To the editor:

   (Plain Press August 2026)I am writing as a concerned citizen in opposition to the draft Pit PEIS (Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement) and to the rushed plutonium pit program it was written to support. This document is incomplete, lacks full consideration of all the impacts of the push for new weapons, and reveals the contempt for evidence-based scientific process existing in all the decisions of the current administration. This PEIS was issued after the program for pit production was produced, not before, which is the purpose of an EIS. Elements missing from its analysis of the impacts confirm the intention to conceal any doubts about the program’s risks. I do not support the lack of transparency in this assessment and the failure to identify the risks to all the sites identified as participants where radioactive materials will be handled.

   Specifically, it is:

Unnecessary

   By now you have heard from hundreds of citizens, true patriots, who oppose the expansion of the nuclear warfare capabilities of the U.S.I mention this to identify myself as one more opponent of the creation of more instability it will produce.

Unwise

   If this Draft PEIS adequately and purposefully addressed the reality of climate change I have not seen it. Both Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Savannah River Site (SRS) are uniquely unwise sites for the manufacture of plutonium pits.

   LANL, (Los Alamos National Laboratory) in New Mexico with its proximity to wildfires is not something that can be controlled as fire incidence increases.

   New Mexico has been declared to be in a Millennium Drought, and this is regarded as a permanent condition, not one that can be remediated with more rain or snow. The current drought contingency plan expires this year in October with no new plan on the horizon. The U.S. Drought Monitor report released July 2, 2026, lists nearly all of New Mexico to be in either a state of “severe” or “extreme drought”. And yet the pit production at LANL will double its water, power, and petroleum fuel usage.

   Does this point to a good reason for the failure of the Draft PEIS to require a strong evacuation plan beyond a 50-mile radius?

   SRS (Savannah River Site) in South Carolina exists in a region of a different climate change effect in the form of intensified storms, flooding and tornadic events resulting in the persistent possibility of infrastructure failures. But its consumption of water, electrical power, and petroleum fuel will be increased.

   The final PEIS must include a clear and comprehensive assessment of increased water and energy uses at both Los Alamos and Savannah River

   The transportation of both product and waste back and forth between the identified destinations calls for special training for local first responders and for extensive evacuation plans and not just within a 50-mile radius referenced in this PEIS. Weather events alone can cause accidents with widespread consequences. 

   Here I need to state my personal experience driving across the country looking out the window to see a tornado on the ground churning its way directly toward us. Trucks began exiting the highway in search of shelter and were seen closely packed in parking lots that would provide no safety. This event was years before the frequency and intensity of tornadoes that are the new climate reality. In 1965 a tornado that destroyed every building on our farm turned a fully loaded dump truck upside down 50 feet from where it was parked. This could happen to a truck hauling radioactive material.

   It is unwiseto pursue greater numbers of weapons with greater capacity for the extent of damage delivered at an undetectable speed. This is being pursued in a climate of proliferating authoritarian governments with expansionist intentions threatening the stability of worldwide security.

   How can we pretend that these facilities are not targets for terrorist attacks when our government has attacked the nuclear facilities of Iran? In the long history of the U.S. gamble with nuclear war this is the worst I can remember. 

   Also unwise is the creation of additional radioactive waste when the legacy waste has not been cleaned up and there remains no solution for its permanent isolation. WIPP is a pilot program with an uncertain capacity even without additional waste to be sequestered forever. This must be addressed in the final PEIS.

   By breaking out the impacts on individual resources – land, water, air, human health, etc. – the impacts are rendered as small. A few more health effects a year may be statistically infinitesimal but not to the victims of radiation caused illness and death.

   This leads to my final objection to this unnecessary and unwise program. It is

Unfair

   This cannot be discussed as just a little more impactful on the families, communities, and the regions that have borne the enormous cost to their wellbeing over the decades of exposure to the impacts of the existence of these facilities. They have endured the degradation of every identified resource on which their lives depend, without the recourse to insurance or compensation for the loss of their health and the value of their homes and livelihoods caused by the imposition of a dangerous and destructive industry. 

   The socio-economic impact considerations in the PEIS are limited to the increases in jobs and wealth that is supposed to be created by renewed plutonium pit production. The cost of increased contamination of the air, land and water falls on those who have already suffered decades of ruin. 

   As with all things nuclear the most vulnerable populations including women, children and pregnancies bear the consequences disproportionately. Studies evaluating those risks have been suppressed resulting in incomplete determinations.

   We cannot continue to pretend that the presumed benefits of this industry are worth the permanent generational loss for the people most negatively affected.

Finally,

   A “no action alternative” must be included in the final PEIS and no action means just that – no action, not just a “reduced action” alternative.

Daryl Davis