The advocacy group Nuclear Watch New Mexico slammed the state’s new rules for cleanup of legacy nuclear waste at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory Wednesday in a long-telegraphed dressing down of the revised consent order between DOE and Sante Fe.
“The new Consent Order is a giveaway to the Department of Energy and the Lab, surrendering the strong enforceability of the old Consent Order,” the Albuquerque, N.M.-based group wrote in a press release emailed late Wednedsay.
New Mexico released its final revised consent order late Friday.
NukeWatch, as the group is known, called the revision “clearly the opposite of the old Consent Order, whose underlying intent was to make DOE and LANL get more money from Congress for accelerated cleanup. In contrast, the new Consent Order allows them to get out of future cleanup by simply claiming that it’s too expensive or impractical to clean up.”
The centerpiece of the new consent order is the so-called campaign approach to cleanup, in which DOE and the state identify between 10 and 20 cleanup milestones for each year covered by the document. Remaining LANL cleanup will take about 19 years, DOE and the state agree. The department thinks the cleanup will cost about $4 billion over that time, while the state believes the price tag is closer to $5 billion.
The new agreement contains both enforceable milestones and unenforceable targets, which the state said will be updated yearly. New Mexico may waive any financial penalties it wishes for breaches of the agreement, according to the new consent order.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico Environment Department did not reply to a request for comment Wednesday, nor to multiple requests for comment about the new consent order this week.
NukeWatch is suing DOE and LANL prime contractor Los Alamos National Security in federal court for $300 million in damages the watchdog says the state is entitled to, under the old consent order. New Mexico joined the suit last week on the side of the defendants.
New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn, who has defended the new consent order steadfastly since before it went out for public comment in draft form on March 31, has called the NukeWatch suit “frivolous.”
