Santa Fe County Commission opposes radioactive material being sent to LANL, SFNM, 10 Jan 2023

Santa Fe County Commission opposes radioactive material being sent to LANL

By Claudia L. Silva csilva@sfnewmexican.com
Jan 10, 2023 Updated Jan 11, 2023

The Santa Fe County Commission is raising concerns over a proposal by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration to send 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium to the Los Alamos National Lab.

Under the proposed plan, outlined in a Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the lab will process the surplus weapons-grade plutonium into powdered plutonium oxide, which will then be transported to the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina to be made unusable for weapons. Once processed, the material would be stored underground at the nation’s only permanent, deep geologic radioactive waste repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near in southeastern New Mexico.

The commission voted Tuesday to send the administration a letter expressing concerns the transfer could affect the financial and physical health of county residents.

The transfer proposal “has the potential to put millions of people at risk for financial and health impacts from potential accidents or incidents and dangerous disposal of surplus weapons-grade plutonium,” the letter stated.

“Should Los Alamos National Laboratory be selected for that process, it can be very dangerous to our constituents, and they have a great concern,” Commissioner Anna Hansen said during the meeting.

According to the letter from the commission, even small leaks can contaminate up to 42-square miles and can pose a risk to drinking water from the Buckman Direct Diversion project on the Rio Grande. Additionally, a Department of Energy study found cleanup could cost $620 million in a rural area and up to $9.5 billion in larger cities.

The National Nuclear Security Administration will hold a public hearing Jan. 26 in Los Alamos. That location frustrated some commissioners who felt this would make it hard for Santa Fe County residents to participate.

“I find that really challenging for my constituents to have to drive up that hill at the end of January,” Hansen said. “I mean, it is unknown whether there will be snow on the road or not.”

“It is unfortunate that the meetings are not being held in our community because it has been made very clear that the laboratory has both positive and negative impacts in our community,” added Commissioner Camilla Bustamante.

Greg Mello published comment:

While surplus plutonium can be and should be disposed underground by some early date, the oxidation of this material is, we believe, unnecessary, as is 90% of the transportation (which is not particularly dangerous in any case, but it is mostly unnecessary.) Prior to his time at LANL, LANL director Thom Mason headed up a 2015 review team at Oak Ridge which pointed out these other approaches, suggesting further review if there was interest. See https://lasg.org/Disposition/Documents/RedTeamRpt_13Aug2015.pdf, p. 33 and elsewhere. This was not the first time such options were brought up; a study by the National Academy of Science previously suggested non-WIPP options decades ago.

That said, if for pork-barrel reasons LANL "must" have a new plutonium mission, processing of surplus plutonium for disposal is better than pit production. The former is (weakly) on the side of disarmament; the latter enables the present arms race. But really, that's quite a theoretical observation on my part, because LANL just doesn't, and won't, have the facilities to do that mission safely. It's nuts.

I suspect the present "public comment" process is being done for the same reason our pets are given toys to chase and bite on. It calms them and keeps them from damaging the furniture. NNSA doesn't care much about surplus plutonium disposition, relatively speaking. Yes, it has a contractor and pork barrel constituency, and it has immediate public relations value and longer-term real value, but the old reason to proceed, the biggest former reason -- to lock up Russian plutonium in a parallel process in Russia -- is gone.

What NNSA and its much bigger brother DoD care about far more is pit production, and plutonium oxidation for disposal strongly competes with that production for scarce space in PF-4. Because pit production has already been proclaimed to take precedence over the surplus plutonium mission at LANL, this whole process has something of the look and smell of a red herring.

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