Federal plan would boost Los Alamos plutonium pit production to at least 80 a year, triggering 50-year impacts and public review.

Primary season used to be about comparing the professional merits of the candidates. Apparently now, its just about waiting to see which ones have the least horrific histories of misconduct until the slate is down to 1.

Just appreciating these two posts next to each other. Peak Bluesky, at least in my eccentric feed.

Apparently some are not familiar with the story: Croesus of Lydia asked the Oracle what would happen once he attacked Iran. Oracle predicted: "a great civilization will die". Of course it turned out that the one that died was Lydia, not Iran. Seems relevant...

A statement from our team at @ucs.org on today’s dangerous rhetoric:

If you need an extra nudge or some guidance for how to reach your representatives, please check out this action alert from the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Even Marjorie Taylor Green is calling for invocation of the 25th ammendment, but my Democratic congresswoman, @dorismatsui.bsky.social? Silence for the past two days. Extraordinarily frustrating and shameful.

Because we all need something amazing today. #artemisII

Public comment opportunity to oppose new uranium mining and exploration in New Mexico:

Le Monde informed the Bulletin about the image on March 19. I wrote a detailed visual and technical analysis supporting my assessment that the cargo may have been highly enriched uranium. (8/n) @thebulletin.org #Iran #nuclearweapons #uranium #OSINT #nukesky

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

"Dylan Spaulding with the Union of Concerned Scientists decried both the near doubling of energy and water use that could come with the expansion and the potential impacts on Puebloan cultural sites via the addition of “a parking lot, bus transfer station, and several solar energy installations.”

".. the US military is approximately a month, or less, away from running out of ATACMS/PrSM ground-attack missiles and THAAD interceptors. Israel is in an even more precarious spot, with its Arrow interceptor missiles likely to be completely expended by the end of March."

No... no, we're not. This headline is horribly misleading and dangerous. I know its the Washington Times, but still.. even the story says "no decision has yet been made to move ahead." No one who actually understands testing is taking these considerations seriously and stories like this don't help.

Today, LANL released their final Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement, outlining plans for expansion over roughly the next decade. Its a big document and I'm still digging, but here are my first impressions:

The more we look, the more we find the building blocks of life in space. Not surprising, given how much comes out of a Miller-Urey type experiment. Still doesn’t mean putting these pieces together in a self-replicating manner is easy or common. Still, perhaps a reminder to be humble?

My amazing @scovillepf.bsky.social @seantmanning.bsky.social has a new @ucs.org piece on what he appropriately calls Trump's "Bloody New Deal," i.e., his proposal to dump $1.5 trillion into military spending, a massive 66% increase. See: blog.ucs.org/sean-manning...

My colleague, Dr. Sara Al-Sayed, presents clear-eyed historical context around US and Isreali intervention in Iran and the resulting nuclear hypocrisy. "For any chance of lasting peace in the region, the United States and Israel must eventually move toward diplomacy and multilateral approaches"

He added that only Israel stood to gain materially by overthrowing the Islamic Republic, and had little concern about who governs Iran subsequently. "This is an uncomfortable truth to tell... America has lost control of its own foreign policy. But it must be told."

"A three-year-old energy company that appears to have fewer than five employees is being considered for a $25 billion contract from a massive trade deal President Donald Trump brokered with Japan last year.. The company... is largely unknown...[and has] never completed a nuclear project"

Grossi: “At the end of this war, Iran will still have nuclear material and enrichment capacities” The Iranians came to the table, both for the JCPOA and right up until the present war. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/18/ignorance-misunderstanding-obfuscation-iran-nuclear-talks-trump

"The US spent $11.3bn on just the first week of its military assault on Iran. This huge expenditure dwarves the annual budgets of many of the public health and scientific agencies the Trump administration has sought to cut, raising stark questions about the country’s priorities."

This is both appalling and not at all surprising. While the administration is spending more than $1B/day attacking Iran, administration officials are profiting at home from insider trading and defense contracts, including Golden Dome money.

Finnish Defense Minister: amending the Nuclear Energy Act “is necessary to enable Finland's military defense as part of the alliance and to take full advantage ofNATO's deterrence and collective defence”.

Surely just a coincidence, right?

Rubio's recent invocation of Chiang Kai-shek in reference to Iran come just before a much-anticipated US-Chinese summit and will only further undermine any possibility of constructive dialogue. Careless words from a bungling administration. See my colleague @gkucs.bsky.social's take on it here:

"Israeli defense minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that the decision to assassinate the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was taken in November, far predating the breakdown in the nuclear programme negotiations that Donald Trump claimed led to the US launching a preemptive strike on Iran."

This is a significant turning point and potentially just the start of a nuclear snowball that the US has set in motion due to its actions in Iran.

Kick the can down the road, by which time costs will inevitably be higher, there will be new unknowns, and greater incentive for Congress to swallow the sunk-cost fallacy. Delays also mean a costly MMIII refurbishment (which was previously deemed impossible in order to justify Sentinel's approval).

This is the best take I've seen on the recent US allegation of Chinese nuclear tests. There are obvious reasons for concern, but the burden of proof is not yet met. At the same time, the need for transparency around activities at the test sites has never been higher and would be provided by the CTBT

My wonderful @scovillepf.bsky.social @seantmanning.bsky.social has a great story in @inkstickmedia.com about biking alongside interstates during COVID. Those interstates could soon be carrying new plutonium "pits" - the radioactive core used in a new nuclear weapon: inkstickmedia.com/every-day-nu...

The court has found both Yoon Suk-yeol and former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun guilty of insurrection.

The New Mexico Environment Department is pushing back on Los Alamos to prioritize remediation of its existing waste. This is good news for neighboring communities who bear the burden of the lab’s past and present impacts and who fear the future ones.

“It’s all a bit mysterious,’’ said Jill Hruby, a longtime nuclear expert who, until last year, ran the National Nuclear Security Agency, a part of the Energy Department that designs, tests and manufactures American nuclear weapons. “It is very confusing what they are doing.”

I'm so grateful for the contributions and insights of artists during times like these. This is a powerful monologue, delivered as only Ian McKellen can:

Official statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on New START on their offer to maintain current limits on nuclear weapons without further negotiations, until a new agreement: "... no formal official response from the United States... has been received through bilateral channels."

A vital read from @gkucs.bsky.social: “Carney, invoking Vaclav Havel’s characterization of the old Soviet system, described the post-war US-led system as “a lie.” If more US allies come to the same conclusion, a significant change in Chinese foreign and defense priorities could follow.”

“if we told you how many pits we make every year, and you kept track, you would know how many W87-1s there are, and that's a classified thing.” - Thom Mason But I can tell you how many missiles are ready to carry those shiny W87-1's: ZERO. LANL is working hard to meet an unnecessary objective.

A big win today: a federal court found that the Trump administration’s sham report attacking climate science was created in secret by a hand-picked set of climate policy opponents, violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Read our statement here:

As long as the new Sentinel ICBM is delayed, new plutonium pits from Los Alamos aren't going anywhere - this is yet another reason that plutonium pit production is ripe for rescoping and downsizing. Current (unrealistic) quotas are not in sync with the warheads or delivery systems they are for.

“Trump’s Golden Dome space-based interceptor shield is nothing but fool’s gold—shiny, but ultimately worthless—and taxpayers would be left footing the bill to defense contractors,” said Dr. Laura Grego, senior research director in the Global Security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"They're taking a wrecking ball to the system of nuclear safety and security regulation oversight that has kept the U.S. from having another Three Mile Island accident," said Edwin Lyman, ... at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "I am absolutely worried about the safety of these reactors."

“We are not producing a product enough people want,” Ms. Weiss told employees... at the network." You mean like unbiased, objective reporting of facts? Because that's what people want.

Thanks to @joshuakeating.bsky.social at @vox.com for picking up on my latest blog about the fragile pause in nuclear testing. blog.ucs.org/dylan-spauld...

Stay warm, Minneapolis.

The Trump team is dropping the ball on New START, which limits deployments of nuclear weapons. Russia has offered an off ramp without negotations but the US isn't responding. This is a no-brainer, but Trump's ignorance and machismo are likely to result in the shredding of this important treaty.

Listen to me discuss American nuclear modernization, plutonium pit production, and whether deterrence is a question of faith this evening at 5pm PT on Sustainability Now! on KSQD out of Santa Cruz, CA. Thanks to host, Ronnie Lipschutz for the invite.

CNN wrote a story today based on my recent musings on nuclear testing. We passed a fragile milestone this week, setting a record for the longest period without a nuclear test since Trinity. Will it hold? The blog: blog.ucs.org/dylan-spauld... CNN's take on all of this:

My colleague @dkspaulding.bsky.social inspired this excellent @cnn.com piece on #nuclear testing with this compelling story: blog.ucs.org/dylan-spauld...

Todd Harrison of AEI: "We already have unfettered access to what we need for Golden Dome in Greenland” Sidebar: Golden Dome will not work and should not be built. www.politico.com/news/2026/01...