Tuesday, June 27, 2006
LANL wants to beef up stock of nuke triggers
The Associated Press
June 27, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Energy Department officials want to quadruple the number of plutonium pits, or triggers, for nuclear bombs that can be made at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
National Nuclear Security Administration officials want to manufacture as many as 80 new triggers a year as part of its plan to build a new plutonium-research facility in coming decades. The pits provide the initial spark that detonates the weapon's thermonuclear blast.
[...]
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RetiredWhatever,
I normally don't intercede in the little spats that periodically erupt here, but I'm willing to make an exception in your case.
How about if you just pretend that you haven't heard of the blog for three more days? Your contributions do not add much, except to suggest that you have not fully ripened yet.
In other words, please go away.
Thank you,
--Doug
I normally don't intercede in the little spats that periodically erupt here, but I'm willing to make an exception in your case.
How about if you just pretend that you haven't heard of the blog for three more days? Your contributions do not add much, except to suggest that you have not fully ripened yet.
In other words, please go away.
Thank you,
--Doug
Comment added on behalf of "14MEVs":
_________________________________
Fat Man was one pit, Little Boy was another. However, with this new announcement from NNSA we are now talking about something completely different - perhaps an annual production of 80 pits per year, year-in and year-out. Let's get one issue straight. Most of the LANL staff are not anti-nuke. I have no problem with the idea of limited pit production at LANL. Five, ten, maybe even 20 pits per year. That's not what we are hearing with this latest announcement. This announcement is setting LANL up to be the Modern Pit Facility. NNSA just doesn't have the guts to tell that to us to our face.
Reflect for a moment on just what 80 pits per year might mean. Just the security apparatus for dealing with this much plutonium material on site will forever change the style of life at both LANL and the town site. The current brouhaha over the Security Perimeter Road will soon be seen as relatively minor compared to the types of security apparatus that will be required to secure this new level of pit production at the TA-55 facilities. And then there are the huge security concerns involved with transporting dangerous production materials into Los Alamos and sending all these completed pits out the front door. Are you beginning to get the picture? This is a very big deal, if for no other reason than the immense security concerns that could impact all of Los Alamos County on a daily basis.
Beyond the security issues, committing LANL to this level of pit production could easily cause most of the science at LANL to be overshadowed by the pit production factory. Making the pit quota will soon become LANL's over-riding goal for satisfying NNSA's requirements.
When you put it all together, it quickly becomes apparent that this may be something of which neither LANL nor the town site have experienced since the War Years. Like it or not, much of Los Alamos County appears destined to become Rocky Flats II, and the impacts are going to be dramatic. The Los Alamos you once knew, both at the lab and within the town site, could forever be changed, and probably not for the better. If you live or work within Los Alamos County, this news of NNSA's desire for greatly increased pit production at LANL should cause you grave concerns.
With hindsight, it is now beginning to appear to me that NNSA's recent push to build the Security Perimeter Road, the lock-down of Parajito Road, the RFP with its demand of "for-profit" management, and the subsequent selection of engineering firms Bechtel and BWXT to run LANL may have all been part of a larger, unspoken scheme to turn Los Alamos into the Rocky Flats II production facility. This recent news article only reinforces that suspicion.
_________________________________
Fat Man was one pit, Little Boy was another. However, with this new announcement from NNSA we are now talking about something completely different - perhaps an annual production of 80 pits per year, year-in and year-out. Let's get one issue straight. Most of the LANL staff are not anti-nuke. I have no problem with the idea of limited pit production at LANL. Five, ten, maybe even 20 pits per year. That's not what we are hearing with this latest announcement. This announcement is setting LANL up to be the Modern Pit Facility. NNSA just doesn't have the guts to tell that to us to our face.
Reflect for a moment on just what 80 pits per year might mean. Just the security apparatus for dealing with this much plutonium material on site will forever change the style of life at both LANL and the town site. The current brouhaha over the Security Perimeter Road will soon be seen as relatively minor compared to the types of security apparatus that will be required to secure this new level of pit production at the TA-55 facilities. And then there are the huge security concerns involved with transporting dangerous production materials into Los Alamos and sending all these completed pits out the front door. Are you beginning to get the picture? This is a very big deal, if for no other reason than the immense security concerns that could impact all of Los Alamos County on a daily basis.
Beyond the security issues, committing LANL to this level of pit production could easily cause most of the science at LANL to be overshadowed by the pit production factory. Making the pit quota will soon become LANL's over-riding goal for satisfying NNSA's requirements.
When you put it all together, it quickly becomes apparent that this may be something of which neither LANL nor the town site have experienced since the War Years. Like it or not, much of Los Alamos County appears destined to become Rocky Flats II, and the impacts are going to be dramatic. The Los Alamos you once knew, both at the lab and within the town site, could forever be changed, and probably not for the better. If you live or work within Los Alamos County, this news of NNSA's desire for greatly increased pit production at LANL should cause you grave concerns.
With hindsight, it is now beginning to appear to me that NNSA's recent push to build the Security Perimeter Road, the lock-down of Parajito Road, the RFP with its demand of "for-profit" management, and the subsequent selection of engineering firms Bechtel and BWXT to run LANL may have all been part of a larger, unspoken scheme to turn Los Alamos into the Rocky Flats II production facility. This recent news article only reinforces that suspicion.
Submitted on behalf of "CMBman"
_________________________
In scanning the SWEIS, I found an equal or greater concern with plans to dismantle up to 600 ppy along with the production of up to 80 ppy. Both of these numbers are at least an order of magnitude greater than has been done at LANL. All this in a 30-year old facility that was designed for R&D.
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_________________________
In scanning the SWEIS, I found an equal or greater concern with plans to dismantle up to 600 ppy along with the production of up to 80 ppy. Both of these numbers are at least an order of magnitude greater than has been done at LANL. All this in a 30-year old facility that was designed for R&D.
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