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Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
As drought threat looms, Los Alamos National Lab works to reduce its wildfire risk
Burned trunks from previous fires remain in the scrub oak brush and stands of aspens in the Jemez mountainside just overlooking portion of Los Alamos National Laboratory property. LANL leadership told media during a May 28 tour that they were taking steps to prepare and mitigate the risk of wildfires. (Courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory) As New Mexico water and fire managers prepare for increased drought and wildfire danger this summer, Los Alamos National Laboratory officials say the lab has taken steps to mitigate those threats on its campus. LANL provided a media tour mid-week to highlight those steps, but did not allow outside photography or recording. 'We're very proud of our preparedness efforts for wildfire,' said Deputy Laboratory Director of Operations Mark Davis from the floor of the Emergency Operations Center, as videos of the 2022 Cerro Pelado fire played across six screens on the wall. 'We want to show our efforts to communicate how our mitigation efforts will protect the lab, workforce, community and environment.' The state has identified the towns of Los Alamos and White Rock as high risk areas for wildfire threats, including LANL, which spans 36 square miles of mesas and canyons. The lab and surrounding town have been evacuated twice in the past 30 years due to fires. That included evacuations for two weeks during the Cerro Grande Fire in 2000, which burned 43,000 acres total, including 45 lab buildings and 7,500 acres of LANL property. Los Alamos evacuated for another 10 days during the 2011 Las Conchas fire, which burned more than 156,000 acres, though only one acre on the lab's property. In 2022, during the same time the Hermit's Peak-Calf Canyon fires raged, the Cerro Pelado fire, also caused by a controlled burn, sparked up and ultimately burned 45,000 acres, requiring the lab to move to remote work in preparation for an evacuation. In 2022, at the request of the Biden Administration, LANL released its Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment and Resilience Plan, which showed that increased wildfire presented the highest risks to equipment, electricity systems, onsite radioactive waste processing, buildings, water systems and communications systems. Critics say climate threats to the laboratory are compounding. LANL's proposed thinning is 'a slow job, but certainly necessary,' said Greg Mello, the executive director of nuclear nonproliferation nonprofit Los Alamos Study Group. But he said the hazards with climate change are stacking up. 'We just wish that the laboratory wasn't straining against every single environmental constraint that there is on that plateau,' Mello said. 'The laboratory is too big and trying to do too much in a place that was never appropriate for a laboratory of the present scale, let alone the additional laboratory facilities and staff that they envision.' The approximately 18,000 people employed at LANL work mostly in science and engineering, from modeling infectious diseases to increasing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. 'Our missions are vital and critical to national security and they cannot fail,' Davis said. The Jemez wilderness bears scars from the Cerro Grande and Las Conchas fires. Large bald patches with skinny charred remains of the ponderosa pines stand among scrub oak brush replacing the once-forested area. Recent scattered rainstorms offered a small reprieve, but the area remains in Stage 1 fire restrictions — an elevated threat level that restricts all campfires or outdoor burning. Laboratory facilities are interspersed on the top of mesas to higher elevation ponderosa pine forests, separated by canyons and arroyos filled with brush. The lab is bordered by federally managed forests; San Ildefonso and Jemez Pueblos; and Santa Fe and Los Alamos County land. The patchwork of agencies has complicated firefighting and mitigation efforts in the past, said Jeff Dare, who leads the Emergency Operations Center, but Cerro Pelado offered a framework for more cooperation with members of county government and liaisons for surrounding federal agencies and tribal governments. The lab is part of the Master Cooperative Wildland Fire Response Agreement, which allocates additional resources such as helicopters and personnel to fight any wildfire that does appear, Dare said, adding: 'It protects the laboratory before it can get here.' The more recent focus has been trimming back the areas around lab buildings, roads and utility lines, said Richard Nieto, LANL's wildland fire program manager. Trimming has occurred on an estimated 12% to 15% of lab property. 'Hope is not a strategy,' Nieto said, adding that the area needs to better adapt to fires when they happen. 'This area was meant to burn; it's what we have to deal with, ecologically.' But overgrowth is a challenge. Much of the higher-elevation ponderosa forests sport 400 to 1,300 trees per acre, rather than the healthier 50 to 150 trees per acre, he said. Habitats for two endangered species and archeological sites also require consideration. Beyond trimming, the lab is working on developing plans for prescribed burns, but will take another three to five years to realize, he said. On the other side of lab property, fences looped with concertina wire and sporting signs warning of radiological hazards contain Area G. Vaguely merengue- shaped white tents — coated in fireproof material — stand amid the juniper and piñon scrub. Inside, under crisscrossed steel frames, stacked white containers on metal pallets contain legacy waste from the lab's work in the nuclear program. The facilities are geared to reducing fire concerns, said Gail Helm, the facility operations director for N3B, which is contracted to manage the 10-year $2 billion dollar cleanup of Cold War Era legacy waste. The tents include fire detection and suppression. Concrete barricades surround them to prevent vehicle accidents and potential fires. Under the Stage 1 fire restrictions, a water truck remains onsite at all times. To the west of Area G lies Technical Area 53, where the lab logs and stores new transuranic nuclear waste — such as gloves contaminated with plutonium — produced at the new plutonium pit production site. The waste is eventually disposed off-site at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project outside of Carlsbad. Thomas Vigil, the deputy group leader at the Chemical and Waste Facilities said LANL is doing 'its due diligence' to follow every protocol to keep the public and workers safe. 'This is my state, this is where we live,' he said. 'I live just down the road, and it's important to me.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Axios
14-05-2025
- Business
- Axios
U.S. to spend $1 trillion on nuclear weapons over next decade
It's going to cost nearly $1 trillion to operate, maintain and upgrade America's nuclear arsenal over the next decade — more per year ($95 billion) than what's spent on many federal agencies. Why it matters: That eye-popping estimate from the Congressional Budget Office is catnip for critics, who argue Washington is spending blindly or that portions of the triad are vestigial. Driving the news: The combined 2025-34 nuke plans of the Defense and Energy departments amount to $946 billion. In what have been a few wild days for the nuke-watching world — including India-Pakistan clashes and the U.S. Air Force saying it needs new silos for its already delayed and over-budget Sentinel missiles — the dollar figures jump out. What they're saying: "The huge expenses tallied in this report were not anticipated at the outset of the nuclear modernization program," said Greg Mello, the director of Los Alamos Study Group, which monitors National Nuclear Security Administration sites and activities. "There will be no return to the 'heroic mode of production' for nuclear weapons," he added. "Even if Congress dumped $100 or $200 billion more on nuclear weapons, the system that produces them would not 'jump to the task' for years, if at all." Our thought bubble: There's a lot on the table, even if you ignore requisite infrastructure upgrades at places like the Savannah River Site. Sentinel. B-21 Raider. Long-Range Standoff Weapon. Columbia-class submarines. What we're watching: Where today's obsession with cheap mass (drones and artillery shells, for example) clashes with revered and rarely used stockpiles. Nuclear acquisition programs represent almost 12% of the Defense Department's planned buying costs over the next decade, according to the CBO. That means DOD will have to make "difficult choices about which programs to pursue." Arms Control Association executive director Daryl Kimball in a piece this month said "skyrocketing" prices siphon resources from "other more pressing human needs and national security priorities." Yes, but: There are businesspeople who think it can be done more effectively. "What we see here is the really strong need for the U.S. government, specifically on the topic of nuclear deterrence, to look at opportunities to work with" the private sector, JC Btaiche, the founder of Fuse, told Axios. Fuse seeks to be the "new nuclear-security prime," as Btaiche put it. Its advisers include Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, the former NNSA boss, and retired Adm. Charles Richard, once the head of Strategic Command.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Report finds maintaining nuclear weapons stockpile to cost 25% more than estimated
A gallon of milk costs a dollar more than it did in March 2020. So does a pound of chicken, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the receipt for the nation's nuclear program is following suit. An April report published by the Congressional Budget Office, which conducts nonpartisan analyses for Congress, found maintaining the nation's nuclear stockpile is likely to cost 25% more over the next 10 years than it estimated in 2023 — an increase of about $129 billion over the estimate for 2023 to 2032. Call that sticker shock. The office estimates over the next decade the country will spend $946 billion on modernizing silos, improving infrastructure at nuclear weapons laboratories and other projects associated with nation's nuclear program. Among the sites working to update the nation's nuclear arsenal is Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of two sites designated for production of plutonium pits — the hollow, bowling-bowl sized core of a nuclear weapon. Developing and preparing the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile system is one of the main programs driving up costs, the report states. Missiles that make up the system will replace hundreds of Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles located in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota that have been in service for half a century, a swap that's part of a nationwide nuclear stockpile modernization effort. Proponents have argued it's essential to ensure the threat of nuclear weapons remains credible amid a changing geopolitical landscape. In a fact page about plutonium pits, LANL called the replacements a "precaution" to avoid potential changes to the capability of a nuclear weapon as plutonium ages. "The world has changed since nuclear modernization efforts began," said Gen. Anthony J. Cotton at a November discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Our posture must align with today's reality, where nuclear weapons are foundational to adversaries' strategies." But the price tag is ever rising. "The Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program has encountered significant cost growth in recent years," the report states. "The full extent and timing of that growth remains uncertain, as the Department of Defense is currently restructuring the program." In July, the Department of Defense estimated the program would cost 81%, or approximately $63 billion, more than the department expected five years ago. The department concluded, however, that despite the major cost increases the program should continue. The system will include a piece of New Mexico. In October, the Department of Energy "diamond-stamped" the first plutonium pit produced by LANL as part of a recent push to update the nation's nuclear stockpile. That pit is destined for the W87-1 warhead, which will in turn become part of the Sentinel system. Los Alamos Study Group executive director and anti-nuclear activist Greg Mello urged Congress and the White House to ditch the "troubled" program, anticipating further cost increases and challenges. "The buzzards are circling," Mello said in a statement. "The coming year will bring more revelations about Sentinel and they won't be good. The White House and Congress should pull the plug on Sentinel now, however difficult that would be." The Congressional Budget Office is expecting that $193 billion will be spent in the next 10 years at the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories. Along with increased costs for intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Department of Defense is facing higher price tags for ballistic missile submarines and upgrades to communications and early warning systems. The Department of Energy is primarily looking at increased costs to revamp production facilities. Aging infrastructure has been a concern at Los Alamos National Laboratory; in 2019, the lab received $5 billion to upgrade facilities over the next five years. At the time, about 40% of the facilities were built before 1970. As the nuclear program grows in cost, however, Mello believes LANL could be facing a more competition for defense dollars. "As CBO notes, most nuclear weapons costs are incurred by modernizing the arsenal and its production facilities, not by deploying and maintaining existing weapons," Mello said. The Congressional Budget Office report comes as President Donald Trump's administration attempts to slash costs across the federal government, including everything from terminating leases on federal buildings to cutting staffing levels at several agencies. In February, Trump said the country "already [has] so many" nuclear weapons and signaled an interest in cutting the nation's defense budget in half as part of arms control negotiations with China and Russia. Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced $5.1 billion in department contracts had been cut. But Sunday, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees announced legislation developed "in close conjunction with the White House" that included a $150 billion boost to defense spending, including $1.5 billion in risk reduction for Sentinel and $540 million for "deferred maintenance and repair" needs for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Sign showing President Trump and Vladimir Putin stolen from home in Albuquerque
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – With tensions on the rise across the county over the political climate, many have exercised their freedom of speech by placing signs on their doorstep. Now, one northeast Albuquerque family says they've become a victim for expressing their opinion after they were targeted by vandals. They are now asking for the public's help to stop this from happening again. Story continues below Albuquerque: Family speaks following lawsuit settlement for man shot by police Don't Miss: Officials to give update on deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife Politics: Three candidates have announced campaigns for Albuquerque mayor 'It's upsetting. It's costly a little bit, for sure,' said Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group. It was supposed to be a way to open the door for conversation. 'By and large, the response has been very positive,' said Greg Mello. Greg and Trish Mello founded the Los Alamos Study Group, which is a non-profit group dedicated to nuclear de-proliferation. Over the years, the couple has placed a number of different signs in their front yard, all on current events. 'We've got to set priorities differently than we have, and that's why we put these signs up,' said Greg Mello. This latest sign, a photo of President Donald Trump shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the words 'peace, not war', was cut down and stolen. 'When you have someone come in with that violence, that violence that cutting it down or removing it and just taking it off and throwing it away, if you disagree with us, that's your business, and you could at least talk to us,' said Trish Mello. The vandalism happened two more times after they put up new signs. They are now on sign number four. The couple told KRQE News 13 they just want to practice their freedom of speech and for the vandals to stop. 'It is also an opportunity to have this conversation today and hopefully others with neighbors and other people, and I'm hoping that we can make lemonade out of this lemon.' Anyone with information is asked to contact the couple, the phone number is 505-577-8563. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
