Speak out on pit production at hearing
Today there is a public hearing in Santa Fe for the draft Plutonium Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, made possible by Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s successful lawsuit.
Plutonium “pits” are the fissile cores of nuclear weapons. Their production has been the choke point of U.S. industrial-scale nuclear weapons production ever since a 1989 FBI raid investigating environmental crimes shut down the notorious Rocky Flats Plant near Denver.
As the archbishop of the diocese where nuclear weapons were invented, I follow in the footsteps of our late Pope Francis who declared that their mere possession is immoral. Today I am guided by Pope Leo XIV, who has declared: “The idea of the deterrent power of military might, especially nuclear deterrence, is based on the irrationality of relations between nations, built not on law, justice and trust, but on fear and domination by force.”
Here I believe that our Holy Father gets to the heart of the matter. The Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement claims that the National Nuclear Security Administration’s programs are consistent with the 1970 Nonproliferation Treaty. That deserves serious examination.
For 56 years, the Nonproliferation Treaty has acted as the cornerstone of nuclear weapons nonproliferation. However, the treaty is now badly frayed, perhaps even in danger of collapsing. Its 11th review conference, being held now at the United Nations in New York City, is widely expected to fail for the third time over 15 years to make any progress whatsoever toward nuclear disarmament. This is primarily due to the never-ending refusal of the nuclear weapons states to enter into serious negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament, which they pledged to long ago in the treaty. The one-word excuse is always “deterrence”; that is, to deter others from using nuclear weapons. But this deflects the blame from our own possession of immoral, genocidal weapons.
“Deterrence” is at best only a half-truth. In reality, our government’s policy has always been a hybrid of deterrence and maintaining nuclear warfighting capabilities that can end civilization overnight. That is why the U.S. and Russia each have thousands of nuclear weapons instead of only a few hundred for minimal deterrence. That is why the U.S. has a $2 trillion so-called modernization program to keep nuclear weapons forever, in which expanded plutonium pit production is the critical issue.
Pope Leo XIV calls for a world built on law, justice and peace, which is our God-given duty to pursue. The U.S. Constitution enshrines international treaties as the “supreme Law of the Land.” The essential bargain of the Nonproliferation Treaty was that the nuclear weapons powers promised to negotiate nuclear disarmament, in exchange for which all other nations promised to never acquire them. The nuclear weapons powers have not upheld their end of this legal bargain.
No future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, it is all for new-design nuclear weapons which can’t be tested because of the international testing moratorium, thereby perhaps eroding stockpile confidence. Or new-design nuclear weapons could prompt the U.S. to return to testing, which would shred the global nonproliferation regime.
The enormous sums for unneeded new nuclear weapons rob from the poor and needy. Military spending is reaching record heights while programs for the common man and woman are being slashed. We urgently need comprehensive cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to protect our irreplaceable groundwater. Instead, $6 billion will be put into LANL’s nuclear weapons programs next year, of which $2.4 billion is for plutonium pit production. But cleanup gets less than $300 million.
These are the clearly the wrong priorities. I urge concerned citizens to speak their minds at this evening’s public hearing. In addition, please be sure to submit written comments on the need for cleanup and nuclear disarmament by the deadline of July 16 (which happens to be the 81st anniversary of the Trinity Test that harmed New Mexicans).
The Most Rev. John C. Wester is archbishop of Santa Fe.
[The Pit Production PEIS public hearing Thursday, May 14, 2026: 5:00-5:30 pm Open House Poster Session, 5:30-8:00 pm Formal Public Hearing, at the Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute, 1607 Paseo de Peralta. It is also virtual at https://bit.ly/PitPEIS14May, Meeting ID: 278 752 885 654 34, Passcode: W9Bt96vN Written comments should be submitted by July 16 to PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov]
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