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Aggressive Los Alamos labs expansion plan wins approval from National Nuclear Security Administration Mar 26, 2026 Federal officials have adopted the most aggressive of three operational plans under consideration for Los Alamos National Laboratory. The “expanded operations alternative,” which lab officials announced Wednesday, when they also released a new sitewide environmental impact statement, includes facilities upgrades and other actions “to respond to future national security challenges and meet increasing requirements.” The expansion includes “construction and operation of an additional supercomputing complex and a new X-ray-free electron laser facility, which will complement the capabilities of the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center,” the lab said in a statement, as well as wildfire mitigation such as forest thinning and measures to remove feral and invasive cattle. “Modernized operations,” with some upgrades, was the second option, while the third was “no action,” which would, however, include new construction such as warehouses, office buildings and parking lots, mostly in the lab’s Pajarito Corridor Planning Area south of the community of Los Alamos. According to a summary of the environmental analysis, the expansion would have a 4,447-acre development footprint and increased water use. It could also impact 22 “known cultural resources,” 12 of which would be due to the construction of a hydropower facility, and could impact Mexican spotted owl and Jemez salamander habitat more than the other options. LANL released a draft of the sitewide environmental impact statement in early 2025, previewing the three plans for the lab over the next 15 years. The expansion had the backing of National Nuclear Security Administration officials but ran into pushback from lab critics and local officials — Santa Fe County commissioners passed a resolution a year ago backing the no-action alternative. ‘Get out of jail free’The lab has come under particular scrutiny for plans to ramp up production of plutonium pits, the trigger devices for nuclear weapons, which was included even in the no-action alternative. Although plans long have called for the production of 30 pits per year at LANL, an NNSA official said earlier this year that could increase to 60. “LANL’s pit mission is a national blunder that began under the first Trump Administration, continued under [President Joe] Biden, and is now being accelerated in Trump’s second term,” Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, said in a statement. “We believe it will end in tears." Mello criticized the environmental analysis as “incomplete and therefore inaccurate” because it didn’t consider the impact of doubling pit production. “Now that NNSA has this document, we can liken it to a big deck of environmental ‘get out of jail free’ cards, which NNSA can now play whenever they need to,” Mello said. “There’s no sincere attempt to protect the environment involved.” Dylan Spaulding with the Union of Concerned Scientists decried both the near doubling of energy and water use that could come with the expansion and the potential impacts on Puebloan cultural sites via the addition of “a parking lot, bus transfer station, and several solar energy installations.” “UCS has previously called for meaningful consideration and integration of Pueblos’ concerns into the laboratory’s plans, particularly around environmental justice issues,” Spaulding said in a statement. “Not only were environmental justice topics removed from the plan due to a federal executive order, but as many as 33 cultural heritage sites could be impacted to make way for new construction.” Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said struggles at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which also was expected to become a pit production site, mean the onus will be on LANL. “Eighty pits per year is becoming more and more likely,” Coghlan said. “LANL is going to have to fill in for delays at the Savannah River Site.” Coghlan argued the lab’s heightened focus on pit production will lead to a weakening commitment toward cleanup at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “The are so obsessed with it they are indefinitely postponing comprehensive cleanup when we know the groundwater has been contaminated,” he added.
Published comments by Greg Mello:
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