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Feds start process to evaluate environmental impacts of pit production
By Alaina Mencinger amencinger@sfnewmexican.com
May 9, 2025
The National Nuclear Security Administration has announced plans to prepare a broad environmental assessment of plutonium pit production.
Friday’s notice of intent kicks off a lengthy process to evaluate whether a plan to produce the radioactive trigger devices for nuclear weapons at two sites complies with federal environmental law — and if there are any feasible alternatives.
Producing the programmatic environmental impact statement, as it is known, and seeking public input are expected to take around two years, according to the notice published in the Federal Register. After a draft statement is produced in about a year, public hearings will be held in Santa Fe as well as South Carolina, California, Missouri and Washington, D.C.
It all started with a 2021 lawsuit filed by several organizations around the country, including local anti-nuclear group Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
The groups argued that by deciding to produce plutonium pits at two sites — the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and Los Alamos National Laboratory — the federal government had violated the National Environmental Protection Act.
In September 2024, a judge agreed.
U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled the agency had not thoroughly considered alternatives to the plan to produce plutonium pits at both the Savannah River Site and Los Alamos or investigated the cumulative impacts of such a plan.
The decision spurred months of finagling over how to fix the problem. The parties reached a deal in January requiring the agency to produce a new programmatic environmental impact statement.
“This means undertaking a thorough analysis of the impacts of pit production at NNSA sites throughout the United States, including the generation of new radioactive wastes and their uncertain future disposal,” the plaintiffs wrote in a news release. “Under NEPA, this will provide the opportunity for public scrutiny on NNSA’s aggressive production plans.”
Until the statement is finalized, the National Nuclear Security Administration won’t be able to bring any nuclear material or classified equipment into the main processing building at the Savannah River Site’s plutonium facility, despite protests that the delay could be costly and impact national security.
Such a provision isn’t mandated for LANL, which is charged with producing a minimum of 30 pits per year. The goal is to produce at least 80 pits per year between the two sites.
According to the notice in the Federal Register, the no-action alternative evaluated by the review will be based on the plan to produce 30 pits per year at LANL with “surge efforts” to produce as many as 80 pits per year at the single site.
Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said he’s happy to see “serious scrutiny” applied to the plutonium pit production program.
But some features of the notice gave him pause, including that the environmental impact statement will analyze the environmental effects of plutonium pit production over the next 50 years. He questions whether the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nuclear waste repository outside Carlsbad, would be able to accommodate waste produced over a half-century — especially after the facility’s last state permit renewal mandated that legacy waste, produced before 1999, be prioritized over new waste.
He was also disappointed the proposed no-action alternative “baked in” pit production at LANL.
“Of course, it’s a mixed bag,” Coghlan said. “NNSA is never going to give us all we want, and we had to fight them tooth and nail for this.”
The agency will hold meetings May 27 and May 28 to allow stakeholders to provide input on the project’s scope, requirements and goals. The current deadline to submit comments on the scope of the statement is July 14.
Coghlan said he hopes public input on the environmental impact statement becomes a larger conversation on the nation’s nuclear program as a whole.
“My ultimate aim here is to have this programmatic environmental impact statement on pit production become a public referendum on the new nuclear arms race,” Coghlan said. “As imperfect as this is, you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.”
Published comments by Greg Mello:
Comment #1:
This debacle, including the false statements by Mr. Coghlan about it, offer textbook insights into how federal agencies, liberal foundations, and pork-barrel politicians can divide, conquer, and distract opposition. Among its more interesting aspects is the media culture, with its eye forever on its bottom line, led along willy-nilly in this process. Regardless, and as ever, there remains the practical problem of how to foster reality-based civic institutions amid torrents of propaganda.
Where to start? Contrary to what Mr. Coghlan says, the South Carolina case was aimed by the plaintiffs, from its inception, at driving all pit production to New Mexico. The SC venue, the selection of just one plaintiff from New Mexico, which omitted the most affected parties here, the SC lawyers, and the arguments presented were selected for that purpose. There was never any effort or argument to halt preparations for pit production in Los Alamos. As plaintiffs (erroneously) wrote in their proposed settlement of this lawsuit, annulment of the two-site production decision "would not disrupt activities at [LANL]." NNSA quickly agreed to this major concession, pointing out that “Plaintiffs’ NEPA claim challenges only the decision to produce pits at a second site [i.e. in South Carolina]; thus, any remedy should be limited to the second production site...this Court should not order relief that blocks previously authorized production at Los Alamos.” (Joint Reply on Alternative Remedies," Aug 23, 2024, p. 3).
In fact Mr. Coghlan and Nuclear Watch have always promoted, and never at any time opposed, pit production at LANL. They have always sought for LANL to be the sole pit production facility for the United States, since 2003. When pressed, as we have done many times, they have refused to join in the opposition to LANL pit production, saying that: production at LANL was the lesser evil; was already decided and therefore a moot point; and would be inherently limited by LANL "screw-ups."
In 2009, Nuclear Watch helped lead a major effort funded at the six-figure level that proposed bringing all the plutonium processing and manufacturing, all the uranium processing and manufacturing, all the tritium processing, and all the surrogate nuclear testing to LANL, as well bringing manufacturing of all other NNSA-made nuclear weapons components to Albuquerque. The present effort to make the Greater Santa Fe area the Plutonium Weapons Capitol of the United States is the last residue of that ridiculous plan. (See "Transforming the U.S. Strategic Posture and Weapons Complex, Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network," Apr 2009). It too will fail.
What has been created as a result of this lawsuit is yet another set of faux-democratic fora. Yes, we must do what we can with them. But Mr. Coghlan would like these fora to be all about the badness of the new nuclear arms race generally. Again, he wants to change the subject away from the actual subject at hand, which is pit production, especially pit production here and now. That is what is on the table. LANL pit production uniquely supports a new arms race. Its whole raison d'etre is speed. LANL is to make the unnecessary new warheads, ASAP, for the proposed, troubled Sentinel ICBM.
Opposition to this neocon agenda is important. As a first step, please join the hundreds of businesses, organizations, and individuals opposing NNSA's pit production plans by signing the Call to Sanity at stopthebomb.org. Next, do not be seduced into thinking this is all about something big and far away, i.e. "the nuclear arms race (not otherwise specified)." That's not quite right. It's about the nuclear arms race happening right here and right now, which we can stop. The LANL pit factory is far from finished and may never be. NNSA says it will be done 7 years from now, but sad to say, that could only be the beginning. The billions yet to be spent will define the region's future, if this project continues without opposition.
Comment #2:
I should have mentioned that New Mexicans have defeated plans for pit production on multiple occasions, starting in 1990 and most consequentially, in 2010-2012, when the then-proposed pit factory at LANL was cancelled as a result of repeated litigation and extensive analysis by the Los Alamos Study Group. See https://lasg.org/CMRR/open_page.htm and the litigation linked there. What is most important here is not that we did this but that it was done. Pit production at LANL was defeated not just once but multiple times. There is an organic opposition to pit production in New Mexico, for very good reasons. NNSA fears and respects that opposition, your opposition, which is part of why these hearings are supposed to be virtual, rather than in-person. The public, if you sift through the comments made to NNSA, understands the practical aspects of trying to do this mission here better than NNSA itself does. NNSA is driven by the DC Blob, of which it is a charter member. In other words, NNSA is driven by ideology and politics, which in this case are overriding its own better technical judgment, which explicitly did NOT support the present plans.
If you endorse the Call for Sanity (again, go to stopthebomb.org), we will send you the information you need, and we will do our best to be part of the fellowship we all need, to successfully fend off this massive environmental, moral, political, and cultural insult one final time. I say "final" because the factory in South Carolina is being built, no matter what, and it can handle the whole pit "mission." This article didn't tell you that, and I forgot to mention it also (for a current snapshot, see https://lasg.org/SRPPF/images/SRPPF-Apr2025-construction.jpg.) It is the factory here that is optional -- the $22 billion "bonus" factory first sought by the New Mexico delegation, the Air Force, and the Livermore lab especially. It greases many palms.
As should be obvious, effective political action requires particulars, not vague generalities. We oppose the nuclear arms race by opposing it here and now, in the particular material ways history presents to us, along with opposing it generally -- in the abstract as it were. As Arundhati Roy said, we here have the "power of proximity," if we recognize and have the self-respect to rise into it. It is a latent power, a latent sovereignty, as well as a privilege and a responsibility. It is not just a matter of us being many, while "they are few" as Shelley wrote: "Rise like lions after slumber / In unvanquishable number— / Shake your chains to earth like dew / Which in sleep had fallen on you— / Ye are many—they are few."
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