NNSA Town Hall July 22nd – Hruby: “We have to limit the growth of Los Alamos Laboratory…”

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) Los Alamos Field Office held a Town Hall event hosted by the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and EM on Monday, July 22, in Santa Fe. The Town Hall was led by NNSA’s Jill Hruby and EM’s Senior Advisor Candice Robertson. The intent according the event flier was to “engage with the community, provide updates, and address concerns related to the DOE’s activities and initiatives.”

The public comment period began with Jay Coghlan, executive director of NukeWatch NM, reading aloud a statement from Archbishop John C. Wester to the DOE, NNSA and EM.

“Nuclear disarmament is a right to life issue. No other issue can cause the immediate collapse of civilization. In January 2022 I wrote a pastoral letter in which I traced the Vatican’s evolution from its uneasy conditional acceptance of so-called deterrence to Pope Francis’ declaration that the very possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.  https://archdiosf.org/living-in-the-light-of-christs-peace “Therefore, what does this say about expanded plutonium pit production at the Los Alamos Lab? And what does it say about the obscene amounts of money that are being thrown at pit production, often excused as job creation?

“What does this say about the fact that the [NNSA] is pursuing expanded pit production without providing the public the opportunity to review and comment as required by the National Environmental Policy Act? I specifically call upon NNSA to complete a new LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement.

“I have a simple message for NNSA and the nuclear weapons labs. You’re very good at creating them. Now show us how smart you are by demonstrating how to get rid of nuclear weapons. Stop this new arms race that threatens all of civilization. Let’s preserve humanity’s potential to manifest God’s divine love toward all beings.

Jill Hruby intro:

A lot has changed in the last 15 months. At the highest level Russia continues its full scale invasion of Ukraine including nuclear Saber rattling and the takeover of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. It has violated most nuclear norms and most recently seems to be exploring using nuclear weapons in space. China is projected to have 1500 nuclear warheads by the year 2035 and continue to express an intent to take over Taiwan, their technology advancement is significant, and the combination of China and Russia now means that parity in the number of nuclear weapons doesn’t make any sense. In addition, we have North Korea and Iran that are still players in this world and the cooperation between all of them is also advancing. But what I want to say is despite these advances, we do not want an arms race, this administration doesn’t want a new arms race, the NNSA doesn’t want an arms race. We’re trying to exercise leadership and transparency, but we also can’t sit on our hands, and so we’re trying to find the balance.

There’s been clear statements made by the White House and by the strategic posture Commission, which is a bipartisan committee appointed by Congress, by the Department of Defense, that we must prepare for two nuclear power adversaries within a decade. The nuclear triad remains the cornerstone of our National Defense but we are looking at integrated capabilities, both nuclear and conventional capabilities, for the deterrence of two peer adversaries. NNSA is being asked to do a lot more than we’ve been asked to do for a very long time and we’re modernizing now seven weapons in the next decade for the nuclear triad.

So what does this mean for New Mexico? It means that the labs here, Sandia and Los Alamos, have continued to hire and to grow. Each lab now has a budget of approximately $5 billion and employees over 16,000 people.

These are good paying jobs that are important to people throughout the US but it does bring on new challenges like traffic and other things that I’m sure we’ll talk about tonight. Spending on contracts from the labs in New Mexico alone exceeds $3 billion.

NNSA does not operate WIPP, EM operates WIPP, so I recognize that you’ll have discussion questions about our plan to make 30 plutonium pits per year here at Los Alamos to begin to replace the pits that we stopped making when the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado closed. They made pits from 1952 to 1989, so here in Los Alamos we have the only operating facility capable of handling plutonium and making pits. We are also establishing a capability in South Carolina at our Savannah River Site to make 50 pits per year or more. So in addition to that effort, I just do want to say that Los Alamos is still a research lab it’s not a production lab. The pit activity is a production like activity but we want to limit it, we’re not trying to make it the only mission and that’s why we’re opening a second site for pits.

Candace Robertson intro:

As you know New Mexico is very important to the Department of Energy, we have multiple clean up sites here in New Mexico. The WIPP of course is where all of the transuranic waste goes, but we have other disposal sites around the country for other types of nuclear waste, and Los Alamos cleanup is somewhat unique in that all of the waste is shipped off site one way or another. Most recently 56% of the waste from landfill that’s being shipped out is TRU, and 44% is low level waste or makes a low level waste that gets shipped to other states… It was great to get out to [Los Alamos] and see the significant progress that’s being made. The site is working in five different aggregate areas to protect the groundwater. They’re making significant progress on the 1^st buried waste to be retrieved and size reduced. Most importantly I met many of the workers and every one of them is firmly committed and proud of what they do to protect their families their communities and the citizens of New Mexico.

Jill Hruby response to question about increased traffic and housing needs in Los Alamos:

I accept it as serious issue with the growth of the workforce and the limited housing available on the Mesa itself. We are trying to work with the local area to improve transportation options to widen the geographic area that people could live in. I’m going to be honest about this, this is going to have to be a joint activity, we don’t build housing for our workers – we’re not the Russian Federation where you work in a closed city and you build housing for your workers. We have a different approach so together we need to try to solve this problem so that people can live high quality lives in this area. We do also have to limit the growth of the laboratory, of Los Alamos, it has about peaked maybe “asymptotically.” That is, we’re not we’re not going to continue to grow the lab, they’ll still be hiring and replace people who leave the laboratory, but not to grow the size of the laboratory. So we’re trying to make sure that growth doesn’t just continue forever. Hopefully the housing can catch up, it’s an issue I hear from the workforce as well and we’ll have to try to create opportunities together that will address this issue.

Don Hancock from southwest research and Information Center in Albuquerque asked two questions:
You stated again tonight that you need two sites for Pit production – the same logic would be that you need more than one disposal site for transuranic waste. Yet you’re proceeding only with WIPP at this point so my question is what’s the logic of saying only one repository, reminding you what the National Academy of science has said in 2020 that WIPP is a single point failure risk, so this is a well known thing. Second related question is what are you doing and what can you tell us tonight you’re doing to comply with the WIPP permit provision to report the progress on siting a repository in a state other than New Mexico?

Hruby reply: I follow your logic I do understand that WIPP is a single point of failure and I think the time is coming, maybe a little late here, but that we really do have to look at additional repositories. There’s been some false starts as you well know and so WIPP is hugely important to us, it is a single point of failure it’s absolutely true, we have a lot of single point of failures in our complex and it’s one of them.

Candace reply: This is a perfect example of how your voices absolutely matter, thanks to the input from citizens it’s required that EM include planning for a second repository. So our first annual report on that is due this year and we’re working on making that happen. It’ll be something that we continue to evolve and we really appreciate the clarity with which you guys provided input on what you’d like to see in that report. We’re working towards that but we do believe that there’s sufficient capacity for planned transuranic waste right now but as you noted it is a single point of failure so it’s something that’s worth us continuing to dialogue on and I look forward to talking with you more about as we are developing this report so that we can start that conversation in earnest.

Phenomenal question from Leona Morgan on New Mexico’s nuclear legacy:
I’ve been doing work on mostly uranium and radioactive waste issues for a long time. I’m from the Navajo Nation, right now we’re looking at new uranium development and a lot of this is being pushed by Biden when he promised to triple nuclear energy development by 2050 as a false solution to climate change. We’re dealing with new mining proposals and I just want to look at the full spectrum of nuclear proliferation and how it impacts our state. We’re dealing with several so-called uranium cleanups, mostly cap and cover, and a proposal for a new uranium dump in a community, a diné community. There really are no good solutions when it comes to nuclear waste, we just have bad solutions to all of our various radioactive waste problems – if we don’t have the proper ways to keep this stuff safe, why do we keep making it? I’m wondering, why does the US continue to fund new projects when the legacy, all the stuff from uranium mining to what’s going on now (most of which is the responsibility of the federal government), how can we be funding all of these new things when we haven’t even dealt with the old mess? Why is there so much disparity when it comes to cleanup? When we’re looking at clean up in white communities or more populated communities compared to our indigenous communities and our rural communities? I just also want to make the connection between the DOE and the white Mesa mill, just recently the country of Japan has sent waste to the white Mesa mill which DOE funds studies for. We need to stop accepting wastes from other countries. The DOE, NRC, EPA, and the state of New Mexico agencies must not allow the creation of new wastes and new contaminations from plutonium pits, uranium mining, enrichment, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, all of it, until the federal government has cleaned up its radioactive mess in and beyond this country. We must ensure that the DOE does proper studies and to consult with all the local indigenous leaders as well as the local communities before trying to plan new waste projects including CI CIS and expansions at WIPP.

For more information:

La Jicarita:  The NNSA and DOE get an ear full from the anti-nuke community (July 24, 2024).  https://lajicarita.wordpress.com/2024/07/24/the-nnsa-and-doe-get-an-ear-full-from-the-anti-nuke-community/

Santa Fe Reporter:  Advocates Pass on Plutonium:  New Mexicans speak out against proposed LANL pit production at town hall (July 24, 2024).  https://www.sfreporter.com/news/2024/07/24/advocates-pass-on-plutonium/