Yesterday The National Nuclear Security Administration confirmed its plans to replace an aging Los Alamos National Labs facility, which runs across a major fault line, with an estimated $4-6 billion plutonium lab. According to the NNSA notice, the new building “would provide vitally essential technical support capabilities to NNSA’s national security mission.”

However, according to Greg Mello of the Albuquerque-based Los Alamos Study Group, a LANL watchdog, the project creates very few new jobs for New Mexicans — perhaps as few as 300 — over its projected 10-year-long construction. Moreover, the unofficial cost of the building by the time of its actual completion could run as high as $12 billion. And, he says, its real purpose is the creation of nuclear warheads, each of which would have 50 times greater capacity and impact than the bomb used on Nagasaki in 1945. “Basically,” said Mello, “it’s making weapons of mass destruction.”

Although federal officials assented to the their plans (which, by LASG’s estimation, has already cost $458 million just to get it to this planning stage) for the construction of the new lab, approval by both the U.S. House and Senate is still necessary.

In presenting his memorial, Sharer said nuclear energy is clean and that it doesn’t emit the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. He said opposition to nuclear power was misinformed.

“[There's] simply a misconception in what it is and how its used,” he said.

In the audience, Sharer’s memorial was supported by Adela Duran of the Uranium Producers of New Mexico, a group composed of five uranium mining companies. Her clients are wholeheartedly in support of the bill, she said, and believe nuclear energy is the most dependable clean energy source.

But Molly Brook of Conservation Voters of New Mexico testified that the memorial did not take into account the impact of by-products of producing nuclear energy, including cancer and autoimmune disorders. Plus, she said, at the end of nuclear energy production, the byproducts remain toxic for thousands of years.

Sen. Kent Cravens, D-Albuquerque,  spoke at length from his perch on the Rules Committee, in favor of the memorial. He said the radioactivity of uranium is a natural part of the environment, suggesting that the mining of uranium has no negative impact. Cravens described a university study he was part of 30 years ago that  pinpointed the places where uranium ore mining has the most potential, saying they were places where “nobody had ever lived.”

“We could actually determine where the best area for harvesting uranium ore might be,” he said. “That map was determined for places where nobody had ever lived. That leaching [of uranium into the environment] already exists. You can’t get much greener than the way god created it.”

Cravens didn’t address the issue of water pollution from uranium mining in longstanding tribal as well as non-tribal communities that exist in places such as the Grants Uranium Belt.

After his remarks, the rest of the committee didn’t find it necessary to debate the issue. Senator Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, moved to table the memorial, which was quickly affirmed, with Sen. Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, being the lone dissenting Democrat.

Sharer didn’t seem happy.

“I’m not a bit surprised, because scary works,” he said to the committee, “but you have made an error.”

“Nuclear energy provides clean, safe, reliable power and has an important role to play as we build a low-carbon future,” Chu said in a statement. “The Administration is committed to promoting nuclear power in the United States and developing a safe, long-term solution for the management of used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.”

According to Peter St. Cyr, Domenici said that nuclear energy is “a key component of a new American energy policy that moves toward renewable, non-carbon emitting energy sources.”

Domenici, currently a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, was a long-time advocate of nuclear energy while in the Senate, where he chaired the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He retired from the Senate after six-terms before the 2008 election.

Drill, drill, drill – and what do you get?

Architecture 2030, the Santa Fe nonprofit headed by solar architect Edward Mazria, has released a chart that literally makes oil production from future offshore drilling look like a drop in a bucket.

On this chart, based on statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, that little pool of yellow that looks like a bit of oil floating on top of an ocean is what the outer continental shelf would produce at peak production.

The yellow totals 200,000 barrels of oil a day, which Architecture 2030 says – again quoting USEIA stats – “would supply a meager 1.2 percent of total U.S. annual oil consumption (just 0.6 percent of total U.S. energy consumption).”

The nonprofit says the U.S. “will consume a year’s supply of oil from expanded offshore drilling in the outer continental shelf in just four days.”

“The comprehensive energy plans proposed by politicians that are centered on oil drilling and
nuclear power would supply just 1.8 percent of total U.S. energy needs – a drop in the bucket,” Mazria says.

The 2030 Web site says:

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, oil production from drilling offshore in the outer continental shelf wouldn’t begin until around the year 2017. Once begun, it wouldn’t reach peak production until about 2030 when it would produce only 200,000 barrels of oil per day (in yellow above). And, the offshore oil would be sold back to the U.S. at the international rate, which today is $106 a barrel. So, the oil produced by offshore drilling would not only be a “drop in the bucket,” it would be expensive, which translates to little or no relief at the pump.

Meanwhile, Mazria continues to spread his message that energy-efficient buildings are the key to phasing out convention coal power plants and reducing oil imports by 86 percent by the year 2030 – the tenets of his 2030 Challenge and 2030 Blueprint.

Mazria spoke last month at the first National Clean Energy Summit hosted by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. On Oct. 8, he travels to the University of Hawaii, Manoa campus, where he will once against posit that it’s possible to achieve energy independence, solve climate change and revitalize the U.S. economy with a single solution: changes in the building sector, the nation’s largest energy consumer.

“We tend to rush toward the complex when trying to solve a daunting problem, but in this case, simplicity wins. Better buildings, responsible energy use and renewable energy choices are all we need to tackle both energy independence and climate change,” Mazria says.