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 “red 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.
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, which is comprised of nine cities, counties, and pueblos surrounding Los Alamos. 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.”
DOE and New Mexico spokespersons could not immediately be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
