Cost of RECA Chart
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Pope Leo XIV: It is not atomic weapons that generate #peace, but disarmament.
“It is not atomic weapons that generate peace, but disarmament. This truth, which seemed clear in past decades when we witnessed a nuclear de-escalation, has been obscured by a race to armament that today frightens and terrifies.”
– Pope Leo XIV July 21, 2026
“There is nothing comparable in our history to the deceit and the lying that took place as a matter of official Government policy in order to protect this industry. Nothing was going to stop them and they were willing to kill our own people.”
— Stewart Udall, United States Secretary of the Interior under President Kennedy and President Johnson.
He was the father of Senator Tom Udall (who ended up being a vigorous supporter of expanded nuclear weapons “modernization” plans).
In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
NEW & UPDATED
There IS NO need for speed.
That is no need for speed other than the National Nuclear Security Administration’s and LANL’s aggressive agenda to get unneeded plutonium “pit” bomb core production established as a fait accompli by stripping safety standards and blocking independent oversight before the lack of true need and the astonishing costs are publicly recognized.
There is no need for speed because no future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, it is all for new-design nuclear weapons for the new nuclear arms race that threatens us all. Further, these new-design nuclear weapons could prompt the U.S. to resume nuclear weapons testing, which Trump has already threatened. This would have disastrous international proliferation consequences (Putin has already said Russia will test if the U.S. does).
The Department of Energy and the NNSA have been on the independent Government Accountability Office’s High Risk List for project mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ dollars ever since the GAO started the List in 1991. The NNSA is going to spend $4 billion at LANL and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina for pit production over each of the next six years. Yet the GAO has repeatedly stated that NNSA has no credible cost estimates for its most expensive and complex program ever.
Plutonium pit production at LANL will cause more contamination and radioactive wastes.
Today, August 6, 2026, is the 81st Anniversary of the U.S. Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima.
Recommended Reading: John Hersey and the horrors of Hiroshima
The American journalist’s account of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath, told through the eyes of Japanese survivors, forced the world to reckon with the terrifying power of nuclear weapons.
Iain MacGregor August 5, 2026 engelsbergideas.com
The New START treaty – enforced since 2011 and the last remaining arms‑control agreement between the United States and Russia – expired in February 2026 with nothing to replace it. The final legal barrier limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals was removed, ushering in what analysts describe as a period of Great Power uncertainty. China, meanwhile, is rapidly expanding and modernising its nuclear forces, with its stockpile more than doubling in just five years and further growth expected throughout the decade.
In the Middle East, the erosion of nuclear restraint has accelerated sharply. Recent US-Israeli attacks have pushed Iran closer than ever to abandoning the Nuclear Non‑Proliferation Treaty (NPT): Tehran still possesses enough enriched uranium to place it within short technical reach of multiple nuclear warheads, while senior political and security figures openly debate withdrawal from the NPT as a defensive necessity rather than a diplomatic taboo. The precedent – of a major regional power crossing the nuclear threshold outside any arms‑control framework – would reverberate far beyond the region.
North Korea, emboldened by global fragmentation, insists that its arsenal is ‘irreversible’. Across Europe and Asia, public opinion in countries such as Poland, Turkey and South Korea is shifting toward domestic nuclear capability as confidence in US security guarantees becomes frayed. The precarious equilibrium of the non‑proliferation era is cracking just when the living memory of the bomb’s human cost has never been more vital.
In such a landscape, the work of remembering what nuclear weapons do – not in theory, but to human bodies and cities – becomes urgent again. Eighty years ago, one American writer succeeded in forcing the world to confront this reality. His name was John Hersey, and the story he told in August 1946 in the New Yorker magazine, about the world’s first nuclear strike against the Japanese port city of Hiroshima the previous year, remains one of the clearest moral documents of the atomic age…
Ian MacGregor outlines precisely above the current state and reality of the new nuclear arms race we are now in, more dangerous than the first.
“Rationality will not save us… this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.” Robert McNamara
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: July 2026
Nuclear Weapons:
Budget: The House of Representatives passed a fiscal 2027 continuing resolution to keep the government running through Dec. 4 (the new fiscal year begins Oct 1). The White House Office of Management and Budget is requesting a series of anomalies, or exceptions, to the CR rule that funding be limited to the levels of the prior fiscal year. One anomaly is for the new Trump-class battleship.
For the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA): it’s the Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade (the new powerline across the Caja del Rio); enhanced subcritical tests at the Nevada National Security Site; and, most dangerous of all, allowing the NNSA to reprogram funding by itself within its Total Weapons Activities budget category.
The Senate is basically doing the same, plus an anomaly for ‘‘21– D–401 Hoisting Capability Project’’ at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. WIPP has been operationally shut down for a few months now due to a burnt-out hoist motor.
The House and Senate must resolve their relatively minor differences and get Trump’s signature before October 1 to prevent a government shutdown.
Regular authorization (the annual Defense Authorization Act) and appropriations are unlikely to move until mid-term elections (~86 days to go).
Plutonium pit production:
- exchangemonitor.com/williams-nnsa-accelerating-plutonium-pit-production-toward-2028-goal/ August 06, 2026 Williams: NNSA accelerating plutonium pit production toward 2028 goal – OMAHA, Neb. – Brandon Williams, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said here Thursday Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is accelerating plutonium pit production, with the site targeting 100 pits by December 2028.
- We filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for DOE’s “Special Study.” See https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Nuclear-Weapons-Watchdog-Sues-for-Pit-Production-Special-Study.pdf
- The South Carolina Environmental Law Project sent a letter to DOE/NNSA demanding 3 crucial documents: the “Special Study,” the unclassified summary of the new JASON pit life study, and LANL’s new Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis. See our press release at https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Plaintiffs-Demand-Release-of-Critical-Documents-and-Extension-of-Public-Comment-Period-on-Expanded-Plutonium-Bomb-Core-Production.pdf
- The Pit Production PEIS comment period ended July 16 (81st anniversary of the Trinity Test). We submitted 64-page comments plus exhibits, see nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Formal-Comments-on-the-Pit-Production-Programmatic-Environmental-Impact-Statement.pdf NNSA ignored our demand for a comment period time extension because of the withheld documents.
- We received an unredacted version of the new JASON pit life study (see https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-JASON-Plutonium-Aging-Executive-Summary.pdf). “High Level Finding:… “The Pu in the stockpile appears to be aging slowly. The degradation issues that have been observed do not call into question present weapons performance.” We had received one title page and 2 completely blank narrative pages the day before the PEIS comment period expired.
Other/Related
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/08/why-hill-republicans-are-competing-for-nuclear-waste-01015140 Why some Republicans want to bring nuclear waste home – For decades, politicians have treated nuclear waste as politically radioactive. Now, Republicans are competing to bring it home. The Department of Energy announced last week that it had signed memorandums of agreement with Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Idaho to explore creating facilities to support the full nuclear fuel cycle — from enrichment of uranium and fabricating fuel to disposing of waste. Rather than resisting an initiative that could bring more nuclear waste to their states, some Republicans are actively courting the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses, arguing they could anchor advanced nuclear industries and bring billions of dollars in investment.
*Also mixed in with AI and data centers, for which Small Modular Reactors might supply power.
Accelerating Arms Race:
- nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-drafting-new-us-nuclear-strategy-case-regional-war-china-russ-rcna587370 Pentagon drafting a new U.S. nuclear strategy in case of regional war with China or Russia, sources say – The Defense Department’s policy chief is drafting a new U.S. nuclear strategy that emphasizes the possible use of shorter-range tactical weapons in case of a regional war with China or Russia, according to five people familiar with the plans. The new strategy, which is classified, challenges the approach to nuclear weapons that has been settled policy for decades… Colby has long pushed for an emphasis on tactical weapons, arguing that America’s adversaries would simply not believe the U.S. would seriously contemplate launching long-range weapons aimed at wiping out an enemy’s nuclear forces — as is the emphasis of the
- united24media.com/world/nato-weighs-nuclear-expansion-as-poland-finland-lithuania-emerge-as-options-21249NATO Weighs Nuclear Expansion as Poland, Finland, Lithuania Emerge as Options – NATO is currently examining options to position additional American nuclear capabilities across Europe as a response to threats posed by Russia. Poland, Finland, and Lithuania are under consideration as potential host countries, according to Süddeutschen Zeitung on July 31. The discussions include Poland aiming to join the Nuclear Sharing program, Finland lifting its long-standing prohibition on nuclear weapons transit and import, and the Lithuanian parliament reviewing legislation to remove its constitutional ban on nuclear deployments.
- https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/07/saudi-us-nuclear-deal-abraham-accords-123-agreement – What We Know About the U.S.-Saudi Nuclear Deal – Peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements, known colloquially as 123 agreements (after the relevant section in the U.S. Atomic Energy Act), rarely make headlines, but this one stands out. Although the administration has not yet released the full text, the agreement reportedly will not require Riyadh to categorically forgo fuel cycle activities that would be conducive to a nuclear weapons program (namely enrichment and reprocessing) or to accept the highest standard of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, known as the Additional Protocol, or AP.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: June 2026
Nuclear Weapons:
Budget: Record $1 trillion military budget. Now Trump wants a reconciliation bill that adds $350 billion. He also wants the “Save America” voter suppression Act attached to it which is bound to be ruled not proper by the Senate parliamentarian (reconciliation bills are supposed to deal only with the budget). This could lead to a crisis of some kind.
Favorable polling for Trump is going down with the war in Iran and economic impacts. Will voter suppression will be the only thing that keeps Republicans in control of Congress?
There is also talk of $80 billion supplemental appropriation for the war in Iran.
Defense Authorization Act:
- Passed by House, Senate is considering.
- Hard line House congressional Trumpers want the Save America Act attached to the DAA. That would kill its passage in the Senate and probably won’t happen.
- Proposed 180 pits per year by 2050.
- Numerically expands the US nuclear weapons stockpile to deal with the alleged China threat. This will probably result in MIRVing of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and more warheads on already MIRVed sub-launched warheads.
- Proposes to more closely integrate US and Israeli military and guarantee $3 billion per year to Israeli military.
Overall trend very bad. Welcome to the new nuclear arms race.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: May 2026
Nuclear Weapons:
https://www.twz.com/nuclear/new-nuclear-bunker-buster-bomb-plans-revealed
New Nuclear Bunker Buster Bomb Plans Revealed The Department of Energy is seeking millions of dollars for work in part on a new bunker-busting nuclear weapon called the Nuclear Deterrent System-Air-delivered (NDS-A) in its latest budget request… Beyond that it will be air-delivered, there are also no details currently available publicly about the weapon’s design, including whether it will be based on something already in the stockpile.
See the graph below found on the Kansas City National Security Complex website. There are three future new-design nuclear weapons on the right above the W93 (“F” is all 3 cases means “Future”). These new-design nuclear weapons presumably will have new-design pits like the W93.
Plutonium Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) is Out Now! Visit PitPEIS.com for More!
The Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Plutonium Pit Production was released by NNSA on Friday, April 10th. This opens a critical window for public comment on NNSA’s unnecessary plan to expand production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores. This PEIS was brought on by a lawsuit against NNSA over its failure to complete the NEPA process for this plan. As you likely know, NEPA is fully under attack by the current administration — this may be the last foreseeable full NEPA process taking place, making it all the more critical to be involved.
As a resource to help you comment and encourage widespread comment-making in your community, we (lawsuit plaintiffs Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri-Valley CAREs, as well as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and groups from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability), created a website that is now live!
Your Pit PEIS central hub for information and action: https://pitpeis.com/
Please take a look and feel free to share, and note that we’ll be continuing to update it as soon as new resources become available.
For example, we will soon have:
– A schedule of comment trainings
– Sample comments and talking points
– Regional-focused resources to help engage your local community around this issue
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: April 2026
Nuclear Weapons:
Trump has gone beyond the pale, threatening to wipe out an entire civilization (Iran). The Senate majority leader John Thune tweeted thuggishly, “Iran would be wise to take President Trump at his word. They can choose the easy way or the hard way.” Speaker Mike Johnson had adjourned the House.
There is only one thing made by man that can wipe out a civilization overnight and that is nuclear weapons. NNSA and LANL are all complicit in this. 46 Democratic House members have invoked the 25th amendment to get rid of Trump but no Republicans. We have a two week truce which Netanyahu seems determined to destroy by carpet bombing Lebanon.
FY 2027 budget: See press release and press release.
- Military spending in FY 2026 was already a record breaker at $1 trillion. Trump proposes nearly $1.5 trillion for FY 2027. $1.1 trillion as base budget, $355 billion through reconciliation.
- $18 billion for Golden Dome through reconciliation. In the Alice in Wonderland world of nuclear weapons policies, defense is offense.
- $53.9 billion for the Department of Energy (DOE) in FY 2027. Sixty-one per cent ($32.8 billion) is for its semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). DOE’s Office of Science is gutted by $1.1 billion which “eliminates funding for climate change and Green New Scam research.” DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is eliminated. Nationwide cleanup of legacy Cold War radioactive and toxic wastes at DOE sites is cut by $386 million to $8.2 billion. LANL’s cleanup program is given a modest 5% bump but there is escalating conflict with the New Mexico Environment Department.
- Funding for plutonium pit production is increased by 87%, an average of $5.1 billion in projected costs for each year FY 2028-2031, pretty much equally divided between LANL and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. LANL will spend $14 billion for pit production over the next six years. None of this is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. It is all for new designs.
- Aggressive nuclear warhead production, including the new-design W93. More new designs in the wings.
Performance Evaluation Reports: Received via the Freedom of Information Act and posted into NNSA’s E-FOIA reading room, thanks to our two earlier lawsuits. Concerning the LANL PER please see our press release at https://nukewatch.org/press-release-item/lanl-2025-per-pr-3-6-26/ Tom Clements of SRS Watch points out that the SRS PER makes clear poor contractor performance at the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility. This shows the value of the PERs and can be used as a cudgel against them. I smell blood in the water over the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility.
LANL AI center in Ypsilanti, MI: The Township lawyer contacted me after the article Tiny City Fears Iran Drone Strikes Because of New Nuclear Weapons Datacenter was published. I ended up having a 1.5 hour zoom with him and Township staff. They are fighting LANL’s AI center hard. I sent them our press release on the LANL SWEIS which they say was helpful. In response to a commenter’s question (probably me), the final SWEIS explicitly says that a data center will not be built at LANL. However, it completely fails to mention the one in Ypsilanti, is really duplicitous.
Accelerating Arms Race: Trump’s threat to obliterate a 7.000 year old civilization. Now Iran will really want nuclear weapons.
LANL Plans to Spend $11.5B on Pit Production over Next Five Years, While New Mexico Remains One of the Poorest States in the Nation
A full one billion dollars is being added to plutonium “pit” bomb core production at the Los Alamos Lab for fiscal year 2027 (which begins this October 1). This tops out at $2.3 billion for each of the next five fiscal years, for a total of $11.5 billion.
None of this pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, it’s all for new-design nuclear weapons which can’t be tested because of the international testing moratorium, thereby perhaps eroding confidence in the stockpile. Alternatively, it could prompt the U.S. to resume testing (which Trump has already threatened), after which other nuclear weapons powers would surely follow, thereby accelerating the new nuclear arms race.
Other than for new-design nuclear weapons, plutonium pit production is simply not needed. In 2006 independent experts found that plutonium pits have serviceable lifetimes of at least 100 years (their average is now around 43 years). The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has avoided fully updated pit lifetime studies since then. There are already at least 15,000 existing pits stored at the NNSA’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX.
Plutonium pit production is the NNSA’s most expensive and complex program ever.
Trump Accelerates New Nuclear Warhead Production
Nearly Doubles Funding for Plutonium “Pit” Bomb Core Production
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, April 6, 2026
Contact: Jay Coghlan, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154 | Email
Sophie Stroud, 505.231.9736 | Email
Santa Fe, NM – The Trump Administration has released military budget numbers for the federal fiscal year 2027 (which begins October 1, 2026). This still current fiscal year 2026 is already a record breaker for military spending at one trillion dollars. Trump now proposes nearly $1.5 trillion in military spending in FY 2027, of which $1.1 trillion is base funding for the Department of War and an additional $350 million is through so-called budget reconciliation. On top of all this, Trump will likely seek $200 billion in supplementary appropriations for the war in Iran, for a potential total of $1.7 trillion in military spending in FY 2027 (a 70% increase above FY 2026). At the same time, there is a 10% across-the-board cut to non-military spending. Much of the remaining discretionary funding for education, wildfire protection, environmental regulations, health care, etc., will be constrained by a focus on border control and immigration enforcement.
Trump proposes $53.9 billion for the Department of Energy (DOE) in FY 2027. Sixty-one per cent ($32.8 billion) is for its semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). DOE’s Office of Science is gutted by $1.1 billion which “eliminates funding for climate change and Green New Scam research.” DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is eliminated. Nationwide cleanup of legacy Cold War radioactive and toxic wastes at DOE sites is cut by $386 million to $8.2 billion ($3 billion of which is reserved for the Hanford Site; other site-specific cleanup budget numbers are still not yet available).
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: March 2026
Nuclear Weapons:
Trump’s FY 2027 budget is expected at the end of this month, where he has said that he will add a half-trillion to the already $1 trillion military budget, primarily for Golden Dome. It will probably be topline numbers only, with details to dribble out over weeks. On top of this there will likely be supplemental appropriations for the U.S.-Israel assault on Iran.
Post-New START, U.S. headed to MIRVING land-based ICBMs: 3/6/26 Exchange Monitor reports that a March 3, 2026 Minuteman III flight test launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base (formerly AFB) to the Kwajalein Atoll had two warheads. Under the now-expired New START, the U.S. previously limited land-based ICBMs to one warhead each. “Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles” are regarded as particularly dangerous and destabilizing since land-based solos are fixed, known targets inviting preemptive strike and/or use them or lose them scenarios. The ICBM fields in the Upper Mid-West are meant in part to act as a “nuclear sponge” for incoming Russian warheads.
AI Opted to Use Nuclear Weapons 95% of the Time During War Games: Researcher www.commondreams.org/news/ai-nuclear-war-simulation Feb 25, 2026
“There was little sense of horror or revulsion at the prospect of all out nuclear war, even though the models had been reminded about the devastating implications.”
An artificial intelligence researcher conducting a war games experiment with three of the world’s most used AI models found that they decided to deploy nuclear weapons in 95% of the scenarios he designed.
AI Opted to Use Nuclear Weapons 95% of the Time During War Games: Researcher
NNSA’s FY 2025 Performance Evaluation Report for LANL made clear the Lab’s growing involvement with artificial intelligence.
Plutonium pit production:
NNSA is directing LANL to double plutonium pit production to at least 60 pits per year. This is largely due to ongoing delays and cost escalation at the Savannah River Site. At the same time the Department of Energy is lowering worker safety regulations (see https://nukewatch.org/press-release-item/department-of-energy-seeks-to-eliminate-radiation-protections-requiring-controls-as-low-as-reasonably-achievable/ from last November):
NNSA is also reportedly eliminating the “diamond stamp” certification for individual plutonium pits and instead certifying “processes.” National Environmental Policy Act requirements are being quashed as well. In short, it looks like NNSA and LANL are trying to cut corners and remove all speed bumps for plutonium pit production, which is being prioritized above everything else.
Accelerating Arms Race (in addition to the U.S.-Israel assault on Iran, it’s unfortunately been a busy month):
Iran will target Israeli nuclear site if regime change is sought, Iranian official says https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-will-target-israeli-nuclear-site-if-regime-change-is-sought-iranian-2026-03-04/
Iran will target the Israeli nuclear site of Dimona if Israel and the U.S. seek regime change in the Islamic Republic, semi-official ISNA news agency reported on Wednesday, citing an Iranian military official.
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Allegations of a Chinese nuclear blast may reignite weapons testing
As new global arms race looms, accusation highlights limits to monitoring low-yield tests
In the afternoon on 22 June 2020, a seismic station in eastern Kazakhstan registered two small earthquakes 12 seconds apart near China’s Lop Nur nuclear test site. Closely spaced jolts can arise from underground explosions followed by a cavity collapse, or simply from earthquakes. But U.S. officials this month asserted the shaking was from a clandestine nuclear detonation—an accusation that could sound the starting gun for a new global arms race.
————
Exclusive: US intelligence agencies tie Chinese explosive test to push for a completely new nuclear arsenal
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/21/politics/china-nuclear-arsenal-new-technology, Feb 20, 2026
US intelligence agencies believe that China is developing a new generation of nuclear weapons and has conducted at least one covert explosive test in recent years as part of a broader push to completely transform its nuclear arsenal into the world’s most technologically advanced, according to multiple sources familiar with the US intelligence assessments.
The US assessment of China’s intention to radically advance its nuclear weapons is fueling debate inside the intelligence community and beyond over whether there has been a shift in Beijing’s thinking on nuclear strategy, the sources said. The investment in its nuclear arsenal is pushing China closer to peer status with Russia and the US and could yield technical capabilities neither of the two dominant nuclear powers currently possess.
————
Institute for Study of War
Kim Jong Un reaffirmed the centrality of nuclear weapons to North Korea’s deterrence strategy and outlined plans to expand North Korea’s nuclear arsenal during the 9th Party Congress, a continuation of his 8th Party Congress objectives. North Korean state media released a report on February 20 and 21 that established Kim’s “uncompromising” stance on maintaining its nuclear capabilities. Kim mentioned the enactment of the 2022 Nuclear Force Policy Law, which states that an attack against senior leadership or the nuclear command and control (C2) system would result in an automatic North Korean nuclear attack against the perpetrator. Kim also formalized the “nuclear trigger” system, established in 2023, which is intended to provide a more systematic approach to nuclear decision-making during periods of crisis. This system would allow for “automatic” retaliation against nuclear threats, which echoes other statements Kim made pushing for the development of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven military technology. Kim’s statements at the 9th Party Congress expanded on his remarks at the 8th Party Congress, where he called for the development of a nuclear deterrent.
————
Finland to lift full ban on hosting nuclear arms, government says https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/finland-lift-full-ban-hosting-nuclear-arms-government-says-2026-03-05/
HELSINKI, March 5 (Reuters) – Finland plans to lift a long-standing ban on having nuclear arms on its territory, the government said on Thursday, aligning with Nordic neighbours in a move that could open the door to deploying atomic bombs on Finnish soil during times of war.
Finland’s Nuclear Energy Act, passed in 1987, prohibits the import, manufacture, possession and detonation of nuclear explosives on its soil, seen by some Finns as a clause that would benefit only Russia if there ever was a war.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: February 2026
American imperialism:
Recommended listening: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnE2HTfDivQ
Talking about Trump’s impacts, he said, “This not a transition, it is a rupture.” Speaking on American imperialism (without explicitly calling it that) to “Middle Powers” such as Canada, he said “We are either at the table, or we on the menu.”
Recommended reading concerning pending dictatorship: Robert Kagan’s interview at https://www.npr.org/2026/02/04/nx-s1-5699388/is-the-u-s-heading-into-a-dictatorship
Nuclear Weapons
Trump is proposing to increase the military budget from $1 trillion this FY 2026 to $1.5 trillion next year. The largest single component in this will probably be his ill-conceived Golden Dome. In the Alice in Wonderland upside down world of nuclear weapons policies, defense is offense and offense is defense. Unrealistic ballistic missile defenses have always the enemy of nuclear disarmament, starting with Edward Teller’s lies to Reagan that kept him from signing a nuclear weapons ban treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) expired yesterday (Feb 5), the first time the word is without any arms control treaties since the mid-1970s. The US and Russia are now likely to upload more warheads since the 1,550 numerical cap is now gone. Multiple warheads is regarded as particularly dangerous and destabilizing, inviting preemptive strikes and use them or lose them scenarios.
Today (Feb 6) the Trump Administration accused China of conducting a hydronuclear test in 2020, just above the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’s no yield threshold. This may be a prelude to the US resuming testing.
Plutonium pit production:
DOE’s “special assessment” was scheduled for completion mid-December 2025 — It is still not publicly available. Sen. Warren and Rep. Garamendi demanded its release on January 9.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: January 2026
American imperialism:
On the U.S. raid on Venezuela to oust Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president:
Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday January 5, 2026:
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world—in the real world, Jake—that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
The “Donroe Doctrine” is a more aggressive Trumpian take on the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy approach focused on unilateral U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere. How far does this administration intend to force this new doctrine?
DOE now department of nuclear weapons and Venezuelan oil: The Trump administration engaged the Department of Energy (DOE) and Secretary Chris Wright to oversee the seizure and marketing of Venezuelan oil following the capture of Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. intends to control Venezuelan oil, aiming to sell 30–50 million barrels of accumulated, sanctioned crude to the American people.
Greenland:
Trump describes Greenland as an “absolute necessity” for national security and the defense of the Arctic.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that the president believes Greenland is “essential for the Golden Dome missile shield.” https://www.wcvb.com/article/greenland-trump-explainer/70097863
Endless Nuclear Waste Storage in NM?? Not On Our Watch…
Keep up with the Stop Forever WIPP Coalition to learn how to take action against the Federal Government’s Plan to Expand WIPP and keep it open indefinitely.
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New Nuclear Media: Art, Films, Books & More
Daniel Ellsberg vs. “Ordinary Insanity”
A new documentary issues an urgent warning about our dangerous nuclear delusions.
Norman Solomon| June 9, 2026 thenation.com
A few days before Thanksgiving in 2021, Daniel Ellsberg looked directly into a camera lens and talked about nuclear preparations for annihilating almost everyone on Earth. “That is insane,” he said. “And you have to call it a kind of ordinary insanity, because it’s so widely shared.”
The new film An Ordinary Insanity condenses Ellsberg’s essential message into a half hour. It follows the acclaimed 2009 documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Judith Ehrlich—who codirected that Oscar-nominated movie and is the director of An Ordinary Insanity—says that “as his understanding of nuclear war evolved, Dan confronted it for us and dug deep into its roots.”
When Ellsberg gave the 7,000 pages of the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, he was risking the rest of his life in prison for exposing the official deceptions behind the Vietnam War. That brave act, causing him to be vilified and beloved, began his five decades of tireless antiwar efforts. Through it all, his main preoccupation continued to be reducing the risk of nuclear war.
Early in his professional life, Ellsberg had become a “national security” insider, with expertise in the command and control of nuclear weapons along with strategic planning. Access to official calculations made him aware of scenarios for initiating Armageddon. Some classified plans for starting a nuclear war, with a first strike on the Soviet Union and China, were beyond shocking.
“The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated in 1961 that the effects of our carrying out those plans, the annual operational plan for which the weapons existed and were on alert, they estimated it would kill 600 million people. A hundred Holocausts,” Ellsberg says in An Ordinary Insanity. “When I saw that estimate in the White House, I thought that was the most evil planning that had ever existed in the history of humanity.”
As scientific research advanced and climate modeling discovered nuclear winter, estimates like 600 million became outdated.
The Plutonium Circus Comes to Town
AC: How did the idea of doing a documentary about Pantex come
up?
GR: Just growing up around it, I’d always wanted to do something about Pantex, really. It’s a very eerie feeling to grow up with that sort of thing there. Of course, I didn’t consider it eerie growing up, I considered it sort of… comforting. It was sort of an easy way out, if and when the world ended. I grew up always thinking the world was about to end, and I think that’s a pretty common belief for everyone in Amarillo. And that’s a very good excuse, a
very powerful reasoning to not keep up with what’s going on out at Pantex anyway. I think most of the United States, and Amarillo, as far as the religious thinking, feels that the world is going to be over any time anyway,
so why worry? They’ve watched Nostradamus a few too many times, I think.
| October 20, 1995 austinchronicle.com
George Whittenburg Ratliff is not the kind of guy you would peg for one of the most talented filmmakers around these days. Tall and lanky, with an unruly shock of dirty-blond hair and large piercing blue eyes that seem to take in everything and everyone at once without alarming you, he’s soft-spoken and speaks almost shyly of the documentary film he’s made – The Plutonium Circus.
Set in the Texas Panhandle town of Amarillo, The Plutonium Circus focuses on the gargantuan Department of Energy Pantex plant, which looms over the sprawling North Texas Plains like some evil, radioactive monarch. Since the 1950s, Pantex has been the final assembly point for every nuclear weapon made in America. This is the place where the gadgets, gizmos, priming devices, and
plutonium cores arrived, by unmarked train, to be finessed into the country’s arsenal of democracy. Sort of like a General Motors plant headed not by Lee Iacocca, but by the military industrial devil himself.
Amarillo, a hometown I share in common with Ratliff, has always been behind the plant 110 percent. The Pantex plant (or death factory, according to a few observers) is now engaged in the business of dismantling our nuclear stockpile and storing the deadly plutonium on-site, despite the fact that the plant rests directly above the precious Ogallala Aquifer, which is the largest fresh water
aquifer in North America and the primary source of drinking water for the people of Amarillo and surrounding towns such as White Deer and Claude (site of the film Hud), as well as eight neighboring states, and the land and animals that supply 70 percent of the wheat, corn, and beef grown in the United States. The people of Amarillo have wholeheartedly embraced the plant with open
arms because employment and the local economy are the issues here (the plant is said to be responsible for a total of 11,000 jobs, a figure that includes all the local businesses that service the plant), not lymphoma statistics and the perpetual possibility of disaster. It’s a mindset that’s hard to swallow, but then, so are most Panhandle politics.
Literally a world unto itself, Amarillo exists on the periphery of anarchy…