BY MARK MUHICH
Chairman
Sierra Club Stop Nuclear Weapons Team

Open Letter To Dr. Thom Mason:

With your indulgence, I would pose three questions regarding the proposed manufacture of plutonium pits at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1. How does LANL seek to avoid the toxic fate of many other facilities associated with past plutonium production and manufacture? Infamous sites such as Hanford WA, Rocky Flats CO and Savannah River SC have all suffered irredeemable radiological contamination beginning with the Manhattan Project. DOE has budgeted over $1 trillion in  “Legacy Costs” for managing these and hundreds of other sites involved with nuclear weapon development.

2. The United States ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1969, along with 190 other states. How can the renewed production schedule of 30 plutonium pits for new nuclear weapons adhere to the spirit and letter of the NPT, Article VI?

Article VI. Each of the Parties undertakes to negotiate in good faith the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early dare and to nuclear disarmament and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict international control.”

3. Albert Einstein famously warned that “We will eliminate nuclear weapons, or they will weliminate us”. On which side of this equation does the production of hundreds of neplutonium pits fall?

Thank you for you attention,