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Residents, Watchdog Groups Oppose Increase in Plutonium Pit Production at Los Alamos Lab
Watchdog groups and New Mexico residents this week have criticized U.S. plans to increase production of nuclear bomb triggers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (see GSN, June 27). The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to increase annual plutonium pit production at the facility from 20 to 80, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported yesterday. The agency needs new pits to refresh triggers in nuclear weapons and for tests of production technology, Thomas D’Agostino, agency deputy administrator for defense programs, said in June. Opponents said the plan would lead to additional environmental contamination and lead Los Alamos away from a focus on research. “We can be assured that accidents will happen,” said Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group. “We just don’t know how severe they’ll be.” The proposal would turn Los Alamos into “a manufacturing center for a new generation of nuclear weapons,” Mello said (Andy Lenderman, The New Mexican, Aug. 9). “Science at Los Alamos is an endangered species,” he added, according to the Albuquerque Journal. Speakers at a public hearing Tuesday in Los Alamos questioned the plan’s implications for the global nonproliferation regime and the laboratory’s ability to manage additional waste. “Currently, we don’t have adequate and safe plans to dispose of waste we have already produced,” said Albuquerque pastor Daniel Erdman. The nuclear agency is preparing an environmental impact statement on the proposal. Public comments are to be included in the document, the Journal reported (John Arnold, Albuquerque Journal, Aug. 9).
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