‘control and dominate’ space

The disclosure by US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink that the US has deployed space weapons in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) confirmed what many had always thought and is a consequence of the competition between the USA and Russia-China over access to LEO. Whoever controls the increasingly limited parking spaces in LEO will be at a considerable advantage and will be able to see and direct weapons not only to targets in space but also on the Earth.

Elon Musk is being paid to fill up LEO with military satellites as fast as possible for the US.

The US Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) with huge radars in Texas, Australia and possibly Wales — where grassroots opposition is massive — would be part of a system to guide anti-satellite weapons (ASATS) to hit targeted satellites in space.

Other options for the US appear to be space-based lasers and electro-magnetic guns to blind or fry spacecraft electronics.

The Trump administration’s proposed “Golden Dome” system is bringing lots of lucrative contracts to aerospace companies but is nowhere near likely to be completed by Trump’s end of term. The American Physical Society and the Congressional Budget Office also report it would cost trillions of dollars and would not likely be effective against Russian or Chinese hypersonic missiles.

However, Meink’s announcement could really be about attempting to make Golden Dome sound inevitable, thereby forcing Congress to appropriate the massive funds needed to secure the controversial project in the Pentagon’s space strategy.

One other long-term issue is the “mining the sky program.” The US and its fellow NATO allies want to move their 500-year western colonial domination to the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies for resource extraction. During a keynote speech at the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said, “the Joint Force is prepared to fight, endure, and win in global contested environments from the seabed to cislunar space”. Cislunar space is the space between the Earth and the Moon.

The plan is to establish nuclear powered mining colonies. Nuclear powered rocket engines are being developed to cut-in-half the amount of time it would take to get to Mars. The Department of Energy labs that fabricate these space nuclear devices have a long history of worker, air, and water contamination.

The 1989 Congressional study entitled “Military Space Forces: The Next 50 Years” called for the US to control the pathway off Earth to space (also called the Earth-Moon Gravity Well).

As the Space Command’s ‘Vision for 2020’ stated, the US must “control and dominate space” and “deny” others the use of space. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recently stated, “I’m not interested in orbital equity or parity. We demand orbital dominance plain and simple.” Those are fighting words.

In the end, the taxpayers should be wondering who will pay for the trillions of dollars for these collective offensive space programs – especially when the US is already over $40 trillion in debt! Long ago the aerospace industry identified the “entitlement programs” as their preferred source of funds to pay these enormous costs. By this they mean Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the now tattered social safety net. Trump has announced that the already fiscally strapped states should take over Medicare and Medicaid due to recent war spending.

In 1989 Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell (the 6th person to walk on the moon) spoke at a peace in space rally organized by Bruce Gagnon at the now re-named Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Mitchell told the assembled that a war in space would be the “one and only” because so much space junk would be created (on top of the existing huge debris field) that we would not be able to get a rocket thru the deadly space trash orbiting the Earth. He said it would be like trying to “get thru a piranha laced river” in the Amazon.

There is a name today for this phenomenon – the Kessler Syndrome. Much of life on Earth would grind to a halt as the satellites that make our high-tech world function would be smashed to bits.

The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty, signed and ratified by 118 states, including the US, calls for the peaceful use of outer space, prohibiting the deployment of any weapon of mass destruction and preventing anyone from claiming sovereign control. However, it does not prevent the stationing of other types of weapons in space. The US has repeatedly voted against a resolution, supported by China and Russia, for “no first placement of weapons in outer space”. Now we know why.

For many years the US and Israel have also voted against the annual call by China, Russia and others to negotiate a new treaty on PAROS – the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space. The official position of the US has been, “There are no weapons in space, we don’t need a new treaty.”

We see this as a spiritual disconnection in the minds and hearts of those “leaders” in Washington who believe that 4% of the global population living in the US should be the Masters of Space. It is a deep sickness.

Space should be a realm for exploration and inspiration, a place for humans to grow further in knowledge and wisdom. A few morally impoverished souls are ruining space even as they poison the earth. This will not end well.

The time has come for people in the US to rise up and demand their government halt the fascist march of the human race to annihilation.

~ By the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space Boards of Directors and Advisors.

‘Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.’
~ Henry David Thoreau

‘It’s sad that so many people are blinded by the green frog skin….’

~ Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

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Hold Nuclear Weapons Decisionmakers Accountable
ACT NOW

This summer the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) wrapped up the public comment period for the programmatic environmental impact statement to produce plutonium pits, the cores of nuclear weapons. However, while these comments are being considered, the NNSA is allowed to move forward with pit production at sites across the country and Congress continues to allocate more money toward the project. All this despite new plutonium pits being unnecessary, their production potentially dangerous, and costs out of control.

The NNSA promised a cost estimate and schedule for pit production in September 2025, yet still has not produced this data and is allowed to ramp up the program without any guardrails. The NNSA has a history of missed deadlines without accountability. Congress can, and should, demand a full cost estimate and schedule before allowing more taxpayer dollars to be spent on this troubled, unnecessary project.

Send a message to your members of Congress today to demand a budget and schedule for the NNSA’s plutonium pit production program. Taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going.

According to UCS research, the current nuclear stockpile is not at risk from the aging of plutonium pits. These new pits will be for newly designed nuclear weapons. The NNSA is rushing toward artificial deadlines for weapons that make us less safe and must be held accountable by Congress.

Urge Congress to hold the NNSA accountable for nuclear weapons spending.

Sincerely,

Hunter Noffsinger
Organizer
Global Security Program
Union of Concerned Scientists

ACT NOW: ucsaction@ucs.o

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Joint Press Release from: South Carolina Environmental Law Project, Savannah River Site Watch & Nuclear Watch New Mexico

Public Interest Groups Warn NNSA on Plutonium Giveaway

South Carolina – Today, the South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) sent a letter of demand to the Department of Energy (DOE) and its semi-autonomous agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), about their proposed unsound and dangerous management of U.S. plutonium. The letter notified them that they must comply with the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirement for public review of the Trump Administration’s troubling plan to give away 19.7 metric tons of nuclear weapons-grade plutonium to private corporations.

SCELP’S letter, on behalf of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch, and a private citizen who lives near the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, outlines why NNSA must be held to its legal NEPA obligations. The letter describes how recently issued presidential executive orders:

…constitute a vast change in the prior decisions and purposes of the DOE/NNSA surplus plutonium disposition program that has been in place since at least 1996… This change is also contrary to the larger nuclear non-proliferation policy of the United States restricting the commercial use of plutonium that has been in place for approximately fifty years.

This action follows SCELP’s earlier NEPA lawsuit on behalf of SRS Watch and Nuclear Watch New Mexico. In a landmark settlement, that litigation successfully compelled the NNSA to prepare a nationwide programmatic environmental impact statement on the production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores for nuclear weapons (the “Pit Production PEIS”).

SCELP’s new letter of demand states as follows:

In a generally analogous NEPA situation, my clients are concerned that the Department of Energy and NNSA are radically changing course in their surplus plutonium disposition program without preparing a necessary supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement.

On May 23, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14302 “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base” which officially terminated DOE’s previous “dilute and dispose” program for excess weapons-grade plutonium. In that program, 40 metric tons of plutonium were to be treated as nuclear waste for underground disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, as analyzed in several earlier NEPA documents.

President Trump’s 2025 decree directed DOE to establish a program to supply surplus plutonium in a form usable by the commercial sector—specifically for advanced nuclear technologies and small modular reactors. Notably, the Executive Order focused extensively on “recycling” and “reprocessing” spent nuclear fuel to remove plutonium for use in reactors. It then contemplated agreements “with domestic nuclear energy companies” that “implement methods to enhance the capacity to manage spent nuclear fuel, including the recycling and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel….” Not only was this significant shift in policy done without required NEPA analysis, but there is no justified demand to use plutonium as nuclear fuel.

In addition to serious proliferation, environmental and radioactive waste concerns, this planned giveaway of weapons-grade plutonium is also linked to the increasingly controversial issues of artificial intelligence and data centers. Still hypothetical and untested advanced nuclear reactors and speculative small modular reactors are being eyed to power future data centers across the country. This urgently underscores the need for a nationwide public programmatic review, which SCELP’s letter of demand seeks.

In May 2026, NNSA announced yet another major policy shift in the plutonium disposition program, again without mandated NEPA review. The government agency selected five private companies to receive the 19.7 metric tons of plutonium: Oklo Inc., Exodys Energy, Shine Technologies, Standard Nuclear, and Flibe Energy, Inc. The current Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, had to resign from the Oklo board of directors to assume his job as the head of DOE. That continues to raise eyebrows as DOE funnels money to Oklo, a private corporation, for its ill-defined program which will purport to use some of the government’s weapons-grade plutonium.

The Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina is key to the Trump Administration’s plans to give away weapons-grade plutonium to private corporations. As the SCELP letter notes:

[I]n support of its new plutonium utilization program, DOE announced in March its ‘decision to restart HB-Line operations at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.’ This activity was stated to provide ‘the capability to power America’s nuclear future by recycling surplus plutonium and partnering with industry to produce uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for advanced nuclear reactors. The facility is an integral part of H-Canyon, the only chemical separations facility of its kind in the United States.’

This is ironic. DOE and NNSA have been on the Government Accountability Office’s High Risk List for project mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ dollars ever since GAO started the List in 1991. An ill-conceived MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at SRS—terminated in 2017—was a ~$7 billion failure for which there has been no government accounting. That boondoggle plutonium MOX fuel facility is now being “repurposed” by NNSA into a new $30 billion production facility to produce plutonium “pit” bomb cores for new-design nuclear weapons, which will be the most expensive building in U.S. history.

SCELP’s letter of demand concludes:

Before bringing suit on the Pit Production PEIS, my clients wrote to NNSA five times reminding the agency of its legal obligations under NEPA. They never received a response. It is my hope that we can avoid a similar predicament. My clients request that DOE and NNSA respond to this letter within 30 days. If NNSA and DOE do not elect to engage, my clients will evaluate what legal actions may be necessary and proceed accordingly.

Ben Cunningham, SCELP Attorney, commented, “Since the mid ‘90s, DOE and NNSA have scrutinized how to address the surplus plutonium issue many times across several administrations. The public has been engaged in the process each time. NEPA continues to require that same level of scrutiny and public engagement before these agencies commit to a course of action that would place plutonium in private hands.

Tom Clements, Director of SRS Watch, added, “It is imperative that DOE and NNSA immediately halt questionable plans to introduce weapon-grade plutonium into civilian reactors and other nuclear facilities and affirm that it will now begin preparation of the legally required environmental review.”

The Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Jay Coghlan, concluded, “As nuclear threats increase around the world, the last thing we need is government giveaways of nuclear weapons-grade plutonium to private profit-seeking corporations. We are asking the NNSA nicely for the public review legally required by the National Environmental Policy Act. If it blows us off again like it did with the Pit Production PEIS, we’ll discuss it with NNSA in court.”

# # #

Contacts:
Tom Clements, Director, SRS Watch, 803-240-7268, tomclements329[at]srswatch.org;
Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505-989-7342, jay[at]nukewatch.org
Shelby Cohen, Comms Manager, SC Env. Law Project, 864.414.7726, shelby[at]scelp.org

About the nonprofit organizations: The South Carolina Environmental Law Project has used its legal expertise to protect land, water and communities across South Carolina since 1987. Savannah River Site Watch, based in Columbia, SC, works for the public interest by monitoring activities at the Savannah River Site. Nuclear Watch New Mexico, based in Santa Fe, NM, watchdogs plutonium pit production at both the Los Alamos Lab and SRS. Learn more at scelp.org/, srswatch.org/, and nukewatch.org/.

SCELP’s full letter of demand to DOE and NNSA is available at: bit.ly/scelpletter9-8-26

This press release is available online at: scelp.org/news/groups-warn-nnsa-on-plutonium-giveaway

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The Archbishops of Santa Fe, Seattle, and Nagasaki and the Bishop of Hiroshima will be traveling to New York City in late November for the first Review Conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The Archbishop and Archbishop Emeritus of Nagasaki plan to bring a replica of the Madonna of Nagasaki (a statute) whose face was burnt by the plutonium bomb 81 years ago.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 7, 2026
Contact: Jay Coghlan, 505.989.7342, cell 505.470.3154, jay[at]nukewatch.org

Sophia Stroud, 505.231.9736, sophia[at]nukewatch.org

Santa Fe, NM – The Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has released an unredacted report entitled Plutonium Aging: Executive Summary (Unclassified), copied in its entirety below. Its key “High-Level Finding” is:

“The Pu [plutonium] in the stockpile appears to be aging slowly. The degradation issues that have been observed do not call into question present weapons performance.”

Plutonium “pits” are the radioactive cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons. The NNSA has repeatedly claimed that potential aging effects drive the need for the aggressive expansion of plutonium pit production, which is its most expensive and complex program to date.

However, the independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) has repeatedly stated that the NNSA has no credible costs estimates and no “Integrated Master Schedule” for simultaneous production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in northern New Mexico and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. In fact, DOE and NNSA have been on the GAO’s “High Risk List” for project mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ dollars since 1991. At more than $30 billion, the plutonium pit plant at SRS is on track to become the most expensive building in U.S. history. A comparable amount will be spent at LANL on facility upgrades and related projects, for which the NNSA fails to keep total aggregated costs.

Expanded plutonium pit production has been the choke point of resumed industrial-scale nuclear weapons production by the U.S. Crucially, no future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing stockpile. Instead, it is all for new-design nuclear weapons for the new arms race. These new weapons can’t be tested because of the existing global testing moratorium, thereby perhaps degrading confidence in the stockpile. Or new-design nuclear weapons testing could prompt the U.S. to resume testing, which would have severe international proliferation consequences.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the Plutonium Aging: Executive Summary (Unclassified) in June. On July 15 we received an unclassified executive summary, but its two narrative pages were completely redacted. The date is significant because on July 16 the public comment period expired for the draft Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), which was meant to examine the need and rationale for pit production to begin with. The nonprofit organizations Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch and Tri-Valley CAREs had to sue NNSA under the National Environmental Policy Act to compel NNSA to complete the Pit Production PEIS to begin with. The agency has now apparently bowed to public and congressional pressure to release an unredacted version. Nevertheless, concerned citizens were deprived of this crucial document while attempting to submit truly informed comment.

NNSA’s draft Pit Production PEIS claimed:

“NNSA’s existing pit manufacturing capability is insufficient to meet current production requirements, necessitating the establishment of additional pit production capability and capacity both to satisfy the congressional mandate and to mitigate risks associated with plutonium aging.” Draft Pit Production PEIS, NNSA, January 2026, P. S-2

[While rejecting the reuse of more than 15,000 existing pits] “Only Reuse Existing Pits. Not feasible as sole solution. Stockpiled pits age and do not mitigate aging risks or enable enhanced safety features…” Ibid., p. S-14

“Many of the aging pits will have to be replaced with new ones in the coming years to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile and deterrence.” Ibid., p. 1-3

NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams recently said that the Los Alamos Lab will begin to produce 100 pits per year by 2028. In 2021, LANL Director Thom Mason declared:

“… the pits we have today were largely manufactured in the 1980s, and we don’t have the predictive ability to say with certainty that our current, 40-year-old pits will be good until any particular date. It’s sort of glass half full, glass half empty; we can’t prove that they will fail, but we also can’t prove that they will work.” The best way to deal with this dilemma is to “take it off the table,” Mason explains. “We do that by making new pits, immediately.” [1]

Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, commented,

“The Lab Director certainly must be pleased that LANL is going to spend 2 billion taxpayer dollars on new plutonium pit production for each of the next six years. But it looks like his plutonium aging excuse doesn’t really hold water. LANL’s nuclear weapons programs are getting a huge $1 billion raise on October 1 for a total of $6 billion in FY 2027, while virtually everything else is being cut. We need real national security against wildfires, pandemics and adverse climate change, not empty excuses for new-design nuclear weapons for the new arms race that threatens us all.”

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As of May 2026, the United States is replacing or “modernizing” nearly every component of its strategic nuclear arsenal as well as expanding tactical capacity that was abandoned at the end of the cold war.

A war involving nukes would bring on blast and fire damage, along with radiological and chemical poisoning. It would likely bring on a “nuclear winter” that might last 5 years. A Nuclear Winter event would dramatically disrupt the world’s food supply.

In a rational world, we’d only have to worry about enemies starting war or accidents but now we face added problems of unstable, self-serving or even crazy leaders (e.g. Trump, Netanyahu and perhaps Putin) with fingers on the triggers. Underlings, civilian and military could trigger wars that go nuclear. False flag operations could go sour.

Please push for a serious American effort to live peaceably with other nations and halt the nuclear “modernization.”

bennet.senate.gov. hickenlooper.senate. gov. neguse.house.gov.

any member of Congress. 202-224-3121

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She adds: “If the president decided to launch a counterattack, even if the initial attack was launched by accident, certainly the adversary is going to retaliate. That’s a civilisation-ending day – or an afternoon.” I’m so taken aback I laugh out loud. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’ve had many years to acclimate to this. But most people haven’t. Most people don’t know we’ve set up a system that is essentially a doomsday system. And we can dismantle it. We just have not.

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