Citizen Action New Mexico, a non-profit public interest group, has requested that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the sub-autonomous agency under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), conduct a public hearing whereby Albuquerque residents can make comments on a plan proposed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to increase production of nuclear bombs, also known as pit production.

The term pit refers to a softball-sized plutonium sphere that act as the trigger in a nuclear bomb. The increased pit production at LANL was revealed in a lab document called the LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS).

Pits were previously made at the Rocky Flats plant near Denver, Colorado. The plant was shut down in 1989 following an FBI raid that determined the Plant had severely contaminated the environment. Despite extensive clean up efforts Rocky Flats today the land remains contaminated with plutonium, workers are still seeking compensation for cancers and other occupational illnesses suffered, and residential development at the site is prohibited. After the shut-down of Rocky Flats, nuclear bomb production resumed at LANL with a limited pit production of 20 pits per year.

According to the SWEIS, LANL is seeking to quadruple its pit production from 20 to 80 pits per year. It has been estimated that the amount of transuranic (TRU) radioactive waste generated from increased pit production at LANL could add another 250 cubic yards per year to the current 260 cubic yards of TRU waste generated per year. This means that an additional 1,800 55-gallon barrels of radioactive bomb waste will be traveling on New Mexico's highways en route to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southern New Mexico each year.

Contamination from chemical and radioactive materials used in the production of nuclear bombs at LANL has already reached the ground water in Los Alamos and is heading towards Santa Fe's regional aquifer. Toxic materials from past weapons production disposed of in canyons and arroyos, and buried in unlined pits and trenches atop mesas at LANL have been reported in New Mexico’s surface waters and the Rio Grande, Albuquerque’s future source of drinking water.

Dave McCoy, Assistant Director for Citizen Action said, Albuquerque is a mere 60-miles downstream from LANL. By not scheduling a public hearing in Albuquerque the DOE/NNSA is denying Albuquerque residents an opportunity to present their concerns regarding the impacts of increased plutonium pit production. There is extensive public concern over increased environmental contamination, transport of weapons waste, waste storage, nuclear weapons proliferation, potential terrorism and violation of international treaties.

McCoy added that an increase in pit production at LANL will also lead to increased nuclear weapons activities at the Sandia National Laboratories, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sandia designs and engineers the “non-nuclear components” for nuclear weapons - over 6,300 parts of a nuclear bomb’s 6,500 individual components. Sandia makes the casings for nuclear bombs, mates the nuclear warheads to weapons delivery systems, and conducts “weapons effects” research to guarantee that nuclear weapons will work in the severe radioactive environments of a nuclear war.

Citizen Action has contacted both Senator Bingaman and Congresswoman Heather Wilson asking for their support in obtaining a public hearing in Albuquerque on the LANL SWEIS. To date there has been no response from either office.