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

May 15, 2026

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.

Comments on the draft will be accepted until July 16, and the National Nuclear Security Administration expects to have a final environmental impact statement and a decision by early next year.

Toni Chiri, public affairs specialist at the administration’s Los Alamos field office, said the agency encourages people to participate.

“These meetings are important,” Chiri said. “NNSA does listen; we take the comments — especially those that actually address the document — and consider those as we work towards our final document.”

“Based on the turnout tonight, it’s clear that the public is paying attention and wants to provide its input,” she added.

The alternatives

The draft environmental impact statement evaluated three alternatives, all centered around two sites: Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The first, the no-action alternative, would allow for pit production to continue at LANL and some construction, but no production, at the Savannah River Site.

The second, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s preferred tack, is simultaneous production at both sites, which could produce more than 200 pits per year on the high end.

The third would evaluate production for the stockpile at either Los Alamos National Laboratory or at the Savannah River Site alone. The latter could produce a larger rate of pits, between 50 and 125 per year.

LANL could produce from 30 to 80 pits per year, but, according to the environmental impact statement, that maximum rate would be “unsustainable” over time.

All three of the alternatives include some level of pit production, however, which drew criticism from several commenters.

“Where is … the true no-action alternative?” asked Albuquerque resident Amanda Champion with Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. “Why have we never been given this option?”

Tangled history

Dozens of members of the public expressed concerns about the impact on water availability and quality; the health of both workers and the public; and the creation, transportation and disposal of additional waste from pit production. Several also pushed for the cleanup of legacy waste.

A speaker, who identified himself as a retired environmental consultant who worked in radioactive and hazardous waste management, said the cost can be “astounding.”

“It’s astonishing that after 80-plus years, we still have a huge, tremendous amount of work ahead of us to dispose of legacy waste and to remediate former weapons production sites,” said Santa Fe resident Gary Lasswell.

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.

During the Cold War, the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado was tasked with the production of plutonium pits until the facility was stormed by the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency, which suspected violations of environmental law, and shut down in 1992.

In 1999, a sitewide environmental analysis for LANL evaluated producing up to 80 pits per year. That number was far more modest than the production at the Colorado site, which could produce more than 1,000 pits per year, and the selected rate of 20 pits per year was more modest still.

In 2007, LANL became the first place in the country to produce a stockpile-quality plutonium pit since Rocky Flats closed. Over the next four years, the lab would produce a small number of plutonium pits.

The federal agency later planned to resume pit production at both LANL and Savannah River. The two sites would aim to produce at least 80 each year: 30 in New Mexico, 50 in South Carolina.

The mission could add from roughly 800 to 2,000 operations staff at LANL and from 1,700 to 2,800 at the Savannah River Site, according to a presentation at Thursday’s hearing.

Expanded role for LANL

In a presentation earlier this month to the Los Alamos County Council, deputy laboratory director for operations Mark Davis said that to reach a rate of 80 pits per year as close to 2030 as possible, the New Mexico lab and Savannah River Site would have to work together.

But as timelines for pit production at the South Carolina facility move out, Davis said, the site’s role would be in support of production at LANL exclusively.

“For that short term, certainly LANL is the one pit production facility,” Davis said.

When asked about the timeframe for production at the Savannah River Site, Davis was blunt.

“It’s not in the next decade, let’s put it that way,” Davis said.

Davis said he came to the council amid a “dynamic” geopolitical situation.

Based on discussions with the National Nuclear Security Administration about higher production rates at LANL — a February memorandum suggested the lab might be asked to produce a minimum of 60, rather than 30 pits per year — Davis said the lab might further adjust schedules.

A little over a year ago, the lab shifted from a schedule of four 10-hour shifts to 24/7 operations, Davis said, allowing for production during the day and maintenance and construction on the off-shifts. Now, Davis said the lab is looking at expanding to seven 10-hour days of production.

“We’re not there yet,” Davis said. “It’s just in the talking stages, but we are expanding those hours, because we’re about at capacity for what we can do on a 4/10 schedule. So if we want to do more, we have to utilize those other hours."

Published comments by Greg Mello:

    Good article -- especially bringing in the Davis presentation and Q&A in Los Alamos. Santa Feans need to stand up. There's an understandable wish for no pit production, but a lack of realism that would, if present, appreciate that NNSA and Congress will build and operate at least one pit production facility, at some level. The questions of "where" and "how many" need to enter the lexicon of the antinuclear groups, which otherwise find themselves in an intellectual dreamland and a political cul-de-sac. In other words, there was far too little realism last night. 

    Propping up the fantasies were constantly repeated but erroneous talking points like "there are more than 15,000 usable pits in Texas" (there aren't, but there are a few thousand older pits which could be used in an emergency), or "the U.S. doesn't need to produce pits because pits can be recycled for decades to come." That last whopper comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which should know better. The pit recycling narrative is partly true, and certainly does apply to the near term, i.e. to LANL production, which is not needed, as many speakers pointed out. 

    As far as constructing a long-lasting pit facility, it is a red herring. The U.S. is just not going to legislative itself into unilateral nuclear disarmament by halting all progress toward long-lasting pit production capability. It's just not. I offer this as a fact, not an opinion. There is no disarmament Santa Claus. Sorry about that. It takes a long time to build a pit factory, whether it be in Los Alamos (total cost including operational costs while under construction: $30 billion) or in Savannah River ($20-$25? billion, cheaper because despite the larger scale construction, there are few operational costs during construction). 

    If the SC project were halted for let us say 5 years it would take roughly two decades in all to bring forth an alternative. In the meantime Los Alamos would be put on an extreme schedule, with savage safety cuts and a high probability of accidents. This would be the result of the course of action recommended by the SC lawsuit plaintiffs, like Nuclear Watch. What NNSA is now doing approaches just that. The wisest available overall course of action is still the one NNSA itself recommended in 2017: demonstrate pit production in Los Alamos while building the facility in South Carolina. In other words: go slow. 

    This is the opposite of Trump's dictum to NNSA ("go fast"). This is the least expensive and least environmentally impactful option available in the real world, and the most compatible with arms control and nuclear disarmament. Los Alamos is, as multiple speakers said last night, among the worst sites in the U.S. for a pit factory. Yet the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that produced last night's hearing, want exactly that. They cloak this by being very vocal about opposing pit production generally. This and the not-very-endearing naiveté so evident last night gave a nostalgic quality to the hearing, as if it was a time capsule of the 1990s. 

    Forgotten were all the things the U.S. has done to Russia in the meantime. Russia doesn't want to do the "Charlie Brown and the football" thing with us anymore. Congress is meanwhile rabid with ignorance and hate, and poisoned by defense dollars. At the top, NNSA is run by ideologues. Because of all this, NNSA does not hear the plaintive voices opposing all pit production. Neither does the New Mexico delegation, which is responsible for bringing this mission here in the first place. 

    The bottom line is that we have to get real, get clear on what we want (no pit production HERE and NOW), get vocal, and be firm. Don't make NNSA the enemy. They are the ones who will eventually agree with us if we make enough sense and find a way to get their attention, as has happened many times before. Join us at StopTheBomb.org. See lasg.org for more.

     
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