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Santa
Fe, NM – In
its own words, “The
New Mexico Environment
Department [NMED]
issued several actions
today to hold the U.S.
Department of Energy
accountable for
failing to prioritize
the cleanup of Los
Alamos National
Laboratory’s “legacy
waste” for disposal at
the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant.”
Amongst
these actions is an
Administrative
Compliance Order
designed to hasten
cleanup of an old
radioactive and toxic
waste dump that should
be the model for Lab
cleanup. Nuclear Watch
New Mexico strongly
supports NMED’s
aggressive efforts to
compel comprehensive
cleanup given
Department of Energy
obstruction.
This
Compliance Order comes
at a historically
significant time. On
February 5 the New
Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty
expired, leaving the
world without any arms
control for the first
time since the middle
1970s. The following
day the Trump
Administration accused
China of conducting a
small nuclear weapons
test in 2020, possibly
opening the door for
matching tests by the
United States.
NMED’s
Compliance Order comes
as LANL’s nuclear
weapons production
programs are radically
expanding for the new
nuclear arms race. The
directors of the
nuclear weapons
laboratories,
including LANL’s Thom
Mason, are openly talking
about seizing the
opportunity provided
by the Trump
Administration’s
deregulation of
nuclear safety
regulations to
accelerate nuclear
warhead production.
As
background, in
September 2023 NMED
released a
groundbreaking draft
Order mandating the
excavation and cleanup
of an estimated
198,000 cubic meters
of radioactive and
toxic wastes at
Material Disposal Area
C, an old unlined dump
that last received
wastes in 1974.
However, in a
legalistic maneuver to
evade real cleanup,
DOE unilaterally declared
that Area C:
“...is
associated with active
Facility operations
and will be Deferred
from further
corrective action
under [NMED’s] Consent
Order until
it
is no longer
associated with active
Facility operations.”
The
rationale of DOE’s
semi-autonomous
nuclear weapons
agency, the National
Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA),
is that Area C is
within a few hundred
yards of the Lab’s
main facility for
plutonium “pit” bomb
core production. LANL
is prioritizing that
production above
everything else while
cutting cleanup and
nonproliferation
programs and
completely eliminating
renewable energy
research. DOE’s and
NNSA’s unilateral
deferment of Area C
until it “is no longer
associated with active
Facility operations”
in effect means that
it will never be
cleaned up. No future
plutonium pit
production is to
maintain the safety
and reliability of the
U.S.’ existing nuclear
weapons stockpile.
Instead, it is all for
new design nuclear
weapons for the new
arms race that the
NNSA intends to
produce until at least
2050. Further,
new-design nuclear
weapons could prompt
the United States to
resume full-scale
testing, which would
have disastrous
international
proliferation
consequences.
To
break up the
legalistic log jam
around cleanup of Area
C, NMED’s new
Administrative
Compliance Order
orders DOE, NNSA, and
their contractors to:
1) Provide
within 30 days
specific
justifications for
their unilateral
“deferment” of an old
radioactive and toxic
waste dump from
cleanup; and
2) Rescind
their withdrawal of a
2021 “Corrective
Measures Evaluation”
(CME) which proposed
possible cleanup
methods. DOE had
claimed that
withdrawing the CME
had mooted any legal
basis for NMED to
mandate comprehensive
cleanup at LANL.
The
Lab’s budget for
nuclear weapons
programs that caused
the need for cleanup
has more than doubled
over the last decade,
with a one billion
dollar increase in
this year alone.
Nevertheless, DOE et
al want cleanup on the
cheap. Their plan is
to “cap and cover”
existing wastes,
leaving them
permanently buried in
unlined pit and
trenches as a
perpetual threat to
groundwater.
Ironically,
there is no current
need for pit
production. In 2006
independent experts concluded
that plutonium pits
have serviceable
lifetimes of at least
100 years (their
average age now is
~43). Moreover, at
least 20,000 existing
pits are already
stored at the NNSA’s
Pantex Plant near
Amarillo, TX.
Pit
production is the
NNSA’s most complex
and expensive program
ever. It will likely
cost more than $60
billion over the next
25 years, exceeding
the cost of the
original Manhattan
Project that designed
and built a plutonium
pit from scratch.
However, the
independent Government
Accountability Office
has repeatedly concluded
that the NNSA has no
credible cost
estimates and no
“Integrated Master
Schedule” for planned
redundant pit
production at LANL and
the Savannah River
Site in South
Carolina.
In
addition, it’s not
clear where an
estimated 57,500
cubic meters of
radioactive
transuranic wastes
from future pit
production
will
go. DOE is
fundamentally changing
the cleanup mission
of the only existing
permanent repository,
the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant (WIPP) in
southern New Mexico,
to become the dumping
ground for new nuclear
bomb production.
However, WIPP is
already oversubscribed
for all of the
radioactive wastes
that DOE wants to send
to it. Moreover, NMED
has previously ordered
DOE to prioritize
disposal of LANL’s
Cold War wastes at
WIPP (which it is not
doing) and to begin
looking for a new
out-of-state waste
dump, which will be
politically
controversial.
In
all, NNSA’s expanded
plutonium pit
production is so
plagued with problems
that the DOE Deputy
Secretary ordered a “special
assessment”
of the program
completed by December
8, 2025. However, it
is still not publicly
available.
LANL
and DOE have a long
history of deception
concerning
contamination and
cleanup. In 1992 a Lab
pamphlet was inserted
into the Sunday
edition of The
New Mexican
newspaper which
claimed that plutonium
from LANL had never
been found in the Rio
Grande. This was
despite the fact that
a 1987
study
detected
Lab plutonium 17 miles
south down the Rio
Grande in Cochiti
Lake, a popular
recreational site.
As
late as the late 1990s
LANL was claiming that
groundwater
contamination was
impossible, going so
far as to request a
waiver from even
having to monitor for
it (fortunately denied
by NMED). Today we
know of a massive
hexavalent chromium
plume whose size is
still not known that
has migrated onto San
Ildefonso Pueblo lands
(Lab maps showed it
stopping at exactly
the Pueblo border).
Plutonium, high
explosives and
perchlorates have all
been detected in
groundwater. A 2005
hydrogeological study
concluded that “Future
contamination at
additional locations
is expected over a
period of decades to
centuries as more of
the contaminant
inventory reaches the
water table.”
In
2018 DOE was falsely
claiming
that cleanup at the
Lab was more than half
complete. In Nuclear
Watch New Mexico’s
view, genuine cleanup
of LANL has yet to
begin. It will start
with a final Order by
NMED to DOE mandating
excavation and
treatment of the
radioactive and toxic
wastes at Area C.
Lab-wide comprehensive
cleanup is the only
sure way to protect
New Mexico’
life-sustaining
groundwater and will
provide hundreds of
long-term, high paying
jobs.
Jay
Coghlan, Director of
Nuclear Watch New
Mexico, commented:
“What is more
important to New
Mexicans, clean,
uncontaminated
groundwater or more
nuclear weapons for
the accelerating
global arms race? We
salute NMED’s efforts
under the leadership
of Secretary James
Kenney to hold the Lab
accountable and make
it genuinely clean up.
This enforcement
action is a crucial
step toward reining in
Lab contamination. But
it is also a global
step in forcing the
Los Alamos Lab to
focus on cleanup
instead of the buildup
of nuclear weapons for
another arms race that
threatens us all.”
#
# #
The
New Mexico Environment
Department’s
Corrective Action
Order is available at
https://www.env.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/2026-02-11-LANL-MDA-C-ACO.pdf
For
more, please see
Nuclear Watch New
Mexico’s fact sheet on
Area C, The
Future of Los Alamos
Lab: More Nuclear
Weapons or Cleanup?
at https://nukewatch.org/area-c-fact-sheet/
For
more on plutonium pit
production, please see
https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Plutonium-Pit-Production-Fact-Sheet.pdf
This
press release is
online at https://nukewatch.org/area-c-nmed-corrective-action-order/
This
work is made possible
through the generous
support of
PLOUGHSHARES
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