Los Alamos National Laboratory and the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The ongoing federal government shutdown could soon lead to a shuttering of Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico. Together the two facilities make up the majority of the nation's nuclear weapons program, while also bringing over $4 billion annually into one of the poorest states in the country.
The National Nuclear Security Administration ordered the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Sandia National Laboratories to be ready to shut down by October 21 and potentially furlough the majority of the labs' 18,000 employees, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The NNSA, which is part of the Department of Energy, oversees the work at the two labs, as well as a third nuclear weapons facility at the Lawrence Livermore Lab in California. There's been no word yet on a planned shut down for Livermore, but the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee that also handles nuclear weapons and fuel for naval reactors began an "orderly shutdown" on Monday.
"If a shutdown is needed, programmatic work will not be conducted," Sandia President Paul Hommert said in a memo to laboratory employees.
In addition to weapons and nuclear-related activities, Los Alamos and Sandia also conduct space research, run some of the world's fastest supercomputers and conduct experiments in nanotechnology, just for starters. In my experience alone, I've shared New Mexico ski lifts with lab employees who work on complex climate models or have experimented with getting bees to be able to sniff out explosives.
If the shutdown continues into next month, those employees will have more time for skiing, if they can afford it while on furlough.
Among the lab activities that have already been affected by the shutdown is processing low-level nuclear waste to be transported to a permanent underground disposal site near Carlsbad, New Mexico. When the massive Los Conchas fire threatened the Los Alamos lab a few years ago, the flames were reported to have come within striking distance of the area where some of that waste was stored in what are essentially above-ground tents on the Los Alamos Lab property.
If a full shutdown were to occur at Los Alamos, a skeleton crew of about 600 workers would remain to protect nuclear material, manage computer systems and respond to emergencies.
