Cost of RECA Chart
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Pope Leo XIV: It is not atomic weapons that generate #peace, but disarmament.
“It is not atomic weapons that generate peace, but disarmament. This truth, which seemed clear in past decades when we witnessed a nuclear de-escalation, has been obscured by a race to armament that today frightens and terrifies.”
– Pope Leo XIV July 21, 2026
“There is nothing comparable in our history to the deceit and the lying that took place as a matter of official Government policy in order to protect this industry. Nothing was going to stop them and they were willing to kill our own people.”
— Stewart Udall, United States Secretary of the Interior under President Kennedy and President Johnson.
He was the father of Senator Tom Udall (who ended up being a vigorous supporter of expanded nuclear weapons “modernization” plans).
In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
NEW & UPDATED
FOLLOW-ON SUPPLEMENTAL Sample Comment on the Draft Plutonium Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS)
This is a sample supplemental comment for the draft Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). Plutonium pits are the fissile cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons. For legal and procedural reasons, this comment should be accepted despite being filed after the official comment period ended on July 16, 2026. This is justified by the fact that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has withheld and is still withholding crucial documents needed for well-informed comment. Please download, edit, and send in your supplemental comment to PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov today (and please CC info@pitpeis.com)! We must stand up against NNSA’s lack of transparency.
NNSA Releases New Plutonium Life Study – Key Finding: Plutonium Aging Not Affecting Existing Nuclear Weapons
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 10, 2026
Contact: Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154 | Email
Sophia Stroud, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 505.231.9736 | Email
Santa Fe, NM – In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has released a new study entitled Plutonium Aging: Executive Summary (Unclassified) by long-time scientific advisors to the U.S. government called the JASONs. The key “High-Level Finding” of this new report 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 all-important 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 the agency’s most expensive and complex program ever. The Pentagon has stated that expanded pit production is one of the most critical issues in its $2 trillion “modernization” program to keep nuclear weapons forever.
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.
NEW 2026 JASON Plutonium Aging Executive Summary
“The Pu in the stockpile appears to be aging slowly. The degradation issues that have been observed do not call into question present weapons performance.”
Today, August 6, 2026, is the 81st Anniversary of the U.S. Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima.
Recommended Reading: John Hersey and the horrors of Hiroshima
The American journalist’s account of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath, told through the eyes of Japanese survivors, forced the world to reckon with the terrifying power of nuclear weapons.
Iain MacGregor August 5, 2026 engelsbergideas.com
The New START treaty – enforced since 2011 and the last remaining arms‑control agreement between the United States and Russia – expired in February 2026 with nothing to replace it. The final legal barrier limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals was removed, ushering in what analysts describe as a period of Great Power uncertainty. China, meanwhile, is rapidly expanding and modernising its nuclear forces, with its stockpile more than doubling in just five years and further growth expected throughout the decade.
In the Middle East, the erosion of nuclear restraint has accelerated sharply. Recent US-Israeli attacks have pushed Iran closer than ever to abandoning the Nuclear Non‑Proliferation Treaty (NPT): Tehran still possesses enough enriched uranium to place it within short technical reach of multiple nuclear warheads, while senior political and security figures openly debate withdrawal from the NPT as a defensive necessity rather than a diplomatic taboo. The precedent – of a major regional power crossing the nuclear threshold outside any arms‑control framework – would reverberate far beyond the region.
North Korea, emboldened by global fragmentation, insists that its arsenal is ‘irreversible’. Across Europe and Asia, public opinion in countries such as Poland, Turkey and South Korea is shifting toward domestic nuclear capability as confidence in US security guarantees becomes frayed. The precarious equilibrium of the non‑proliferation era is cracking just when the living memory of the bomb’s human cost has never been more vital.
In such a landscape, the work of remembering what nuclear weapons do – not in theory, but to human bodies and cities – becomes urgent again. Eighty years ago, one American writer succeeded in forcing the world to confront this reality. His name was John Hersey, and the story he told in August 1946 in the New Yorker magazine, about the world’s first nuclear strike against the Japanese port city of Hiroshima the previous year, remains one of the clearest moral documents of the atomic age…
Ian MacGregor outlines precisely above the current state and reality of the new nuclear arms race we are now in, more dangerous than the first.
“Rationality will not save us… this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.” Robert McNamara
Nuclear Watchdog Sues for Plutonium Pit Production “Special Study”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 4, 2026
Contact: Jules Zacher, Esq., 215.888.5183, | Email
Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154 | Email
Sophia Stroud, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, 505.231.9736 | Email
Santa Fe, NM – Nuclear Watch New Mexico has sued the Department of Energy under the Freedom of Information Act for its Special Study of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Leadership and Management of the Plutonium Pit Production Mission. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within DOE.
Plutonium “pits” are the radioactive cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons. Their expanded manufacturing has been the chokepoint 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.
Plutonium pit production is the NNSA’s most expensive and complex program to date. However, the independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) has repeatedly stated that the agency 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.
Nuclear Watch New Mexico sues Department of Energy for plutonium pit report
Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, wrote in a statement there is a “massive coverup” related to plutonium pit production.
“To grease expanded nuclear weapons production, they have rescinded nuclear safety regulations, illegally restricted the access of the independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, and are withholding crucial documents from the American taxpayer,” Coghlan wrote.
“We hope this lawsuit will help to bring [the National Nuclear Security Administration] plutonium house of cards tumbling down,” he added.
Santa Fe New Mexican | August 5, 2026 santafenewmexican.com
A nuclear watchdog group that focuses on Los Alamos National Laboratory recently sued the federal government for what it says are failures to comply with open records law and hand over a study.
Nuclear Watch New Mexico filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on July 23 against the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. The group on Dec. 22 filed a records request under the Freedom of Information Act seeking a copy of a study related to plutonium pit production, the complaint states, but hasn’t received any of the records.
A spokesperson for the Department of Energy, which also houses the National Nuclear Security Administration, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
LANL is for now the only facility in the nation capable of producing plutonium pits, which serve as the trigger devices for nuclear weapons…
A World Without Nuclear Weapons: Trinity Test Commemoration Recording July 19, 2026
From Reflection to Action: An Interfaith Remembrance of the Trinity Test with Archbishop John Wester, Archdiocese of Santa Fe
Event Speakers Include:
- Jay Coghlan, Executive Director, Nuclear Watch New Mexico
- Tina Cordova, Co-Founder, Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium
- Dr. Michael Ketterer, Professor Emeritus, Northern Arizona University
- Keynote: Secretary James C. Kenney, New Mexico Environment Dept.
Note: You may have already seen this event as a livestream on YouTube. This recording is a significantly improved version with enhanced audio, where you can hear most all of the speakers loudly and clearly.
Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: July 2026
Nuclear Weapons:
Budget: The House of Representatives passed a fiscal 2027 continuing resolution to keep the government running through Dec. 4 (the new fiscal year begins Oct 1). The White House Office of Management and Budget is requesting a series of anomalies, or exceptions, to the CR rule that funding be limited to the levels of the prior fiscal year. One anomaly is for the new Trump-class battleship.
For the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA): it’s the Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade (the new powerline across the Caja del Rio); enhanced subcritical tests at the Nevada National Security Site; and, most dangerous of all, allowing the NNSA to reprogram funding by itself within its Total Weapons Activities budget category.
The Senate is basically doing the same, plus an anomaly for ‘‘21– D–401 Hoisting Capability Project’’ at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. WIPP has been operationally shut down for a few months now due to a burnt-out hoist motor.
The House and Senate must resolve their relatively minor differences and get Trump’s signature before October 1 to prevent a government shutdown.
Regular authorization (the annual Defense Authorization Act) and appropriations are unlikely to move until mid-term elections (~86 days to go).
Plutonium pit production:
- exchangemonitor.com/williams-nnsa-accelerating-plutonium-pit-production-toward-2028-goal/ August 06, 2026 Williams: NNSA accelerating plutonium pit production toward 2028 goal – OMAHA, Neb. – Brandon Williams, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said here Thursday Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is accelerating plutonium pit production, with the site targeting 100 pits by December 2028.
- We filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for DOE’s “Special Study.” See https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Nuclear-Weapons-Watchdog-Sues-for-Pit-Production-Special-Study.pdf
- The South Carolina Environmental Law Project sent a letter to DOE/NNSA demanding 3 crucial documents: the “Special Study,” the unclassified summary of the new JASON pit life study, and LANL’s new Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis. See our press release at https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Plaintiffs-Demand-Release-of-Critical-Documents-and-Extension-of-Public-Comment-Period-on-Expanded-Plutonium-Bomb-Core-Production.pdf
- The Pit Production PEIS comment period ended July 16 (81st anniversary of the Trinity Test). We submitted 64-page comments plus exhibits, see nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Formal-Comments-on-the-Pit-Production-Programmatic-Environmental-Impact-Statement.pdf NNSA ignored our demand for a comment period time extension because of the withheld documents.
- We received an unredacted version of the new JASON pit life study (see https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-JASON-Plutonium-Aging-Executive-Summary.pdf). “High Level Finding:… “The Pu in the stockpile appears to be aging slowly. The degradation issues that have been observed do not call into question present weapons performance.” We had received one title page and 2 completely blank narrative pages the day before the PEIS comment period expired.
Other/Related
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/08/why-hill-republicans-are-competing-for-nuclear-waste-01015140 Why some Republicans want to bring nuclear waste home – For decades, politicians have treated nuclear waste as politically radioactive. Now, Republicans are competing to bring it home. The Department of Energy announced last week that it had signed memorandums of agreement with Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Idaho to explore creating facilities to support the full nuclear fuel cycle — from enrichment of uranium and fabricating fuel to disposing of waste. Rather than resisting an initiative that could bring more nuclear waste to their states, some Republicans are actively courting the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses, arguing they could anchor advanced nuclear industries and bring billions of dollars in investment.
*Also mixed in with AI and data centers, for which Small Modular Reactors might supply power.
Accelerating Arms Race:
- nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-drafting-new-us-nuclear-strategy-case-regional-war-china-russ-rcna587370 Pentagon drafting a new U.S. nuclear strategy in case of regional war with China or Russia, sources say – The Defense Department’s policy chief is drafting a new U.S. nuclear strategy that emphasizes the possible use of shorter-range tactical weapons in case of a regional war with China or Russia, according to five people familiar with the plans. The new strategy, which is classified, challenges the approach to nuclear weapons that has been settled policy for decades… Colby has long pushed for an emphasis on tactical weapons, arguing that America’s adversaries would simply not believe the U.S. would seriously contemplate launching long-range weapons aimed at wiping out an enemy’s nuclear forces — as is the emphasis of the
- united24media.com/world/nato-weighs-nuclear-expansion-as-poland-finland-lithuania-emerge-as-options-21249NATO Weighs Nuclear Expansion as Poland, Finland, Lithuania Emerge as Options – NATO is currently examining options to position additional American nuclear capabilities across Europe as a response to threats posed by Russia. Poland, Finland, and Lithuania are under consideration as potential host countries, according to Süddeutschen Zeitung on July 31. The discussions include Poland aiming to join the Nuclear Sharing program, Finland lifting its long-standing prohibition on nuclear weapons transit and import, and the Lithuanian parliament reviewing legislation to remove its constitutional ban on nuclear deployments.
- https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/07/saudi-us-nuclear-deal-abraham-accords-123-agreement – What We Know About the U.S.-Saudi Nuclear Deal – Peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements, known colloquially as 123 agreements (after the relevant section in the U.S. Atomic Energy Act), rarely make headlines, but this one stands out. Although the administration has not yet released the full text, the agreement reportedly will not require Riyadh to categorically forgo fuel cycle activities that would be conducive to a nuclear weapons program (namely enrichment and reprocessing) or to accept the highest standard of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, known as the Additional Protocol, or AP.
Fire in glovebox at LANL plutonium facility sparks safety discussion
“The Board is concerned that this significant level of access denial and limitation is occurring simultaneously with a considerable increase in production at defense nuclear facilities and regulatory change,” said the report.
Nuclear Newswire | July 30, 2026 ans.org
According to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) report, a fire occurred in a glovebox in the plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory on June 15. A test involving nonnuclear material was underway in the furnace inside the glovebox at the time of the incident.
An explanation for the cause of the fire has yet to be released. The incident has incited discussions among laboratory personnel and management regarding fire safety practices at the facility, including concerns raised by resident inspectors that most gloveboxes in the facility lack automatic fire suppression and that multiple similar preventable incidents have occurred at the facility in the past few years.
What we know: The DNFSB report said that on June 15, personnel were conducting a thermal treatment test of an americium recovery resin. The resin, which contained no nuclear material, had been placed in a furnace inside a glovebox. Having received a permit to do so, they left the room unattended, and when they returned they “smelled an unexpected odor and then saw smoke and subsequently flames coming from the furnace.”
NM Environment Secretary James C. Kenney Takes Aim At Department Of Energy LANL Legacy Waste Cleanup Program During Trinity Commemoration Event In Santa Fe
‘This is not about feelings. When are we talking about feelings; this is about money. If you show me the numbers for legacy waste cleanup at Los Alamos moved to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. You show me numbers that you’re investing in New Mexico and I’ll show you some feelings, but until that time, you have the feelings that I have, which are that I’m really annoyed and I’m really bothered. I’m going to say to say it again. This isn’t about feelings – in some ways it is a lot about feelings in this room – but when it comes to legacy waste cleanup it’s not about feelings – it’s about moving the waste from Los Alamos and getting it into WIPP,” Kenney said.
New Mexico Environment Department Sec. James [Kenney] was the guest speaker at Sunday’s annual Trinity Test Commemoration at St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe, and was expected to outline the department’s efforts to hold the federal government accountable for cleanup efforts and the protection of New Mexico’s water resources.
Other speakers were Dr. Michael Ketterer, Professor Emeritus at Northern Arizona University; Jay Coghlan, Executive Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico; and Tina Cordova, Co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. The event is organized by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, Back from the Brink New Mexico Hub, Interfaith Power and Light New Mexico, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Soka Gakkai International-USA, and the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium.
Later in the afternoon when it was Secretary Kenney’s turn to speak, he recognized that 81 years ago with the Trinity Test, New Mexico and the world changed in “a moment of non-consent, a moment that nobody knew was coming”. He said it changed the trajectory of communities like Los Alamos and all over the state of New Mexico, who are dealing with the fallout of what transpired.
While pointing NMED staff members in the audience who had chosen to attend the event, Kenney said he wanted to be really clear that the Environment Department staff fully recognizes that their past is their call to action. He called those employees the community’s last bastion to hold the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration accountable.
Expanded federal law says these states and parts of others were downwind, but many don’t know they could be compensated
Nuclear fallout gave her cancer. Now she’s a dogged voice for America’s downwinders
When she was 29, Mary Dickson got thyroid cancer and chalked it up to bad luck or bad genes.
Her life had been pretty idyllic, despite being raised against the frightening backdrop of the Cold War.
She spent hours of her childhood running around in the gullies by her home near the mouth of Parleys Canyon in Salt Lake City. The neighborhood was packed with kids who pretended those rising and falling hills were rollercoasters, racing up and down, laughing and screaming. With seven kids in her house, she always had playmates.
Dickson and her friends also pretended at school. Children were taught to huddle under their wooden desks and cover their heads with their hands, pretending Russians were dropping bombs. Each child brought a bleach bottle filled with water, name scrawled in indelible marker so they’d have something to drink should bombs actually fall. Sometimes, they cowered in a “fallout shelter” — a crawlspace under the grade school— waiting for an audible all-clear.
But as most children get to do, Dickson grew up. She went to college, launched a career in journalism, married. Then came the cancer, with its then-brutal treatment: removal of her thyroid and surrounding lymph nodes, followed by radioactive iodine-infused medicinal drinks that made her ovaries light up during monitoring. Hospital staff put a “Caution, radioactive material!” sign on her hospital room door. Even those delivering meals would reach in just far enough to put food on a nearby tray.
KEY POINTS:
- Mary Dickson got thyroid cancer at 29 and only years later discovered it was caused by radioactive fallout from U.S. nuclear weapons tests.
- The government acknowledges downwinders throughout Utah, Idaho and New Mexico, as well as parts of Arizona, Nevada and Missouri.
- But advocates for downwinders cite gaps — cancers and locations — and many people do not know they could be compensated.
Endless Nuclear Waste Storage in NM?? Not On Our Watch…
Keep up with the Stop Forever WIPP Coalition to learn how to take action against the Federal Government’s Plan to Expand WIPP and keep it open indefinitely.
Visit the Stop Forever WIPP Coalition’s website and social media:
Website: www.StopForeverWIPP.org
Facebook: facebook.com/StopfvrWIPP
Twitter: twitter.com/stopforeverwipp
Instagram: instagram.com/stopfvrwipp
Stay Informed of All Permit-Related Happenings at WIPP! Sign Up for Updates:
The New Mexico Environment Department maintains a Facility Mailing List to which you can add your name and address to get the latest information – just email Ricardo Maestas at the New Mexico Environment Department at ricardo.maestas@state.nm.us and ask to be added to the list. Or mail your request with your mailing address to:
Continue reading
New Nuclear Media: Art, Films, Books & More
Daniel Ellsberg vs. “Ordinary Insanity”
A new documentary issues an urgent warning about our dangerous nuclear delusions.
Norman Solomon| June 9, 2026 thenation.com
A few days before Thanksgiving in 2021, Daniel Ellsberg looked directly into a camera lens and talked about nuclear preparations for annihilating almost everyone on Earth. “That is insane,” he said. “And you have to call it a kind of ordinary insanity, because it’s so widely shared.”
The new film An Ordinary Insanity condenses Ellsberg’s essential message into a half hour. It follows the acclaimed 2009 documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Judith Ehrlich—who codirected that Oscar-nominated movie and is the director of An Ordinary Insanity—says that “as his understanding of nuclear war evolved, Dan confronted it for us and dug deep into its roots.”
When Ellsberg gave the 7,000 pages of the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, he was risking the rest of his life in prison for exposing the official deceptions behind the Vietnam War. That brave act, causing him to be vilified and beloved, began his five decades of tireless antiwar efforts. Through it all, his main preoccupation continued to be reducing the risk of nuclear war.
Early in his professional life, Ellsberg had become a “national security” insider, with expertise in the command and control of nuclear weapons along with strategic planning. Access to official calculations made him aware of scenarios for initiating Armageddon. Some classified plans for starting a nuclear war, with a first strike on the Soviet Union and China, were beyond shocking.
“The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated in 1961 that the effects of our carrying out those plans, the annual operational plan for which the weapons existed and were on alert, they estimated it would kill 600 million people. A hundred Holocausts,” Ellsberg says in An Ordinary Insanity. “When I saw that estimate in the White House, I thought that was the most evil planning that had ever existed in the history of humanity.”
As scientific research advanced and climate modeling discovered nuclear winter, estimates like 600 million became outdated.
The Plutonium Circus Comes to Town
AC: How did the idea of doing a documentary about Pantex come
up?
GR: Just growing up around it, I’d always wanted to do something about Pantex, really. It’s a very eerie feeling to grow up with that sort of thing there. Of course, I didn’t consider it eerie growing up, I considered it sort of… comforting. It was sort of an easy way out, if and when the world ended. I grew up always thinking the world was about to end, and I think that’s a pretty common belief for everyone in Amarillo. And that’s a very good excuse, a
very powerful reasoning to not keep up with what’s going on out at Pantex anyway. I think most of the United States, and Amarillo, as far as the religious thinking, feels that the world is going to be over any time anyway,
so why worry? They’ve watched Nostradamus a few too many times, I think.
| October 20, 1995 austinchronicle.com
George Whittenburg Ratliff is not the kind of guy you would peg for one of the most talented filmmakers around these days. Tall and lanky, with an unruly shock of dirty-blond hair and large piercing blue eyes that seem to take in everything and everyone at once without alarming you, he’s soft-spoken and speaks almost shyly of the documentary film he’s made – The Plutonium Circus.
Set in the Texas Panhandle town of Amarillo, The Plutonium Circus focuses on the gargantuan Department of Energy Pantex plant, which looms over the sprawling North Texas Plains like some evil, radioactive monarch. Since the 1950s, Pantex has been the final assembly point for every nuclear weapon made in America. This is the place where the gadgets, gizmos, priming devices, and
plutonium cores arrived, by unmarked train, to be finessed into the country’s arsenal of democracy. Sort of like a General Motors plant headed not by Lee Iacocca, but by the military industrial devil himself.
Amarillo, a hometown I share in common with Ratliff, has always been behind the plant 110 percent. The Pantex plant (or death factory, according to a few observers) is now engaged in the business of dismantling our nuclear stockpile and storing the deadly plutonium on-site, despite the fact that the plant rests directly above the precious Ogallala Aquifer, which is the largest fresh water
aquifer in North America and the primary source of drinking water for the people of Amarillo and surrounding towns such as White Deer and Claude (site of the film Hud), as well as eight neighboring states, and the land and animals that supply 70 percent of the wheat, corn, and beef grown in the United States. The people of Amarillo have wholeheartedly embraced the plant with open
arms because employment and the local economy are the issues here (the plant is said to be responsible for a total of 11,000 jobs, a figure that includes all the local businesses that service the plant), not lymphoma statistics and the perpetual possibility of disaster. It’s a mindset that’s hard to swallow, but then, so are most Panhandle politics.
Literally a world unto itself, Amarillo exists on the periphery of anarchy…