Environmental Impacts of New Nuclear Warhead Concern Local Watchdog Group

By: Nick Bastovan

A local nuclear watchdog group, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), is considering filing a lawsuit over the environmental impacts of newly-produced nuclear weapons designed in the Bay Area.

The lawsuit is expected to challenge the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) failure to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of their proposed actions before making final decisions. 

In the 2017 Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review, the Trump Administration called for at least 80 new plutonium pits to be produced per year by 2030. A plutonium pit is the core of a nuclear warhead and contains the fissile material necessary for a nuclear detonation. The newly-produced pits will be used for a new nuclear warhead dubbed the W87-1, which is being designed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. 

The NNSA is planning to accomplish this goal by splitting pit production between two facilities, with 50 being produced in the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and 30 in the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. 

In a statement released by the NNSA, Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty, the Department of Energy’s Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and NNSA Administrator said, “We’re fully committed to meeting military requirements, and our two-pronged approach at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site represents the best way to manage the cost, schedule and risk of producing no fewer than 80 pits per year.”

In 2008, in anticipation of this mission, the NNSA prepared a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), which evaluated the alternatives for producing 10-200 plutonium pits per year at various sites across the United States. 

The study was updated when the Los Alamos and Savannah River sites were selected as the pit production facilities. A Supplemental Analysis was prepared for Los Alamos in 2018. On May 17, 2019, the NNSA announced that they would prepare a site-specific Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for their proposal to produce pits at the Savannah River Site. 

However, Tri-Valley CAREs contends these studies do not go far enough. Marylia Kelly, Executive Director of Tri-Valley CAREs, said the NNSA is improperly segmenting the studies into separate smaller studies. 

Kelly said the NNSA is improperly segmenting studies to avoid a new, more extensive comprehensive study or to avoid supplementing the existing 2008 Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. She asserted there have been significant environmental changes since 2008, which require supplemental studies under the NEPA. 

“To allow them [NNSA] to make a decision regarding expanding nuclear pit production without looking at all the impacts and implications is just bad decision making,” Kelly said. 

Kelly said the NNSA needs to perform a new or Supplemental PEIS that considers the cumulative impact of producing pits at two separate locations. 

“There is a lot of connective tissue that doesn’t get analyzed at all if you just do those two micro analyses each in isolation,” said Kelly. 

When asked about the necessity of a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, NNSA Public Affairs Officer John Daniels said, “There is already an extensive Complex Transformation PEIS on this subject, so the best step now is for NNSA to do a Supplement Analysis to evaluate whether the existing PEIS needs to be supplemented or a new EIS prepared.” 

Scott Yundt, an environmental attorney with Tri-Valley CAREs, pointed to the September 2019 decision in Oak Ridge Envt’l. Peace All. v. Perry as evidence that previous NEPA reviews need to be updated. 

The case, decided by a federal court in Tennessee, involved Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the building of the Uranium Processing Facility for uranium manufacturing. The NNSA conducted an environmental impact study in 2011, but in the time since that study was completed, design issues were identified and new seismic studies have been conducted.

The Oak Ridge court granted summary judgment to the NNSA for segmentation of the project. However, the court determined that the newly revealed information requires further NEPA analysis.  

“The court determined that relying on old NEPA reviews was not sufficient. We think a lot of this case applies to the plutonium pit situation,” Yundt said. 

However, the court in Oak Ridge ruled in favor of the NNSA on the question of improper segmentation, finding that as long as the NEPA studies are “properly tiered,” it cannot be considered unlawfully segmented. “Tiering” means avoiding duplicative environmental reviews that have already been conducted.  

In a comment to the Draft EIS for plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability stated, “The NNSA plan involves unexamined health, safety and environmental risks as well as financial costs.”

The NNSA’s program to produce 80 pits each year is still in the early stages, but it already appears there may be significant disagreement on how the environmental impacts of the project should be assessed under the NEPA. 

(Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the December 2019 [Volume 50, Issue 2] version of The Advocate.)