|
|
|
January 9, 2024 Four upcoming events in Santa Fe: a) volunteer mtg TOMORROW, Jan 10, noon; b) City Council mtg Jan 10, 6 pm; c) study session re new LANL power line Jan 11, noon; c) public meeting re power line, 4 pm Previous letter, 01/05/24: Four upcoming events in Santa Fe: a) volunteer mtg Monday, Jan 8, 11 am; b) City Council mtg Jan 10, 6 pm; c) study session re new LANL power line Jan 11, noon; c) public meeting re power line, 4 pm. We canceled the Jan. 8 meeting due to weather. Permalink for this letter. Prior letters to this New-Mexico-oriented list. Good afternoon! Apologies for the late notice but tomorrow (Wednesday, January 10), we will have a volunteer work meeting at Chomp (505 Cerrillos Road, map), from 12 noon to 2 pm. We will be working on recruiting endorsers for the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production," plus there will be time for some discussion and meeting new friends. We have several approaches in mind and will look forward to seeing those of you who can come. Then, please come to the Santa Fe City Council meeting at City Hall (200 Lincoln Ave., map) on tomorrow at 6 pm to show your support for a City resolution opposing all pit production at LANL. As we said last time, after the 1/1/24 installation of new city councilors, only Jamie Cassutt remained to support the original resolution. These two good articles will give you an update on most recent developments:
We can provide more of an update on the status of this resolution tomorrow. Then on Thursday, January 11, we will have a noon study session in Santa Fe, again at Chomp, re LANL's proposed new transmission line across the Caja del Rio. THEN, that evening, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is hosting a public meeting about this power line at 4 pm at Santa Fe Community College (6401 Richards Ave., map). We will send out talking points tomorrow or Thursday. We are noticing that while there seems to be a fair amount of opposition to this power line, a lot of the opposition takes the form of asking for more time to comment, or different or better environmental analysis on the part of the Department of Energy. That is fine and proper and we agree. HOWEVER it is not opposition to the power line. These hearings under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are important public fora because they are often (and in this case so far) the ONLY public fora. They are for us to network and to protest, and for the news media to witness on behalf of all parties as is their job. Unfortunately these hearings also serve the function of fooling many people into thinking that somebody at DOE or the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is going to listen and take the public's sincere comments to heart. It would be foolish to think that. NNSA, the nation's nuclear weapons agency, will get away with precisely as much tyranny over public resources (money, land, sacred sites, careers) as they need and believe they can get away with. It is up to us to change what they can get away with. As you will shortly see from us, LANL's "power grab," to be carried out via this transmission line, is costly to other electricity users, especially if renewable energy is involved. And the power capacity increase is all -- 100% -- for nuclear weapons. No other LANL mission, and nothing in the civilian Los Alamos power grid, requires the growth in capacity that LANL wants. Don't even think about solar panels supplying this. The power LANL needs would (ballpark) a million solar panels. You can do the math yourself. And then the batteries. There isn't a useful wind resource at LANL. Perhaps some of you may propose that LANL build itself a nuclear power plant to power its nuclear weapons enterprise. Nuclear power is after all LANL's largest "clean power" program. If you can go in person on the 11th, it would be important to do so even if you know little or nothing about the proposed power line. This is our meeting as much as it is NNSA's and we can use it to our benefit. If you can't, here's how to show up virtually along with other details, via LANL (go to the link for more background; again we will be putting out a fact sheet/talking points in the next day or two):
More soonest, and best wishes to all, Greg |
|||
|
|
|||
|