 2020s to support the W87-1, plutonium modernization spending requests have exploded.

Some of the background for that decision is reviewed below. But first, here is a visualization of plutonium modernization and predecessor program spending since 2000, in constant dollars, to date.

This history and projection does not include funding for support programs and associated infrastructure, such as the large, ever-evolving Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) project (04-D-125) and other supporting programs, construction projects, administration, and internal overheads.

In the next chart, we see that year after year, prior-year cost estimates have been been dramatically superseded by new, higher estimates. (In 2018, NNSA didn't even bother to provide a Future Years National Security Plan [FYNSP]. Congress let NNSA get away with this as well as other omissions in their budget request.)

Where is that cost situated? The answer to that question, at least through 2025, is at LANL, as shown below.

Again, this chart omits some supporting costs -- roughly $250 million more in FY21, according to Senator Heinrich's tally of plutonium spending, including CMRR and a couple of other projects.

We have not attempted to quantify these non-plutonium-budget-line costs for other years, since NNSA does not say what exactly is already included in its plutonium budget line.

How did NNSA decide to have two production plants, requiring ever-larger budget requests and future-years budget estimates?

3. In 2017, NNSA rejected reliance on LANL's main plutonium facility for pit production. After complaints from the New Mexico delegation and its congressional allies and confirmation of a new NNSA Administrator, NNSA reversed itself and now claims to be relying exclusively on PF-4 for pit production at LANL.

In June of 2017, NNSA's Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs (the "Program Secretarial Officer," or PSO, for pit production), made a formal decision that LANL's main plutonium facility (PF-4) in Technical Area (TA-) 55 (dated but useful photo) was too small, too old, and had too many other important missions to be relied upon for enduring pit production (Pit Production Analysis of Alternatives [AoA], pp. 47-48). After extensive analysis in a year-long AoA, NNSA concluded in October of that year that when pit production began in another facility, "PF-4 can return to the research and development mission for which it was built" (p. 2).

The AoA process had begun in 2016 and was completed in October 2017, under Administrator Klotz. It looked at a wide range of possible sites, facilities, and combinations of these for pit production -- almost 400 alternatives in all (p. 23).

By April 2017 these had been winnowed down to 40 alternatives, which in turn were narrowed to these five:

• A dedicated new pit production facility at LANL, the Savannah River Site (SRS), or the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), or
  
• A repurposed existing facility at SRS (new, large) or INL (old, smaller).

The two repurposing options had distinct advantages in cost and schedule over building from scratch (p. 77).

Alternatives that either a) split the production flowsheet (processes, manufacturing steps) between different facilities (a feature of every LANL option in NNSA's Engineering Assessment), or b) split the pit production load between two sites (as NNSA and DoD later chose), were found to be either unworkable, needlessly expensive, or both.

The five "semifinalist" options were then winnowed to two preferred alternatives:

• Constructing a new 80+ ppy Hazard Category 2 (HC2) plutonium facility at LANL, or
  
• Refurbishing the former Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at SRS, now called the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF, photo).

Of these two, NNSA's AoA found that what is now called the SRPPF at SRS would have the lowest risk, the most favorable cost and schedule, and have the greatest flexibility and capacity (pp. 79-81).

Construction of a new HC2 plutonium facility anywhere would be slower, riskier, and more expensive (p. 9).

4. NNSA rejected splitting production between two sites but later, under pressure from the same senators and the Air Force, chose that strategy anyway.

As mentioned, the option of splitting pit production between LANL's PF-4 (at 30+ ppy) and another facility (at 50+ ppy) was analyzed and rejected in 2017. Why?

NNSA found that only 22 additional pieces of equipment (i.e. 133 instead of 111, 20% more) in only 6,350 additional sq. ft. of space (18% more; see table at top of p. 18) would be needed in the 50+ ppy facility to increase production to 80+ ppy (60% more) (p. 45). If the second facility had enough space -- which SRPPF certainly would have -- the extra capital cost of doing all production there would be minimal, much less than the overall cost uncertainty at this point. This point applies a fortiori if an existing facility were already large enough to accomodate the additional equipment to increase production from 50+ to 80+ ppy, as is the case in SRPPF.

Also, it would also take an additional 7 pieces of equipment and 2,000 additional sq. ft. in in PF-4 to firm up production there from a nominal 30 ppy (modeled as an average of 29 ppy, p. 41, which is the AoA's baseline or assumed status quo) to a firm 30+ ppy, which would be necessary for two-site production (p. 46). (This estimate turns out to be a major understatement; see pp. 12-20.)

So splitting production between PF-4 and another facility, the AoA found, would require 50% more equipment overall (201 pieces vs. 133) and associated HC2 space than would having all of the production in one adequate facility (pp. 17, 45-46), not even considering the other supporting costs that would be necessary at LANL (e.g. additional security, waste management, administration -- and as we now know [pp. 12-20], additional production and direct support staff and facilities for the necessary 24/7 operations).

Long before this, NNSA analyses had shown large economies of scale in pit production. DOE's Defense Programs Advisory Group (DPAG) 1998 study of pit production estimated that the cost of a new 225-ppy pit facility would be only 10% more than the cost of a new 150-ppy facility (i.e. 10% greater cost for 50% greater capacity).

These economies of scale assume no other limitations. But what if a site or facility is otherwise limited? LANL is. A few of LANL's limitations are these:

• PF-4 in particular is limited. PF-4 houses a number of missions besides pit production, some of which NNSA believes cannot be interrupted for any length of time. The available space at PF-4 is inadequate for a larger pit production mission (pp. 43-47), even temporarily.
• The available land area in the 40-acre TA-55 is limited -- according to the AoA, only ~2 acres of realistically-buildable land remains, p. A-7. We see somewhat more available land than this, but following NNSA we also question the geotechnical stability of the south side of TA-55 for larger buildings; see the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility, pp. 3-21 to 3-28 and especially pp. 4-43 to 4-45, cited further below).
• LANL's transuranic (TRU) waste management capacity is limited, as NNSA has noted (pp. A-13,14).
• Other LANL-specific infrastructure limitations are discussed at pp. A-2 to A-20.
• Housing is very limited in Los Alamos County, and the local road network is at or beyond capacity. Some 5,000 housing units are said to be needed, but there is nowhere nearby to build so many. The County has formally requested that NNSA give them some 3,500 acres for housing and related development.

Incidentally, and foreshadowing NNSA's decision 20 years later, the DOE DPAG concluded that the limited capacity of LANL's PF-4 (then estimated at 50 ppy) was "not adequate over [the] long term." Whatever that may mean in more precise terms, we are now 22 years closer to it.

Despite knowing it would greatly increase pit production cost as well as risk to existing LANL programs, in May 2018 NNSA chose to split pit production between LANL and SRS.

Two years later, in its March 2020 Draft Supplement Analysis (DSA), NNSA now claims to being relying exclusively on PF-4 for HC2 pit production space at LANL for the foreseeable future.

5. Underground plutonium modules were strongly criticized by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and rejected by NNSA in 2017 -- but were resurrected a few months later as the basis of all LANL pit production options.

NNSA's AoA found that underground production "module" plans at LANL (the "Plutonium Modular Approach," PMA), the plan du jour when NNSA began its AoA (and quite possibly NNSA's unstated plan today), had a high cost and risk of failure, as well as an unfavorable schedule (pp. 46-47, 75-76).

Underground modules had been authorized by the FY2014 NDAA (Section 3117) ("not less than two" modules, to be operational "not later than 2027") as an alternative to the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF). The CMRR-NF was at the time indefinitely deferred (despite being required by law provided it could be built for $3.7 billion, which was far from the case). In August of 2014 the CMRR-NF was canceled, the month after the Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) formally committed to the underground module strategy.

Two years later, in 2016, the GAO found that NNSA and LANL had developed no real plan for the modules and had not conducted even an elementary analysis ("Congressional auditors flay Los Alamos plutonium plans," Aug 10, 2016). A year later, in 2017, when NNSA wrote its AoA, LANL still had no modular plan ("LANL did not provide an official proposal for how this concept would achieve the 80 ppy mission requirement without compromising other required plutonium missions," p. 75). Two 5,250 sq. ft. modules, NNSA wrote in the AoA, would not be enough; at least seven such modules would be required (p. 76).

A few month later, when Parsons Engineering wrote its Engineering Assessment (EA) for NNSA, Parsons noted that LANL's modular plan still lacked adequate radiography capabilities (EA, p. 2-4), requiring transport of partially-built pits back and forth to the Pantex Plant near Amarillo. Parsons also noted that the proposed modules would not have normally-required safety features to protect co-located workers and the public (pp. 2-43 through 2-47) -- a major risk to the whole idea should this truncated approach to safety not pan out.

Avoidance of active safety systems is a design feature of the underground module plan and the major reason for its supposedly-smaller building area and cost savings. It is a required feature of the plan, not a bug.

Without going into details, the support functions, access ramps, and ancillary facilities necessary for each underground production module require several times as much real estate as the working area in the modules themselves. Even without active safety-class systems, the 3-module plan in the EA (Option 2c) consumes all the available land in TA-55.

Construction of seven modules at TA-55 is thus impossible, as the AoA found -- especially if any portion of TA-55 must be reserved for replacing all or part of PF-4 as is apparently the case. (Such replacement may not be feasible. As noted above and in more detail below, the TA-55 geology may preclude construction of large nuclear facilities on the south side.)

Sequential module construction, once plutonium is introduced to the first modules, would be "prohibitively expensive" for security and logistical reasons (p. A-7). NNSA estimates the cost of a Perimeter Intrusion, Assessment, Detection, and Delay (PIDADS) system for the initial modules at roughly $5,324/inch in 2016 dollars, based on recent LANL costs. Moving a PIDADS twice to accomodate construction may be infeasible.

There is no longer any space for a construction laydown area at TA-55 without closing down Pajarito Road for a long time, perhaps years.

Module construction within a PIDADS would be very difficult. Costs within such an area were recently estimated at 4x normal NNSA costs for labor and 2x times normal NNSA costs for materials; schedules are also extended. (The same source says DOE/NNSA costs are, in turn, typically 1.5-2.0x normal construction costs.) (See: Parsons Engineering for NNSA, "Material Staging Facility Analysis of Alternatives," 2018, p. E-2, Study Group files).

There are additional costs at LANL. NNSA has estimated the "hotel load" for module construction (i.e. the overall project cost multiplier associated with providing hotel accomodations for workers) at 25% during module construction and 35% during start-up and commissioning (NNSA, "Independent Cost Review of the Plutonium Facility Four Modular Approach Project," 2015, redacted, p. 4-11, Study Group files). LANL's Chief Operating Officer Kelly Beierschmitt recently stated in a public presentation that 80% of LANL's construction craft workers live in the Albuquerque area, an impractical 4-hour/day commute.

For reasons such as these there is nothing really "modular" about "modules" at TA-55. They would need to be built all at once, as one integrated building.

The 2018 EA nonetheless retained the "module" terminology for all three of its LANL options. All three options utilize PF-4 to a great or lesser degree (i.e. are based on "split flowsheet" production), a strategy rejected as temporary (because PF-4 is temporary) and risky in 2017.

The module plan proposed by LANL -- endorsed in concept by the Nuclear Weapons Council, and supported by the New Mexico delegation -- involving multiple underground modules, with 2-shift pit production in PF-4 until the modules could be completed ("Option 2c"), was the option with the most dilatory schedule, the highest risks, and the highest costs. Parsons distances itself from the module option -- it was not their idea, they say.

The EA calls its other two LANL construction options (Options 2a and 2b) "modules," but they involve construction of alternative single, two-story, above-ground HC2 facilities at TA-55, not dissimilar in concept to the previously-rejected initial version of CMRR-NF, along with a non-nuclear "program support module" for each option (pp. 2-2,3).

Although the EA does not address this, these options must face and surmount the geotechnical issues NNSA identified in 2011 for CMRR-NF (p. 4-45) caused by the combination of high seismicity, the presence of a thick, loose stratum of volcanic ash beneath TA-55, and the lateral proximity of a deep canyon (Twomile Canyon) on the south side of TA-55:

• Potential for static deflection (compression)
• Potential for hydro-collapse, due to wetting
• Potential for excessive movement of buttress, due to dynamic slope instability
• Inadequate resistance to dynamic sliding forces
• Seismic shaking and building response

These geotechnical issues are among the primary drivers of the cost increases experienced in the short history of the doomed CMRR-NF.

6. Pushback from the New Mexico delegation in the fall of 2017

By September 2017, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), where New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich is the Ranking Member of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, was aware that NNSA would shortly issue an AoA rejecting the concept of underground modules at LANL as well as the plan to use PF-4 as an industrial pit facility. In a September 20, 2017 letter very likely drafted with the cognizance of Senator Heinrich, SASC Chairman John McCain (who was at the time quite ill with an aggressive brain cancer) and Ranking Member Jack Reed expressed their profound concern that NNSA might be about to take pit production away from LANL and its "modules."

By November 17, the New Mexico senators had managed to backstop LANL's pit-making role with a "preemptive strike" against the findings of the AoA in the FY2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) ("NM senators make it harder to move ‘pits’ from Los Alamos, Albuquerque Journal, Nov 17, 2017; "Moving Pit Production From New Mexico Would be Harder Under NDAA," Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, Nov 17, 2017).

When a single page of the AoA congressional briefing was leaked to this organization ("Study: LANL may not be best for pit-making," Albuquerque Journal, Dec 2, 2017), Senator Heinrich produced the McCain-Reed letter in rebuttal ("Senators: Keep ‘pit’ making at Los Alamos," Albuquerque Journal, Dec 4, 2017).

Senators Udall and Heinrich and Congressman Ben Ray Lujan immediately released a joint statement supporting pit production at LANL ("Questions Swirl About Plutonium Pit Production at US Lab," US News & World Report, Dec 4, 2017), saying "It's hard to see how NNSA could justify uprooting and recreating the mission somewhere else will save time and money." They called NNSA's AoA “deeply flawed”and called for a comprehensive review of the AoA by the Nuclear Weapons Council ("Report shows LANL competing with South Carolina site for pit production beyond 2026," Santa Fe New Mexican, Dec 5, 2017).

When the other 8 pages of the AoA briefing slides were leaked to this organization and summarized in the news media, these three New Mexico Democrats claimed erroneously that the AoA had not considered "modules" and suggested that the AoA analysis had somehow shortchanged "safety," when in fact it is LANL's module plan which does that, as noted above ("Heinrich, Udall, Luján: Plutonium pits report ‘inherently flawed’," Santa Fe New Mexican, Dec 20, 2017; NM senators, rep push back at LANL skeptics, Albuquerque Journal, Dec 26, 2017 with published comment by author). Their joint statement errs in other factual ways as well, but the main point of their letter was not factual but rather political. As we shall see it registered fully with NNSA.

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There is a lot more to this story, but I need to truncate this memo here, or it will arrive too late to have even a whisper of a chance to make much difference in this year's legislation.

Take care of yourselves please, and write or call if you have any questions at all.

Very best wishes to all of you,

Greg Mello and Trish Williams-Mello