The demon core killed two scientists before its deadly career ended, and melted down for reuse. The question we face now is whether we will allow its legacy to drive us toward unnecessary production, when our existing stockpile of 15,000 plutonium pits already vastly exceeds any plausible operational requirement.
On February 6th, 2026—less than a month away—the New START treaty expires, ending the last bilateral constraint on U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces. For the first time in 35 years, neither nation will be prevented from innovating and rapidly deploying additional warheads on existing delivery systems. No inspections. No transparency. No mutual verification.
This is the context in which the United States proposes to manufacture 80 new plutonium pits annually—not to replace aging components (existing pits remain reliable for over 100 years), but to arm a new generation of land-based ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, and air-delivered weapons. The planned production could be achieved through pit reuse and remanufacturing using our existing stock.1 We are, after all, a nation that once recognized excess weapons-grade material as a paramount security threat: in the 1990s, we purchased 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium from the dismantled Soviet arsenal precisely because unsecured fissile material posed unacceptable proliferation risks (Bunn and Wier 145-158).
Now we propose to manufacture more—not because we need it, but because we can.
© 2026 Farooq Hussain
The convergence of these two crises—the lapse of the last arms control treaty and accelerated pit production—is the subject of my new book,
The Last Treaty,
which launches on Amazon Kindle next month.
The book examines how Cold War-era arms control frameworks have failed to keep pace with today’s rapidly modernizing arsenals, diversified warheads, and AI-integrated command systems. More urgently, it explores what comes next: not treaty nostalgia, but pragmatic, interim frameworks for mutual restraint that can be implemented quickly and adjusted dynamically in our technologically unstable nuclear age.
Want to do something about unnecessary plutonium pit production?
The Union of Concerned Scientists is calling for immediate action during the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) process to oppose unnecessary expansion of pit production. This matters now more than ever: without new treaties under negotiation or being proposed, every new pit we manufacture is a match that might ignite a new arms race. It’s assessed that both Russia and China have nuclear weapons modernization plans in progress.
Call your representatives at (202) 224-3121 and ask them to
oppose accelerating pit production.
The demon core’s legacy isn’t just about those two deaths in 1945. It’s about whether we’ll learn that, in a world without treaties, producing more weapons-grade material faster threatens fiscal responsibility, global stability, and human survival itself.
The National Nuclear Security Administration’s assessments acknowledge that pit reuse is technically feasible to maintain the stockpile. The JASON studies confirmed that existing pits remain reliable well beyond the original design assumptions, making wholesale replacement unnecessary (JASON 15-17). Yet the proposed Los Alamos and Savannah River production facilities are sized for new manufacturing, not remanufacturing—a choice driven by institutional momentum rather than strategic necessity. For detailed technical analysis, see Gronlund et al., “Plutonium Pit Production: An Alternative Approach.”