Foreign Policy In Focus

That is, six times the cost of the division of the Manhattan Project (to develop nuclear weapons during World War II) that was based in New Mexico. The heart of it -- what later became known as Los Alamos National Laboratory. Odds are, with the Cold War consigned to history, you couldn't have imagined that a nuclear weapons facility of such immensity was still on the table.

Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG), which, since 1989, has been spearheading nuclear disarmament in New Mexico, and, consequently, the nation. Since 1999, it has concentrated on halting or, failing that, downsizing a building project at Los Alamos called the Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR). The intended function of this facility is to increase the capacity to produce new plutonium pits. The actual site of the nuclear fission, they're the beating heart of the warhead. 

The CMRR, writes Greg Mello in a press release, "was marketed to Congress as a $350 million building [but] has grown to an estimated $4.3 billion." The "per square foot of useful space has grown to more than 100 times what [Los Alamos's] existing plutonium facility cost in 1978, in constant dollars [adjusted for inflation]." 

How, you're probably wondering, in these economic times, could we be embarking on an endeavor more vast than the Manhattan Project? If we were, shouldn't it be, instead of weapons, a flagship form of alternative energy?

Cognitive dissonance on our part aside, over the years, LASG devised a plan with the help of a law firm. Under the National Environmental Policy Act they filed suit to stop all funding for and work on the CMRR until a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was prepared. Nor is this just a legal maneuver: a new EIS is sorely needed.

"The Los Alamos Study Group," reads the the original suit for an EIS (apologies for yet more abbreviations), "alleges that the DOE [Department of Energy] and NNSA [National Nuclear Security Administration] have violated the National Environmental Protection Act [NEPA] by preparing to construct [the CMRR] without an applicable [EIS]. . . . NNSA wrote an EIS for an earlier version of the facility in 2003. At that time the facility was to cost one-tenth as much, use one-fiftieth as much concrete, take one-fourth the time to build, and entail far fewer environmental impacts.

In fact:

Many of the project's difficulties can be traced to just a few major causes. . . . Changes . . . helped drive the proposed facility underground [not figuratively, literally] -- into a thick stratum of loose volcanic ash which cannot support it. [Especially since the] magnitude and frequency of earthquakes expected at the site has increased dramatically, requiring much heavier construction.

Said construction would entail (emphasis added):

A new excavated depth of 125 feet . . . and replacement of an entire geologic stratum beneath the building with 225,000 cubic yards of concrete and grout;

. . . 29-fold increases . . .  in structural concrete and steel;

Greatly increased total acreage, sprawling over many technical areas at LANL;

Anywhere from 20,000 to 110,000 heavy truck trips to and from Los Alamos County;

A decade-long construction schedule, up from less than 3 years

Bear in mind that the United States already has "approximately 24,000 . . . tested, stockpiled pits for each delivery system" and "these pits last essentially forever." LASG "believes there are many simpler, cheaper, faster, less risky, and less environmentally damaging alternatives to [the CMRR, which] let alone any other . . . is poorly justified from the nuclear deterrence perspective."

Has LASG's strategy proven effective? On November 15 Nuclear Weapons and Materials Monitor reported (emphasis added):

The National Nuclear Security Administration has suspended all procurements related to the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility while the agency updates the environmental analysis of the multi-billion-dollar facility. . . . The move . . . could jeopardize the laboratory's plans to complete work . . . for the project in 2011. . . .

Spurred in part by a push from New Mexico nuclear watchdogs including an ongoing lawsuit by the Los Alamo Study Group -- the NNSA announced in September that it was preparing a Supplemental [EIS] for the CMRR. [Said Supplemental] hasn't satisfied the Los Alamos Study Group, which is still pursuing its lawsuit and pushing for the NNSA to redo the EIS rather than simply update it. . . . But the [NNSA] study will also include an examination of the alternative of not building the project at all, but rather modifying the existing Chemistry and Metallurgy Research building.

The first highlighted phrase shows the effect that LASG is having on the NNSA. The second shows how pragmatic LASG's tactics are. Although total disarmament is its ultimate goal, it keeps its eye on the first line of defense: curbing expansion and waste at Los Alamos. 

"The simple hallmark of good policy, is to spend less money" 

I contacted Greg Mello and asked him to expand on LASG's strategy. To begin with, he states in one of his press releases:

CMRR . . . should not be desirable to weapons administrators because there are much better, less managerially risky, cheaper, and safer facility options for preserving U.S. nuclear weapons. [And we] have already developed a set of reasonable alternatives to this facility and anticipate working productively with the review team and with Congress.

I just wanted to hear Mello confirm in his own words that the underlying strategy behind the above statements is to walk the world back toward disarmament by working with the nuclear-industrial complex one step at a time. His reply, with my annotation and emphases, follows. Excuse the prejudicial statement, but let's hope that you find it as brimming with insight as I did. 

Consider the matter from two perspectives: a) values, or timelessness, or eternity if you want to put it that way, or an ideal; and b) historical process, management reality, political decisions today, or realpolitik. [Most of our work] addresses both. We have to.  

If we express only absolutist "positions" . . . we will play into the hands of the "antinuclear nuclearists,"* which is a militarist strategy designed in part to emphasize, or capitalize upon, an absence of realpolitik. We will be easily manipulated.  

*Anti-nuclear nuclearism, as LASG defines it, is "a foreign and military policy that relies upon overwhelming U.S. power, including the nuclear arsenal, but makes rhetorical and even some substantive commitments to disarmament, however vaguely defined." Mello continues.

I think we must try to place ourselves in the position of those in government who make real decisions, and offer steps . . . to embody our values. . . . . We are not more pure than they are. . . . . They have a job to do and we have to help them or we are not doing our job.  . . .

At present, effective steps toward disarmament and effective steps toward more effective management of the nuclear enterprise can be the same. How? . . . NNSA believes it must modernize the arsenal, replace old weapons with newly-designed ones, and provide the capability for large-scale manufacturing. It is these goals which drive about one-third to half the existing budget, and all the budget increases proposed by Obama and demanded by Republicans. Wiping out these goals would wipe about about 60% of Los Alamos and most of Livermore. Sandia would be affected much less, and the plants much less still.  

Wiping out all this spending would bring us toward rationality overall and within NNSA. We would [still] be dealing with an abusive, violent relative, to be sure, but he would not also be drunk. 

Mello provides more little-known insights into the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Officially, NNSA has a goal of nuclear disarmament, since the [nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] was signed and entered into force. . . . It also has a goal of nuclear weapons sustainment. [Significantly, though, it] does not yet quite have a goal of modernization, but is sidling there. NNSA ignores the disarmament side of its mission. It could decrease the dissonance by construing its [supposed] deterrence goal [even] in a conservative manner. That would help disarmament a lot.  

We find that all parties who want to understand us (as opposed to those who seek to harm us, which are unreachable anyway), from the hard-core abolitionists, of which we are one, to active weapons managers, understand all this pretty well and respect our attempt to reconcile God and man as it were.  

The golden road right now, the simple hallmark of good policy, is to spend less money. This is almost an absolute good, as I see it. Money spent equals the value of nuclear weapons in society, mas o minus. The chief distinguishing characteristic of the co-opted is that they want to build up in order to build down. They want to build up the [Nevada Test site] budget or the Pantex [nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant] budget in order to increase the rate of dismantlement, for example.

Wrong. Dismantlement eats into [life extension programs], at present, which is just fine. That's how it should be. It's a real tradeoff. Why decrease the pressure on NNSA to choose? They want to build new factories in New Mexico, increasing the budget "in the short run," while there are perfectly good facilities elsewhere. Wrong. The Weapons Activities budget is far too big and should decrease monotonically. . . .

What is real is effectively symbolic. What is merely symbolic is not real. (A dictum of ours this year.)  

So who is the audience, you will ask? That has to sort itself out. The masses are powerless, uninterested, and disengaged, so -- not them.  

Politically, I think we must all recognize that we cannot push what we ourselves need to do onto some posited others who will not ever act politically in any meaningful way, just a sort of "pretend" activity aimed at the next foundation grant, etc. There is a huge difference between reaching to others politically, for actual, effective political action, and reaching to others for mere legitimization of an elite perspective, career, or institution.  

Which, in the end, is why LASG has demonstrated proven effectiveness -- as opposed to impotence on the part of certain disarmament organizations to which he alludes in the preceding paragraph. 

In LASG's November 23 press release, Mello describes the cost and scale of the CMRR as "a bellwether for our society. At those unprecedented prices something -- our society or the project -- has to break. . . . That's part of the point. The folks planning this thing at LANL know perfectly well the sorry state of federal finance. Nevertheless they are bending every effort to make sure the federal government is fully vested in this project before the full crisis hits. Their primary consideration is to make sure they, and the rest of nation's nuclear establishment, end up on top. Social needs, renewable energy, avoiding climate catastrophe, and in final analysis human survival -- all these are expendable goals, just like they have always been in the nuclear bomb business."

The New York Times saw fit to provide valuable op-ed space to John Bolton and John Yoo on November 9. You'd think the latter, especially, best known for providing the Bush administration with legal justification for torture, would be reluctant to show his face -- or byline -- in public again. In this instance Bolton and Yoo are turning their collective wisdom to the new START treaty.

"The sweeping Democratic midterm losses last week raise serious questions for President Obama and a lame-duck Congress," they write. "Voters want government brought closer to the vision the framers outlined in the Constitution" -- laying it on a little thick, guys -- "and the first test could be the fate of the flawed New Start arms control treaty [which] awaits ratification. The Senate should heed the will of the voters and either reject the treaty or amend it so that it doesn't weaken our national defense." 

In his November 8 column for the Week, Daniel Larison of (the libertarian) American Conservative also addressed the fate of new START. 

After the Republican gain of six seats in the Senate, including Mark Kirk of Illinois, who will be seated immediately, the arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, known as START, has much less of a chance of passing during the lame-duck session before January. . . . After the start of the new Congress, the treaty will be as good as dead.  

When he then warns that such a course of action will "harm U.S. security interests," he means something entirely different from Bolton and Yoo when they call for rejecting or amending new START in order that "it doesn't weaken our national defense." Larison is referring to the danger that "it will wreck the one mechanism available to the United States for verifying the nature and extent of Russia’s nuclear arsenal." 

In fact, there's no love lost between this author and new START. For starters, as explained in April by Michael Bohm in the Moscow Times . . . 

. . . Russia and the United States have agreed to apply "creative accounting" to pad the reductions on both sides to get to the much-desired 30 percent figure. . . . one trick was to count the 20 warheads on B-52 bombers as only one. At the end of the day, the real net cuts, according to Hans Kristenson of the Federation of American Scientists, will be only 100 U.S. deployed warheads and 190 Russian ones. [Another trick was revealed when] the two sides announced the final number -- 1,550 deployed warheads -- the key qualifier is "deployed." The roughly 2,000 non-deployed warheads stored in U.S. military warehouses were not included in the New START.

More to the point, if Republicans truly reject or further water down new START, what becomes of the $80 billion for the next 10 years that the Obama administration promised to the nuclear-weapons industry in part to win Republican votes for ratification? Not to mention funding for, as Greg Mello writes in the latest bulletin of the Los Alamos Study Group, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility planned for Los Alamos, the cost of which "per square foot of useful space has grown to more than 100 times what [Los Alamos's] existing plutonium facility cost in 1978, in constant dollars." In fact, "it's the biggest project ever proposed for Los Alamos -- six times the size of the whole Manhattan Project in New Mexico," also in constant dollars. (I've still yet to digest that last revelation.)

Obviously concerned about losing that funding, Bolton and Yoo write, "Congress should pass a new law financing the testing and development of new warhead designs before approving New Start." If it's rejected or neutered, does the Obama administration plan to retract some or all of that funding? Unlikely, I know, but were that to occur it would look a lot more like disarmament than new START.

I'm aware that I'm committing arms-control heresy. But the new START treaty that Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed looks like more trouble than it's worth. To begin with, as Ivan Oelrich and Hans Kristensen reported for the Federation of American Scientists back in June . . .

. . . while the treaty reduces the legal limit for deployed strategic warheads, it doesn't actually reduce the number of warheads. A peculiar counting rule increases the importance of bombers: each bomber counts only as one nuclear bomb although the B-52 can carry 20 nuclear-armed cruise missiles. [Also] the treaty does not require destruction of a single nuclear warhead and actually permits the United States and Russia to deploy almost the same number of strategic warheads that were permitted by the 2002 Moscow Treaty.

Worse, to secure the eight Republican votes needed for ratification by the United States Senate (and in the interest of pork husbandry in general), the Obama administration is requesting $7 billion, a 10 percent increase, in funding for nuclear weapons "modernization" (as the defense world calls it) and stewardship. Typical of Republicans seeking funds for the nuclear-weapons industry is Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Speaking of work inside Y-12, the facility in his state, as it exists now, he said, "It's like building a Corvette in a Model-T factory."

As if that's not bad enough, as Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group makes clear in a press release, on September 30, "Congress completed action on a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the federal government in the new fiscal year (FY), which begins today. The President signed the bill."

What's a continuing resolution? Here's what it means in this instance (apologies for lack of link; can't recall where I found this).

Due to the failure of the Democrat [sure sign it's from a conservative site! -- RW] Congress to enact a single Appropriations bill so far this year to provide funding for Federal Government programs and agencies, a CR will be necessary to continue government operations past the end of the fiscal year, which expire[d] on September 30th. These emergency appropriations last until December 3, by which time Congress must either pass appropriations bills or another CR. 

Mello again: "This CR continues funding for federal agencies at the same level as [fiscal year] 2010, with very few exceptions." Among them were some which, even though a CR is intended as essentially a holding pattern, actually received more money. "One of those rare exceptions was an emergency increase in nuclear weapons spending in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)." He continues (emphasis added):

According to historical data in [the Los Alamos] Study Group files, today's increase [in the case of Los Alamos in New Mexico] is the largest annual increase, in both absolute and percentage terms, since the Manhattan Project. Annual nuclear weapons appropriations in New Mexico [just] increased by about $527 million . . . 84% of the $625 million net overall increase at all the [NNSA] sites.

But an emergency? Again, it's to secure Republican vote for ratification by the Senate which, Mello explains, "the Administration hopes to accomplish prior to seating a new Congress, widely expected to contain fewer members of the President's party." But . . .

To pick this particular emergency priority over nearly all other objectives of government at this time speaks volumes about the priorities of Congress and this Administration.  These are not the priorities that would put people to work, provide health care or education, protect the environment, or halt what most ordinary people understand to be a continuing economic decline, with no end in sight.  

This is cynicism to the third power: First, calling it an emergency. Second, trading funding to the nuclear-weapons industry for START votes. Third and even worse, turning START into a front -- or more to the point, an engine -- for securing said funding.

In a recent Focal Points post, we posed a fundamental question: Who stands at the front lines of disarmament? Is it the makers of the new movie Countdown to Zero? Disarmament groups like the Ploughshares Fund and the International Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Commission? Weapons-system-trashing activists a la the Berrigan brothers? Using the last as a reference point, we concluded that "even the perimeter fences of a submarine base aren't the front lines of disarmament. The honor goes to those groups that act as watchdogs on behalf of the public for U.S. national laboratories such as Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore."

Greg Mello is the head of the primary watchdog for the former, the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG). As I wrote in my previous post, he explained that "$3.4 billion of the proposed $16 billion in new warhead spending [in the federal budget] is to be allotted to the construction of a Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility for the construction of nuclear pits. In a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists piece, he writes that, at 270,000-square-feet, the new facility 'would add only 22,500-square-feet of additional plutonium processing and lab space to [Los Alamos's] existing 59,600-square-feet of comparable space.' [That] works out to $151,000 per square foot, or $1,049 per square inch.' Holy (watch your tax dollars go up in) smoke!" 

Even worse, since "there is already a surfeit of backup pits [which] will last for many decades to come" the new facility "would increase production capacity to an even more absurd level." To provide perspective, as LASG notes elsewhere, "If built, it would be by far the most expensive government project ever built in New Mexico except the interstate highways."

To give you an idea of how LASG actually works, one of its staff, Darwin BondGraham, wrote in a press release, "Earlier this year we finally obtained enough information from [the Department of Energy] and its contractors to confidently determine that the increased cost, greatly expanded construction requirements, and . . . new environmental impacts . . . make the [Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement] different [from what] was originally analyzed." Thus: "On July 1 we formally notified the U.S. Department of Energy of our intent to seek a new Environmental Impact Statement, and to pursue an injunction against [the] Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement [facility]." 

This is what life on the disarmament front lines looks like: poring over the books cheek by jowl with lawyers. And this, courtesy of an August 16 LASG press release, is what a frontal assault looks like.

The Los Alamos Study Group today filed a complaint in federal District Court in Albuquerque to halt further investment in [the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility]. . . . The complaint was filed against the Department of Energy . . . and the National Nuclear Security Administration [the NNSA, which, LASG alleges] have violated the National Environmental Protection Act . . . by preparing to construct [the facility] without an applicable Environmental Impact Statement. [Mello said] "NNSA changed the project to which it had committed without telling anyone, and without environmental analysis of alternatives either to the project."

Why an environmental impact statement? Department of Energy changes . . .

. . . helped drive the proposed facility underground -- into a thick stratum of loose volcanic ash which cannot support [the] new excavated depth of 125 feet (up from 50 feet) and replacement of an entire geologic stratum beneath the building with 225,000 cubic yards of concrete and grout. [This would also result in] greatly increased CO₂ emissions including more than 100,000 tons from concrete production alone [and] from 20,000 to 110,000 heavy truck [trips] just for concrete ingredients and disposal -- somewhere -- of loose volcanic ash.

To sum up, the Los Alamos Study Group is on the front lines of disarmament because it's confronting production of the nuclear pit, the beating heart of a nuclear weapon -- where the chain reaction occurs. As another such watchdog, Livermore's Tri-Valley CAREs, put it: "Stopping nuclear weapons where they start."

If you agree that LASG is (wo)manning the front lines of disarmament and you'd like to help, but are leery of NGOs top-heavy with administrative salaries, consider LASG. Donating to this self-contained, action-oriented organization figures to give you a lot of bang for the charitable buck. And make no mistake, bucks have got to bang if we hope to block the biggest modern-day bang of all -- the detonation of a nuclear bomb.

If a nuclear weapon is an evil fruit of the times we live in, its "pit" is like a dollop of brimstone ladled out by Satan with love from hell.

Didn't know a nuclear weapon has a pit? First, it behooves us to note that the word "pit" has a number of definitions. In fact, even when applied to fruit -- "a seed covered by a stony layer" -- it's of two faces like Janus. To humans, it's waste material to be discarded, but from a tree's point of view (on whatever level, such as cellular), it's a means of ensuring the future of its species.

The nuclear-weapons industry adopted the word "pit" for the weapon's core, which is power-packed with the varieties of uranium or plutonium isotopes capable of a warp-speed chain reaction. Yes, it's a seed for the a chain reaction. But instead of ensuring anything or anyone's continued existence, the pit instead serves as a cache for -- drum roll, please -- a seed of destruction.

Why have I brought up the subject of nuclear pits? A project for their production is pivotal to the Obama administration's plans for nuclear modernization. In a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists piece titled Bunker mentality: Is NNSA digging itself into a hole at Los Alamos?, Greg Mello writes that "as part of the New START ratification package, the administration projects $16 billion in new warhead spending over this decade." A beneficiary of the funding, if passed by Congress, would be Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, where -- boring name alert -- the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility for producing said pits would be built for a whopping $3.4 billion.

Mello writes that, at "270,000-square-foot" the new facility "would add only 22,500-square-feet of additional plutonium processing and lab space to [Los Alamos's] existing 59,600-square-feet of comparable space." It "works out to $151,000 per square foot, or $1,049 per square inch." Holy (watch your tax dollars go up in) smoke!

"But why make pits at all?" Mello asks.

Aside from the many potent reasons to steadily diminish a reliance on nuclear weapons . . . there is already a surfeit of backup pits [which] will last for many decades to come. [Nor is there a] shortage of space to make pits, either at [Los Alamos] or nationwide. … Were [the new facility] in place, [it] would increase production capacity to an even more absurd level. … Every aspect of the . . . project, from the mission itself to the practicality of the building design, should be questioned far more deeply than Congress has done to date.

The Obama administration is making generous concessions to the nuclear industry presumably, as alluded to above, to win votes from Republicans on the new START treaty and other disarmament measures, however tepid. In fact, one can't help but wonder if the administration and conservatives have committed themselves to cooperation (respectable speak for "conspiracy'') in finding ways to keep the "nuclear-industrial complex" humming along, if at a diminished velocity from its heyday in the fifties to eighties.