Update on Opposition to Revving Up a New Nuclear Arms Race: “Plutonium Pits Lawsuit re: Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Los Alamos in New Mexico”

Nuclear Hotseat podcast: “Plutonium Pits Lawsuit re: Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Los Alamos in New Mexico”

– with update on our lawsuit against DOE for failure to prepare a Programmatic EIS on expanded pit production at SRS (via the proposed Plutonium Bomb Plant) and at Los Alamos National Lab, aka “:The Plutonium Center of Failure”

Plutonium pits – the trigger for nuclear weapons: Congress has mandated that this country produce new plutonium pits at a rate of 80 per year by 2030… but nobody’s done the proper Environmental Impact Surveys to determine what this manufacturing push will mean to people and the environment.

by Libbe HaLevy | Dec 1, 2021

This Week’s Featured Interview:

Plutonium pits are the triggers necessary to detonate nuclear weapons. The United States currently has an estimated stockpile of approximately 3,800 active warheads — 1,800 deployed with approximately 2,000 held in reserve. Additionally, there are approximately 1,750 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement, giving a total inventory of approximately 5,550 nuclear warheads.

Congress has mandated that we begin producing 80 new plutonium pits per year… though it begs the question: WHY??? And how have they gotten away with not yet performing a comprehensive Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) on the full project at both sites where the pits are to be manufactured – the Savannah River Site in South Carolina near Georgia, and Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. This PEIS would comprehensively analyze the full range of health, safety and environmental justice impacts of splitting the production of pits at two sites across the country.

To learn more about this situation and the complex set of issues it entails, we spoke with two of the principals in this lawsuit:

TOM CLEMENTS serves as the Director of Savannah River Site Watch and has worked on nuclear issues for Greenpeace International, Friends of the Earth, the South Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club, and other NGOs.
EMAIL: srswatch@gmail.com
LESLIE LENHARDT is Staff Attorney for the South Carolina Environmental Law Project. Previously, from 2007 to 2018, she was in private practice with her focus on environmental and administrative litigation as well as regulatory matters.

Nuclear Hotseat podcast posted here: http://nuclearhotseat.com/2021/12/01/plutonium-pits-lawsuit-re-savannah-river-site-in-georgia-los-alamos-in-new-mexico-nh-545/

This Week’s Featured Interview:

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