|
|
|
New Mexico Environment Department takes sweeping action over LANL waste Feb 12, 2026 By Alaina Mencinger amencinger@sfnewmexican.com The New Mexico Environment Department on Wednesday issued three compliance orders with a combined $16 million in penalties against the U.S. Department of Energy over its delayed cleanup of radioactive and hazardous waste stemming from nuclear weapons production. The state agency also informed the federal government it intends to take the rare action of overhauling a permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Southern New Mexico to better prioritize the disposal of radioactive waste from the Los Alamos lab. The actions underscore a growing frustration with a “longstanding lack of urgency” to clean up legacy waste and contamination, according to a statement from the Environment Department. “We’re escalating because they’re not meeting the moment that immediately preceded it,” Environment Secretary James Kenney said in an interview. Two of the orders center on a decades-old, toxic underground plume of hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen that was used as an anti-corrosive in pipes at LANL. In the early 2000s, the 1.5-mile plume was discovered stretching from the national laboratory. The Environment Department reported last year the plume’s ever-fuzzy boundary had passed into San Ildefonso Pueblo lands. That detail was later contested by a federal official, who told state legislators in December more testing was needed to verify the plume’s movement. The Department of Energy’s Environmental Management field office in Los Alamos did not immediately comment on the enforcement actions. A representative for the department told The New York Times the Department of Energy was reviewing the orders and remained “committed to public safety, efficiency, and transparency.” The last compliance order is in regard to Material Disposal Area C, a landfill at the lab used between 1948 and 1974 to dispose of various waste, including radioactive materials and heavy metals. The state and federal agencies have clashed in the past over how best to handle cleanup of the area. Then last year, the Department of Energy said the cleanup should be deferred entirely due to active LANL operations nearby — a decree that didn’t sit right with state regulators. The compliance order on Area C directs the federal agency to produce proof that a cleanup deferral is needed within 30 days. “NMED is aware that national pit production is occurring proximate to the MDA-C location,” the February compliance order reads. “However, that production has been ongoing since the 1990s, and Respondents have not indicated how MDA-C is associated with this ‘active facility operation’ other than providing speculative information about how corrective action at MDA-C could impede work for the national pit production mission or may jeopardize the timeline for the pit production if NMED’s intended remedy selection for MDA-C is selected." Nuclear Watch New Mexico Executive Director Jay Coghlan cast Area C as a crossroads. “It presents a clear choice between more unneeded nuclear weapons or cleanup,” Coghlan said, speaking on Tuesday’s enforcement actions. “The other aspect is that we think that successful cleanup at Area C should be the model for cleanup of the rest of the lab, including the much larger Area G.” The Environment Department also sent a letter to the Department of Energy and WIPP contractor Salado Isolation Mining Contractors indicating it plans to pursue a permit modification, with a goal of drafting new language for the permit by April. From there, the public and the permittees will have a chance to comment on the proposed changes before they are finalized and the permit is reissued. WIPP is the nation’s only deep geologic repository for radioactive waste from the defense industry. While its permit includes a condition to prioritize legacy waste from LANL, Kenney said, there aren’t specific metrics to ensure the emplacement, or permanent storage of waste, is on track. That’s one of the changes the department would like to see. Between 2021 and 2025, the amount of legacy waste shipped from LANL declined, the state agency’s letter states, and in that period the repository accepted “five times” more waste from Idaho National Laboratory. Kenney said the repository’s permit is in need of “significant modification” to address what he described as a “dire” legacy waste issue. The state agency reopening a permit is uncommon, he added. “I can only think of one other time in my tenure where we’ve actually opened up a permit, unilaterally initiated that and said, ‘Your permit is not working. We’re going to change it,’ ” Kenney said. “It’s not that we’re looking for conflict, but it’s that we’re looking for results." Published comments by Greg Mello: Coghlan is right about the pivotal nature of the choice involved in the potential cleanup of Material Disposal Area (MDA) C. More weapons, or cleanup? But is NMED serious? Is it all for show? These are proposed fines, not actual fines, and in LANL's world the amounts are very small. Neither side is being fully forthcoming here. LANL and NNSA have large plans for that site, which is a valuable piece of real estate for them in their pit plans, as they have said in various places, and LANL needs the Pajarito Corridor kept free of cleanup traffic for the decades to come, as they see it. It is not a case of wanting to defer cleanup for a few years. LANL doesn't want cleanup of that site EVER. That was true under Biden and it is truer under Trump. As to LANL's pit production being "ongoing since the 1990s," that's not a bit truthful, and this newspaper did nothing to correct the record. Where did NMED get that idea? The outcome of this controversy, which affects so-called "national security" (not) in a direct way, will likely be decided in Congress -- obviously. Yet as in a hundred prior articles, the people most responsible are never questioned by this newspaper, which does not foster any sort of accountability or democracy. The LANL pit production mission was successfully written into law by the efforts of the New Mexico delegation, which objected to NNSA's decisions to not use LANL's old plutonium facility for enduring pit production. It was all about the money. The people primarily responsible were Heinrich, Udall, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and Ben Ray Lujan. As for Nuclear Watch, they have been and still are pressing for pit production at LANL, so they hold an exactly contradictory position on this issue. They want cleanup, but they also want LANL to be the nation's sole pit production facility, vastly growing its pit mission beyond that it is today. LANL's pit mission is the largest capital project in the history of New Mexico -- roughly 20 times what the Manhattan Project spent here in constant dollars. I see that Coghlan has written comments, which need a reply. See below. Reply to Coghlan: Jay, you keep banging the nuclear testing drum when there is zero evidence that anybody in this business actually wants or needs to resume nuclear testing. Repeating this threat is just playing into Trump's hands. It's popular to do so, of course. On the other hand, you are right that nuclear safety regulations ARE being "right-sized," or "streamlined," as they would put -- "loosened," or perhaps in some cases "gutted," as you and I might put it -- as Marlene Wilden accurately wrote in the LA Daily Post. And you are right about Area C being pivotal. But as a former groundwater scientist who was extensively involved in enforcement against LANL from the very beginning, the groundwater contamination situation is a lot more nuanced than you portray here. I think you pander to nuclear hysteria on the one hand, because it is popular, and go along with our congressional delegation in promoting LANL pit production, on the other hand. You just want pit production "right-sized." You can't control that. You want to open the barn door, hoping that the horses you prefer won't leave. It is not too late to show some solidarity with your New Mexico colleagues instead of selling us out as you did for example in your NEPA lawsuit in South Carolina which aimed at making LANL the sole pit factory, and join the so-far 276 organizations and businesses opposing pit production at LANL (see stopthebomb.org). |
|||
|
|
|||
|
