For immediate release: April 10, 2026
Contact: Greg Mello: 505-577-8563
Permalink * Prior press releases and backgrounder
(In yesterday's press release, the link to a graph of past NNSA Weapons Activities funding was incorrect. The correct link is here.)
A quick note regarding the Los Alamos Study Group (Study Group): For more than 35 years we have been an independent policy analysis, education, and action team. We are not a watchdog group, though we work closely with such groups (e.g. the Government Accountability Office; Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board) as well as with policy-makers in government. For more background see " About us."
"Pits" are nuclear warhead cores, made of plutonium and other materials. When imploded with chemical explosives, pits produce a nuclear explosion that is used to "ignite" the subsequent stages in the overall detonation of a nuclear warhead or bomb.
The PEIS Summary provides a succinct explanation of why the PEIS was written, what the major assumptions underlying it are, what alternatives were considered reasonable and were analyzed for their environmental effects, and the draft conclusions of that analysis.
The two alternative sites considered for pit production are the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
NNSA also provided a schedule of public hearings to be held in May in North Augusta, SC; Kansas City, MO; Livermore, CA; Santa Fe, NM; and Washington, DC.
The Study Group, which has been a plaintiff in a number of NEPA litigation cases, will provide more detailed comments in due time.
In the meantime, we offer these. Study Group director Greg Mello:
"Pit production is not needed for at least the coming decade. Pit production at LANL is starting far ahead of actual stockpile need. It's 'bonus' production, but it comes at extremely high fiscal and environmental costs. Every dollar spent on pit production at LANL, beyond demonstration and training, is wasted -- unless gratuitous nuclear threats and arms racing are the goals. Arms racing is very lucrative to contractors, as Trump's proposed nuclear weapons budget shows.
"NNSA's pit production program is out of control. This country doesn't need new pits right now and it certainly doesn't need two factories to build them. Until 2018, having one factory was always considered the only prudent and responsible choice.
"What happened is that New Mexico Democrats, and then other Democrats, allied themselves with nuclear hawks to press for a pit factory at LANL that could be stood up quickly. Udall and Heinrich were afraid they would lose this tantalizingly-rich pork-barrel opportunity, so they, with the LANL contractor behind them, went in like gangbusters to claim this mission for LANL.
"But almost nobody in Washington believed then, or believes now, that LANL alone, with its inadequate, aging facilities and its record of unreliability, can be trusted with the whole pit mission. As this PEIS says [p. S-12], the required pit production level "is not considered sustainable" at LANL.
"New Mexico Democrats, with their credo of 'nuclear welfarism,' are the reason we have a two-site pit plan. In the real world, if LANL is to be a pit factory, there have to be two. It's as simple as that. The Democrat-aligned NGOs who think Congress and the Pentagon can be tricked or litigated into making LANL the only pit factory are part of the problem, not the solution.
"The draft PEIS can be likened to a deck of environmental 'get out of jail free' cards that can be applied as needed to subsequent policy decisions. The three (and only three) alternatives offered are each rather loosely specified, which makes them flexible and adaptable to future NNSA decisions. NNSA also also appears to have minimized any apparent contrast between the environmental impacts of these alternatives.
"The 'No Action Alternative,' as is NNSA's usual practice, includes tens of billions of dollars of what any normal person would call "actions," including continuing to build, and then operate, a pit factory at LANL and building (but not operating) a pit factory at SRS.
"Adding up what NNSA has already spent, and what the agency estimates it will spend on building out the factory at LANL, anyone can see that the LANL factory will cost in the neighborhood of $30 billion (B), ten times the original estimate. NNSA estimates the pit factory at SRS could cost up to $25 B, more than five times the original estimate. [" Current & historical cost estimates for reconstituting plutonium pit production, details, Aug 29, 2025].
"Combined future costs at the two sites are roughly $40 B. This, NNSA says, is 'no action' -- because they have already decided to do it! This is the opposite of NEPA, of course.
"Another peculiarity is the separation of construction from operation at SRS. As if NNSA would build a huge factory and not operate it at some level. Of course, NNSA could make one decision today and then another one in several years, based on the same PEIS. They could just 'turn on the switch' at SRS, no matter what is decided now.
"Part of NNSA's analytical problem is that Congress has -- at least for now -- constrained NNSA's choices even more tightly than this document suggests. The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act [ P. L. 119-60, Section 3112] requires DOE to ensure that both LANL and SRS have the capability to produce pits -- at least 30 per year at LANL and at least 50 per year at SRS. An empty factory with no workers, or with workers who are not exercising their skills, does not create capability.
"The terms of the South Carolina settlement were subject to future legislation. Last year's National Defense Authorization Act can be seen as just such superseding legislation, mandating two production sites.
"So the single-site alternatives are now illegal. We aren't sure how illegal alternatives can be 'reasonable.'
"Prior to this PEIS, NNSA had a fully NEPA-compliant environmental impact statement and subsequent NEPA decision available for the single-site solution of producing all the required pits at SRS. LANL, in turn, already had NEPA compliance for a pit production demonstration and training program that made 10 pits per year. This was the solution to NNSA's NEPA problem that we suggested in our 2024 amicus brief.
"We are pleased that NNSA now considers the SRS-only alternative 'reasonable' in its draft PEIS [p. S-10]. But law would need to be changed to allow it.
"NNSA's 'No Action Alternative' relies on 2008 NEPA documents which assumed that another large plutonium facility would be built at LANL. That didn't happen, and this PEIS rightly says that assuming that such a facility could be built at LANL any time soon is unreasonable [p. S-14].
"We do not think the No Action Alternative is at all reasonable or NEPA-compliant, even with the NEPA statute and regulations cut back so heavily by Congress and the Trump Administration.
"Some of the possible enhancements mentioned in this PEIS are already in NNSA's budget request, such as re-directing plutonium disposition at SRS and LANL into the pit production program."
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