RECENT UPDATES
NEW 2026 JASON Plutonium Aging Executive Summary
“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.”
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
A World Without Nuclear Weapons: Trinity Test Commemoration Recording July 19, 2026
From Reflection to Action: An Interfaith Remembrance of the Trinity Test with Archbishop John Wester, Archdiocese of Santa Fe
Event Speakers Include:
- Jay Coghlan, Executive Director, Nuclear Watch New Mexico
- Tina Cordova, Co-Founder, Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium
- Dr. Michael Ketterer, Professor Emeritus, Northern Arizona University
- Keynote: Secretary James C. Kenney, New Mexico Environment Dept.
Note: You may have already seen this event as a livestream on YouTube. This recording is a significantly improved version with enhanced audio, where you can hear most all of the speakers loudly and clearly.
Sample Comments for the Draft Plutonium Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS)
Why should you comment? This process produces valuable information, increases government accountability and transparency, and creates a legal administrative record that has led to important litigation in the past. The Trump administration is severely limiting and removing key opportunities for public comment and objection. Significantly, there is no other legally required opportunity that enables the public to comment on the “modernization” program to keep nuclear weapons forever.
BACKGROUND: 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. The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico has been capable of producing plutonium pits since 1996, and until 2018 production was capped at no more than 20 pits per year. 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.
Grassroots activist organizations Nuclear Watch New Mexico of Santa Fe, NM; Savannah River Site Watch of Columbia, SC; the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition of coastal Georgia, and Tri-Valley CARES of Livermore, CA successfully sued the NNSA over its failure to complete a required nationwide “programmatic environmental impact statement” (PEIS) for its plan to massively expand plutonium pits production. A draft of this PEIS was released in April 2026, kicking off in-person hearings in Livermore, CA, Santa Fe, NM, Aiken, SC, Kansas City, MO, and Washington, DC, as well as a 90-day public comment period ending July 16, 2026. This provides a unique and critical opportunity for public scrutiny of and formal comment on the government’s plans to make new nuclear bombs for a new 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
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).
Quotes
Defense Bills Would Create Separate Fund for New Ohio-Class Nuclear Submarines
Far-reaching implications
“The creation of a National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund to pay for an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine replacement could significantly alter the typically underfunded Navy shipbuilding account, while also establishing a precedent that other military services may attempt to leverage in years to come.”
Justifying Nuclear Weapons
“Both Russia and the United States are now officially and publicly using the other side as a justification for nuclear weapons modernization programs”
– Hans Kristensen, from The Intercept, 2/23/16
U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms
“What few Americans realize is that the U.S. is completely rebuilding the production side of its nuclear weapons complex, with new multi-billion dollar factories expected to operate until ~2075. The aim of the for-profit nuclear weapons establishment is a never-ending cycle of exorbitant Life Extension Programs for existing nuclear weapons. These programs will not only extend their service lives for up to six decades but also endow them with new military capabilities, despite denials at the highest levels of government…”
-Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM comment on NY Times Article U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms
This White House has Caved to the Nuclear Priesthood
“The United States can deter any country from using nuclear weapons against America and its treaty allies with a nuclear force that is far smaller, less destabilizing, and less expensive than the one the Pentagon is planning to build.
This White House has caved to the nuclear priesthood in the bureaucracy. Instead of staying on nuclear autopilot, the next administration needs to fundamentally rethink the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy, the costs of implementing the current strategic force modernization program, and the alternatives that could provide greater stability and less risk of nuclear conflict at a much lower cost.”
-Richard Sokolsky, Gordon Adams, Carnegie Endowment, January 18, 2016
For more click here.
Bad Idea. Don’t Do It.
“Let me be crystal clear: There is no such thing as ‘limited use’ nuclear weapons, and for a Pentagon advisory board to promote their development is absolutely unacceptable. This is even more problematic given President Trump’s comments in support of a nuclear arms race.
As Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work testified in 2015, ‘Anyone who thinks they can control escalation through the use of nuclear weapons is literally playing with fire. Escalation is escalation, and nuclear use would be the ultimate escalation.’
Nuclear weapons present us with a paradox: We spend billions of dollars building and maintaining them in the hope that we never have to use them. The sole purpose of nuclear weapons must be to deter their use by others. Designing new low-yield nuclear weapons for limited strikes dangerously lowers the threshold for their use. Such a recommendation undermines the stability created by deterrence, thereby increasing the likelihood of sparking an unwinnable nuclear war.”
-Senator Dianne Feinstein, (D.CA) Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chair
No To a New Generation of ICBMs
“As long as we have ICBMs, there will be the possibility of the President launching them in response to a false alarm. Since the ICBMs are known in fixed locations, they can be attacked and we presume that any nuclear attack on the United States would include attacks against those ICBMs. And therefore, we have a policy called launch-on-warning which means if we have a warning of an attack, then the President would be notified and he has the option of launching those ICBMs before the attack actually reaches its targets.
Now the danger with that, of course, is that if the warning of attack is wrong, if it’s a false alarm, and the President actually launches the ICBMs, he will have no way of calling them back or destroying them in-flight if, in fact, the alarm is a false alarm.So the problem with the ICBMs fundamentally is that if we get a false alarm and the President launches the ICBMs, we will have started a nuclear war capable of ending civilization based on a mistake, based on an accident, based on a false reading. That is not very likely to happen- it’s a low probability- but a low probability with a very, very high consequence. So that’s my concern with the ICBM program and it’s a fundamental concern; as long as we have ICBMs, there will be the possibility of the President launching them in response to a false alarm.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)There’s one role- and only one role- for nuclear weapons, and that’s deterrence. We cannot, must not, will not ever countenance their actual use. There’s no such thing as limited nuclear war, and for the Pentagon’s advisory board to even suggest such a thing is deeply troubling.
– Senator Diana Feinstein