For immediate release February 10, 2021

Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab to open offices in Santa Fe

Shift in identity, values feared for "Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis"

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-577-8563 cell
Permalink * Prior press releases

Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico -- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) today announced it had signed a 10-year lease on a 28,000-square-foot building in downtown Santa Fe, according to the vigilant Los Alamos Reporter (LAR), which first broke the story. The building will house up to 75 workers, provide space for meetings and events, and will serve as a teleworking hub.

LANL and its parent federal agency the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have sought leased space to house LANL's expanding staff for much of 2020 ("Warhead agency seeks to lease office and warehouse space within a 50-mile radius of LANL," Jul 21, 2020; "NNSA seeks to lease office, light lab, and warehouse space within 50 miles of LANL on urgent basis," letter to congressional colleagues, Jul 23, 2020). NNSA has approved leasing of up to 180,000 sq. ft. of real estate for these purposes, a figure LANL has also mentioned in public meetings.

LANL warhead activities spending increased by 49% in this fiscal year over the previous year's level, to $2.91 billion (B), about three-fourths of the lab's budget. If supporting functions are included the nuclear weapons portion of LANL's work increases to more than 80% ( Presentation to the NM Radioactive & Hazardous Materials Committee, Sep 9, 2020, slide 6).

LANL's largest growth sector is the new mission of industrial-scale manufacturing of plutonium warhead cores ("pits"). LANL was formally assigned this mission on September 2, 2020 (here and here). LANL expects to have 4,000 people working on this mission by 2026 (slide 29), more than Rocky Flats had until 1980.

Study Group Director Greg Mello: "We see this development as quite problematic. Santa Fe is the 'Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis.' His prayer echoes down to the present day: 'Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.' LANL's prayer is different. It says, 'Send us money to make weapons of mass destruction,' or in so many words, 'Government, make me an instrument of your wars.' LANL staff themselves have no say in the matter. They do what they are told.

"These are two very different worldviews, normative orders, identities, and ways of ordering society. However imperfectly realized, one upholds civilization; the other brings it to an end. The true social, economic, and cultural development of Santa Fe -- its soul if you will -- is at risk. Pretense can continue, but the life in it will wither to the extent we let LANL's story -- which is, as LANL is quick to say, the story of money -- be our story and our guide.

"We have to choose. Now that NNSA wants to build a plutonium factory in our midst, we can't kick 'The Bomb' down the road any longer.

"The choices for a Santa Fe 'meta-narrative' in a time of ecological emergency boil down to life vs. death -- biophilia vs. the death cult. Compare the "Canticle of the Sun" to Oppenheimer's self-identification with death (video): "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." It is a choice between St. Francis and a revenant Cold War 'Plutopia." Which will it be for Santa Fe?

"We have no intention of allowing this to be a comfortable location for LANL. It is, thankfully, convenient.

"Ohkay Owingeh elder Herman Agoyo once wrote, 'A new generation will have to be taught a new way of harmony, mutual respect, common interest, and love for each other and the planet....Memory and meaning go hand in hand.' I could not agree more. Is that what we are doing here?

***ENDS***