Tom Clements, executive director of Savannah River Site Watch, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said negotiations are ongoing.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico is another plaintiff, and the New Mexico-based Los Alamos Study Group has filed an amicus brief advocating for production at just one location — the Savannah River Site.

Clements anticipates this might be the last deadline extension, although he said, “we’ll just see this week how things proceed.”

“There may be some differences on some points, and agreement on others,” Clements said.

“But I think both parties are definitely following the judge’s instruction to have the negotiations and come up with some kind of joint proposal.”

In an August declaration, Brian Schepens, deputy director of the NNSA’s Savannah River Acquisition and Project Management Office, wrote additional analysis of NEPA, which could take up to 18 months, could delay completion of the Savannah River Site’s plutonium processing facility by five years.

The delay, Schepens said, would result in “imperiling the national security mission to maintain a dependable nuclear arsenal,” in addition to job losses and price increases.

In another declaration filed in September, Schepens said a conditional approval for construction could be expected by December 2025.

Clements said his “bottom line” is a programmatic environmental impact statement — something he believes is possible before the end of 2025.

“We’re trying to find some common ground,” he said.

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Published comment by Greg Mello:

We are glad the New Mexican is trying to keep up with this. Our press release and factual declaration can be found at https://lasg.org/press/2024/press_release_30Oct2024.html. We are not offering opinion (i.e. entering as an expert, since we are not party to the case) as much as bringing crucial facts into the case which have been omitted by plaintiffs and defendants alike.

Readers may not understand that the crux -- in fact the sole basis -- of the judge's decision declaring the programmatic (nationwide) environmental analysis inadequate lies in the indisputable fact that NNSA changed its plan from conducting pit production at one site -- which site, and with what capacity and operational level, were to be determined -- to the new plan of conducting pit production at two sites. That's VERY different.

NNSA already did a full programmatic (nationwide) analysis of pit production, and also a full, separate, up-to-date environmental impact statement for pit production at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. Absent that big change in overall paradigm from one-site production to two-site production, there was no basis identified in the decision for halting work at SRS.

Ironically, and in a nutshell, it is the huge preparations for pit production at LANL which create the impression of illegality of the preparatory work at SRS.

I used the phrase "impression of illegality" because the judge has not actually vacated (annulled) NNSA's decision. NEPA decisions prior to this one have brought considerations of equity -- the consequences -- into such decisions, as the declaration of Mr. Schepens brought into focus. Also, the substance of NNSA's NEPA analysis was not questioned; the Court did not inject itself into technical matters, as was proper. She has left the remedy (i.e. NNSA's course of action from this point forward) undecided, throwing the outcome of the lawsuit back to the parties.

So essentially the Court is mandating a supervised mediation process, rather than being the one to decide. (As a cultural and political aside, this is how the two-site pit production plan arose in the first place: under previous management, NNSA responded to demands from the New Mexico congressional delegation and Senate hawks organized by Heinrich and Udall to have an industrial pit production role for Los Alamos despite a clear NNSA recommendation NOT to do so, and also NOT to have pit production at two sites. The whole reason LANL has an industrial -- that is, "reliable" = "high confidence"="at least 30 pits per year" = pit production mission in addition to SRS is because the New Mexico delegation demanded it. NNSA couldn't make a clear decision then so they "split the baby," resulting in the present case.)

Overall, New Mexicans may not realize that the plaintiffs call for continuing preparations for industrial pit production at LANL while halting preparations to do so in South Carolina.

Finally, a lot is being made here about "public participation" in the NEPA process. That's worth nothing more than a bucket of warm spit. Don't be fooled. It's a political pacifier for political babies, a way to "cool off the mark" in the con that's going on, in social psychologist Erving Goffman's famous paper of that name more than 50 years ago. People can blow off steam in NEPA hearings, the record of which then protects the agency from litigation. In this case, NNSA changed direction without the right process.

We will be debating pit production with NNSA Administrator Dr. Jill Hruby and others next week in Washington, DC. (Press advisory: Panel discussion at National Press Club Wed. Nov. 13, 1-4 pm EST, with NNSA Administrator Hruby, Los Alamos Study Group, GAO, others regarding plutonium warhead core ("pit") production). Meanwhile New Mexicans and others can join the resistance against pit production by endorsing the CALL FOR SANITY, NOT NUCLEAR PRODUCTION.