Surveillance groups want the Biden government to reconsider a U.S. agency’s decision not to conduct a broader environmental review related to the production of plutonium cores used in the country’s nuclear arsenal.
The renewed order comes when federal facilities in New Mexico and South Carolina face a deadline to make 80 cores a year by 2030, with the first 30 due in five years.
With jobs and billions of dollars in spending at stake, the effort to modernize the country’s nuclear arsenal has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress over the years, especially among Democrats in New Mexico, whose districts are expected to benefit from unexpected economic gains. . The Biden government acted quickly to reverse some Trump administration policies, but has not yet said whether it plans to move forward with the production of more plutonium cores. He says the work is being revised.
Nuclear Watch, New Mexico, SRS Watch, South Carolina, and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, California, sent a letter to the United States Department of Energy last week, requesting a rigorous review before the production increased at Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico and the Savannah River site near Aiken, South Carolina.
The groups cited provisions of the National Environmental Policy Law, or NEPA, saying that the production of the plutonium core would significantly increase the amount of radioactive and toxic waste generated in the two locations and that the collective environmental effects need to be considered.
“We are hopeful that a review of programs with significant environmental impacts under NEPA will return to normal with the new presidential administration,” said Leslie Lenhardt, a lawyer for the South Carolina Environmental Bill, who is representing the groups.
The nuclear safety agency said in an email to The Associated Press that the issues raised by the groups were considered during previous public participation opportunities.
The agency chose last fall to prepare a supplementary analysis of an environmental review carried out for Los Alamos more than a decade ago, despite criticism that the increase in production in the laboratory goes beyond initial plans and should be reexamined. A separate review was done for Savannah River.
National Nuclear Security Administration spokeswoman Ana Gamonal de Navarro said the decisions were consistent with the agency’s legal obligations and that there was no guidance for revisiting the decisions during the presidential transition.
But she also noted that it is common for programs and activities to be reviewed under new leadership.
“NNSA’s approach to producing plutonium wells will be included in this review process,” she said. “Until such a review is completed, NNSA will continue with its current timeline and overall mine production strategy.”
United States Senator Ben Ray Lujan and US Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez, both Democrats from New Mexico, did not answer questions about whether they would support a broader environmental review for the planned work in Los Alamos.
The city of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County in January passed resolutions seeking further studies.
Surveillance groups have raised concerns about contamination if new plutonium warhead factories are established in New Mexico and South Carolina that resemble the Colorado Flats facility in Colorado, which had a long history of leaks, fires and environmental violations and needed of a $ 7 billion cleanup that took years to complete.
The mission to produce the plutonium cores started in Rocky Flats in the 1950s and was finally transferred to Los Alamos in the late 1990s. Pursued by security concerns and concerns about lack of responsibility, production in Los Alamos happened by leaps and bounds and ravines over the years. It was sometimes closed and only a few prototypes were made in fiscal year 2019.
The cost of the work also generated criticism. A 2019 analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that expanded mine production plans could cost up to $ 9 billion over the next decade, but that the estimate was very uncertain. The Government Accountability Office pointed last year to the National Nuclear Security Administration and independent studies that cast doubt on the agency’s ability to prepare the two planned factories on time.