For those planning to attend Tuesday’s public hearing of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) to protest — rather than discuss — nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), good news: official DNFSB guidelines for the event permit both costumes and signs, albeit in moderation.
The five-member DNFSB will meet in Santa Fe on Tuesday in a rare public hearing to consider safety concerns at the Department of Energy site’s main nuclear waste dump, Area G.
Evidently, the board is girding itself for a rude welcome.
Official public participant criteria released earlier this month stipulate that people planning to attend the hearing may bring signs no larger than 20 inches on a side, but only if those signs are not attached to poles. Protesters may also wear costumes, but “due to security concerns, costumes may not mask the identity of the individual,” DNFSB said in its participation guidelines. That rules out perennial favorites such as gas masks.
Not ruled out, however, is the possibility that protesters will be corralled into a holding area away from the hearing.
“If needed, the Board will designate a specific area adjacent to the venue to allow active demonstrations or protests,” according to DNFSB’s public participant criteria.
A barrel of improperly sealed transuranic waste — plutonium-contaminated equipment — from Area G was blamed for the February 2014 radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The barrel was packaged by EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City, a subcontractor to LANL prime contractor Los Alamos National Security, a joint venture of Bechtel National, the University of California, BWXT, and AECOM.
WIPP was shut down after the radiation release, which followed an unrelated underground fire, and has been closed to new shipments of transuranic waste ever since. DOE plans to reopen the facility in mid-December.
