SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The National Nuclear Security Administration failed to properly evaluate its expansion of plutonium pit production at sites in South Carolina and New Mexico in violation of environmental regulations, a federal judge has ruled.
Plaintiffs challenged a plan consummated in 2018 for two pit production sites — at South Carolina’s Savannah River and — that they say relied on an outdated environmental impact study. They also say it didn’t truly analyze simultaneous production, and undermined safety and accountability safeguards for a multibillion-dollar nuclear weapons program and related waste disposal. “Defendants neglected to properly consider the combined effects of their two-site strategy and have failed to convince the court they gave thought to how those effects would affect the environment,” Judge Mary Geiger Lewis said in her ruling.
The decision arrives as U.S. authorities this week certified with a “diamond stamp” the first new plutonium pit from Los Alamos for deployment as a key component to under efforts to modernize the nation’s weapons.
Hollow, globe-shaped plutonium pits are placed at the core of nuclear warheads. Plutonium is one of the two key ingredients used to manufacture nuclear weapons, along with highly enriched uranium. The new ruling from South Carolina’s federal court says nuclear weapons regulators violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to properly analyze alternatives to production of the nu.
