Early in-person voting started last week and runs through May 29, for the June 1 special election in New Mexico’s Congressional District 1, which is home to the Sandia National Laboratories.
The seat was vacated by Rep. Debra Haaland (D), she was confirmed as the Joe Biden administration’s secretary of interior on March 16.
The special election pits state Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat, against state Sen. Mark Moores, a Republican, as well as Libertarian Christopher Manning and Independent Aubrey Dunn, according to the Ballotpedia website.
Both Stansbury and Moores were nominated in their parties’ respective conventions during March.
Stansbury is a one-time consultant to Sandia National Laboratories and was a congressional staffer for the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources between 2015 and 2017, according to her LinkedIn biography. Moores is a former chief of staff for a former New Mexico lieutenant governor, Walter Dwight Bradley and is a former executive director of the New Mexico Dental Association, according to an online biography.
Biden carried this congressional district in November with 60% of the vote. The district has not elected a Republican to Congress since then-Rep. Heather Wilson gave up the seat in 2008 to make an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate. Wilson later served for two years as President Donald Trump’s undersecretary of the Air Force, according to Ballotpedia.
The National Academies of Science are putting together a panel of experts to look at the thoroughness and technical quality of a recent analysis done by the Department of Energy national laboratories on supplemental treatment options for low-activity tank waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Nominations are due by May 21 via this link. About 14 volunteer experts are sought to be part of this National Academies-backed research into grouting and other technology called for in the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal 2021. Questions can be emailed to Charles Ferguson at [email protected].
This new committee of experts will evidently pick up where a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel left off last year.
Over the course of about two years, the committee will generate three review reports on options for the low-activity waste (LAW), which cannot be turned into glass at the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel.
Low-activity waste accounts for about 90% of the 56 million gallons of tank waste left over from decades of plutonium production at Hanford. But the Waste Treatment Plant only has enough capacity to handle about half of the LAW.
The prior National Academies of Sciences panel, in a congressional-mandated follow-up to research by the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, last year said vitrification, grouting, and steam reforming are all technically feasible for the supplemental waste — although vitrification into glass is the most expensive of the three. The last National Academies committee, however, did not select a preferred choice. It called for more study into that issue using the Savannah River lab research as the starting point.
