The Los Alamos Study Group and Nuclear Watch New Mexico published separate statements this week criticizing the Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2027 request for an increase in funding plutonium pit production and decrease to nonproliferation and non-weapons science programs.

“Throughout this budget it is global dominance, not global cooperation, that is the stated theme. U.S. dominance was always more or less the goal no matter what was said… now it is the explicit goal,” Greg Mello, director of Los Alamos Study Group, said in a press release April 3. “Not just NNSA’s warhead work but also NNSA’s nonproliferation and arms control work are now explicitly oriented toward global dominance.”

On April 3, the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget released a high-level budget proposal for fiscal 2027 that requested $32.8 billion, 12% more than fiscal 2026, for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Department of Energy’s semiautonomous agency in charge of maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. 

While the White House’s request mainly listed toplines, the DOE released a Budget in Brief document that justified the White House’s toplines and also went into detail about subsections. The details include funding for each of the labs and a 35% increase to weapons activities, or its programs for producing parts of the nuclear warheads, bringing it up to $27.4 billion. It also included an 83% increase in production of the fissile core of the nuclear weapon, or the plutonium pit, bringing it up to $2.4 billion for fiscal 2027 if enacted.

On April 4, Mello in a different statement added, “New information from many sources tell us that the ever-rising costs at LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] are not just cost overruns but also increases in scale, in line with recent Trump Administration directives… There has been no environmental impact statement applicable to this increased mission, and no accountability for past failures.”

In accordance with federal law, NNSA must be able to produce 80 or more pits yearly to replenish the nuclear stockpile. The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF) will eventually work in tandem with LANL to produce plutonium pits, or the fissile cores of a nuclear weapon, for the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

“[NNSA] has directed [LANL] to double pit production to at least 60 pits per year, making it more and more a nuclear weapons production site,” Jay Coghlan, head of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said in an emailed statement. He refers to a memo by David Beck, deputy administrator for Defense Programs at NNSA, which requires Los Alamos to reach a 100 pit capacity by 2028 and a production rate of 60 pits per year afterward. 

“However, no future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile,” Coghlan added. “Instead, it is all for new-design nuclear weapons for the new nuclear arms race.”

A document that lists funding for each of DOE’s national laboratories has a request for $478 million for Los Alamos for fiscal 2027 specifically for the W93 program, the U.S.’s first new nuclear warhead design since the Cold War. “This is despite the recent completion of life extension programs for the U.S.’ two existing sub-launched warheads (the W76 and W88) that gave them new military capabilities, costing around $12 billion dollars. Nevertheless, the W93 program is moving forward, largely because of lobbying by the United Kingdom,” Coghlan said.

Savannah River is expected to make upwards of 50 once SRPPF completes construction at an expected date of 2035, and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is expected to make upwards of 30. NNSA also expects SRPPF’s design to be 90% complete in 2026.

LANL would initially make cores for the first stages of W87-1 warheads, which are to top the Air Force’s planned silo-based Sentinel missiles some time next decade. Savannah River will make cores for the W93 warheads, which the Navy will use in its submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The W93 warhead will begin production in the mid-2030s.

“NNSA and LANL in particular are, quite simply, out of control,” Mello concluded.