Albuquerque and Santa Fe, NM --  We are calling this press conference to call attention to the crucial role the City and County of Santa Fe are playing in what has become President Trump's expanding nuclear arms race. 

Santa Fe's role as a bedroom community and spillover office location and public relations hub has become essential to the successful acquisition and operation of a nuclear weapons factory complex at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). 

The factory in question is for the plutonium-containing cores of nuclear weapons, the "pits." It is a $30 billion effort, all told. Current schedules show construction continuing through 2034 (p. 66), but pit-related construction is likely to continue past this date unless plans change, incurring additional billions. 

The proposed combined pit production capacity of the Los Alamos factory, plus the one being built in South Carolina, is before Congress this year. 

Just this past Friday (October 16), NNSA announced that the South Carolina pit production project had cleared a major milestone, allowing for construction on all its subprojects, not just some. 

Making new pits is not needed for maintaining any of the nuclear weapons in the stockpile. LANL:

Pit production to replace pits in the deployed stockpile due to plutonium aging is not required, nor is it planned to occur.  If this situation were otherwise, the NNSA...would have established a Modern Pit Facility pathway and be constructing a “large” production facility capable of producing several hundred pits per year...

Nor are new pits needed for the proposed new warhead (the W87-1) being designed for the new Sentinel missile system under development. Neither the warhead itself nor the pit within it is needed -- assuming one wants the missile system at all. If the missile and the warhead are to be built, the warhead could be built with recycled pits for 1% of the cost of new pits, according to NNSA. 

Continuing to build and operate this growing factory comprises 35% (pp. 44-46) -- more than 1/3 -- of LANL's requested funds for the present fiscal year, which would be a 90% jump in funding for this mission. LANL has always made nuclear weapons components for testing purposes, but to make pits on an industrial basis is altogether a new mission. 

As a result of this program and others, LANL's budget and staffing have grown tremendously, placing large strains on local housing, road capacity, labor markets, and resources (e.g. water). The number of LANL employees has doubled in recent years; most employees now commute to the site. According to Los Alamos County in 2023, 12,000 people now commute into and out of the County daily. 

Nuclear waste generation has likewise grown, delaying the removal of legacy waste from the site for many years already. 

NNSA anticipates tremendous growth in LANL nuclear weapons programs in years to come, including in waste generation and water consumption (p. 29), which is to be 68 times what Project Jupiter says it will need. 

As part of local community response to these alarming developments, the Study Group has proposed a resolution by the City of Santa Fe that would formally express opposition, not to everything LANL does but to the new pit mission, as well as to the further expansion of LANL into Santa Fe (for more explanation, see this advertisement).

Study Group director Greg Mello: 

This situation -- which tremendously concerns Santa Fe -- is evolving, and "Santa Fe" hardly knows it is even happening. It is truly a "deer in the headlights" moment for the region. This huge mission, if allowed to proceed without opposition, will come to dominate the region and the state even more than at present. 

People err when they say the nuclear labs and defense industries already dominate the state, so "resistance is futile." They do not understand how severe the economic, social, and environmental problems traceable to New Mexico's failures of sovereignty and spine could become -- and will become unless more leadership is exercised. 

The sudden onslaught of proposed AI data centers in the state is in part due to the "pollution shopping" effect, which occurs when corporate planners observe that a state is willing to accept pollution and corporate takeover -- in fact may be willing to help pay for it through local government bonds. 

Meanwhile LANL is the stuffed goose of the world's nuclear weapons labs. This year, LANL -- even without Sandia -- will spend enough taxpayer money every single minute of the year to install a solar PV system for a home or office. For this, taxpayers will get basically nothing but additional risk of nuclear war. LANL's main product is risk, not security.