On October 19, 2006, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within the Department of Energy (DOE), published a formal Notice of Intent to build “Complex 2030,” the nuclear weapons complex of the future. If allowed to move forward, this new Bombplex will design new nuclear weapons and resume industrial-scale bomb production.

How did we get here?
This process began in 1996. Under a program called Stockpile Stewardship, the Department of Energy was consolidating and transforming its nuclear weapons complex without adequate public involvement. Only after threat of citizen litigation did DOE complete a “Stockpile Stewardship and Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS).”

The 1996 PEIS established “interim” production of plutonium pits, the central cores of nuclear weapons, at New Mexico’s Los Alamos Lab. Pit production had been halted in 1989 after the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver was shut down following a FBI raid investigating environmental crimes. Since 1996, NNSA has proposed various “supplements” to the 1996 Stockpile Stewardship and Management PEIS, most notably for a “Modern Pit Facility” designed to produce up to 450 pits per year. NNSA has now cancelled the Modern Pit Facility and instead is initiating this Complex 2030 Supplemental PEIS (or “SEIS”). In it, NNSA proposes a minimum production capacity of 125 pits per year at a future Consolidated Plutonium Center to be built at one of five candidate sites.

Does the U.S. Need a New Plutonium Bomb Plant?  NO!