Published comment on “Expert panel formed to advise on cleaning up LANL’s toxic plume” (Scott Wyland, Santa Fe New Mexican, 4/19/24).
I hope readers do not think that LANL’s contamination, in this and most other cases, will be “cleaned up.” In this case, there is a lot of hexavalent chromium temporarily tied up above the plume in question, which will slowly bleed down into the main aquifer. By the way, LANL, DOE, and NMED all knew about this contamination for decades prior to taking action. Nobody was interested. They are now. I have no professional opinion on the disputed pump and treat strategies (at one time, I used to design and enforce some of these), but am only pointing out that there is an element of expectation here that nature will not allow to be fulfilled. It is worthwhile effort, to be sure, as is the LANL cleanup generally but again, readers need to be aware that by mass, most of the “mother lodes” of LANL contamination will remain. Cleanup is laudable nonetheless, as much as can be done, proportionate to the environmental impact that cleanup itself causes (e.g. thousands of interstate truck trips). Just don’t expect perfection. LANL has even plans, according to the last three years of its own planning documents, to construct a new on-site “low-level” disposal (not storage) site to support pit production. Exactly what this is supposed to mean remains a mystery.
On a related note, it turns out that by far the two largest funded infrastructure projects in the U.S. in dollar terms are the DOE cleanups at the two plutonium production sites of Hanford, WA and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in SC. The third largest seems to be a commuter rail system in Seattle, and fourth — wait for it — is starting up plutonium pit production at LANL and SRS, currently clocking in at up to $37 billion, according to NNSA’s “preliminary” calculations. (It will be more, and NNSA does not supply details as yet.) LANL’s pit production project is many times as large as any other project in the history of New Mexico. Pit production as a whole is larger than the whole Manhattan Project, in the so-called “constant” dollars your government uses to calculate Social Security benefits and the so-called real “growth” shown in official GDP numbers.
So — as far as a half-hour Google search reveals to me — 3 of the top 4 construction projects in the U.S. have to do with plutonium. It is a truly pathetic situation, and indicative of the heavy toll the nuclear weapons enterprise has wrought, and is still wreaking, on this country.