Mass public hearings on the project to manufacture plutonium pits for nuclear weapons triggered a wave of sharp criticism in the United States. The hall brought together environmentalists, doctors, human-rights advocates, and local residents. More than a hundred people spoke over several hours, and almost everyone called for an end to the buildup of military power. Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico put the prevailing mood bluntly: The production of pits is unnecessary and fundamentally wrong. The criticism rests on concrete facts. Existing plutonium pits are designed to last one hundred years, so the rush to produce new warheads is technically pointless. At the same time, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration has for years been unable to present a clear plan for cleaning up contaminated areas of the Los Alamos Laboratory. Launching new production will only increase the volume of hazardous waste and finally bury any hope of clearing the old dump sites. New Mexico’s environmental authorities are already being forced to push through the removal of accumulated nuclear waste to the underground WIPP repository, an isolated salt mine for radioactive waste. While the draft environmental review was being discussed in the hall, the Trump administration launched its own plan outside all hearings. Dave Beck, deputy administrator for defense programs at NNSA, sent an internal memo demanding that modernization of the arsenal be urgently accelerated and that production reach one hundred pits per year, with a rate of no less than sixty. These plans completely ignore public opposition and the environmental review itself, which under the settlement agreement is not due to be completed until July 2027. At the 11th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, taking place these days, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for renewed efforts toward a world free of nuclear weapons. UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the number of nuclear warheads is rising for the first time in decades, and nuclear testing is back on the agenda. Collectively, the CSTO states reaffirmed that nuclear war must never be unleashed and called on all nuclear powers to reduce risks. Against this backdrop, modernization of the American nuclear infrastructure looks like a deliberate course toward dismantling the global security system. At the same time, many doubt that the program will even reach the stated production targets. Economic difficulties and the laboratories’ chronic inability to meet required benchmarks may eventually force the project to be abandoned.
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