April 11, 2025

We are looking for two half-time Santa Fe based outreach staff to help build opposition to a new nuclear arms race -- contact us if you think you might be interested

Dear friends --

Thank you very much for your support and help!

As we said last time, we are making slow but solid progress. What You Can Do provides some ways to help. Contribute!

If you have not already done so, please endorse the Call for Sanity not Nuclear Production!

This letter will be brief; items of more general interest (of which there are many!) need to be kept back for the next full Bulletin and the ones after.

First, the Study Group would like to hire two half-time, energetic, Santa-Fe-based, outreach persons to help build opposition to the new nuclear arms race!

If you think you might be interested please send an application letter to Trish. Attach any supplementary information you feel might be helpful in assessing your qualifications and motivations.

We are looking for idealistic people with their feet on the ground who are willing to work to prevent a new nuclear arms race, the literal "core" of which is happening in Los Alamos. As Brandon Williams, the Administration's nominee to head up the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said earlier this week in his confirmation hearing, "plutonium pit production was 'right at the heart' and [on] the 'critical path' to restoring the capability to either build new nuclear weapons or refurbish the existing stockpile."

As readers of these letters know, we have stopped pit production preparations before and seek to do so again. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is already far behind schedule ("DOE Secretary Wright says LANL will make "more than 100" pits by January 2029. Is this realistic? What purpose does it serve? Secretary Wright would do well to hearken to Senator Domenici's advice," Apr 2, 2025).

None of us can live on ideals alone. For each of these two half-time positions, we are offering $15/hour base pay, plus a bonus for every additional business, organization, or church that endorses the Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production. We will provide continuous training, full-time support from the rest of the staff and our core volunteers in Santa Fe as well as camaraderie, and all materials that might be needed.

At present, we can only extend these jobs through the end of July. We will need to see what develops by then -- including what has been accomplished in this campaign, and what additional funds we can raise as a result.

By the way, we see this work as having a significant spiritual component. Success requires (and develops) organization, focus, awareness, and sensitivity. Social skills and ideological tolerance are required. Much more than sheer quantitative output -- "getting another sign-on" -- is involved. If you work with us, you will be our ambassadors, with all that implies.

Our Santa Fe and Albuquerque-based teams will be there to help you. Whoever does this work with us will find it to be a memorable and possibly a transformative experience.

Second, on April 8, the Santa Fe County Board of County Commissioners unanimously approved a letter to NNSA which says, in its conclusion, "We firmly oppose any expansion of Los Alamos National Laboratory that continues to produce plutonium pits."

This letter contained the County's comments on the draft Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for the continued operation of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

We had advised them on this matter several times. The final language, while stilted, is stronger than the original draft, which supported the mis-named "No Action Alternative" and only opposed "expansion" of pit production, not pit production per se. (LANL has no pit production capacity. If it did it would be producing pits right now, as it is under a statutory obligation to do so. "Expansion is the wrong concept.)

This letter is a step forward from prior County resolutions. It will be helpful in building opposition to pit production in the region.

The County's draft had already made waves locally (Santa Fe County commissioners raise concerns about LANL expansion possibilities, Santa Fe New Mexican, Mar 11, 2025) and in Washington, DC ("Santa Fe commissioners leery of LANL expansion into Northern New Mexico," Exchange Monitor Morning Briefing, 3/19/25).

Before closing this note, it might be good to remind readers that the so-called "No Action Alternative"in the draft SWEIS  includes all preparations and operations for making not just at least 30 pits per year (ppy) but also preparations for and operations comprising so-called "surge" production of at least 80 ppy, which LANL is currently required by law to do by 2030 at the latest. They can't do that, but they have a mandate to try.

The NAA also includes 88 as-yet-unbuilt facilities totalling 1.47 million (M) square feet in combined size, plus 11 utility and facility upgrades on some 216 acres of land on-site (pp. 3-7 to 3-10), including the new power line across the Caja del Rio.

Finally, I also want to remind everybody that what the Study Group is doing locally is far from all we are doing. We very much appreciate your support.

More soon, thank you,

Greg