LANL Economic Impact Study: Economic Engine or Distraction? By SUZIE SCHWARTZ
LANL Economic Impact Study: Economic Engine or Distraction?
By SUZIE SCHWARTZ
Taoseños for Peaceful and Liveable Futures
The April 10 deadline for public comment on the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for “Continued Operations of Los Alamos National Laboratory” is fast approaching. In-person and virtual public hearings were held on Feb. 11-13, 2025. Incidentally, or more likely, deliberately, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) released its new Economic Impact Study on Feb. 11, the same day contentious public hearings commenced, where not one person spoke in support of the new SWEIS. and where many questioned and protested the legitimacy of the SWEIS.
The timing of the release of LANL’s new study is part of NNSA’s disingenuous charade meant to distract us from the fact that LANL’s new “missions” actually commenced back in 2020, when NNSA sneakily authorized itself to switch LANL’s missions from a research and development facility to an industrial plutonium pit factory with two Amended Records of Decision. Construction was funded, and then NNSA decided to do a new SWEIS for the pit factory in 2022, a draft of which was released in early January of this year. The new SWEIS is in violation of NEPA, as was recently made crystal clear at the public hearings. NEPA requires environmental impact statements to be completed before a project is funded. The new Economic Impact Study and the new SWEIS are twin shams designed to pull the wool over our eyes.
Very Basic Economics
Roy Cordato, Senior Economist Emeritus at the John Locke Foundation, describes the technique commonly used by special interest groups to garner consent for a project.
Economic Impact Studies: The Missing Ingredient is Economics
“The formula is simple, predictable, and effective. A special interest group that stands to benefit from the project funds an economic impact study that purports to provide hard numbers on the number of jobs, the increase in wages, and the additional output that will be generated by the project or subsidy, and it will do this on an industry-by-industry basis. It makes grandiose claims about how much overall economic growth will be enhanced for the state or region generally. Once the report is completed, the special interest group that paid for the study will tout these results in press releases that will be picked up by the largely uncritical media establishment, ensuring that the political decision makers and others who determine the fate of the project receive political cover.”
Ironically, when the results of a previous study by the University of New Mexico Bureau of Business and Economic Research, commissioned by the Lab to show the Lab’s economic impact on Northern New Mexico, contained data demonstrating the Lab had a negative fiscal impact on Santa Fe, Taos, and especially Rio Arriba County, LANL requested those statistics be removed from the final study.
LANL’s new study is not about a proposed project, but one that is well underway. LANL’s study shows its spending of billions of taxpayer dollars preparing for industrial-scale plutonium pit production, with this statement:
“The Laboratory invests and partners in economic development initiatives and programs that help stimulate business growth, create jobs, and strengthen our communities.”
LANL paints a rosy picture in its study, concluding its presentation with these findings:
Overall, the Laboratory spent:
$1,195,080,080 on goods and services with small businesses,
$155 million Payment in New Mexico Gross Receipts Taxes,
$2,300,924,416 Total Laboratory procurement spending.
Outlined in economic impact studies such as LANL’s are what are known as “Inputs” and Outputs.” Inputs are the resources used in production, such as labor, materials, and capital. Outputs are the goods and services produced. LANL’s primary output, or product, would be plutonium pits. LANL’s study describes the effects of its expenditures on entities that are directly impacted, such as the construction industry, local suppliers, and so on, that will continue until construction is complete. The study also shows what are known as “multiplier effects” where businesses that benefit secondarily from the initial spending, such as hotels and restaurants increase their output, at least temporarily. New Lab employees are spending some of the money they earn, increasing the demand for other products.
Cordato explains that while a project may show results that can be seen directly, it is essential to understand that there will also be economic activities that won’t occur, that otherwise would. In other words, none of one of the impacts are free. Every dollar that is spent and every resource that is used, including labor, has what is known as an unseen opportunity cost, or alternative cost. Starting with the original billions awarded to LANL’s weapons contractor, Triad LLC. for preparations for industrial-scale plutonium pit production, the question is, what economic activities would have occurred if those billions had remained in the hands of the taxpayers? Would it have been spent on various goods and services or saved in local banks and therefore had an economic impact that would also have had secondary, or “ripple effects” associated with it? LANL’s study fails to account for economic activities that aren’t happening that otherwise would, if pit production had not been funded.
A true assessment of the economic impact of LANL pit production or any other project should estimate the losses due to unseen activities and subtract them from the values associated with the seen activities. In fact, Cordato argues that any economic impact study that does not attempt to assess opportunity costs cannot legitimately be called economic analysis.
“Opportunity costs, while real, are by their nature related to resource uses that are diverted from economic activities that would otherwise be pursued and are therefore unseen.”
For example, if it were decided to use the billions of dollars designated for plutonium pits for, say, a high-speed rail system and supporting public transit, how would our economies, environment, and people be affected differently? Would projects such as these benefit society as a whole more than pit production?
“The objective of opportunity cost is to ensure efficient use of scarce resources.”
The LANL study doesn’t cite any alternative possible uses of scarce resources, especially water and electricity, of which LANL requires extremely disproportionate amounts. In addition, if pit production and its associated plutonium operations were not funded, there would be the considerable advantage of fewer radioactive and hazardous wastes to deal with.
The Three Corruptions of Economics
According to Rob Johnson, president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, among the three corruptions of economics, all three of which LANL’s study is guilty of, is the “corruption of omission.”
“The way to study power in a society is to understand the contours of the silences. The silences reveal what’s not said and that’s the clue to where power is.”
The US Department of Energy, NNSA, and LANL are undeniably powerful entities, replete with slick and extravagantly funded public relations machines. Omitted in LANL’s Economic Impact Study is the fact that its raison d’etre is to produce nuclear weapons of mass destruction and that its entire new workforce, procurements, and partnerships with our schools are for pit production and pit associated activities. Only a tiny percentage of funding is dedicated to mitigating the contamination caused by pit production and other nuclear weapons-related plutonium activities. The study touts the new agreement between LANL and Northern New Mexico College for workforce development in cybersecurity and IT areas, but omits the fact that Cybersecurity and IT make up at most 1% of LANL’s entire budget.
Further demonstrating LANL’s corruption of omission, the terms plutonium warhead core “pits” or nuclear weapons arsenal do not appear anywhere in the Economic Impact Study on LANL’s website. Even the titles of the jobs, “Manufacturing Technician” or “Radiation Technician,” obscure the fact that these are the people whose dangerous job it is to make the actual pits or clean up the “un-cleanupable” radioactive contamination. Also not mentioned is the fact that the new pits are specifically for the new W78-1 Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVing) warheads, both of which are components of the unneeded, massively over budget new Sentinel ICBM Missile System. Finally, excluded, is the cost of the new pits. Independent experts at the Los Alamos Study Group estimate that each new pit will cost ~ $77- 156 million taxpayer dollars, including all costs.
The Department of Energy’s press release for the new SWEIS barely mentions pit production in its summary of the three alternatives. All three alternatives include LANL’s enormous new mission of industrial-scale plutonium pit production for 30 pits per year and up to or exceeding 80 ppy, summarized in the Federal Register here.
LANL’s Expansion and the Politicians
While we are being distracted from NNSA’s sham SWEIS process with LANL’s glowing Economic Impact Study, we should be asking if LANL nuclear weapons money really trickles down to the ~ 800,000 people living in Santa Fe, Rio Arriba, Bernalillo, and Taos Counties? Statistics don’t show it. In fact, rapidly increasing poverty and homelessness are in plain sight in Taos, Espanola, Albuquerque, and even more shamefully, in the New Mexico Capital City of Santa Fe. Yet Santa Fe County has passed resolutions in support of LANL expansion and pit production.
Santa Fe County’s 2021 Resolution, 2021-11 calls on NNSA and LANL to further expand its educational opportunities and [nuclear] workforce training efforts, and also to expand procurement opportunities for small businesses in order to generate Gross Receipts tax revenues the County needs for its operations. The resolution also tacitly condones LANL pit production by requesting NNSA suspend LANL pit production until nuclear safety issues are resolved—implying once pit production is made safe, it’ll be fine to make pits. On a side note, the resolution includes a false assertion that the independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which is strictly an advisory board, is authorized to enforce its findings through certification, which it is not.
Currently, Santa Fe County has announced it is preparing to respond to the new SWEIS. The county commission appears to be supporting the so-called “no action alternative,” where buried in the description is this clause: “The No-Action Alternative also includes changes in operations, examples of which include increased plutonium pit production” (emphasis added). LANL will continue on its path of trying to make 30 ppy with a “surge capacity” of 80 or more ppy. This is a departure even from Santa Fe County’s weak 2021 resolution.
Meanwhile, in the Royal City of Holy Faith of St. Francis, Santa Fe is in conflict with St Francis’s prayer, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,” as it appears to welcome LANL’s for profit nuclear weapons expansion into the city. When LANL leased a 28,000-square-foot building in downtown Santa Fe, in early 2021, a LANL spokesperson told the Santa Fe New Mexican, “The lab has been looking for the potential to have a downtown Santa Fe office for a while. We need more space.” Then City of Santa Fe economic development director Rich Brown wrote, “As we look to recover economically from the pandemic, having LANL as a contributor residing in Santa Fe will be a great boost to our entrepreneurial community. LANL’s many agencies bring specialized business assistance in a variety of ways to our community.” LANL and City officials assiduously avoid mention of LANL’s product, consistent with the new LANL SWEIS alternatives and LANL’s Economic Impact Study, that nuclear weapons are why LANL needs to expand.
LANL’s Employee Housing Crisis
At a January 2024 meeting in Santa Fe, Lab Director and CEO of Triad LLC, nuclear weapons contractor, Thom Mason talked about expanding LANL’s footprint, especially to Santa Fe, in response to a question about LANL’s housing problem. Mason explained to a questioner from Michigan, repeatedly saying “expanding the lab footprint”.
“One of the things we have been doing is we’ve been communicating relentlessly with the community and with developers about our hiring plans over the years and that has started to bear fruit. There’s[sic] more housing developments under construction both in Los Alamos and particularly the south side of Santa Fe. What we’re hearing from developers in Santa Fe is about 40% of what they’re building is occupied by laboratory employees. One of the things we have been doing is expanding the lab footprint to Santa Fe. We’ve leased some building space close to interstate transportation. Using those as teleworking hubs helps because it expands the community footprint and we’re exploring opportunities to do more … expanding our footprint for more space for people who are doubled or tripled up in offices. It helps us in terms of expanding the footprint of places that people can live.”
The Housing Crisis for Everyone Else
Meanwhile, it is well known that Santa Fe shares an increasingly severe housing crisis with other New Mexico cities, especially in affordable housing, even as LANL expands its nuclear weapons footprint into Santa Fe and elsewhere. A 2022 article in the Santa Fe New Mexican discusses “key factors,” which include LANL’s expanding footprint.
“Los Alamos National Laboratory has been adding about 1,200 employees a year since 2019 and plans to continue to do so through 2024, with 2,896 employees living in Santa Fe, statistics provided by the lab show.”
According to a February 2025 Santa Fe New Mexican article, many entities such as Homewise, the Community Housing Trust, and Habitat for Humanity are struggling to mitigate the crisis but feel the shortage is worse than ever. Santa Fe County’s 2023 affordable housing plan identified the need for more than 6,200 affordable housing rental units. The county is seeking funding for a private/public partnership with an Indiana real estate developer that will cost $54 million to provide just 160 rental units near Airport Rd on 6.6 acres. (That’s $33700 per rental unit.) “A contractor has not been hired for the project,” the article said. So, by the arithmetic, that still leaves more than 6,040 affordable rental units needed in 2025. Will that number increase or decrease this year or next? Will LANL continue to get support from the City and the County that’s needed for its nuclear weapons expansion?
Is There Another Way?
Santa Fe County bows to the for-profit nuclear weapons enterprise’s hush money, passing resolutions that demand more nuclear weapons money instead of investing in real human needs, while statistics, not mentioned in LANL’s Economic Impact Study, show that tiny Los Alamos County ranks among the wealthiest and healthiest counties in the country, with the most millionaires per capita, and New Mexico remains among the poorest states in the nation, repeatedly ranking dead last in child well-being.
The juxtaposition of multi-million-dollar efforts to chip away at relieving the housing crisis for thousands in Santa Fe, and LANL’s taxpayer funded expansion, needs to be part of the conversation. How is LANL’s parasitic colonialism really affecting Northern New Mexico? Does LANL’s nuclear weapons money, as portrayed in its Economic Impact Study, actually benefit the common good?
For those who want to take action to halt the new nuclear arms race, an easy, free, and powerful way for people to have their voices heard, is to start by endorsing the Los Alamos Study Group’s registry of resistance, “We Call for Sanity, not Nuclear Production.”
To those who say, we have no choice but to be a nuclear weapons colony of the United States Government, I agree that resisting nuclear colonialism isn’t easy. David Lilianthal, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission said,
“We keep saying, we have no other course. What we should be saying is, we are not bright enough to see any other course.”
Can we be bright enough, smart enough, to change course in pursuit of a new economic paradigm that is not based on war profiteering, but instead, where all of life can thrive within the means of our living planet? LANL’s pit missions should be permanently canceled, the billions of our tax dollars should be redirected to human and environmental needs, real prosperity, and peace, and LANL’s Economic Impact Study and the new SWEIS should be thrown into the dumpster.
“The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.”
—Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall
LANL PITS 
NOT HERE!
NOT NOW!
NOT ANYWHERE!
Acknowledgments, notes, and references:
Acknowledgment and appreciation to Institutional Economist Erich Kuershner for providing the article by Roy Cordato and Rob Johnson’s Three Corruptions video, Stewart Udall, David Lilianthal, and Leslie Groves quotations, and for helping me to begin to understand basic economic theory!
Great thanks to the Los Alamos Study Group for the audio clip of Thom Mason, pit cost statistics, Compilation of LANL Resolutions and the “Call for Sanity” and more.
Basic Economics: https://www.johnlocke.org/research/economic-impact-studies-the-missing-ingredient-is-economics/
• LANL website: https://www.lanl.gov/engage/community/economic-impact-new-mexico
• LANL Economic Impact Study released in 2019: “Inequities Edited out of LANL Study: https://www.riograndesun.com/news/inequities-edited-out-of-los-alamos-national-lab-study/article_ea042414-b7f8-11ea-ada6-a7134ccaff97.html
• Examples of “Once the report is completed, the special interest group that paid for the study will tout these results in press releases that will be picked up by the largely uncritical media establishment, ensuring that the political decision makers and others who determine the fate of the project receive political cover.” https://www.johnlocke.org/research/economic-impact-studies-the-missing-ingredient-is-economics/ https://www.abqjournal.com/business/article_98bd6044-c081-11ee-af42-77dee6d31f60.html
https://lasg.org/press/2025/SFNM-economic-impact_18Feb2025.html (To be fair, the SFNM, in a rare instance gave a good amount of coverage to Executive Director of the Los Alamos Study Group Greg Mello’s criticism of the report.)
*The phrase, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” describing the persuasive power of statistics to bolster weak arguments. popularized by Mark Twain is a fitting statement for LANL’s statistics.
The Three Corruptions of Economics:
2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Rob Johnson” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q95p3XF8KAc
LANL Study: The Corruption of Omission (At the SWEIS hearings, the presentation touted these)
- New pipeline programs address critical skills for a growing workforce: (These used to be called “nuclear workforce development pipelines,” which was a euphemism for nuclear weapons workforce development pipelines.)
- The Laboratory has three formal partnerships in place with regional colleges for workforce development pipeline programs. (Omitted: these are all for new pit production missions)
- In partnership with NNSA, the Laboratory also provided funding for additional workforce development programs at 11 regional colleges in 2021, 2022, and 2023 (Omitted: for new pit production missions)
- New agreement between LANL and Northern New Mexico College under the Department of Energy’s Mentor Protégé Program builds capacity for the college and supports workforce development in IT and cybersecurity areas. (IT and Cyber Security make up about 1% of LANL’s budget.) (Nuclear weapons activities make up 82% of the LANL FY 2024 budget request.
- “Solving problems of global importance” is the new euphemism for “National Security.” “National Security” is the old euphemism for Russia/China threats so we need more nukes.
Summary of SWEIS alternatives: https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-publishes-draft-site-wide-environmental-impact-statement-los-alamos-national
Sentinel missile System explained: https://www.exchangemonitor.com/air-force-general-says-sentinel-can-be-tipped-with-multiple-warheads-2/
Independent experts at the Los Alamos Study Group estimate that each new pit will cost ~ $ 77- 156 million taxpayer dollars each, including all costs: file:///C:/Users/eotot/Dropbox/TPLF/FiscalCaseAgainstLANLPitProduction_25Feb2025.pdf file:///C:/Users/eotot/Dropbox/TPLF/PitProductionCostsAtLANL&SRS_13Sep2024.pdf
LANL’s Expansion and the Politicians:
Santa Fe County Resolution 2021 -11:https://www.lasg.org/MPF2/SFCountyResolution_2021-011.pdf
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Board of County Commissioners of Santa Fe County Request NNSA and DOE expand both their educational outreach opportunities and workforce training efforts to further benefit the citizens of SF County;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of County Commissioners of Santa Fe County Request NNSA expand the procurement opportunities for our small local businesses vital to the Gross Receipts Taxes needed for County operations;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT that the Board of County Commissioners of Santa Fe County Request: NNSA suspend any planned expanded plutonium pit production until all outstanding nuclear safety issues are resolved as certified by the independent DNFSB;
City of Santa Fe Resolution 2021-10 https://www.lasg.org/MPF2/SantaFeResolution_2021-10.pdf: BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT that the Board of County Commissioners of Santa Fe County Request: NNSA suspend any planned expanded plutonium pit production until all outstanding nuclear safety issues are resolved as certified by the independent DNFSB;
SF County Commission draft SWEIS Letter with LASG highlights: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#search/greg+mello+County+Commission/FMfcgzQZTgVpbnZtXtPxdXftGpMDhJfl?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1
Summary of the New SWEIS alternatives: https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-publishes-draft-site-wide-environmental-impact-statement-los-alamos-national
LANL’s Employee Housing Crisis: Housing and LANL expansion to SF:
Thom Mason question about LANL employee housing shortage: vhttps://lasg.org/MPF2/ThomMason-housingSantaFe_31Jan2024.mp3
The Housing Crisis for Everyone Else: Partial compilation of material on Santa Fe housing crisis:
2023:
https://lajicarita.wordpress.com/2022/02/23/saving-all-of-santa-fe-county-for-the-future/
Homewise Santa Fe Livability Series: https://homewise.org/livability-speaker-series/
Homelessness is a Housing Problem: https://www.livabilityspeakerseries.com/event/colburn
Santa Fe Association of Realtors: Housing for All in Greater Santa Fe:
“As part of its guiding principles, SFAR works to support a thriving community for all by:
- advocating for measures aimed at increasing the availability and affordability of housing to all residents of Santa Fe in the area where they work, play, and shop;
- pursuing reasonable, incentivized, market-driven growth strategies that meet the region’s housing needs, expand homeownership opportunities, help revitalize Santa Fe, build attractive and livable neighborhoods, thus allowing for continued economic prosperity and acknowledging that housing is a key economic driver in our community; and
- recognizing Santa Fe as an international tourist destination committed to providing a unique and authentic visitor experience through a wide variety of housing and stay options while preserving Santa Fe’s existing historical character, among other principles. (LANL expansion has a negative impact on all of these guiding principles.)
https://sfar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Housing-For-All-in-Santa-Fe-2024.pdf
Office of NM Governor: State Level housing Approach: https://www.nmml.org/DocumentCenter/View/1141/Supporting-Housing-Development-in-Local-Communities
Is There a Better Way?
New economic paradigm: A circular economy is a systemic approach to economic development designed to benefit businesses, society, and the environment. In contrast to the ‘take-make-waste’ linear model, a circular economy is regenerative by design and aims to gradually decouple growth from the consumption of finite resources. https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/the-circular-economy-in-detail-deep-dive
• The Russophobic narrative is not new. Leslie Groves, Director of the Manhattan Project, said, “There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project any illusion on my part, but that Russia was our enemy and the project was conducted on that basis.”
• Interior Secretary and author of the “Myths of August,” Stewart Udall, said in a 1993 New York times interview, “There is nothing comparable in our history to the deceit and the lying that took place as a matter of official government policy in order to protect this [nuclear weapons] industry. Nothing was going to stop them and they were willing to kill their own people. The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality. Until the cold war, our country stood for something.”
