Letter to the Editor, Tracy Press
Gail Rieger
Editor,
I’ve lived In Tracy for 30 years. I’ve watched our town grow from a handful to more than 100,000 residents. Yet, when I logged onto energy.gov to research the government’s plan to restart industrial-scale plutonium bomb core production, I read that the nuclear weapons location in our backyard, Site 300, is a “remote experimental testing facility.”
Remote? Neither our neighborhoods or our roadways are remote! The National Nuclear Security Administration’s new plan includes frequently trucking nuclear weapons grade plutonium on highways, alongside family cars, between the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico to the Livermore Lab main site.
In my written comments on the plutonium plan, I asked the government to provide an updated map of routes it intends to use. An older map clearly shows Tracy straddling the plutonium shipment route. The government has not published any new map or responded to my concern.
Are our local emergency services prepared to respond to a major plutonium accident – or a terrorist attack to obtain the plutonium? One microscopic particle of plutonium, if inhaled, is enough to cause cancer and other potentially fatal illnesses.
Fortunately, this plan can be stopped before this happens. The NNSA is in the process of conducting a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on its new, expanded plutonium bomb core (also called pit) plan. The public comment period extends until July 16, 2026. Public comments can be long or short. You can ask questions.
Learn more about the program and how to comment at PitPEIS.com. For local impacts, see also www.trivalleycares.org
Gail Rieger,
Tracy