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The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is aggressively expanding the production of plutonium pits, the radioactive cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons.
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NNSA now plans to produce up to 205 pits every year for the new arms race, with at least 80 pits per year made at LANL and at least 125 per year at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
Why producing new pits is a problem:
Cost
Pit production is NNSA’s most expensive program ever, with $5 billion to be spent over each of the next six years and at least $60 billion over the next 20 years. There should be consideration of how taxpayer resources would be better used to address urgent national security threats such as adverse climate change and global pandemics.
Toxic waste
The only repository for radioactive transuranic (TRU) wastes is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southern New Mexico, and it is already overcommitted to holding other radioactive waste from nuclear weapon production. The New Mexico Environment Department is mandating that DOE prioritize LANL’s Cold War wastes for disposal at WIPP instead of new plutonium pit bomb wastes, and to look for a new dump somewhere else. In short, there is no certain path for the safe disposal of future radioactive bomb wastes.
Health and environmental risks
There are risks to the environment and communities. LANL’s plutonium facility has historically prioritized expediency and production over safety. This endangers the workforce and the local community, as well as the program itself should a significant accident occur. The NNSA should expand the impact radius beyond a 50-mile radius to account for worst-case scenarios such as facility fires. Additionally, the project must account for cumulative impacts of other chemicals in the environment and must also include risk analysis for vulnerable populations, such as children, women, low income, and other communities not represented by traditional exposure limits.
50 more years of nuclear weapons violates obligations to disarm
Planned plutonium pit production for the next 50 years violates the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty’s requirement for nuclear weapons states to enter into negotiations leading to disarmament. The draft PEIS claims that NNSA programs, including expanded plutonium pit production, are “consistent with the NPT.” That is false. The final programmatic environmental impact statement should comport not only with the NPT’s mandate to disarm nuclear stockpiles, but also with the essential need for the U.S. to lead by example toward ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, the PEIS should have a reduced operations alternative instead of solely analyzing expanding nuclear weapons programs.
Take Action
This is a unique and critical opportunity for public scrutiny of and formal comment on the US government’s plans to make new nuclear bombs for a new arms race!
The deadline is 16 July, 2026.
Comments can be sent by email to: [email protected]
Please be sure to include the document number: DOE/EIS-0573
Learn more
Want to learn more? Many ICAN Partners have prepared resource materials on this issue:
For example, this helpful toolkit by Tewa Women United-
Watch testimonies from the hearings already held, and get more information here: https://pitpeis.com/
You can also learn more from this expert briefing to the U.S. Congress-