VIDEO: Heinrich Presses NNSA Nominee On Maintaining Key LANL Mission

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, during a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing to consider the future head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) pressed nominee Lisa Gordon-Hagerty on her commitment to maintaining pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), including providing the Lab with a safer, more modern facility.

VIDEO: Heinrich Presses NNSA Nominee During Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing

In 2014, the Nuclear Weapons Council and Congress endorsed a modular building strategy at Los Alamos that would fully meet the nation’s requirements to maintain the nuclear stockpile and provide new, modern facilities. However, the NNSA conducted an analysis that totally neglects this current plan to meet the nation’s needs and instead compared new alternatives to an outdated plan Los Alamos abandoned years ago. In December 2017, Senator Heinrich, along with U.S. Senator Tom Udall and Congressman Ben Ray Luján, sent a letter to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry raising “very serious concerns” about the flawed analysis.