Environ-Mental Impact: the Nuclear Security State

This was written already a while back (Sept. 2006). It was meant as a critique on the existing SWEIS  (Side Wide Environmental Impact Statement) for los Alamos future --the thinking at that time. You can see that things has developed since then. However it also tries to analyse the unseen environ-mental impact of building a bunker like the CMRR: building that CMRR-Nuclear Facility is like an endorsement for a nightmarish vision of Fascist rule with ever increasing numbers of "Hibakusha"(nuclear victims) roaming the planet....


Here are some ideas that have kept their urgency....  

willem

Willem Malten | Los Alamos Environmental Impact

    Los Alamos Environmental Impact
    By Willem Malten
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Wednesday 06 September 2006

what democracy looks like....

    When over 80% of the American public has expressed a desire for mutual nuclear disarmament and still the US nuclear labs (Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California) keep pursuing nuclear weapons upgrades - and now a new plutonium warhead core ("pit") factory - there is something seriously wrong. The sheer magnitude of nuclear weapons and everything that comes with them - the research and testing, the production, the contamination, the ever-increasing security - is simply incompatible with a functioning democracy. Now that democracy may have to be rebuilt from the bottom up.
    The latest nuclear insult to democracy, common sense and morality is described in a document called the "Draft Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement," or SWEIS for short, for the operation of Los Alamos National Laboratory. In it, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an autonomous fiefdom within the Department of Energy (DOE), describes the first 5 years of its plan to turn Los Alamos into a nuclear bomb factory.
    Few details of this plan are provided, despite nearly 2,000 pages of text. In sum, the SWEIS says Los Alamos will be making 80 new plutonium pits per year by 2012. Allowing for defective pits and pits needed for testing, NNSA expects to be building 50 brand-new nuclear weapons per year by that date, pits being the limiting factor in the whole nuclear bomb-making business. After 2012, production is expected to ramp up to 200 pits per year or even more. Billions of dollars in new construction funds are planned.

nordic design....

 Pits are hollow shells of fissile material, usually plutonium, and other metals. When surrounded by high explosives, they make an atomic bomb. In a thermonuclear weapon, this first (or "primary") fission stage ignites a second stage (the "secondary").

    The SWEIS purports to examine the environmental impact of the waste and contamination that will be generated in pit manufacture - as if Los Alamos could be trusted in this regard, and as if writing a big book about the problem somehow fixed it. In reality, the SWEIS is a bit of a macabre sideshow, with multiple levels of absurdity, like talking - and just talking, mind you - about reducing the smoke from the ovens of Auschwitz.
    Much more than just environmental impact is at issue here. What's not mentioned in the SWEIS is the psychic environment that goes hand in hand with the manufacturing of Weapons of Mass Destruction - that is, the denial of any sort of future for our children and what that disturbing realization does to them. Is it a coincidence that New Mexico has among the very highest rates of juvenile suicide of any state?
    We should be equally concerned about the international "environment" created by trashing treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). It is our own complicity in the nuclear build-up, this bad faith, that gives people all over the world reason to see us as enemies. If the world's largest conventional army needs nuclear weapons, doesn't every country?

ahhhhh Bush....torture... torture everywhere....

    And what about moral contamination? Nuclear weapons help condemn most of humanity to live in a perpetual state of fear, slavishly following a global master elite, being brainwashed to accept the propaganda slurry that masquerades as education or news.
    What about the commercial "environment?" How are we going to control a privatized corporate nuclear-weapon industry, especially now that the contract for Los Alamos' Weapons of Mass Destruction Factory has gone to Bechtel and its cronies. Corporations work to maximize profits for their shareholders, in this case fomenting global conflict to support a lively market for their "product." We need more Congressional and regulatory oversight, not less. Concern about rogue contractors is not farfetched: remember, the FBI had to raid Rocky Flats Plant to shut it down.

fascism: the face of security state.....

The vision behind making new pits is a combined nightmare of Fascism and Hibakusha. The threshold of Fascism is crossed when spying and fear become tools of control, when torture is condoned and when civilian targets become commonplace.

Originally, the term Hibakusha referred to the survivors of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of the Hibakusha, even those who at some point were able to function again in some semblance of normalcy, are marked by scars that will never heal from the torture that was perpetrated on them in one single flash of human madness.

hibakusha hibakusha......everywhere.....

    The Hibakusha phenomenon has been spreading over the whole world since 1945. Now we have Hibakusha in the Bikini Atoll, in Australia, in Kosovo, Afghanistan and in Iraq. We have Hibakusha in the Ukraine, and Belarus. We have Hibakusha here in America itself like the Shoshone Nation (the most bombed nation on earth) in Nevada, or here in our backyard, New Mexico, we have Hibakusha in Laguna, Acoma, in Grants, in Navajo, and in Espanola. If it were up to corporations like Bechtel, BWTX, Lockheed Martin, the Washington Group, plus the University of California, we soon could all be Hibakusha.

 Declaring war on ill-defined concepts like "terror" or "drugs" involves the prospect of endless wars, without any measure of victory and with a totally arbitrary distinction between the "good guys" and the "bad guys." The only winners are the corporations that make the weapons, which gives them an interest in "privatizing conflict" and in managing the public perception by media control. In a world where most of the money is spent on weapons, most of the problems start looking like military problems and most of the solutions look military as well.

here is one.....poor thing.....who's responsible ?

    We need to understand the bankruptcy this has wreaked on civil society. This blind militarism is the cause for proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs, worldwide. Nuclear weapons are the very spear point of this culture of violence - the ultimate failure of diplomacy - highlighting our inability to talk with each other as humans among humans. People have to understand that the Fallujahs of our time are just a prelude to the use of nuclear devices. These weapons are not just aimed at the people of the world, they are not just taking away the resources of the next generations - these weapons are aimed at the heart of human dignity. Yet our whole foreign policy rests on the fear that these weapons instill. They provide a kind of "civilized terrorism" as a tool for the commander in chief.
    Neighborhoods, communities and cities are now the vehicles that express the people's will and have to represent the changes we are seeking. True security and democracy comes from a stronger sense of community, from getting closer. This is why it is significant that Santa Fe adopted a second resolution against pit production in Los Alamos and in favor of strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other disarmament treaties.

hey you.....we are in this together

Being a City of Peace and Holy Faith (Santa Fe) at this point means we must resist the Weapons of Mass Destruction Facility called LANL on a mesa nearby. The people of the world are watching and wondering if We the People are up to the task. Brothers and sisters, let's take courage: It started here, let's stop it here.

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 For More Information:     Los Alamos Study Group: http://www.lasg.org/
        http://www.lasg.org/NNSAPrivatization.pdf

CMRR-Nuclear Facility Update

 Update Mon. Nov.1st, 2010:

In the few short months since this blog entry:"New START", the proposed CMRR Nuclear Facility and the LASG lawsuit against the DOE and NNSA, also appeared in the local newspapers and some national blogs -- lots has happened. 


First of all, the lawsuit is in full swing now, and the Los Alamos Study Group under leadership of Greg Mello has already forced the Lab to admit that the 2003 EIS is not adequate and the Laboratories have called for a new SEIS (Supplemental Environment Impact Statement). 
A public meeting in Los Alamos

at Hilltop Hotel Los Alamos
...an early Halloween...

and a couple of scoping meetings have  been underway. Fairly poorly attended by the larger public but richly staffed with lab and covert security personnel, these meetings were mainly kind of a propaganda attempt. One has to realize that contrary to a real EIS, a SEIS (Supplemental EIS), is kind of a swiftly made up thing, that doesn't look at real alternatives to the CMRR- Nuclear Facility, nor stops any design or even physical construction from progressing.

John Tegtmeier, NEPA

I attended both scoping meetings and because the one in White Rock was so poorly attended I got a chance to speak at length with John Tegtmeier who is charged to see the NEPA SEIS investigation through. I felt an urgent need to find out about timeline of the SEIS process. In the sincerity with which he spoke I could see that he wanted to understand the SEIS as kind of a mini EIS where all significant work stopped until later next summer, when the NNSA boss-man D'Augostino can make a decision about the building of the new CMRR-Nuclear Facility ('cause ultimately it is up to him). But when I pressed Mr. Tegtmeier and asked him if any contracts or work were underway as we spoke, he said couldn't tell and instead referred me to Steve Fong, NNSA CMRR-NF project manager.  

Steve Fong, NNSA CMRR Project Manager

My lucky day..... Mr. Fong also was available and so I engaged him on the project and I specifically wanted to know the contracts that are being worked on, and when the new contracts will be signed. When he refused to give me a straight answer I couldn't help but in so many ways ask him again....and again: "Are there any contracts being signed now ?". It clearly bothered him and he accused me of "badgering". I am sorry that Mr. Fong felt like that and I apologize if I was too heavy handed -- really, all I  wanted to have is a conversation together with him and a straight answer to a simple question. 

But I feel worse about what his refusal to answer reveals: I am afraid that this incident points out that the SEIS is not done in good faith. It is a transparent attempt to confuse the public ("....eh...something is being done....an SEIS....") and thus quash the lawsuit that LASG has filed against NNSA DOE and the Labs. The Los Alamos Study Group is calling for a full Environmental Impact Statement. Not some "make do SEIS".


Not surprisingly the NNSA has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. In LASG's response to this motion Thomas Hnasko’s (LASG chief lawyer) brief pointedly mentions “283 employees or contractors ... now at work on the project,” and argues that design work and site preparations now underway are being done without legally required NEPA coverage. 

By the way: those contractors and the work that is already underway is precisely what Steve Fong didn't  want to talk to me about. Speaking privately, officials close to the project have begun building the case that any court action to halt work pending NEPA review would mean all those people would end up unemployed.

 Willem Malten speaking out at SEIS Scoping meeting
in Pojoaque calling it "a fraud"
...what a way to spend a b-day...

This concern of unemployment betrays again the hollowness of the national US investments that are being made. If the CMRR is some kind of employment program, and indeed makes part of Obama’s misguided stimulus moneys for “Complex Revitalization”, then all the more reasons this CMRR bunker needs to be questioned -- also in the light of civil alternatives, that could in that case include investments into alternative energy production (to name just one possible priority of our time) and create employment that way.

The Los Alamos Study Group is not going to drop its lawsuit. It is aiming to win this lawsuit. And I am happy to mention that communities all over New Mexico, Pueblos, and towns along the 'Rio Grande Corridor' are stirring and are proposing resolutions in support of a full EIS.

All this noise has apparently also woken up Dr. Chu in his lair, and he and his staff announced that they are going to do their own study on the CMRR over a 6 weeks period. We think that the time Dr. Chu has set for himself is too short, to come to a final conclusion about the desirability of the CMRR, for the issues involved are complex and manifold, but I do want to say that the effort Dr Chu is making, while belated, is correct. At times I have been critical of Dr. Chu, but if this attempt to crock the CMRR is for real, I will withdraw all my snideness and give Dr. Chu the benefit of the doubt. I wish him insight and wisdom--the odds he is facing to come up with a balanced position are certainly enormous. 

Dr. Chu ...balanced position...

Meanwhile the projected costs are spiraling up. Earlier this year I had stated that the costs were around 4 billion but I was corrected by Mello: costs were 'only' at 3.4 billion at that time. However now, only a few months later, the latest we hear of, is the figure of 6 billion dollars to construct the CMRR-NF. This would represent a inflation rate of about 15 % per month (Of course.... this does not reflect the drop in value of the dollar itself in any way shape or form.....lol.....but it makes you wonder...).


Last word: About START. 
Instead of making START a treaty, let's downgrade it to an "International Agreement" between the USA and Russia. Unlike a "Treaty", this would only require a simple majority in congress. The fact that the president of the USA, Obama and the president of Russia, Medvedev, have signed this treaty, already means a commitment to live up to it. Compare it to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT): even though the CTBT  signed by Clinton, never made its way through Congress, nevertheless there has not been any new nuclear bomb testing in the USA. It is binding. 


The people of the USA and in particular the people of New Mexico,  shouldn't be held hostage to building the CMRR-Nuclear Facility and all that it stands for, in order to sign START. In its final analysis, the START Treaty would be so much more significant if we don't built these monuments of doom at the same time.




.....here is the original article:
"New START", the proposed CMRR Nuclear Facility and the LASG lawsuit against the DOE and NNSA