BY SUZIE SCHWARTZ
Taoseños for Peaceful and Livable Futures
Dear Editor,
Editor’s note: The contents of this letter have not been fact-checked
In the midst of Kit Carson Electric Co-op’s bid to install its massive questionably green hydrogen plants, big tech moving into New Mexico with huge Data Centers such as Project
Jupiter, and the endeavors such as the Project Ranger 1000 acre campus which will manufacture the rocket motors for future hypersonic missiles systems, the biggest and most costly and resource intensive project of all looms at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL.)
Plans for a massive increase in industrial-scale plutonium warhead core “pit” production were
recently revealed by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Deputy for Defense Programs in a “framework” memorandum that was leaked to the Los Alamos Study
Group in Albuquerque. The memo would mandate NNSA to urgently accelerate the “modernization” of all U.S. nuclear weapons programs, including enabling production of 100 plutonium pits/year at LANL with no mention of environmental review.
The nuclear weapons enterprise at LANL obscures much of its nuclear weapons activities with its highly skilled and extravagantly funded PR department; however, this memo spells out the real deal clearly for all to see.
In order to “streamline” the accelerated “modernization” process, the memo stipulates that regulations governing security, personnel reliability, and construction standards will need to be relaxed. Safety standards for plutonium workers will be compromised, thereby increasing the risk of them receiving higher doses of radiation than ever before.
The idea of deterrence, centered in the memo, is entitled, Responsive Today, Dominant Tomorrow: Enhancing American Nuclear Dominance:” Its opening paragraph states, “Strategic deterrence is as critical to U.S. national security today as it has been at any point in history. To ensure the continued supremacy of America’s deterrence posture, we must urgently accelerate the modernization of the nuclear weapons stockpile and the revitalization of its associated facilities and infrastructure.”
What the term “modernization” means is the design, testing, and production of new and upgraded nuclear weapons. Modernization violates the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is the cornerstone of global non-proliferation to which the US is still a signatory. The paragraph further states, “Our overarching imperative is to forge a nuclear security enterprise with the agility and resilience to prevail in an era of renewed great power competition.”
In recent years, there has been much discussion in the halls of power in Washington DC about the possibility of the United States being able to start and win a nuclear war. This kind of rhetoric is absolutely terrifying.
The so-called tactical nukes are as powerful as the bombs that were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Little Boy was 15 kilotons. Fatman was 21 kilotons. Compare those devastating nukes the U.S. dropped on Japan to today’s hydrogen bombs with yields ranging from hundreds to thousands of kilotons. There will be no winners in any kind of a nuclear war.
While the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise continues to beat the drum of deterrence, most of the world is calling for disarmament, and a shift to real diplomacy, with sovereign nations with whom we differ.
Our government identifies countries who refuse to march to the beat of the U.S. Uniploar World Order as competitors, adversaries, or enemies, in order to justify nuclear weapons proliferation, aka “deterrence” and wars of aggression.
During his tenure, Pope Francis broke with the Vatican’s acceptance of nuclear deterrence strategies. He stated in 2017, “The use of nuclear weapons, as well as their mere possession is immoral. Defending the idea of mutual deterrence inevitably ends up poisoning relationships between peoples and obstructing any possible form of real dialogue.”
In 2019, speaking at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima with survivors of the Hiroshima bombing in attendance, he asked, “How can we propose peace if we constantly invoke the threat of nuclear war as a legitimate recourse for the resolution of conflicts? May the abyss of pain endured here remind us of boundaries that must never be crossed.”
There is so much to unpack around our understanding of the nuclear weapons enterprise, the adverse effects on our cultures, environment, worker health and safety, economy, and the enormous amount of our precious water resource needed for their production, it can’t possibly be briefly outlined, but here are just a couple more things for us to consider in relation to what is going on up there on the volcanic Pajarito Plateau.
To get an idea of LANL’s water needs, compare the Project Jupiter data center, which needs 20,000 gal/day to the 1.38 million gal/day for LANL’s projected potable water use under the recently released Site-wide Environmental Impact Statement’s Expanded Operations Alternative, which is from the Biden Administration’s mandate, not even this most recent development! Project Jupiter’s enormous fresh water needs amount to less than 2% of LANL’s.
When asked, most people know very little or nothing at all about LANL’s nuclear weapons activities. But when they get a glimpse of what the “National Security” mission is, the vast majority are adamantly opposed to nuclear weapons proliferation anywhere, but especially in our backyard.
If people want to speak out in opposition to the NNSA’s plans and in support of the paradigm shift that, in order to avoid the nuclear destruction of life as we know it forever, go to STOPTHEBOMB.ORG and join the many individuals, businesses, organizations and religious groups who have endorsed the “Call for Sanity not Nuclear [Weapons] Production!”