For immediate release September 1, 2020

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Department of Energy concludes no rigorous environmental analyses needed for vast expansion of Los Alamos nuclear missions, including plutonium bomb core factory -- altogether, the largest project in the history of New Mexico

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-265-1200 (office) 505-577-8563 (cell)

Albuquerque and Santa Fe -- "Nothing to see here, folks -- move right along." This is the overwhelming message conveyed in the Department of Energy’s latest and final "Supplement Analysis" (SA) to its 2008 environmental analysis of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), or "Site-wide Environmental Impact Statement" (SWEIS).

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous DOE subsidiary, administers LANL. LANL is in turn managed and operated by a limited liability partnership of defense contractors created solely for this purpose, called "Triad National Security."

It is important to realize that the document released today (the SA), is not any kind of supplementary environmental impact statement (EIS).

It is instead a cursory memorandum written to show that no such impact statement is required. The purpose of "supplement analyses" such as this one is not to provide detailed, peer-reviewed analysis, and none is presented here. In an SA, DOE and NNSA are not required to consider alternative actions, perspectives, or any "no action" alternative. DOE did solicit comments on this draft SA but the agency is not actually required to respond to them. As usual NNSA has done so only where convenient or prudent.

At an estimated $13 billion over the present decade, the proposed expansion/reinvestment at LANL is by far the largest capital project in the history of the State of New Mexico, in constant dollar terms.

It will involve processing large quantities of plutonium and producing plutonium "pits," the cores of nuclear weapons, on an industrial scale. This was the mission of the former Rocky Flats Plant near Denver.

This mission -- unprecedented for LANL since the late 1940s, when it resulted in considerable air, ground, and water pollution -- will produce large quantities of nuclear waste. NNSA has made clear that disposal of this new waste will take priority over the long-deferred disposal of about 18,000 drums of legacy nuclear wastes at LANL, currently perched a mile or so west of White Rock and directly adjacent to and above a Native American sacred area.

This expansion will have great regional and local impacts of many kinds, as Triad managers have said on multiple occasions to potential subcontractors and local governments.

Study Group Director Greg Mello:

"The notion that comprehensive environmental analysis is not needed for this gigantic program is a staggering insult to New Mexicans and an affront to any notion of environmental law and science.

"The most reasonable alternatives were omitted in this analysis, including the option of not having an industrial pit mission at LANL -- especially not in the aging, inadequate, main plutonium facility and especially not using multiple production shifts, which is the only way LANL can do this mission.

"In taking this path, NNSA is proceeding directly against the advice of its own staff and of former NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz, who early in the Trump Administration officially forbade the use of PF-4 for the enduring pit mission.

"In its new strategy NNSA is also bucking congressionally-mandated advice from the Institute of Defense Analyses, which warned in stark language against trying to run PF-4 with two production shifts, calling it "very high risk" and saying doing so would jeopardize LANL's basic pit capabilities as well as LANL's other plutonium programs.

"NNSA has abridged the content of this review by narrowing it to pit production only. LANL's planned expansion includes the new pit mission but also goes far beyond it. By narrowing the scope of comparison with the 2008 SWEIS, NNSA is hiding the total magnitude of what is planned. NNSA is shielding its plans for LANL from environmental review, including major off-site impacts, which Triad and NNSA neither understand nor care all that much about.

"NNSA has not clearly defined the scope of even this narrowed version of LANL's expansion. Despite direct congressional requirements to produce detailed pit production plans, we know of no such plan -- indeed we know of no published plan for LANL's future at all. LANL used to produce such plans annually. Doing so is still a contract requirement. Now, Triad and NNSA have presented no resourced plan for expansion and no site plan. There is no state, local or tribal heads-up or involvement. Triad and NNSA have presented no significant information about the new facilities they hope to build, which seem to change from year to year. NNSA statements and congressional reports suggest no actual, signed NNSA plan actually exists.

"Major issues NNSA did not foresee in 2008 include:

• the need for approximately 5,000 additional housing units in Los Alamos County or nearby,
• local and regional road congestion;
• NNSA’s proposal – rejected for now – to transfer 3,000 acres of federal land to Los Alamos County for mixed development to support LANL expansion;
• a proposal by LANL and agencies of the State of New Mexico to build a high bridge over the Rio Grande and tributary canyons with at least two associated highways through roadless areas;
• formal NNSA and Triad proposals to create one or more additional LANL campuses in other counties;
• the absence of any large new nuclear facility to accommodate portions of the pit production mission, which had been assumed in 2008 and on which all plans were then predicated;
• the unfolding climate-driven Southwest megadrought, anticipated and somewhat theoretical in 2008 but now quite real;
• what NNSA claims will be a doubling of County/LANL electricity demand, likewise unforeseen in 2008;
• failure to dispose of 18,000 drums of legacy transuranic waste, and failure to close the Area G site on which it sits; and
• many others."

"To the extent that LANL pit production can be sustained, which we doubt given the unsafe condition of its aging plutonium facility, we now also know that LANL pit production will be very expensive. LANL's life-cycle costs, assuming all goes as planned (which never happens), will be far higher than those at the larger, new plutonium facility situated in the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site, which has been built to far higher safety standards than LANL's facilities have been.

"Much more important is the reality that no new pits are needed to maintain even a very large nuclear arsenal, or even to double the size of that arsenal should a future administration in its madness decide to do so.

"If the US has not set itself on a firm disarmament path by 2030, this country will be doomed, from climate catastrophe and social and economic collapse. There is no need for any new pits, at any time whatsoever."

***ENDS***