Local officials this week voted to express formal concerns about the Department of Energy’s plan to ship weapon-usable plutonium through the Santa Fe, New Mexico area as part of long-planned materials-disposal effort.
On Tuesday, all five Santa Fe county commissioners approved comments to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) about the agency’s Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program, which aims to bury 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeast New Mexico after processing much of the material at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico.
The commissioners said Tuesday that the program could drive up housing prices and affect traffic in their area, among other things.
Beginning in early 2023, the NNSA planned to accept public comment on the draft environmental impact statement, published in December, about the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program.
“They [the federal agency] will be in town on Jan. 26, holding a public hearing, but unfortunately, they are only holding it in Los Alamos and I find that really challenging for my constituents to have to drive up that hill at the end of January,” Commission Anna Hansen (D) said during the meeting.
The NNSA also planned to host public meetings about the draft environmental impact statement near the Savannah River Site, and WIPP.
The environmental review is a legal requirement the agency must fulfill before moving ahead with the long-contemplated plan of producing plutonium oxides at Los Alamos that would be shipped to the Savannah River Site to be mixed with a concrete-like grout formerly called stardust before getting trucked back to New Mexico for final disposal deep underground at WIPP.
“It is unfortunate that the meetings are not being held in our community.” Commissioner Camilla Bustamante (D) said at Tuesday’s meeting, which was webcast, recorded and posted to Facebook.
“There are gives and takes for what we see at Los Alamos,” Bustamante said earlier in the meeting.
