Activists say Savannah River pit plant still unready amid lawsuit

After touring the Savannah River Site’s plutonium pit bomb core production plant near Aiken, South Carolina, the groups suing over the federal program said the facility still has “a long way to go” before it can produce the cores that go inside U.S. nuclear weapons.

The April 21 visit brought together Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tri-Valley CAREs, along with their attorney from the South Carolina Environmental Law Project and a science consultant from the Union of Concerned Scientists. The plaintiffs argued the project is unnecessary and could become “the most expensive building ever constructed in the United States.”

That fight reaches directly into Los Alamos County. The National Nuclear Security Administration is seeking to produce no fewer than 80 plutonium pits a year as close to 2030 as possible, with at least 30 assigned to Los Alamos National Laboratory and at least 50 to Savannah River. Savannah River has never produced pits, while LANL already carries the burden of becoming one of the two national sites in the plan.

The lawsuit has already forced a meaningful procedural hurdle. A court-mandated settlement requires inspection of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility before production can begin, and it is meant to ensure no pit production starts before the final programmatic environmental impact statement is complete. A draft version of that environmental review was released April 10, just 11 days before the tour.

For Los Alamos, the stakes are practical as well as political. Any delay at Savannah River could keep more production pressure on LANL, prolong the federal timeline and affect how quickly Washington commits money to stand up the two-site system. Supporters of the program say the work is needed for stockpile reliability and a resilient nuclear weapons infrastructure. Opponents say plutonium pits, the core of nuclear weapons, move the country toward a new arms race.

The dispute was also pushed into public view at the South Carolina Statehouse on April 22, where opponents used a separate event to spotlight the plant’s status and the lawsuit’s implications. With the 2030 target still ahead, the Savannah River visit was meant to test whether the government’s second pit-production site is truly ready or still years from taking pressure off Los Alamos.