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$4.3 billion to make new plutonium pits for America

a building project at Los Alamos called the Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR). The intended function of this facility is to increase the capacity to produce new plutonium pits. The actual site of the nuclear fission, they’re the beating heart of the warhead…..The CMRR,… “was marketed to Congress as a $350 million building [but] has grown to an estimated $4.3 billion

The Front Line of Disarmament: Blocking a Nuclear Facility Six Times the Cost of the Manhattan Project, THE HUFFINGTON POST, Russ Wellen: 29 Nov 10, That is, six times the cost of the division of the Manhattan Project (to develop nuclear weapons during World War II) that was based in New Mexico.

The heart of it — what later became known as Los Alamos National Laboratory. Odds are, with the Cold War consigned to history, you couldn’t have imagined that a nuclear weapons facility of such immensity was still on the table.
Reg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG), which, since 1989, has been spearheading nuclear disarmament in New Mexico, and, consequently, the nation.

Since 1999, it has concentrated on halting or, failing that, downsizing a building project at Los Alamos called the Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR). The intended function of this facility is to increase the capacity to produce new plutonium pits. The actual site of the nuclear fission, they’re the beating heart of the warhead.

The CMRR, writes Greg Mello in a press release, “was marketed to Congress as a $350 million building [but] has grown to an estimated $4.3 billion.” The “per square foot of useful space has grown to more than 100 times what [Los Alamos’s] existing plutonium facility cost in 1978, in constant dollars [adjusted for inflation].”

How, you’re probably wondering, in these economic times, could we be embarking on an endeavor more vast than the Manhattan Project? If we were, shouldn’t it be, instead of weapons, a flagship form of alternative energy?…….

Bear in mind that the United States already has “approximately 24,000 . . . tested, stockpiled pits for each delivery system” and “these pits last essentially forever.” LASG “believes there are many simpler, cheaper, faster, less risky, and less environmentally damaging alternatives to [the CMRR, which] let alone any other . . . is poorly justified from the nuclear deterrence perspective.”…..

Russ Wellen: The Front Line of Disarmament: Blocking a Nuclear Facility Six Times the Cost of the Manhattan Project

November 30, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear weapons, plutonium