The Plans to Build More Nuclear Weapons—and What You Can Do About It

by John Whitehead

—

The United States, under presidents of both parties, has been building a new generation of nuclear weapons. This project is euphemistically called “nuclear modernization.” One part of nuclear modernization is a plan to dramatically increase production of the plutonium that produces nuclear explosions. 

Increasing plutonium production is profoundly unwise. Producing more plutonium is unnecessary, wastes money, and endangers communities in the United States while also escalating the arms race.

For all these reasons, plutonium production plans have elicited significant opposition. Because of an activist lawsuit, the US National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees plutonium production, has been required to allow public comment on its plans for expanded production.

Peace activists and others opposed to expanded plutonium production currently have an opportunity to express their opposition. They should take advantage of the comment period, which lasts until July 16. 

Activists should also notify their elected representatives of their opposition. Resources are available to help people speak out against increasing plutonium production. 

Expanding Plutonium Production

Plutonium is a radioactive metallic element. When shaped into a hollow sphere and imploded by conventional explosives, plutonium can drive a nuclear fission reaction. 

Such a plutonium sphere, or “pit,” serves as a critical part of a nuclear warhead. Most plutonium pits in the current US nuclear stockpile were produced from 1979 to 1989.

Since 2015, the US Congress has set a goal of producing 80 plutonium pits annually by 2030. At least some of these pits will be used in a new warhead designed for the next generation of US land-based nuclear missiles. 

The responsibility for plutonium pit production falls to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an agency within the US Department of Energy. During the Cold War, large-scale production of plutonium pits occurred at Rocky Flats in Colorado. At its peak, the Rocky Flats site produced 1,000 pits annually. Today, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina are the designated locations for pit production. The ultimate target is for Los Alamos to produce 30 pits and Savannah River to produce 50 pits annually.

This effort to produce new plutonium pits is unnecessary, wasteful, and dangerous. 

Unnecessary Production

The simplest reason for opposing expanded plutonium pit production is that the United States should not be producing new nuclear weapons. The United States already has thousands of nuclear weapons, more than enough to inflict catastrophic damage on the world. The country needs to radically reduce its nuclear arsenal.

The ideal goal would be for neither the United States nor any other country in the world to have any nuclear weapons. However, even if someone does not believe nuclear abolition is possible or desirable, reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons in the world is still a reasonable goal. 

Given the extraordinary destructive power of nuclear weapons, maintaining thousands of such weapons is hard to justify. Most other nuclear-armed nations have limited themselves to possessing hundreds or even smaller numbers of nuclear weapons, and the United States could do the same. The United States does not need to produce more nuclear warheads at the rate of potentially 80 every year. 

Granted, the NNSA maintains that they need to produce new plutonium pits not only to build new nuclear warheads but “to replace existing pits as they age” (p. S-1). Anti-nuclear groups such as Nuclear Watch New Mexico and the Union of Concerned Scientists dispute this claim. 

Nuclear Watch New Mexico comments that “An independent expert 2006 pit life study legislatively prompted by Nuclear Watch New Mexico found that plutonium pits have minimum lifetimes of 100 years…Government documents indicate that the average age of plutonium pits in the active U.S. stockpile is around 43 years.”

Even if one sets aside these objections and accepts the technical need to replace existing pits, the planned number of replacements should be much lower. Producing smaller numbers of new plutonium pits would be consistent with the goal of reducing the US nuclear arsenal to a much lower level.

Large-scale production of plutonium pits, and by extension new nuclear weapons, is not only unnecessary but dangerous. One danger is that expanded US production will encourage other nations to increase production of their own nuclear weapons. The result will be an escalation of the nuclear arms race.

Wasteful Production

The entire US nuclear modernization program is enormously expensive. A 2024 estimate placed modernization’s cost at $1.7 trillion. Expanded plutonium pit production has been estimated to cost over $28 billion.

A practical challenge to nuclear modernization is that the demand for facilities and skilled personnel to produce nuclear weapons and related technologies drastically fell after the Cold War ended. Updating facilities and recruiting people for renewed nuclear weapons production is a long, complex, and expensive process. Nuclear modernization has therefore been marked by delays and spiraling costs.

Plutonium pit production is no exception to the slow progress of modernization efforts. More than a decade has passed since Congress first set the goal of 80 pits annually by 2030, and in that time the Los Alamos facility has produced precisely one pit. The Savannah River site has yet to produce any.

The billions of dollars being spent to create a new generation of nuclear weapons could be better spent. With vital social services such as Medicaid and SNAP under siege, spending such large sums on new weapons of mass killing is an outrage.

Dangerous Production

As already noted, expanding plutonium pit production could escalate the arms race. Such production also poses other threats, specifically to the communities around the Los Alamos and Savannah River sites.

Being radioactive, plutonium is highly dangerous: inhaling even a small quantity of the element can be fatal. Moreover, the history of pit production raises significant safety concerns: the Rocky Flats site that used to mass produce pits was ultimately raided by the Environmental Protection Agency and FBI in 1989 and was shut down for major environmental violations.

Future pit production may well harm workers and surrounding communities. For example, the Los Alamos site has a poor safety record: fires, floods, and worker exposure to plutonium have been problems there. 

Waste disposal is another potential problem: the United States has a site, near Carlsbad, New Mexico, that is suitable for storing nuclear waste containing plutonium. This site’s infrastructure is decades old and in need of repair. In 2014, a barrel of radioactive waste that was improperly prepared by the Los Alamos staff ruptured at the New Mexico storage site, contaminating 21 workers. 

While communities in New Mexico and South Carolina face the greatest danger, they are not alone. Transporting plutonium pits, nuclear waste, and other hazardous materials from the pit production sites to other locations potentially puts communities across the United States at risk.

What You Can Do

A coalition of activist groups successfully sued the NNSA over the plutonium production plans. The lawsuit’s result was to force NNSA to provide a nation-wide programmatic environmental impact statement on plutonium pit production. The NNSA released the impact statement in April 2026, allowing for both in-person hearings on plutonium production and an online comment period.

The online comment period is currently open until July 16. Activists should use the comment period to express their opposition to expanded plutonium pit production for all the reasons given above. Please urge the NNSA to take into careful account the health and environmental risks of pit production.

Comments can be emailed to the NNSA at PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov. The website https://pitpeis.com/ offers talking points (https://pitpeis.com/comment-resources/) to use in comments, as well as extensive information on opposition to plutonium production.

US citizens should also contact their representatives in the House and their senators to urge them to oppose expanded plutonium production. They can also contact President Trump by email or phone (202-456-1111) and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright by email (The.Secretary@hq.doe.gov) to send the same message. 

Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to humanity. We should oppose that threat, as well as the many other ways these weapons waste our resources and poison our communities.