(Washington, D.C.) — The Arms Control Association (ACA) calls on Congress to reject and cut down the president’s request for a defense budget of $1.5 trillion dollars. Coming after several years of large increases to defense spending and in the absence of demonstrable progress in diplomatic steps to avoid arms racing and unnecessary military expenditure, the request is an unjustified and indefensible imposition on the American people.

“Both this administration and its predecessor have failed to convincingly justify several years of explosive growth in spending on nuclear weapons modernization and upgrades, an ambitious and destabilizing scheme for strategic missile interceptors, and other major weapons systems. The new budget request far exceeds any justifiable requirements, will line the pockets of military contractors, and steal taxpayer funds away from programs that address the real needs of Americans,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director.

“As the Trump administration seeks the largest military spending increase in U.S. history and massive increases in Defense and Energy Department spending on nuclear weapons, it has failed to seriously pursue lower-cost strategies to mitigate national security dangers, including effective nonproliferation diplomacy with Iran and bilateral nuclear arms reduction negotiations with Russia,” Kimball noted.

The budget calls for massive increases in military spending, including $71.4 billion for Pentagon nuclear weapons programs, $85.8 billion for missile defense and the president’s Golden Dome project, and $27.4 billion for nuclear weapons activities at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

“The United States is already set to spend more than $946 billion on its nuclear weapons systems in the decade between 2025 and 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That estimate does not include recent hikes in cost estimates for several major nuclear modernization programs,” noted ACA senior analyst Xiaodon Liang.

One example of an unjustified nuclear program is the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that is on track to cost upward of $200 billion and breached Pentagon cost-control measures.

“Because these ground-based missiles are vulnerable to attack by nuclear-armed adversaries, they pose a use-it-or-lose it dilemma for the president, creating an unnecessary escalation risk in the U.S. nuclear posture. ICBMs are an extravagance in an era when an enemy surprise attack is a lesser risk than escalation—particularly accidental escalation—in a crisis. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has ignored calls to forego Sentinel and instead life-extend the existing Minuteman III missile until all land-based ICBMs can be phased out through mutual, verifiable arms reduction agreements,” Liang added.

Despite Trump’s expressions of interest in “denuclearization talks” with Russia and China, the administration failed to pursue a new nuclear arms control framework with Russia to succeed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in the year before the agreement’s expiration on Feb. 5, 2026, while also failing to engage China on a bilateral basis.

“While it is tragic that U.S. and Russian leaders failed to engage in meaningful negotiations on a successor agreement to New START, it is also notable that following the expiration of New START, the United States proposed multilateral strategic stability talks as a means to achieving a ‘new era’ of nuclear arms control,” Kimball noted.

“A ‘multilateral’ approach to nuclear arms control may sound appealing. Indeed, all five nuclear-armed states have treaty obligations to engage in good faith negotiations to halt and reverse the nuclear arms race. But without a serious strategy for success, Trump’s approach could be a formula for further inaction, especially given the complexities of a five-sided negotiation involving states with different force sizes, force structures, nuclear postures, and strategic cultures,” Kimball warned.

“Such an initiative should not be allowed to substitute for the immediate commencement of serious bilateral talks between the United States and Russia and the United States and China on nuclear risk reduction, strategic stability, and nuclear arms reductions that could also yield concrete arms control and risk reduction outcomes, and perhaps more quickly,” he suggested.

“The Trump administration has also advocated for an expansion of the U.S. strategic missile defense system that could cost $185 billion by the end of this presidency according to the Pentagon’s own admission, would not establish an effective workable defense for the U.S. homeland, and would likely encourage Russia and China to improve their offensive capabilities so as to be able to overwhelm any new U.S. missile defense architecture,” Liang said.

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that a missile defense shield that satisfies the president’s stated goals would cost $1.2 trillion – far more than the $185 billion the Pentagon plans to request.

Other excessive nuclear programs include third and fourth warheads for the sea-based leg of the strategic triad (the W93 and the future sea-based warhead), a nuclear bunker buster (the Nuclear Delivery System Air-Delivered), the sea-launched cruise missile, and large-scale plutonium pit production in two states.

“We also oppose the president’s proposed budget hikes because it is designed, in part, to pay for his costly, reckless, and illegal war of choice against Iran. American consumers are already paying for the president’s mistake at the gas pump and their tax dollars should not be used to support an expansion of a war that should never have been launched,” Kimball said.

For these reasons, ACA joined other organizations to encourage Congress to reject the president’s budget request. ACA is one of a diverse array of organizations, led by the Coalition on Human Needs and Public Citizen, which jointly issued an open letter on April 3 to Congress calling on members to oppose the $1.5 trillion budget request.

Instead of further wasteful and excessive spending on the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise, ACA calls on Congress to question the military effectiveness and strategic wisdom of the expensive nuclear build-up underway. Legislators should press the administration for evidence of tangible progress toward reducing military and nuclear competition with Russia and China through hard-headed and sensible risk reduction and arms control diplomacy.

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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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NNSA officials have referred to WIPP as pit production’s Achilles heel, so the WIPP permit issue bears watching. There is now a public comment period on the new permit open until June 8. For that see https://www.env.nm.gov/hazardous-waste/wipp/

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AIKEN — Opponents of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility under construction at Savannah River Site said April 22 that the facility is unneeded and will be the most expensive building ever constructed in the United States.

“I’m alleging a cover up here with respect to keeping the true costs of this unneeded program from the American public,” said Jay Coghlin, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration that resulted in he and other plaintiffs being allowed to tour the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility on April 21.

The facility is being built to produce plutonium pits, which are a core component of nuclear weapons. Proponents say the pits are needed to replace those that are degrading in the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The plaintiffs alleged in an April 22 press conference in the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia that the facility is being built not to produce plutonium pits to replace those aging in the current stockpile, but for use in newly designed but untested nuclear weapons.

The plutonium pit production facility is being repurposed from the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, which was intended to convert weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear fuel. The MOX plant was canceled in 2018 after construction delays and cost overruns.

The lawsuit
In 2018, the Nuclear Weapons Council, a joint council of the Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration, approved a two-site strategy for producing plutonium pits at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Savannah River Site.

In 2018, the Nuclear Weapons Council, a joint council of the Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration, approved a two-site strategy for producing plutonium pits at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Savannah River Site.

In 2019, Congress required that a minimum of 80 pits a year be produced. The NNSA plans to produce 30 per year at Los Alamos and 50 per year at SRS.

In 2021, SRS Watch, based in Columbia, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, based in Livermore, California, filed a lawsuit asserting that NNSA was required under the National Environmental Policy Act to complete a new Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for simultaneous plutonium pit production at two sites.

In October 2024, a judge ruled that DOE and NNSA had not sufficiently evaluated the programmatic impact of producing pits at a second location and did not consider alternative locations for pit production. The judge ordered the parties to negotiate a compromise remedy.

The April 21 meeting and tour were part of the negotiated settlement agreement, which also requires production of a new Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and opportunities for public scrutiny of, and comment on, the document.

The draft of the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement was released April 10.

The tour
Tom Clements, director of Savannah River Site Watch, said the tour was conducted by “gracious but reluctant” NNSA officials and representatives of the contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.

Clements said the group toured the first floor and the roof of the facility, but were told the second and third floors were off limits because of silica dust in the air from the cutting of concrete by high-pressure water jets.

“Basically, all we saw was this huge concrete shell of a building,” Coghlin said.

“I think we can attest that no classified equipment has been installed in the facility, which they’re not allowed to do,” Clements said. “But that only came [about] because we pushed for this Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, and they’re only going to be able to install classified equipment once the draft becomes the final document and they issue a Record of Decision in early 2027.”

“All there was to show yesterday on the tour was basically an empty concrete shell of thick walls and rebar,” said Dylan Spaulding, a senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a technical advisor to the plaintiffs.

“It’s clear that the NNSA faces a daunting challenge in bringing this facility online in the near future. They have a long complex road to completion,” Spaulding said.

“Apart from the facility’s existing seismic qualifications, it’s not clear that this particular building offers any advantage over alternatives that could have, and should have, been considered by a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, had that been conducted according to the requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act,” Spaulding said.

“A Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement should come before federal actions are taken,” he said.

Clements said that during the tour, “I realized I was inside the heart of what could be a new nuclear arms race.”

Cost of the project
Coghlin said he calculates that the facility will be the most expensive building in U.S. history.

“At least $6 billion was spent in the failed Mixed Oxide program. So at least $6 billion already spent on this empty, huge concrete shell of the building, with something like $5 billion spent since then,” he said.

“The National Nuclear Security Administration now says the upper range of cost is $25 billion,” Coghlin said. “That doesn’t include the previous sunk costs… and the new budget request explicitly states they still don’t have final costs. So, we’re looking at $30 billion plus.”

“The GAO, Government Accountability Office, has repeatedly stated that the National Nuclear Security Administration has no credible cost estimates for the pit production program,” Coghlin said.

“This program is so troubled that last August the Deputy Secretary of DOE ordered a special assessment… to analyze the problems in the pit production program, and he ordered that it be completed by mid-December,” he said.

Coghlin said he’s filed a Freedom of Information Act request and that U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Rep. John Garamendi “both have specifically demanded that DOE release that troubled special assessment, and it still has not seen daylight at this point in time.”

“We’ve got an unneeded program, incredibly expensive, that’s going to create the most expensive building in U.S. history, and the costs are being kept concealed from the American taxpayer,” he said.

“This money is not for essential work at Savannah River Site, management of high-level nuclear waste, but it’s basically to restart a nuclear arms race,” Clements said.

The justification
Spaulding said the aging of plutonium pits “does not appear to be a viable motivation for the program that’s underway at SRS or at Los Alamos.”

“You’ll often hear the program to make new pits justified by saying that we need to replace aging plutonium components in the stockpile. But, in fact, the pits in the current stockpile have an average age of about 40 years. As of today, we believe that they have life spans closer to a century,” he said.

“This is not deterrence by anybody’s definitions. The pits aren’t needed for existing weapons,” Clements said.

A new arms race?
The plaintiffs alleged in their April 22 press conference that the true purpose of the pit production program is to build new weapons.

“This is more about setting the U.S. up for production capability than it has to do with maintenance of what we have,” Spaulding said.

“This will be the first time that the United States is introducing new designs into the nuclear arsenal since the end of the Cold War,” he said.

“This is really a paradigm shift in which the nuclear complex is turning from maintaining the weapons we have using science-based techniques that don’t require nuclear testing to introducing… all new designs with potentially new capabilities and new delivery systems to go along with them. This comes along with human and environmental risk,” Spaulding said.

“Low-level waste that’s produced as a byproduct of pit production will stay onsite and be buried here in South Carolina, whereas the transuranic waste will have to be transported by road across all the Southern states, from South Carolina back to southern New Mexico to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. So, the impacts of this project are not limited to South Carolina and New Mexico,” he said.

He said the ramifications could be geopolitical.

“The new pit plant at SRS is strictly for new-design nuclear weapons that can’t be tested because of the international testing moratorium, and therefore could erode confidence in the existing stockpile, or, conversely, these new pits could… prompt the U.S. to resume testing, after which all proliferation hell would break loose,” Coghlin said.

Public input
A summary and two volumes of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement are available through DOE’s website, and public meetings are scheduled in South Carolina, Missouri, New Mexico, California and Washington, D.C.

“This analysis was done more than eight years after the decision was [made] to use this facility for plutonium pit production. So, it essentially amounts to a retroactive rubber stamping for actions that have already been taken without a true analysis of the impacts to South Carolina and to the people that carry this work out,” Spaulding said.

“This lawsuit was brought under the National Environmental Policy Act,” said Tanvi Kardile, nuclear policy program director at Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, based in Livermore, California. “It’s court-mandated, so the public does have that right to be involved through giving oral testimony and written comments as well.”

“The current administration is currently gutting the National Environmental Policy Act through an executive order that the President issued right after inauguration,” Kardile said.

“So now federal agencies essentially make up their own regulations to match this executive order, and, in response, Department of Energy created new regulations that cancel draft environmental impact statements and also cancels public engagement,” she said.

The scheduled meetings “could essentially be the last time the public is able to adequately scrutinize a nuclear weapons project, and that’s really scary that the DOE can now essentially go through with these projects without public engagement, without y’all being able to express your concerns and scrutinize these projects,” Kardile said.

The South Carolina meeting is scheduled for May 5 from 5-8 p.m. at the North Augusta Community Center, 495 Brookside Drive.

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In the world of nuclear weapons (the clock considers nuclear weapons, climate change, bio-threats, and Artificial Intelligence), the Bulletin noted that leaders are explicitly talking about

• new nuclear weapons development

• arms racing

• the resumption of full-scale nuclear testing

• deployment of new types of nuclear capable weapons

• heavy investment in modernizing weapons and production capabilities

• leaders talking about using nuclear weapons on the battlefield

• arms race instability

Noting that the last existing arms control treaty (New START) will expire on February 6, and no steps are being taken to renew the Treaty, the Bulletin’s panel said the decline in nucler weapons stockpiles around the globe has stopped, and we are now seeing the potential for increases.

Bell noted that the movement of the clock toward destruction is not preordained. “It is time to act,” she said. “Every time we have been able to reduce the risks, it has been because of public pressure, people coming together to say ‘We do not accept this.’”

The panel also cited the rise of autocracies and the undermining of the rules-based social and political order as factors in the 2026 clock decision, citing the current Administration action in Minneapolis as an example of the result of the undermining of democractic systems.

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New pro-nuclear group makes presence known in New Mexico
By Trey Rorie
A new pro-nuclear group in New Mexico has emerged and seeks to play a role in the state’s transition towards clean energy with nuclear power.

The New Mexico Nuclear Alliance, founded in July, is a non-partisan membership organization that operates out of Santa Fe. The new group has partnered with the Carlsbad Department of Development, Energy Communities Alliance and New Space Nexus.

Carlsbad is a longstanding nuclear community, where the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Carlsbad Field Office is based. DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is roughly 25 miles outside of Carlsbad.

The New Mexico Nuclear Alliance was founded and led by Scott Lopez, a Marine Corps veteran, investor and business consultant. Lopez’s LinkedIn account does not show a background in nuclear energy.

However, Lopez has ties with DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, as he has “more than 12 family members working there over the last 80 years”, according to New Mexico Nuclear Alliance’s website.

Along with promoting more nuclear power in New Mexico, New Mexico Nuclear Alliance also has an interest in the state’s nuclear waste management, such as advanced recycling and long-term disposal solutions.

“New Mexico can responsibly grow its existing nuclear ecosystem and has the opportunity to lead the country by example, demonstrating that communities once supported by fossil fuels can thrive with carbon-free, reliable and affordable nuclear energy,” according to its website.

On Oct. 24, New Mexico Nuclear Alliance made its first public appearance before the New Mexico state legislature science, technology and telecommunications committee. Lopez spoke before the committee advocating advanced energy technology, particularly nuclear power.

Some environmental groups have taken note of the New Mexico Nuclear Alliance. Nuclear Watch New Mexico Executive Director Jay Coghlan told Exchange Monitor that NukeWatch had heard of the pro-nuclear group but was not a fan.

“Pro-nuke groups are promoting a discredited industry,” Coghlan told Exchange Monitor Wednesday. “ Let’s have a little free market capitalism. The nuclear industry would collapse overnight without taxpayer handouts.That’s at the front end. On the back end, even after ~70 years, they still haven’t solved the radioactive waste problem.”

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Wayne Barber

While sad to see what is designed as a five-person panel of experts fall to a lone member, the departing acting chair of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) feels cautiously optimistic about its future during a time of government cutbacks.

During an interview Thursday with Exchange Monitor, DNFSB Acting Chair Thomas Summers said while the current Donald Trump White House has yet to nominate anyone to fill the vacancies he understands from administration sources that two individuals are being vetted.

Exchange Monitor plans to publish articles this week and next week from the interview.

Summers ends his five-year tenure on the safety watchdog Saturday Oct. 18. His tenure
started in August 2020 when he was confirmed to serve out the last two months of another member’s term. Summers also served his own full five-year term.

The departure of Summers, a career Air Force veteran who also worked with the Department of Energy’s National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA),will leave Patricia Lee, a former Savannah River National Laboratory executive,as the lone remaining member of the DNFSB panel.

Despite the lack of seated board members, a situation bemoaned in a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, Summers leaves feeling pretty good about the Trump White House’s commitment to the small agency.

“I have not directly talked to the president,” Summers said. “I have talked to several of his administration staff … [and]there are some strong indications that the administration supports the board.”

For starters, DNFSB is one of the rare agencies these days where the White House and the House of Representatives
both seek a budget increase for fiscal 2026. The current House-passed appropriations bill would increase the nuclear
safety board budget to $45 million, up from $42 million in fiscal 2025.

As a side note, DNFSB gets its funding in two-year cycles, reducing the impact of the ongoing shutdown, Summers said.The panel has enough funds to continue normal operations six-to-eight weeks from the start of the Oct. 1 shutdown. The period could be extended “if we sharpen our pencils,” Summers said.

As for fiscal 2026, the White House Office of Management and Budget has supported $45 million budget for DNFSB, or a roughly 7% increase. “In this environment … is pretty amazing,” Summers said.

Since taking office in January, the current administration has “strongly supported” DNFSB’s mission to provide DOE within
dependent safety analysis and recommendations in order to protect nuclear complex workers and the public, Summers
said.

“As we see across the government, people are being laid off and riffed.” Summers said, referring to reductions in force.But the nuclear safety board convinced the White House to not only support the existing workforce “but we need to be
plussed-up … we are hiring new [people].”

While some staff left DNFSB due to retirements or other reasons, the agency did not suffer mandatory layoffs, Summers
said. While DNFSB cooperated with the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE did not target DFNSB for big cost-cutting. The DNFSB headcount stood at 106 this week and the board is looking to fill a half-dozen or more vacancies.

DNFSB received about 300 applications for two resident inspector positions, Summers said. The board’s mission is to provide DOE with outside analysis and advice on safety at its nuclear defense facilities.

As for Summers, he is open to taking a job in the administration or possibly accepting a role in private industry where his
defense and safety background would be an asset.

“I want to serve,” Summers said. “I’m open to serve in the administration. If not [then] potentially serve somewhere else
within the enterprise,” he added, referencing the DOE and Department of Defense contractor community.

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