updated 10/9/06

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact Citizen Action: (505) 262-1862

October 2, 2006                                                                                                                                                                          

State, local representatives, newspapers

weigh in on Albuquerque hearing concerning

nuclear bomb production at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Congressman Tom Udall, Albuquerque City Council President Martin Heinrich and New Mexico State Land Commissioner Candidate Jim Baca have each sent letters to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) requesting that a public hearing be conducted in Albuquerque concerning the NNSA’s proposed plan to increase plutonium “pit” or nuclear bomb production from 20 to 80 pits per year under expanded operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The NNSA is the sub-autonomous agency under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Letters from the three officials were sent following a request from Citizen Action New Mexico, an Albuquerque-based public interest group, so that people living in the Albuquerque area could have the same opportunity to ask questions and submit comments on the expanded nuclear bomb operations at LANL.

Plans for the controversial increased nuclear bomb production at LANL were detailed in a government document called a Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS). To date only three public hearings on the increased nuclear bomb production at LANL have been conducted in New Mexico , in Los Alamos, Santa Fe and Espanola. The NNSA purposely excluded Albuquerque , New Mexico ’s largest population center, located approximately 60-miles downstream of Los Alamos .

The expanded nuclear bomb operations at LANL raise a number of questions and concerns as to how such operations will affect Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) in Albuquerque . SNL plays a key role in the design, development and production of nuclear warheads under the U.S. government’s Reliable Replacement Warhead Program (RRW). 

The plans for increased nuclear bomb production at LANL has raised a number of concerns among New Mexicans which include increased contamination to the environment; increased and unsafe methods of waste burial; increased volumes of weapons waste on New Mexico’s highways bound for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant; increased health risks to workers and surrounding communities; increased nuclear-weapons related accidents; potential acts of terrorism; and the impacts of expanded nuclear bomb production on international peace treaties.

In his letter to the NNSA Congressman Tom Udall requested an additional extension for the public to make comments on the LANL SWEIS, as well as a request for a public hearing in Albuquerque to “afford all New Mexicans the opportunity to voice their opinions and obtain responses to their questions on the matter.”

Albuquerque City Council President Martin Heinrich also requested that a public hearing be conducted in Albuquerque on the grounds that increased pit production “has the potential to impact not only the residents immediately adjacent to LANL, but also the wider public.”

Jim Baca, formerly the Mayor of the City of Albuquerque, two-term New Mexico State Land Commissioner, and former Natural Resource Trustee for the State of New Mexico, warned that “pit production is a dirty and dangerous process” giving as an example the severe environmental contamination at the Rocky Flats plant, the previous U.S. weapons complex location where pit production took place, and the “hundreds of workers who contracted various cancers and illnesses” as a result of plutonium pit production. He also noted the $550 million settlement awarded to citizens who filed a class action lawsuit for damages done to their property and lives as a result of pit production at Rocky Flats.

In addition to the three officials’ requests Senator Jeff Bingaman and New Mexico State Attorney General Patricia Madrid also sent letters to the NNSA requesting that a public hearing on the increased pit production at LANL be held in Albuquerque .

Both the Albuquerque Tribune and the Albuquerque Journal editorial boards unanimously agreed that a public hearing on the increased nuclear bomb production at LANL be held in Albuquerque . The Journal stated that, “Albuquerqueans deserve the chance to make their voices heard on an issue that has the potential to affect the environment they live in.”

The Tribune echoed the Journal’s position that a hearing should be held in Albuquerque and that the creation of a “full-scale bomb-pit factory, where production would ramp up to 60 to 80 pits per year within six years, raises reasonable safety, security and environmental concerns.”

The Tribune stated the NNSA should “reconsider its extremely limited public-hearing schedule and comment period and significantly broaden its public outreach … and conduct hearings in Albuquerque and across southern and eastern New Mexico , as well as in other U.S. cities that have nuclear-weapons production and research facilities or national labs.”

The Trib went even further in its assessment of the government’s plan to build new nuclear weapons: “NNSA should bring nuclear weapons out of the closet and provide as broad a public forum for debating this proposal – and other nuclear-weapons issues – as possible.”

Citizen Action is a project of the New Mexico Community Foundation and a member of the New Mexicans for Sustainable Energy and Effective Stewardship (NMSEES). For more information contact Dave McCoy, Executive Director, Citizen Action, at: 262-1862 or dave@radfreenm.org