BY SUZIE SCHWARTZ
Taoseños for Peaceful and Livable Futures
As you know, on January 10, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
published a Draft Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
This SWEIS is a devious departure from NEPA protocol. A SWEIS should have been conducted before billions of our tax dollars started pouring into LANL, initiating preparations for industrial-scale plutonium warhead core “pit” production. The last SWEIS, prepared in 2008, is hopelessly outdated in 2025. Instead of preparing the mandated new SWEIS for continued operations at LANL, on Sept 1, 2020, NNSA issued “A Final Supplement Analysis (SA) for the 2008 SWEIS for Continued Operations of Los Alamos National Laboratory,” in which they arbitrarily decided “no further NEPA analysis is required prior to implementing elements of the
Expanded Operations Alternative in the 2008 LANL SWEIS, as needed, to produce a minimum of 30 war reserve pits per year during 2026.”
A SA is not any kind of environmental study, but simply decides whether or not to conduct any kind of review at all: in this case, not. A SA has no enforceable requirements for public review and comment or impact mitigation. So, back in 2020 NNSA cleverly skirted the public input part of the NEPA process and incorporated new plans for pit production at two sites, LANL and Savannah River, South Carolina, without any public process whatsoever. The Supplement Analysis didn’t include NNSA’s plans for new industrial-scale plutonium pit production at LANL because there were no publicly available detailed, comprehensive plans on paper oranywhere.
The so-called 2008 “elements of the Expanded Operations Alternative” magically incorporated the two-site plan that didn’t exist in 2008. Subsequently, on Sept 2, 2020, NNSA issued two Amended Records of Decision (AROD), to cement the SA and our taxdollars began pouring in with zero environmental review.
On August 19, 2022, billions of dollars, massive cost overruns, and many accidents later, NNSA decided to issue a “Notice of Intent to Prepare a SWEIS for the Continued Operation of LANL,” the results of which we now see in the 2025 published draft. Why weren’t new plutonium pit operations paused upon that notice of intent? This new draft, based on the disingenuous, sleight-of-hand fabricated in the 2020 ARODs, conveniently omits how NNSA transitioned seamlessly from “continued operations” as a Research & Development facility to a new plutonium pit factory, in service to the new US-provoked cold war against Russia and China. Just like that!
The NEPA review process in this case is a deceitful exercise meant to pacify the public and trick us into shutting up and accepting LANL pits. The three alternatives, including the so called “no action alternative” are all about lots of action, as everybody can see. If a real environmental impact study had been undertaken, it would include an action alternative determining plutonium pit production at LANL negatively affects the people, cultures, environment, health, , and economies of Northern New Mexico. The 2020 ARODs should be nullified for the sham they are and pit production suspended permanently.
In the meantime, while LANL proclaims itself an economic engine for New Mexico, we remain among the poorest states in the country. Los Alamos County is one of the richest and healthiest counties in the U.S. with the most millionaires per capita. LANL may be an economic engine for Los Alamos County, but how is further nuclear weapons proliferation in New Mexico of any benefit to the rest of us? I can see with my own eyes, as well as in the statistics, the growing poverty and rampant homelessness everywhere I go.
Clearly, new priorities are desperately needed.
People not Pits!