UPF Lawsuit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 4, 2026

Contact: Jules Zacher, Esq., 215.888.5183, | Email
Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154 | Email
Sophia Stroud, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 505.231.9736 | Email

Santa Fe, NM – Nuclear Watch New Mexico has sued the Department of Energy under the Freedom of Information Act for its Special Study of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Leadership and Management of the Plutonium Pit Production Mission. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within DOE.

Plutonium “pits” are the radioactive cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons. Their expanded manufacturing has been the chokepoint of resumed industrial-scale nuclear weapons production by the U.S. Crucially, no future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing stockpile. Instead, it is all for new-design nuclear weapons for the new arms race. These new weapons can’t be tested because of the existing global testing moratorium, thereby perhaps degrading confidence in the stockpile. Or new-design nuclear weapons testing could prompt the U.S. to resume testing, which would have severe international proliferation consequences.

Plutonium pit production is the NNSA’s most expensive and complex program to date. However, the independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) has repeatedly stated that the agency has no credible costs estimates and no “Integrated Master Schedule” for simultaneous production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in northern New Mexico and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. In fact, DOE and NNSA have been on the GAO’s “High Risk List” for project mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ dollars since 1991. At more than $30 billion, the plutonium pit plant at SRS is on track to become the most expensive building in U.S. history. A comparable amount will be spent at LANL on facility upgrades and related projects, for which the NNSA fails to keep total aggregated costs.

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