The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to conduct a major environmental review of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is set to become a nerve center and manufacturing satellite for nuclear weapon cores this decade.
The semiautonomous nuclear-weapons agency announced the impending site-wide environmental impact statement in a Federal Register notice set to be published Friday. The agency uploaded a draft of the document on Thursday morning.
The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) review “will analyze the potential environmental impacts of the reasonable alternatives for continuing operations of the Laboratory for approximately the next 15 years,” according to the draft notice. The public will be invited to participate, but only virtually, NNSA said, citing ongoing concerns about COVID-19.
Los Alamos is modifying its PF-4 Plutonium Facility, and associated infrastructure, into a factory to produce plutonium pits, the fissile cores of thermonuclear weapon first stages. The facility is supposed to produce 30 war-usable pits by fiscal year 2026 and multiple war-ready pits in the years prior. A proof-of-concept version of these pits, designed for W87-1 intercontinental ballistic missile warheads, was due in fiscal year 2023, which starts in less than two months.
Anti-nuclear and environmental advocates have called on the NNSA to conduct a full programmatic environmental impact statement for the entire pit program, which besides Los Alamos and a larger factory planned for the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., includes other nuclear-weapon sites and shipping routes. So far, the agency has refused to take that step, saying that prior environmental reviews appropriately considered the environmental effects of a multi-state pit complex.
