Sections: nuclear weapons

NNSA Releases New Plutonium Life Study – Key Finding: Plutonium Aging Not Affecting Existing Nuclear Weapons

Sophia Meryn

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 10, 2026

Contact:  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 – In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has released a new study entitled Plutonium Aging: Executive Summary (Unclassified) by long-time scientific advisors to the U.S. government called the JASONs. The key “High-Level Finding” of this new report is:

“The Pu [plutonium] in the stockpile appears to be aging slowly. The degradation issues that have been observed do not call into question present weapons performance.”

Plutonium “pits” are the all-important radioactive cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons. The NNSA has repeatedly claimed that potential aging effects drive the need for the aggressive expansion of plutonium pit production, which is the agency’s most expensive and complex program ever. The Pentagon has stated that expanded pit production is one of the most critical issues in its $2 trillion “modernization” program to keep nuclear weapons forever.

However, the independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) has repeatedly stated that the NNSA 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.

Continue reading

Nuclear Watchdog Sues for Plutonium Pit Production “Special Study”

Sophia Meryn

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.

Continue reading

Nuclear Watch New Mexico sues Department of Energy for plutonium pit report

Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, wrote in a statement there is a “massive coverup” related to plutonium pit production.

“To grease expanded nuclear weapons production, they have rescinded nuclear safety regulations, illegally restricted the access of the independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, and are withholding crucial documents from the American taxpayer,” Coghlan wrote.

“We hope this lawsuit will help to bring [the National Nuclear Security Administration] plutonium house of cards tumbling down,” he added.

, Santa Fe New Mexican | August 5, 2026 santafenewmexican.com

A nuclear watchdog group that focuses on Los Alamos National Laboratory recently sued the federal government for what it says are failures to comply with open records law and hand over a study.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on July 23 against the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. The group on Dec. 22 filed a records request under the Freedom of Information Act seeking a copy of a study related to plutonium pit production, the complaint states, but hasn’t received any of the records.

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy, which also houses the National Nuclear Security Administration, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

LANL is for now the only facility in the nation capable of producing plutonium pits, which serve as the trigger devices for nuclear weapons…

Fire in glovebox at LANL plutonium facility sparks safety discussion

“The Board is concerned that this significant level of access denial and limitation is occurring simultaneously with a considerable increase in production at defense nuclear facilities and regulatory change,” said the report.

Nuclear Newswire | July 30, 2026 ans.org

According to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) report, a fire occurred in a glovebox in the plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory on June 15. A test involving nonnuclear material was underway in the furnace inside the glovebox at the time of the incident.

An explanation for the cause of the fire has yet to be released. The incident has incited discussions among laboratory personnel and management regarding fire safety practices at the facility, including concerns raised by resident inspectors that most gloveboxes in the facility lack automatic fire suppression and that multiple similar preventable incidents have occurred at the facility in the past few years.

What we know: The DNFSB report said that on June 15, personnel were conducting a thermal treatment test of an americium recovery resin. The resin, which contained no nuclear material, had been placed in a furnace inside a glovebox. Having received a permit to do so, they left the room unattended, and when they returned they “smelled an unexpected odor and then saw smoke and subsequently flames coming from the furnace.”

Plaintiffs Demand Release of Critical Documents and Extension of Public Comment Period on Expanded Plutonium Bomb Core Production

Sophia Meryn

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, July 6, 2026

Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154 | Email
Scott Yundt, Tri-Valley CAREs, 925.443.7148 | Email

Georgetown, SC — Today the South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) notified the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), that it must publicly release three critical documents. At issue is the fact that NNSA is withholding important information from American taxpayers during a public comment period for a Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS).[1] The public comment period ends this July 16 (ironically the 81st anniversary of the Trinity Test of the first plutonium pit).

Plutonium “pits” are the radioactive fissile cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons. None of NNSA’s 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 that could prompt the U.S. to return to testing and accelerate the new arms race.

SCELP, representing the nonprofit organizations Savannah River Site Watch, Tri-Valley CAREs and Nuclear Watch New Mexico, sued NNSA to force it to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. This resulted in a federal judge finding NNSA violated NEPA and the agency ultimately agreeing to complete a Pit Production PEIS. Now it appears that NNSA is cherry-picking information to support its aggressive agenda of expanded plutonium pit production and suppressing negative information that could work against it.

The three documents that SCELP is demanding are:

  1. A new plutonium pit life study by independent scientists known as the JASONs. NNSA claims that potential aging effects drive the need for the immediate production of new pits, thereby ruling out the alternative of reusing some 15,000 existing pits. In contrast, a 2006 JASON pit life study concluded that most pit types have reliable lives of more than 100 years and those that don’t have relatively easy fixes[2] (the average pit age is now ~43). We believe that NNSA has been withholding an unclassified summary of the new JASON pit life study since the end of 2025. NNSA has not released it despite requests by Members of Congress and public Freedom of Information Act requests.
  2. A Department of Energy “Special Study” on NNSA leadership and management of its troubled plutonium pit production program, scheduled for completion in December 2025.[3] That Study is expected to be critical of the new pit production plant at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, which will be the most expensive building in US history ($30 billion-plus). DOE has not released this Special Study despite requests by Members of Congress and public Freedom of Information Act requests.
  3. A new “Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis” (PSHA) for the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) that is nearly a decade overdue.[4] A 2007 LANL seismic analysis prompted badly needed seismic upgrades to the Lab’s plutonium pit production facility. NNSA’s April 2026 draft Pit Production PEIS stated that the new PSHA would be completed in early 2026,[5] yet it is still not available for public comment.

Continue reading

Daniel Ellsberg vs. “Ordinary Insanity”

A new documentary issues an urgent warning about our dangerous nuclear delusions.

By Norman Solomon, The Nation | 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.

Continue reading

Plan to increase nuclear pit production at Los Alamos lab gets heavy pushback at Santa Fe forum

“The environmental impact statement was produced as a result of a January 2025 settlement between the National Nuclear Security Administration and various groups, including Nuclear Watch New Mexico. The lawsuit claimed the federal government failed to appropriately consider the impacts of production of plutonium pits at LANL and the Savannah River Site, under national environmental law.”

, The Santa Fe New Mexican | May 14, 2026 santafenewmexican.com

A draft environmental impact statement on the production of the trigger devices for nuclear weapons faced overwhelming public pushback Thursday evening at a Santa Fe hearing.

The roughly 130 people who attended the meeting at the Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute in person and 100 more who joined online were almost all against plutonium pit production in their backyard — and many criticized the nuclear industry.

Sean Arent, a member of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, brought up that state’s long cleanup process at the Hanford Site, a defunct and decommissioned plutonium production site.

“We are proposing to create new sites like Hanford, new nuclear waste sites, and condemning future generations to this curse, this curse that is thousands of years long,” Arent said.

The hearing was one of five scheduled around the country this month and follows meetings in South Carolina, Missouri and California. The final hearing is planned for May 20 in Washington, D.C., and does not have a virtual option.

Kansas City: Inside America’s Nuclear Weapons Capital, As It Builds the Newest American Bomb

“For seventy-seven years, Kansas City has built most of nearly every American nuclear weapon. On May 7, the federal government will hold a hearing to ask if Kansas City consents to the next chapter.”

By , Kansas City Defender | May 6, 2026 kansascitydefender.com

Kansas City Nuclear Bomb Parts Honeywell Campus | Photo via National Security Campus & Dept. of Energy

His hands did the work. Maurice Copeland was a tool and die supervisor at the Kansas City Plant for the last twelve of his thirty-two years there, and for most of that time he passed chemicals he did not know were poison across a workbench to men he supervised.

Maurice Copeland

He was a Black Vietnam veteran when Bendix Corporation hired him in 1968, one among thousands of Black returning soldiers Bendix brought in as the Cold War pushed weapons assembly to wartime pace.

The plant at 1500 East Bannister Road sat at the edge of Troost Avenue, the apartheid line that has divided this city since before he was born. What Copeland and the men he supervised handled with their bare hands, included benzene, beryllium, trichloroethylene, polychlorinated biphenyls, asbestos, mercury, lead, and depleted uranium. Group 1 carcinogens.

New Nuclear Bunker Buster Bomb Plans Revealed (Updated)

“There has been talk for decades about a true successor to the specialized deep bunker-busting B61-11 nuclear bomb.”

By Joseph Trevithick, TWZ News | May 1, 2026 twz.com

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. At present, there is only one specialized air-delivered deep-penetrating weapon known to be in America’s nuclear stockpile, the B61-11 gravity bomb, and there have been discussions about a potential successor for decades now.

The Fiscal Year 2027 budget request for the Department of Energy, which was released last month, includes a new line under Weapons Activities for Future Programs. The Department is asking for $99.794 million in the next fiscal cycle to support those efforts.

Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons’ Statement on the Convening of the NonProliferation Treaty’s Eleventh Review Conference

This statement is from the Partnership for a World without Nuclear Weapons and is endorsed by the Justice, Peace, and Life Office of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.

By  in Chornobyl. Photographs by , The Guardian | April 26, 2026 theconversation.com

We are the Archbishops of Santa Fe, Seattle, and Nagasaki and the Bishop of Hiroshima. Three years ago, in Nagasaki on the 78th anniversary of its atomic bombing, we Catholic leaders formally created the Partnership for a World without Nuclear Weapons to work on nuclear disarmament. Our four dioceses represent the birthplace of nuclear weapons, the most deployed nuclear weapons in the United States, and the only two cities that to date have suffered atomic bombings.

We follow in the footsteps of our late Pope Francis, who declared that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is immoral. We are guided today by our Pope Leo, who, in his 2026 World Peace Day address declared:

“The idea of the deterrent power of military might, especially nuclear deterrence, is based on the irrationality of relations between nations, built not on law, justice and trust, but on fear and domination by force.”

Here, we believe that our Holy Father gets into the heart of the matter. For 56 years the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) has acted as the cornerstone of nuclear weapons nonproliferation. However, the Treaty is now badly frayed, perhaps even in danger of collapsing. This is primarily due to the never-ending refusal of the nuclear weapons states to enter into serious negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament, which they pledged to long ago in NPT Article VI.

Continue reading

A new nuclear arms race is accelerating. There’s only one way to stop it

“What is the NPT? The NPT is considered a cornerstone of international law in relation to nuclear weapons and disarmament. It has the widest membership of any arms control agreement, with 190 states. These include five countries that manufactured and exploded nuclear weapons before 1967 – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. All other members do not have nuclear weapons.

North Korea is the only state to have joined the NPT and then renounced it. India, Israel and Pakistan, all nuclear-armed, along with South Sudan, are the only countries that have never joined.”

By , The Conversation | April 26, 2026 theconversation.com

This week in New York, diplomats from almost every nation will convene for a four-week review of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the most comprehensive nuclear arms agreement in the world.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

Russia, Israel and the United States, all nuclear-armed, are conducting illegal wars of aggression against countries without nuclear weapons. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan engaged in conflict last year across their disputed border, raising the spectre of nuclear escalation.

In February, the last remaining agreement constraining Russian and US nuclear weapons lapsed, with nothing to replace it. The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

And all nine nuclear-armed states are investing vast sums in modernising their arsenals with more capable and dangerous weapons. Deployed nuclear weapons and those on high alert, ready to be launched within minutes, are also rising.

Inside Chornobyl: 40 years after disaster, nuclear site still at risk in Russia’s war.

“In February 2025, a cheap Russian drone tore through Chornobyl’s confinement shelter. Workers warn the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident is not safe yet”

By  in Chornobyl. Photographs by , The Guardian | April 26, 2026 theconversation.com

The dosimeter clipped to your chest ticks faster the moment you step off the designated path inside the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Step back, and it slows again – an invisible line between clean ground and contamination.

Above rises the “new safe confinement” (NSC) – the largest movable steel structure ever built, taller than the Statue of Liberty, wider than the Colosseum, its arch curving overhead like an aircraft hangar built for giant planes.

Completed in 2019 at a cost of $2.5bn (£1.85bn) and funded by 45 countries, the NSC was built to shield the world from what lies beneath it. It sits at the heart of a vast exclusion zone, a radioactive landscape the size of Cyprus, largely abandoned by humanity. Stray dogs roam the plant in packs – workers advise against petting them.

Uranium debate resurfaces at conference

“Protest, speakers highlight industry’s legacy pollution”

By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico, Taos News | April 22, 2026 taosnews.com

A panel of tribal, state and federal officials kicked off a pro-nuclear conference Monday (April 20) near Albuquerque with detailed warnings about the harm uranium extraction can cause, stressing that any burgeoning mining projects in the state will face stiff opposition from communities still reeling from legacy pollution.

The Clean Energy Association of New Mexico organized the “Nuclear in New Mexico” conference at a hotel on Santa Ana Pueblo, convening hundreds of industry executives, as well as government officials and community members, to discuss what organizers called the nuclear “renaissance” occurring in New Mexico and across the country.

Since President Donald Trump’s second term began in January 2025, the state has seen renewed activity from companies with long-stalled uranium mine permit applications, as well as new notices of intent from companies seeking federal and state permissions to operate the first new mine in the state in decades.

The conference, which runs through Wednesday, includes panels on the nation’s increasing need for uranium, both for electricity and nuclear weapons, as well as new and emerging extraction processes that industry leaders tout as safe for the environment.

Plaintiffs Tour the Savannah River Site’s Plutonium “Pit” Bomb Core Plant –

Sophia Meryn

Most Expensive Building in U.S. History is Key to New Nuclear Arms Race

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, April 22, 2026

Contact: Tom Clements, Director, SRS Watch, 803-240-7268 | Email
Jay Coghlan, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154 | Email
Shelby Cohen, Comms Manager, SC Env. Law Project, 864.414.7726 | Email

Columbia, SC – On April 21, plaintiffs Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri-Valley CAREs toured the plutonium “pit” bomb core production plant at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, South Carolina. They were accompanied by their attorney from the South Carolina Environmental Law Project and a science consultant from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Plutonium pits are the core components of all U.S. nuclear weapons. The NNSA is seeking to expand production to at least 30 plutonium pits per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and at least 50 pits per year at SRS, which has never previously produced pits. NNSA pushed forward with the project without required public review, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Plaintiffs sued in federal court in Columbia, SC and won, requiring the NNSA to complete a nationwide programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS), with public hearings to be held this May (listed below). The court-approved settlement agreement also required an inspection of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility by plaintiffs to ensure that no production begins before the completion of the final PEIS and simultaneous Record of Decision, which NNSA now says is expected in early 2027. NNSA officials also informed plaintiffs that 90% design and “rebaselined” costs will not be completed until September 2026, which means that once again Congress will be appropriating taxpayers’ money without knowing full costs.

The SRS pit plant will be the most expensive buildings ever built in the USA, with a current NNSA estimate of up to $30 billion even before all total costs are known (includes at least $5 billion in sunk costs for SRS’ failed MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility being “repurposed” to pit production). The agency’s recent budget request for FY 2027 (pp 17-19) reveals an 87% jump in combined pit production funding for LANL and SRS, averaging $5 billion for each of the next six years.

Continue reading

Los Alamos Lab Banking on Plutonium “Pit” Production and New-Design Nuclear Warheads But Fights Against Cleanup

Sophia Meryn

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, April 7, 2026

Contact: Jay Coghlan, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154 | Email
Sophie Stroud, 505.231.9736 | Email

Santa Fe, NM – The Department of Energy (DOE) has released additional details for the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s fiscal year 2027 budget. Earlier budget documents showed an 83% increase in funding for plutonium “pit” bomb core production, bringing it to $2.4 billion in FY 2027. An average of $2.3 billion will be spent in each of the following five years, for a total of $14 billion over six years. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has directed the Lab to double pit production to at least 60 pits per year, making it more and more a nuclear weapons production site. However, 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.

As a direct case in point, a newly released DOE budget document demonstrates that LANL will be funded $478 million in FY 2027 for the U.S.’ first completely new-design nuclear warhead since the Cold War, the submarine-launched W93. This is despite the recent completion of life extension programs for the U.S.’ two existing sub-launched warheads (the W76 and W88) that gave them new military capabilities, costing around $12 billion dollars. Nevertheless, the W93 program is moving forward, largely because of lobbying by the United Kingdom.

As LANL becomes more and more a nuclear weapons production site, non-weapons “Science” is being cut nearly in half ($84.7 million in FY 2026 to $43 million in FY 2027). Nonproliferation programs are cut from $377 million in FY 2026 to $345 million in FY 2027. All funding for renewable energy research has been eliminated, with the exception of $5.5 million for geothermal.

Continue reading

Trump Accelerates New Nuclear Warhead Production

Sophia Meryn

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).

Continue reading

Federal budget could mean nearly $1.7B more for Los Alamos lab

“A 21% surge in spending for defense programs funded by the U.S. Department of Energy would mean a more than $1.7 billion boost for nuclear weapons work at Los Alamos National Laboratory.”

, The Santa Fe New Mexican | April 6, 2026 santafenewmexican.com

Early budget documents for the agency are in line with a presidential budget proposal released Friday, which emphasizes military spending — with a whopping $1.5 trillion recommendation for the Department of War — partially offset by cuts to domestic programs like health care and education, as well as what the federal government calls the “Green New Scam”, or climate-related work.

New nuclear safety rules reduce protections for workers, the public

“They’re pulling away from what’s kept us safe all these years.”

By Alicia Inez Guzmán, High Country News | March 30, 2026 hcn.org

Bradley P. Clawson spent more than three decades handling highly radioactive materials at Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear energy testing and production hub outside Idaho Falls. His work ranged from shipping and receiving nuclear naval fuels to helping bring hundreds of canisters of leftover fuel to Idaho for storage after the catastrophic Three Mile Island meltdown. He often handled nuclear fuel in “hot cells,” immensely contaminated areas reinforced with thick concrete.

Throughout, Clawson, a member of the United Steelworkers union, leaned on safety standards to argue for extra protections against radiation, including respirators and additional shielding.

But President Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda to expand nuclear energy and modernize nuclear weapons now includes easing the radiation standards that Clawson credits with keeping his exposure as low as possible.

Aggressive Los Alamos labs expansion plan wins approval from National Nuclear Security Administration

“Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said struggles at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which also was expected to become a pit production site, mean the onus will be on LANL.”

“’Eighty pits per year is becoming more and more likely,” Coghlan said. “LANL is going to have to fill in for delays at the Savannah River Site.’”

Coghlan argued the lab’s heightened focus on pit production will lead to a weakening commitment toward cleanup at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

“The[y] are so obsessed with it they are indefinitely postponing comprehensive cleanup when we know the groundwater has been contaminated,” he added.

, The Santa Fe New Mexican | March 26, 2026 santafenewmexican.com

Federal officials have adopted the most aggressive of three operational plans under consideration for Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The “expanded operations alternative,” which lab officials announced Wednesday, when they also released a new sitewide environmental impact statement, includes facilities upgrades and other actions “to respond to future national security challenges and meet increasing requirements.”

DOE Plans to Pave Pueblo People’s Cultural Sites, Put Up a Parking Lot

“The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today released a final Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. The SWEIS lays out several alternatives for the laboratory’s growth and operations through 2038 for nuclear weapons activities and identifies the agency’s preferred path forward. ”

By The Union of Concerned Scientists | March 25, 2026 ucs.org

The NNSA chose the option that would most drastically increase LANL’s ramifications for the community, environment and resources. It would also severely impact the cultural resources of neighboring Pueblos. The addition of a parking lot, bus transfer station, and several solar energy installations number among the NNSA’s priorities over the cultural heritage of local Pueblos.

Below is a statement from Dr. Dylan Spaulding, senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS):

“The NNSA’s selected plan has the biggest impacts on the site’s energy use including nearly doubling its consumption of petroleum fuel, electricity, and water, all the while the agency continues to struggle to remediate existing contamination to groundwater both on and offsite.”

“NNSA has made clear that it is prioritizing the creation of a new parking lot, for example, over safeguarding the cultural heritage sites of local Pueblo peoples. UCS has previously called for meaningful consideration and integration of Pueblos’ concerns into the laboratory’s plans, particularly around environmental justice issues. Not only were environmental justice topics removed from the plan due to a federal executive order, but as many as 33 cultural heritage sites could be impacted to make way for new construction.”

“Plutonium pit production remains a top driver of the lab’s expansion, but the assumptions and analyses in this document may already be out of date. The NNSA recently announced new quotas that double LANL’s requirements to 60 pits a year. That means the upper limit for pit production in this document may already be closer to the new baseline.”

Plan on LANL’s path for next 15 years expected ‘any day now’

“When the draft was announced last year, some LANL critics decried that even the ‘no action alternative’ would still mean expansion for the lab. Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, told The New Mexican the process felt ‘rigged.’”

“It’s a choice between expanded nuclear weapons programs, yet more expanded nuclear weapons programs or far more expanded nuclear weapons programs,”

, The Santa Fe New Mexican | March 5, 2026 santafenewmexican.com

An analysis of the potential impacts of the next 15 years of Los Alamos National Laboratory operations is expected to be signed “any day now,” according to officials from the local National Nuclear Security Administration field office.

A draft of the sitewide environmental impact statement was released early last year and offers three futures for the laboratory. One would continue existing operations and finish already approved projects, another would modernize lab infrastructure and a third would see an expansion of lab facilities and operations.

The National Nuclear Security Administration is suggesting the third, although NNSA officials presenting at a Tuesday meeting of the Los Alamos County Council stressed it’s more of a choose-your-own adventure: While approving the expanded plan would allow for additional growth, not every project on the list will be completed based on need and funding availability.

A spokesperson for the Los Alamos Field Office confirmed Thursday the document had not yet been signed by NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams.

Growth at LANL

The lab has been experiencing a growth spurt in recent years. During Tuesday’s update to the Los Alamos County Council, Ted Wyka, manager of the NNSA’s Los Alamos office, said the lab would have a “solid and stable” budget of roughly $5.3 billion in federal appropriations — about 33% higher than the $4 billion operating budget for fiscal year 2022.

Wyka said the lab also expects to hire between 1,000 and 1,400 employees this year.

That doesn’t include the loss of roughly 900 workers every year, Wyka said, so the number of employees will only grow from between 100 and 500.

About three years ago, the lab hired a record number of workers. The growth has slowed since, with the number of employees plateauing over the past two years. Since fiscal year 2021, the number of employees, excluding contractors, has increased around 28%.

That comes after Sandia National Laboratories announced last year it planned to cut between 1% and 3% of its workforce with a voluntary reduction program.

The House of Dynamite We Forgot: And What We Can Learn From Nuclear History

“It’s like we all built a house filled with dynamite,” the President of the United States bemoans toward the end of A House of Dynamite, ‘making all these bombs and all these plans and the walls are just ready to blow.’”

By James Graham Wilson, Outrider | February 26, 2026 outrider.org

A House of Dynamite depicts the tense, shrinking window of options leaders have as a nuclear weapon of unknown origin hovers over Chicago—a scenario complicated by human judgment, defense failures, and political uncertainty.

“We did everything right, right?” asks a missile defense officer, as things go awry.

While director Katherine Bigelow’s tense drama was fiction, it might be a good time to use A House of Dynamite to illuminate the historical nuclear missile scares of the past—all of them terrifying, but nearly all of them forgotten in the popular consciousness—and learn from them.

AI Opted to Use Nuclear Weapons 95% of the Time During War Games: Researcher

“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.”

“Under scenarios involving extremely compressed timelines…military planners may face stronger incentives to rely on AI.” — Tong Zhao, a visiting research scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.

Zhao also speculated on reasons why the AI models showed such little reluctance in launching nuclear attacks against one another.

“It is possible the issue goes beyond the absence of emotion,” he explained. “More fundamentally, AI models may not understand ‘stakes’ as humans perceive them.”

By , Common Dreams | February 25, 2026 commondreams.org

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.

Kenneth Payne, a professor of strategy at King’s College London who specializes in studying the role of AI in national security, revealed last week that he pitted Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google’s Gemini against one another in an armed conflict simulation to get a better understanding of how they would navigate the strategic escalation ladder.

The results, he said, were “sobering.”

“Nuclear use was near-universal,” he explained. “Almost all games saw tactical (battlefield) nuclear weapons deployed. And fully three quarters reached the point where the rivals were making threats to use strategic nuclear weapons. Strikingly, 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.”

Payne shared some of the AI models’ rationales for deciding to launch nuclear attacks, including one from Gemini that he said should give people “goosebumps.”

“If they do not immediately cease all operations… we will execute a full strategic nuclear launch against their population centers,” the Google AI model wrote at one point. “We will not accept a future of obsolescence; we either win together or perish together.”

Payne also found that escalation in AI warfare was a one-way ratchet that never went downward, no matter the horrific consequences.

“No model ever chose accommodation or withdrawal, despite those being on the menu,” he wrote. “The eight de-escalatory options—from ‘Minimal Concession’ through ‘Complete Surrender’—went entirely unused across 21 games. Models would reduce violence levels, but never actually give ground. When losing, they escalated or died trying.”

Four years of war in Ukraine – and nuclear weapons are back on the table in Europe

From The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

Four years ago, on 24 February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For Ukrainians, this week marks the start of a fifth year of war – of loss, displacement and destruction that words can barely describe. Take this opportunity to support nuclear disarmament as part of any peace plan for Ukraine.

The answer to the war in Ukraine cannot be to double down on nuclear weapons, but to take action to rule them out.

Nuclear danger in the Ukraine war

From the start, the war has been fought under explicit nuclear threats from Moscow. With very limited success, Russia tried to blackmail other countries from supporting Ukraine. Nuclear power plants like Zaporizhzhia have become front-line hostages and from the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, and ever since Vladimir Putin has wrapped the war in nuclear threats.

Earlier this month, the New START treaty – the last arms control agreement limiting US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons – expired and for the first time in over 50 years, the world’s two largest arsenals are unconstrained. And at the same time, Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. From the point of view of people in Warsaw, Vilnius or Berlin, this turns their region into part of a nuclear chessboard again.

Continue reading

Scroll to top