The birthplace of the atomic bomb is booming. Neighbors worry that could make them sick

Los Alamos, New Mexico, is ramping up production of plutonium pits, a warhead part with documented health risks

Oppenheimer, the Christopher Nolan film up for several Academy Awards this weekend, tells the story of how J Robert Oppenheimer developed the world’s first atomic bombs. Set in a secret laboratory in Los Alamos, on northern New Mexico’s Pajarito plateau, the film pays scant attention to the Indigenous communities who inhabited the land before the Manhattan Project and the illnesses they endured after nuclear tests.

Now, nearly 80 years later, Los Alamos is once again booming as the US modernizes its nuclear arsenal. Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the only facility in the country currently producing plutonium cores of nuclear weapons, aim to ramp up production from zero to 30 pits per year over the next two years. The lab has hired some 4,000 new employees in the last two years, bringing the staff population up to nearly 16,000 people.