September 20, 2023

Come to a meeting to oppose plutonium pit production at LANL in Santa Fe on September 27 at 6:00 pm at St. John's Methodist Church!

Previous letter (08/18/2023): Legislative meeting Monday, gm testimony / City of Santa Fe City strongly opposes pit production, nuclear weapons, LANL expansion for same (Subscribe/Unsubscribe and other links at bottom)

Friends, good afternoon --

Please accept our apologies for not writing sooner. We've been busy behind the scenes on a number of developing nuclear weapons stories, plus we've taken some personal time for knee surgery (Trish).

For those who oppose the growth of nuclear weapons missions locally in New Mexico, and specifically those who oppose plutonium pit production in Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the issues have matured to the point where a larger, practical discussion could now be very fruitful.

With this in mind we'd like to invite you to a meeting in Santa Fe this coming Wednesday evening, September 27 at 6:00 pm, at St. John's Methodist Church (1200 Old Pecos Trail, map).

Our initial outreach about this meeting is already bringing in new faces and organizations. As we noted on August 23, local opposition to pit production at Los Alamos is growing. Pit production at LANL, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), is also predicted to be delayed further than was thought in January and February of this year. Whistleblowers and refuseniks are starting to come forward. The Study Group is growing, as well.

After presenting some updates, we will be seeking your help on some new initiatives of our own at this meeting. Some of these initiatives are still under development, so it is better to not try and list them here.

If you can't come, and don't want a plutonium factory at Los Alamos and want to help do something about it, drop us a line.

It's important to realize that being "against nuclear weapons," or "in favor of nuclear disarmament" (or nuclear abolition, or the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons) is peachy, but such opinions butter no bread.

Greater Santa Fe is the epicenter of the largest nuclear warhead project since the end of the Cold War. Nothing else comes close. Not only is Los Alamos slated to become a factory for weapons of mass destruction for the first time since 1949, but the overall nuclear weapons effort at LANL now exceeds the capacity of the Los Alamos site, as well as the highways serving Los Alamos, and the local housing and labor markets.

One result is that LANL now seeks to open satellite labs in Santa Fe and/or Bernalillo or Rio Rancho. Another is local labor markets, especially in the construction crafts, are being drained of talent.

Another is that LANL now wants to open a nuclear waste dump on-site again.

Building this factory is the largest capital project in the history of New Mexico by far, with the sole exception of the interstate highway system, the cost of which is roughly comparable, in constant dollars, to pit production startup at LANL. Should it proceed it will cement New Mexico's identity in the federal system as an internal nuclear colony. Already, income statistics are already beginning to show greater income inequality as a result of pit production, and that's just the beginning. Money will be spent, but overall there will be economic devolution, not development, from this giant hunk of polluted nuclear pork. A few plutonium princelings and princesses -- poor them! -- do not economic and social development make.

You should hear about some new developments before this meeting. Stay tuned.

Best wishes,

Greg Mello, for the Study Group

PS Official narratives about Ukraine are suddenly cracking apart. Please see our Ukraine page. We may not be able to update that page today due to other commitments, but for sure there will be much more up there tomorrow. It is really important to break the spell of unreality that surrounds this U.S. proxy war, a spell created by propaganda. Anything you can do will be helpful. You might already realize that since the Study Group's opposition to this war was front page news in the New Mexican ("Anti-nuclear activist opposes helping Ukraine, encourages peace," Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 5, 2023), somewhere between one and two Vietnam's-worth of Ukrainian men have died needlessly in this war. The longer it continues, the worse the outcome will be for Ukraine.