Most Americans don’t seem aware of it, but the United States is plunging into a new nuclear arms race. At the same time that China is ramping up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Russia has become increasingly bellicose. After a long period of relative dormancy, the U.S. has embarked on its own monumental project to modernize everything in its arsenal — from bomb triggers to warheads to missile systems — at a cost, altogether, of at least $1.5 trillion.

Los Alamos National Laboratory plays a vital role as one of two sites set to manufacture plutonium “pits,” the main explosive element in every thermonuclear warhead. But as a recent court ruling makes clear, the rush to revive weapons production has pushed environmental considerations — from nuclear waste and increases in vehicular traffic to contamination of local waterways, air and vegetation — to the wayside.

That just changed dramatically. On Sept. 30, United States District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis of South Carolina ruled that the federal government violated the National Environmental Policy Act — the “Magna Carta” of federal environmental law — when it formulated and began to proceed with plans to produce plutonium pits at LANL and the Savannah River Site, in Aiken, South Carolina.