The Department of Energy on Friday issued a request for qualifications for developers interested in installing carbon-free electric power projects of 200 megawatts or more at the Idaho National Laboratory.
The request for qualifications is part of DOE’s Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative to tap unused land on Cold War and Manhattan Project sites for renewable power. DOE Office of Nuclear Energy Assistant Secretary Kathryn Huff announced the step in a Friday press release.
Proposals should be filed with DOE by 3 p.m. Mountain Time on April 1, according to the release.
Attorneys for the government and Physicians for Social Responsibility have filed opposing briefs in Washington, D.C.,-based federal court about whether sufficient radioactive contamination remains to justify more environmental review around a wildlife refuge where the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats Nuclear Site once operated,.
The plaintiffs argued in a Feb. 26 filing that the U.S. Department of Transportation and other federal agencies never properly addressed a 2019 soil sample taken in connection with a public road project that showed elevated plutonium contamination. The federal government said the “single elevated sample” is an outlier contradicted by hundreds of others.
The government said in its Feb. 16 motion studies by multiple federal agencies and the state of Colorado showed the so-called “Bill Ray particle,” as it’s referred to in the suit, is an outlier. Furthermore, “In 2006, following a seven-billion-dollar remediation, the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] and the CDPHE [Colorado Department of Health and Environment] declared the cleanup to be complete and no longer a threat to public health.” The case is being heard in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) this week implored fellow lawmakers to renew a program to compensate victims of Manhattan Project-era radiation exposure.
In a letter dated Feb. 26, Hawley asked his Senate colleagues to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which he said is “critical funding,” without which citizens exposed to radioactive materials during and after the last days of World War II “will be denied the compensation they need to treat diseases and cancers caused by the federal government’s nuclear waste.”
Enacted in 1990, RECA is a compensation program for Americans who were unknowingly exposed to radiation during the Manhattan Project and later Cold War nuclear weapon testing programs. A provision to extend the RECA benefits for an additional 19 years was stripped from the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act before that bill passed Congress and was signed into law. Hawley voted against the compromise NDAA for that reason.
Michelle Sandoval, an employee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is again vying to represent New Mexico’s 57th district in the statehouse.
Sandoval, who unsuccessfully ran for the State House seat in 2022, announced another bid for the office as a Democrat on her Facebook page and in the Rio Rancho Observer.
Three years ago, she narrowly lost out to incumbent Jason Harper, a Republican, with 48.2% of the vote to Harper’s 51.8%, a difference of just 428 votes. New Mexico’s 57th district is southern in Sandoval County, a large area that abuts the much smaller Los Alamos County to the northeast. Sandoval lives in Rio Rancho, a suburb of Albuquerque, N.M., which is about an hour and a half south, by car, from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The Los Alamos County Council in New Mexico honored retiring County Manager Steve Lynne during its regular meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 26.
Lynne is retiring Friday March 1, after working for Los Alamos County over 28 years according to a notice on the municipal board’s website. Lynne was deputy county manager in July 2021 when he was elevated to the manager post following retirement of the prior manager, Harry Burgess. “County councilors want to formally recognize his service and thank him for his dedication to the community,” according to a notice honoring Lynne in the agenda for the Tuesday Feb. 27 meeting.
During a December meeting, the council unanimously voted to promote deputy manager Anne Laurent to succeed Lynne. Laurant was picked from a pool of about 30 applicants.Los Alamos county is home to the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.
