Short note about LANL's tritium venting, a strange and confusing subject

September 20, 2025

Several people have asked what we thought about this topic. Here is a summary:

• First of all, I don't know everything about this. Some of the back-story I understand and some I don't, most because it's highly political and therefore hidden. I have read some but not all of the letters and studies that have gone back and forth. I haven't seen anything so far which suggests this issue is important, environmentally or medically. Time being limited, I have tried to stay away from it, with partial success. So I could be wrong, but this is my opinion so far. 

• There would be no need to vent the tritium if the strong stainless steel containers could be properly disposed on-site, with confidence that the seals wouldn't leak for a century. Apparently the reason they cannot is some hyper-legalistic interpretation of hazardous waste law (which I used to enforce at NMED). There apparently are a small amounts of lead in these containers, which prevents on-site disposal. At the Area G dump, there are tons of uranium and surely also lead. There is tritium. There are chemical wastes. As a result, there is zero additional hazard in dumping this small amount of lead there. There's lead in every older sewer and in most fishing tackle boxes. After 100 years, the tritium hazard is close to zero from radioactive decay. Would the strong containers and seals last that long? I don't know. Overall, I am not satisfied from my brief perusal that the alternatives to venting have been properly considered. 

• The tritium is in two forms, aqueous (oxidized; water vapor) and dry hydrogen molecules. Only the former is dangerous in this context; the latter rises quickly in air. LANL has a filtering system in place to filter out "most" of the wet tritium at least (if not both forms -- I don't know), the same filtering system they use regularly, as do other nuclear sites. It works, but LANL and NNSA haven't to my knowledge said how well and I have not had the time to devote to studying these filters in detail. It is pretty easy, IMO, to make air dry, and that's mainly what is needed. In any case I do not believe there is actual danger. For once I agree with NNSA about this. It is a molehill, not a mountain. NNSA said it would avoid bad weather for this -- weather which could bring down aqueous tritium to local receptors. Rising air, i.e. air that is warmer near the ground, is optimal, with a low dewpoint and no local condensation in fog or rain.

• Why in the world has this controversy been going on for 5 or 6 years? Answer: it seems to benefit everybody. Nonprofits get money and attention, so they like that (so do we, usually). NNSA gets -- what? They get to keep nonprofits focused on a trivial issue. This approach is part of modern PR practice. Don't stonewall, or allow unguided anxiety to grow. Get it focused on something trivial, on something regarding which we the agency hold all the cards. Much better than what else the opposition might focus on! NMED has its own political agenda. It is annoying that NMED did not get this settled long ago. It was and is their job to do so. 

• NNSA can't be fully trusted, NMED can't be trusted, the NGOs can't be trusted. Our friends in the tribes often speak symbolically about what are fundamentally spiritual matters. Those views need to be respected, as such. That said, there is quite a bit of confusion about science going on on the part of non-Indians. The media just reports what everybody says. NNSA and LANL could have done a much better job clarifying just what they are doing. NMED could have demanded the same, and set clear conditions. Nothing about this whole situation is as it should be. The whole truth is hard to find.  

• Tritium work at LANL is part of LANL's nuclear weapon mission. Unless the mission has been transferred elsewhere, there is production work involved, namely adding tritium to the neutron generators that fire neutrons into the imploded plutonium pits at just the right instant to maximize the nuclear explosion in the first stage of every thermonuclear warhead. This was part of the work done at the former Pinellas, FL weapons production plant of DOE.  

• It is particularly noteworthy that most of the nonprofits involved don't oppose nuclear weapons manufacturing at LANL. Tewa Women United, to their credit, does oppose it. Most are silent, which is inconsistent and displays a lack of respect to the hundreds of individuals, businesses, and other nonprofits who do oppose weapons manufacturing, including at LANL. I think it must be understood as being cowardly. Nuclear Watch of New Mexico deserves particular notice. Back at the beginning of the Obama Administration, they wanted to bring the nation's entire tritium operation to LANL, not just the present sliver of it, which would have meant vastly greater tritium emissions and risks. They and the Southwest Research and Information Center (NWNM's fiscal sponsor) were the only New Mexico organizations to sign onto a cockamamie plan to bring all the radioactive materials processing for weapons to LANL, while concentrating the entire nuclear warhead complex in LANL, Sandia, and Pantex. They still want to do this for plutonium pit manfacturing. For most of the opposing groups, tritium venting is a "safe" thing to oppose that will not set them at odds with the congressional delegation. The hysteria about tritium venting appears to be in direct proportion to the denial going on about the vastly larger, vastly more dangerous and vastly more impactful mission of plutonium pit production. 

• All that said, why doesn't LANL tell us, in quantitative terms, the effectiveness they expect from their capture system? Is it because they don't want to have to guarantee that effectiveness in future venting from the LANL tritium facility and elsewhere at LANL? In the past, rainfall has been collected at LANL that exceeds the EPA drinking water standard for tritium. I am also uncomfortable with not having an actual measured release standard -- less than so-and-so many curies. Instead -- at least as of a couple of weeks ago -- we get a modeled theoretical exposure maximum. There are a ton of opaque assumptions between the release itself and the exposures it is predicted to create. 

• As for the future of LANL tritium operations, I can't see why LANL needs to do any at all. The LANL tritium facility has been plagued with problems, is located almost directly on an earthquake fault, and there is nothing that is done there which could not and probably should not be done at the Savannah River Site (SRS), where U.S. tritium processing is located. The cry of the opposing groups should be to shut down the LANL tritium facility, not just this particular venting process. SRS is where all the plutonium processing and manufacturing should be done as well. 

• All this assumes that the U.S. government continues to want nuclear weapons. We would prefer it didn't, but alas it does. 

• When the venting is done, there needs to be a report detailing just what came out of the containers, what came out of the filters and when, what the local meteorological conditions were at that time, and what ambient air monitors detected, if there were any that were capable of such detection. Water monitoring could be done also. The NGO scientists may have already proposed such things. Then LANL and independent modeling could be done to calculate doses to individual members of the public, including women and infants. The doses should be very, very close to zero, to a high degree of confidence. If they aren't, NNSA, LANL, EPA, and NMED will be in hot water, so to speak.