By admin 
A nuclear safety watchdog group says it has obtained formerly hidden information that bolsters arguments against building atomic weapons plants in New Mexico and South Carolina — but a key federal agency doesn’t see it that way.
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The federal government has released sections of a report, sought by environmental groups opposed to spending billions of dollars on new factories to produce plutonium pits, key ingredients in atomic bombs.
Environmentalists have said the report could contain information showing that pits are not aging as fast as the government contends, so there is no need for factories to replenish the stockpile. Important sections of the report had not been released until last week, nuclear safety watchdogs say.
The unredacted report summary, developed by a team of consulting scientists and released under an open records request, says pits are beginning to age but that they remain adequate for use in nuclear weapons, as environmentalists have argued.
Despite that, the report — known as a JASON study — recommends continuing with plans to produce pits for use in weapons.
The government should be “establishing pit production capabilities that may be needed to provide options to mitigate any future aging-related issues,’’ the study said.
The federal government has pushed for years to build new plutonium pit factories at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to replace the aging stockpile and to service new nuclear weapons.
Jay Coghlan, who heads Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said the report makes his case against building the pit production facilities, which are expected to cost the government more than $30 billion. If the current stock of pits is in good shape and aging slowly, there is no need to move forward with production of factories in South Carolina and New Mexico, he and others contend.
“It looks like this plutonium aging excuse doesn’t really hold water,’’ he said in a news release.
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His organization, as well as South Carolina’s Savannah River Site Watch and other environmental groups say they are worried that new pit production could crank up a nuclear arms race, while also leading to dangerous testing for new weapons that would rely on the new pits.
Highly toxic nuclear material could leak from an underground test sites, Coghlan said. The pits contain plutonium, one of the most deadly atomic materials. Environmentalists also say it isn’t worth spending more than $30 billion for the project, as is projected.
“There are both environmental concerns and there are very serious proliferation concerns,’’ Coghlan said. “The existing stockpile is highly reliable.’’
The National Nuclear Security Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy, interprets the report differently.
“The most recent JASON study confirms NNSA’s longstanding position that continued scientific research is needed to further understand plutonium aging,’’ the NNSA said in an email Thursday, Aug. 13. “The report also recommends continuing to establish plutonium pit production capabilities, which NNSA is aggressively undertaking to enable the modernization of the nuclear stockpile.
“Given the importance of the stockpile to America’s national security, NNSA remains committed to its two-site pit production strategy, as directed by Congress.”
For more than 20 years, the government has sought to launch production of 80 plutonium pits each year to replenish nuclear weapons stockpiles. The new pits also could supply new atomic weapons. Recent efforts have focused on producing up to 200 pits a year, most of them at the Savannah River Site, a 310-square mile weapons complex in western South Carolina near the Georgia border. Boosters in South Carolina say such a facility could bring thousands of jobs to the state.
The SRS pit factory is being built at the site of a failed mixed oxide fuel plant.
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