The Santa Fe City Council is urging the U.S. Energy Department and New Mexico Environment Department to “strengthen” a 2016 consent order governing cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and also suspend any expanded plutonium pit production at the site “until safety issues are resolved.”
The resolution, passed Oct. 25, calls for additional characterization of legacy nuclear wastes, increased cleanup funding, and more safety training at LANL. It says the nuclear weapons lab received a poor grade in nuclear criticality safety in 2016 from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The resolution cites safety problems ranging from the criticality level inside a glove box to the radiation release from a LANL-origin waste container inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2014.
There were two contamination incidents reported in September involving workers at LANL carrying out tasks with a glove box, which is a sealed chamber where properly shielded technicians can handle fissile material.
The nongovernmental Nuclear Watch New Mexico, which has criticized the August 2016 consent agreement as being too weak to begin with, said in a news release it hopes other local governments will pass similar resolutions. Santa Fe is a member of the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities. Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales is chairman of the regional board.
The 2016 consent decree revised a predecessor agreement from 2005 and reduced emphasis on hard deadlines for cleanup in favor of remediation “campaigns.”
“We do agree that there is a need for increased federal cleanup dollars at LANL,” said NMED spokesperson Allison Scott Majure. “The 2016 Consent Order, serves as a stronger tool for substantiating federal budget requests for greater cleanup funds by demonstrating tangible, measurable performance that is organized by achievable annual cleanup campaigns,” Majure said in an email.
NMED does not have jurisdiction over DOE pit production, Majure noted. That aspect of the lab’s work is managed under the auspices of DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
A DOE spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
