The mission of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico is to provide timely and accurate information to the public on nuclear issues in New Mexico and the Southwest. Through the resulting empowerment of effective citizen action, Nuclear Watch of New Mexico seeks to promote both greater safety and environmental protection at regional nuclear facilities and federal policy changes that genuinely encourage international efforts to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons.



New Mexico is the birthplace of nuclear weapons. It is now the host state for many nuclear weapons research, production and radioactive waste disposal facilities. A decade after the end of the Cold War, the reconfigured nuclear weapons complex has been largely revitalized and consolidated here. Under the so-called Stockpile Stewardship Program, now being implemented by the Department of Energy (DOE), Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories are receiving funding for core nuclear weapons research and production programs that exceeds Cold War levels. The production of plutonium pits, the "heart" of thermonuclear weapons, has been relocated to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) from the notorious Rocky Flats Plant near Denver. The opening of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico gives DOE the ability to falsely claim that it is cleaning the massive environmental degradation caused by the Cold War attitude of production above all else. This, in turn, enables DOE to continue nuclear weapons production.