Previously (10/24/26): Santa Fe City Council meeting Wednesday 10/28; report-back from press conference, pit production the most expensive warhead program in U.S. history

Dear friends -- 

Good afternoon everybody. 

First, regarding the proposed Santa Fe City Council resolution. A few of us spoke in the Governing Body (= City Council + Mayor) meeting this past Wednesday during the "Petitions from the Floor." A video of those 2 minute presentations is posted here. You may be particularly interested in what the young persons have to say. 

Thank you, to those who came. 

We will be meeting with interested members of the Council about the resolution next week. Stay tuned. 

The next meeting of the Governing Body is on Tuesday Nov. 10 (not Wednesday as per usual) at the normal place (City Hall, 200 Lincoln Ave.) It is possible though far from certain that a version of the resolution will be on the agenda. We hope you will mark this date on your calendar and be there to speak in opposition to pit production and the expansion of LANL into Santa Fe if you live nearby. 

Of related interest, before the meeting on Wednesday we visited Santa Fe's Midtown Campus, where a number of LANL-related businesses and organizations are taking root, including aspiring businesses in the nuclear fusion supply chain, as well as a plutonium pit machining training program. We particularly oppose the latter. More on that in a moment. 

There are many interesting "aspects" to Aspect Media, the principal developer, and its major tenant the Innovation Hub. Time is limited so we welcome all the freelance research you may do. If you want to work on this, have at it, and please share what you learn with us. 

We have what we think are some cute stickers for you if you want them ("Don't be a lab rat!" and "Nuclear fusion? No thanks!" and of course "Stop the Los Alamos Plutonium Bomb Factory"). We don't have time to mail them, so come to the City Council if you want some. We want them spread around of course. More stickers are coming. 

It might not be obvious but of all the things we might be doing, we are working with the Santa Fe City Council in part because of YOU. Yes it would be extremely valuable if Santa Fe were to formally oppose pit production as it has done before. It is however the process and the participation which is of even greater value in this moral contest.

Second, and regarding our wider anti-war and anti-nuclear objectives, we hope you will join us on Saturday, November 14, at 11:00 am at St. John's United Methodist Church in Santa Fe, at 1200 Old Pecos Trail, when we will celebrate 37 years of nuclear weapons resistance in New Mexico and some of the many people who have been involved with it -- and discuss what we hope to do now. Please join us. Lunch will be served.  

Third, we did attend this morning's Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) press conference with Brandon Williams, NNSA Administrator. Again we apologize for the short notice; it was all the notice we had. Here was our short press release. 

Nobody else there asked any questions but us. (A private session may have followed the public one, probably on-line.) In any case Brandon Williams did not answer our questions very well -- but then he couldn't, because his announcement was about a SNL grant as part of DOE's new program of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel into new forms of reactor fuel, which we consider a staggeringly dumb idea. So from DOE's perspective, the less said the better. It's embarrassing. 

Pouring money into spent fuel reprocessing would ensure the opposite outcomes from what NNSA wants. Like them or not, China is building practical nuclear power plants. DOE is chasing a mystical dream: "the closed-loop nuclear fuel cycle" and all that goes with it. SNL is supposed to find ways to make such an aspiration a "safe, or secure, and cost-effective" reality, using AI no less. It would be none of those. That much is already clear. 

Here's SNL's afternoon press release with a few more details. Our KOB TV interview may or may not be shown.

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As I said last time, we have to cut this off here. There will be more in the coming Bulletin. Thank you for your attention. 

Greg Mello, for the Study Group

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