NYTimes Oped: A Nuclear Facility We Don’t Need By GREG MELLO

November 14, 2011  New York Times

A Nuclear Facility We Don’t Need

By GREG MELLO

Los Alamos, N.M.
It has been over 20 years since the end of the cold war, and yet the United States continues to spend enormous sums on its nuclear arsenal and related programs. In fact, rather than looking for ways to save money in this budget-conscious time, the National Nuclear Security Administration is asking for even more money to build one of its most unnecessary projects yet: a second big plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The facility, which the administration says it needs to produce more nuclear warhead cores, called pits, would cost between $4 billion and $6 billion to build, and roughly a quarter billion a year to operate. Strikingly, despite the decade (and about $450 million) spent developing the proposal, the administration still doesn’t have a firm cost estimate or a final design. That hasn’t kept it from asking for money, though: this year it is requesting an additional $270 million to continue planning, part of a proposed $621 million increase for warhead management.
A better cost estimate may be available in early 2013, when the final design nears completion, though the administration hopes to begin construction long before that, in January 2012, if Congress allows it. Even after that, experience strongly suggests that further cost increases are likely between now and 2023, when the project is expected to finally come online. By then it will be needed even less than it is now; by the time it is completed the entire nuclear arsenal, except for cruise missile warheads, will have been successfully upgraded without this investment.
The laboratory needs fewer grand ambitions, not more space. Its existing plutonium facility, which has about twice the space inside as the proposed one, already has a high-capacity manufacturing line that takes up just a third of the building. Why does the nuclear administration need to produce more pits, let alone at a faster rate? Scientists agree that the existing stock of pits will last a century or so without replacement. There are also large reserves of extra warheads and pits for each delivery system, more than enough to replace every warhead and bomb deployed.
The nuclear administration says it needs more capacity to facilitate large-scale production of pits for “replacement,” i.e., to produce new types of warheads. It optimistically claims that such new designs can be certified in the absence of nuclear testing. The new building would be built to handle the large steel tanks needed for the explosive “subcritical tests” and “scaled experiments” that are considered helpful in certifying these otherwise untested replacement warheads.
The new building would also house a large new vault containing “the plutonium stores of the nation,” as Don Cook, the administration’s deputy director, has said. Yet the administration already has nuclear storage facilities in South Carolina and Nevada, which are more than sufficient. Meanwhile, it is spending additional billions on other questionable plutonium facilities to dispose of excess plutonium around the country and is even emptying a large modern plutonium facility in Livermore, Calif.
One reason the facility’s estimated costs continue to rise is a new appreciation of how the region’s seismic profile affects the design of the facility. The proposed facility would sit above a thick layer of loose volcanic ash, which amplifies seismic accelerations and provides little resistance to sliding. The entire Los Alamos laboratory complex sits on a fault system capable of shallow magnitude 7.3 earthquakes that give rise to sharp high accelerations.
To top it off, the administration is still not even sure how to design the building: whether to anchor the bunkerlike structure deep in the mesa or let it “float” up near the surface, its upper part protected by earthen berms.
There are alternatives — simpler, faster, cheaper and safer ones — but the nuclear administration refuses to examine them. For example, it could make better use of existing facilities, which were very costly to acquire and are very expensive to maintain and make safe, but which are not being used efficiently. But the nuclear administration and its predecessor agency within the Department of Energy have been continuously on the Government Accountability Office’s watch list of agencies most prone to waste and poor management since the list began 20 years ago.
Even setting these criticisms aside, the case for building more nuclear weapons, at a time when the United States’ arsenal is already by far the most sophisticated and most expensive in the world is growing harder to make. The Congressional supercommittee, which will soon wrap up its plans for cutting federal spending, might or might not want to touch the politics of maintaining our nuclear arsenal — but cutting resources for this dangerous and unnecessary project should be something every member of Congress can get behind.

Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear disarmament advocacy organization.

Model Resolution to Use to Force DOE, NNSA, and LANL Compliance With the Law

I have decided to post a draft resolution to those who recognize that “something is not quite right here”, when DOE, NNSA, and LANL insists that the “CMRR is needed”, despite a tenfold increase in cost. No business man would stay in business if he did not reevaluate his investment strategy when the price of his preferred investment had increased tenfold. To give a scale to what is at stake here,  the  Sunday, Oct 17, 2010 Parade insert that accompanies most NM papers had a picture of Hoover Dam on its cover. That lead story reported:

At a cost of $108 million (or $1.7 billion in today’s dollars), the Hoover Dam was a mammoth construction project. Some 6 million cubic yard of rock were dug up, and 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete poured….

Current estimates of concrete for the CMRR (mostly to mitigate the problem of building a plutonium facility on top of a seismic fault) are for 10% of that concrete; dollar costs are more than double, and already approaching three times the cost of Hoover Dam. If the current rate of cost increases continue, the facility will cost thirty times what Hoover dam costs. 

At what point does the public, DOE, NNSA, and LANL say ENOUGH. This project is absurd?

While there is evidence that even Secretary Chu recognizes the absurdity of “continuing construction” w/o such an evaluation, it is not clear whether the DOE intent is to follow the law. We have a procedure in place to protect the American Public from major waste by requiring an Environmental Impact Statement that mandates honestly defining the purpose of an investment, making the effort to list and study all reasonable alternatives – including BOTH what would happen if the project was not enacted as well as at least one alternative that is outside of the “jurisdiction of the lead agency”.

So until I hear that Secretary Chu acknowledges that this project is too different (the tenfold increase in costs, by itself, is enough to be too different) I will not be convinced that effort is not continuing to feather the nuclear weapons industries nest, rather than do what’s best, as the law mandates.  So Secretary Chu, what is it –“Follow the law and do what the law requires”, or “Look for loopholes to continue to protect the nuclear weapons industry”, as the late Stewart Udall warned us about.

So here is a draft resolution, to use as a model for each governmental or business organization to pass, to stop this hemorrhaging of funds that makes us poorer and less secure.

RESOLUTION

The ______________________ hereby supports halting any and all work on the proposed CMRR Nuclear Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory until a new and full Environmental Impact Statement with scoping is completed by the Department of Energy.

WHEREAS, our community is within the impact area of the proposed $4 to $6 billion dollar plutonium processing plant (known as the CMRR Nuclear Facility) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) we therefore have serious concerns regarding adverse effects on the quality of our air, soil, water and the health, welfare,  and economic well-being of our citizenry; and

WHEREAS, a serious accident during operation, or spill during transportation of nuclear material or waste associated with the proposed plutonium plant could affect our community very adversely, including in ways for which our first responders  and hospitals are not trained or equipped to respond.

WHEREAS, Economic impact studies have not been done on the effects of said plutonium plant on tourism, which is a critical source of income for our community, and on the real estate market; and

WHEREAS, NEPA requires public notice and comment of proposed plutonium processing plant, and recognizing  no such due process has been given to the pueblos or any of the communities of Northern New Mexico ; and

WHEREAS, The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) states that an EIS is to serve as an important contribution to the selection of the best alternative, and “will not be used to justify decisions already made”;

WHEREAS, the cost of the CMRR has increased at least ten-fold and the scale and impacts of the project have greatly expanded as well;

WHEREAS, prudent fiscal management and NEPA mandates that cost and economic well being must be considered in designing and selecting alternatives, and a more than ten-fold cost increase makes it highly unlikely that the current alternative is still the most cost effective one,

WHEREAS, only a full and complete new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) would provide the public with enough information about the current proposal, one which only marginally resembles the proposal under which a 2003 EIS was undertaken, 

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE __________ THAT ___________ BELIEVES 

1) THAT A NEW ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FULLY COMPLYING WITH NEPA MUST BE COMPLETED BEFORE ANY FURTHER FUNDS ARE SPENT, CONTRACTS LET, OR CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITY ALLOWED THAT IS RELATED TO THE CMRR NUCLEAR FACILITY AND   

2) THAT THE NATURE OF CHANGES TO THE PROJECT PRECLUDE, AS INSUFFICIENT AND INAPPLICABLE, A MERELY SUPPLEMENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT.

Chu Asks for New Review of Lab

Possible good news:

John Fleck at the Albuquerque Journal reports:

Chu Asks for New Review of Lab 

The head of the Energy Department has launched another review of a proposed multibillion dollar plutonium lab, along with a similar project in Tennessee, amid concerns about the projects' costs.
        Energy Secretary Steven Chu has asked for an independent committee of experts with "no stake in the outcome" to review the need for the two projects, according to an agency statement.
        The proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement building at Los Alamos would replace a 50-year-old lab that works with plutonium. Federal officials have repeatedly argued that the building is vital for the lab's nuclear weapons work. It is years behind schedule, and its current price tag of at least $4 billion is already far over its original budget, despite the fact that design work has not yet been completed.

Read more here.

I am pursuing how sincere and objective this effort is and will report back when (and if ) I learn more about whether this truly is an " independent committee " with " "no stake in the outcome".

We have been arguing long and hard of the desirability of reviewing "the need" for the CMRR.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must report that I did my graduate work in economics at UCLA under Armen Alchian.  If one learns nothing else from Armen, one realizes that "needs" is a term that has value only if one does not wish to discuss the merits of a sale, but tries to frame the discussion in such a way as to preclude other options from being considered.

So...... until DOE Secretary Chu stops using the term "needs", paint me more than dubious.

I should also disclose that my late father worked in weapons design for most of his career, including various stints at RAND "studying nuclear weapons effectiveness."

Santa Fe Council of International Relations – Responding to a Steve Clemons Challenge

This post was written partially in accepting a challenge by Steve Clemons in his post

where he stated:

Complaining and whining about government and spending and better leadership is easy -- but actually developing sensible, workable policy frameworks and alternatives is hard. But it's what we have to do.

So what I suggest to Larry Wilkerson in his upcoming SFCIR event (and to Richard Rhodes in future book promotion events):

Be clear and honest in terms of describing what attendees can expect by attending.

And to the SFCIR I suggest:

How about hosting an event where the topic of "eliminating nuclear weapons" is actually discussed, by those that see their elimination as a serious alternative? That have actually worked to eliminate, rather than promote, nuclear weapons? An obvious participant would be Greg Mello, of the Los Alamos Study Group, whose group has filed a lawsuit against DOE, NNSA to force compliance with NEPA, and stop construction of the CMRR until an EIS has actually been performed. I would also like to be on that panel. And unlike the last panel’s insistence on a one sided viewpoint, I would even be willing to include one of the SFCIR panelists, Steve Younger. Other nuclear abolitionists in the Santa Fe area might include Scott Kovacs and Joni Arends.

The person [Nicholas Thompson, the grandson of Paul Nitze] who wrote the NYTimes review of Twilight wrote:

Though subtitled “Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons,” Rhodes’s new book doesn’t really deliver on that last phrase…

and

How do we reduce the number of nuclear states? Will the United States ever commit to unilateral reductions and hope that Russia, and then everyone else, follows? Will weapons eventually have to be handed over to the United Nations? Should the international community centralize authority over all civilian nuclear power, since that is the habitual cover for bomb makers? There are unfortunately few people working on these questions, and the world’s shunning of the topic means that “The Twilight of the Bombs” probably doesn’t actually describe a real twilight.

BTW, Paul Nitze (the Hawk in Nicholas Thompson’s book “The Hawk and the Dove” ) wrote the famous NYTimes OpEd “ A Danger Mostly to Ourselves” where he advocated:

“The fact is, I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons. To maintain them is costly and adds nothing to our security.”

Strange that the panel could not find the path to eliminating nuclear weapons that the once super hawk saw so clearly.

But the composition of the panel and Upton Sinclair’s observation- “"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it” – clears that up.

We should have expected an effort to “sell” a vested interest product- the CMRR- to the public and try to counter the LASG lawsuit.

Richard Rhodes and Panel Discuss Elimination of Nuclear Weapons"- NOT

For those following nuclear weapons there was this recent forum, marketed by the Santa Fe Council of International Relations

with the Headline:

"Richard Rhodes and Panel Discuss Elimination of Nuclear Weapons"

which actually turned out to be a marketing effort for "nukes forever", why we can't ever eliminate them, and how we should be thankful for the technical expertise on "our side" protecting us from "them". Lots of talk about how to look for the bogeyman under every bed, and not a clue that what matters and keeps us safe is what is in out hearts, or how to translate that concept into workable operations.

The panel reminded me of the story of a drunk looking for his keys on his lit porch, rather than down the dark driveway,where the keys were dropped, "because he can see better there".

from the LANL site:

Expert panel
The panel, consisting of the author and former Director Browne; Damon Giovanelli, former Lab director of Physics Research; Terry Hawkins, acting director of the Lab's Office of Counterintelligence; and Steve Younger, former director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, will discuss the future of nuclear weapons. The discussion, facilitated by Jay Davis, president of the Hertz Foundation and a National Security Fellow at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will address issues, such as:

• the nuclear threat to the U.S.
• vulnerabilities of Western society
• challenges and risks to the U.S. and her allies as the stockpiles declines
• possible international initiatives.
  

Nothing here about "exploring world without nukes" - but then what do you expect from a panel loaded with those making a living from nuclear weapons, and excluding those that think one needs to look and understand what is in one's heart rather than in one's hidden armory? That is clueless that love is an art, and more about developing the capacity to love others, rather than making yourself "lovable" in the romance market. Are they aware that three of the ten editors in my Erich Fromm Book, the World Perspective Series, were giants in the development of the first atomic weapon- Neils Bohr, I.I. Rabi, and J. Robert Openheimer?

Do they tell the public of the nuclear abolitionists among those early scientists? Of Hans Bethe's admonition, the open letter to weapons scientists, written in 1995:

"I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons."

Do these panelists think themselves smarter that Bethe? Than Joe Rotblat? Than Leo Szilard? I.I. Rabi?

At least LANL was honest whereas the Santa Fe Council of International Relations was not. Or was the Council merely duped?

"America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." was clearly not on the table

I for one would have liked to have known that this was to be a LANL marketing effort for the CMRR before driving down from Taos and spending $20.00

“There is nothing comparable in our history to the deceit and the lying that took place as official Government policy in order to protect [the nuclear arms] industry.

P. 294 in Dan O’Neill “The Firecracker Boys”.

"More and better bombs. Where will this lead . . . is difficult to see. We keep saying, 'We have no other course'; what we should say is, 'We are not bright enough to see any other course.” -- David Lilienthal, former AEC Chairman

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

“For as one’s thinking is, such one becomes, and it is because of this thinking that thinking should be purified and transformed, for were it centered upon truth as it is now upon things perceptible to the senses, who would not be liberated from his bondage?”

– Maitri Upanishad 6.34.4.6

"When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are his pockets" --- Sri Ramakrishna