High-level Radioactive Waste Archives

Keeping a (Nuke)Watchful Eye on Consolidated Interim Storage: No High-Level Waste To New Mexico

Sophia MerynJune 29, 2024July 8, 2024Environmental Impact, Environmental Justice, High-level Radioactive Waste, Holtec, New Mexico, Nuclear Policy, Nuclear Waste, WIPP

If you follow news on nuclear waste, you know that the federal government is required by law to have a permanent disposal plan for our nation’s nuclear waste before engaging in temporary storage, or “consolidated interim storage” for commercial spent nuclear fuel. There are currently about 86,000 metric tons of this fuel in the U.S., stored on-site at operating or shutdown nuclear power plants in 33 states, an amount that continues to grow by about 2,000 metric tons a year (GAO). This is waste generated by nuclear power plants called ‘high-level radioactive waste’ (HLW), also known as ‘spent’ or ‘irradiated’ fuel. This waste contains plutonium, uranium, strontium, and cesium; it is most toxic and dangerous type of radioactive waste created by the nuclear industry and will be radioactive for millions of years.

Two private companies “Holtec” and “Interim Storage Partners” are proposing to build and operate facilities for HLW called “Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities (CISF)” in New Mexico and Texas. While federal law requires the government to have a permanent disposal solution, it does not explicitly prevent private entities from offering interim storage solutions. Enter money-gobbling Holtec and ISP.

Your NukeWatch NM Team in DC!

Sophia MerynMay 31, 2024June 4, 2024Archbishop, Armed Services Committee, Budget, CBO, Downwinders, Environmental Justice, High-level Radioactive Waste, LANL Cleanup, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., Nuclear Weapons, Plutonium Pit Production, RECA, WIPP

Your Nuclear Watch New Mexico team has just returned from a weeklong trip to Washington D.C. (we went so you don’t have to!). We proudly joined the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) in their annual “DC Days” conference and following Spring Meeting, where over 60 individuals from 30+ groups journeyed to DC to lobby congress on nuclear weapons, energy, and waste policy on behalf of the frontline nuclear communities we represent. From across the U.S. near nuclear complex sites in Georgia, New Mexico, Tennessee, California, Missouri, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan and beyond, members were present from the following groups: Beyond Nuclear, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Parents Against Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Peaceworks Kansas City, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles & Wisconsin, Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center, Snake River Alliance, Southwest Research and Information Center, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. There were also a number of individual attendants participating from groups not currently affiliated with ANA as official members, notably more than previous years, which lends optimism for the potential growth of DC Days and ANA as a whole.

A Note on the Value of Site-Wide EISs in Midst of Texas Wildfires Updates

Sophia MerynFebruary 27, 2024March 3, 2024Climate Change, Environmental Impact, High-level Radioactive Waste, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., Pantex Plant

By Jay Coghlan

Texas wildfires live updates: Blaze grows to 500k acres, leading to power outages, evacuations across the map nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/texas-wildfires-live-updates-huge-blaze-covers-300000-acres-forcing-ev

The 2000 Cerro Grande Fire burned 3,500 acres of Los Alamos National Lab property and more than 250 homes in the Los Alamos townsite (I could see the bursts of propane tanks from my house 25 miles away).

It would have been worse except for a 1999 LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) which postulated a hypothetical wildfire that eerily matched the real fire. That hypothetical fire was in the final SWEIS only because citizens (i.e. me) pointed out that DOE did not consider wildfire risk in the draft SWEIS.

Nuclear Weapons Issues & The Accelerating Arms Race: February 2024

Sophia MerynFebruary 15, 2024March 3, 2024FY 2023 Budget, FY 2024 Budget, High-level Radioactive Waste, Holtec, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., Modernization, New Mexico, Pit Production, Pit Production at LANL, Pit Production at SRS

FEDERAL BUDGET NEWS

Release of federal FY 2025 budget expected March 11 (it will initially be just topline numbers).

Meanwhile on the FY 2024 budget: House and Senate Armed Services Committee authorized funding exceeding Biden’s request, including money for the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile and nuclear warhead (reminder: that the President doesn’t want), plus adding $$ for plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site. But appropriations bills are still not happening because of ever increasing congressional dysfunction. This is now best exemplified by Republicans rejecting an immigration bill they initially drafted but that Trump denounced because he wanted immigration to remain a hot issue during the presidential election campaign.

The current second “laddered” Continuing Resolution that is keeping the government running expires March 1 and 8.

Los Alamos Lab’s Future at a Crossroads: Cleanup or More Nuclear Weapons? NukeWatch Applauds NM State Rejection of Fake Cleanup

Sophia MerynSeptember 18, 2023March 3, 2024DOE, GAO, High-level Radioactive Waste, LANL Cleanup, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., New Mexico, NMED, Nuclear Waste, Nuclear Weapons, Pit Production at LANL

Santa Fe, NM – In an important win for genuine cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) has rejected the Lab’s plans for so-called cleanup through “cap and cover.” LANL’s plan would leave existing radioactive and toxic wastes uncharacterized and forever buried in unlined pits and trenches as a permanent threat to groundwater. At issue is remediation of the Lab’s “Material Disposal Area C” waste dump that has 7 pits and 108 shafts of radioactive and toxic wastes. Area C is located in the heart of nuclear weapons production at LANL, contiguous to the Lab’s main plutonium facility which is expanding production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores.

In a September 7, 2023 “Public Notice of Statement of Basis,” the Environment Department ruled:

“For maximum protection of human health and the environment and to ensure that the drinking water resource can be conservatively protected, NMED has determined that the selected [cleanup] remedy for MDA C must consist of waste excavation, characterization, and appropriate disposal of the buried waste… Excavation will ensure that the source of contamination at MDA C is removed…”

FULL PRESS RELEASE [PDF]

THE FUTURE OF WIPP: PLUTONIUM BOMB WASTE

Sophia MerynFebruary 28, 2023December 11, 2023High-level Radioactive Waste, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., New Mexico, Nuclear Waste, Plutonium, Plutonium Pit Production, WIPP

NNSA’s mission is plutonium pit production…for the next 30 years and beyond.

NNSA HAS STATED CLEARLY: “WIPP IS ESSENTIAL FOR PIT PRODUCTION UNTIL 2080.”

As you can see clearly in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s chart above, NNSA is getting ready to dump radioactive wastes from plutonium pit production at WIPP for the next 30 years.

Waste from expanded pit production will soon far outweigh cleanup wastes.

Despite being located in New Mexico, out-of-state sites have been given priority over radioactive wastes from Los Alamos Lab.

ALL FUTURE PIT PRODUCTION is for speculative new designs that can’t be tested because of the international testing moratorium, thereby perhaps eroding confifidence in the stockpile. Or, alternatively, these new designs could push the U.S. into resuming testing, which would have severe proliferation consequences.

Pit production will add an estimated 57,550 cubic meters of radioactive plutonium wastes over 50 years, more than half of WIPP’s projected future capacity. The National Academy of Sciences has already concluded that WIPP doesn’t have sufficient capacity for all of DOE’s planned radioactive wastes.

VIEW OUR FULL WIPP FACT SHEET (FEBRUARY 2023)

Energy Dept. Nearly Triples Funding for Plutonium Pit Production, Cuts Cleanup in Half – But Refuses to Complete New Env. Impact Statement for Los Alamos Lab

Sophia MerynMarch 10, 2020November 9, 2020DOE, FY 2021 Budget, High-level Radioactive Waste, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., NNSA, Nuclear Waste, Nuclear Weapons, Pit Production at LANL, Plutonium, Plutonium Pit Production, Trump Administration, WIPP

The 2011 Las Conchas fire threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory. CREDIT: Brian Klieson.

Santa Fe, NM – Today the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), announced that it will not complete a new site-wide environmental impact statement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The last site-wide environmental impact statement was in 2008.

Since that time a catastrophic wildfire burned to the western boundary of the Lab (likely to occur more frequently with climate change); an exploding radioactive waste drum improperly prepared by LANL shut down the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for three years, costing taxpayers ~$3 billion to reopen; the full extent and depth of a hexavalent chromium plume contaminating the regional groundwater is still not fully determined; and LANL’s long track record of chronic nuclear safety incidences remain unresolved.

New Estimate ($377B) Raises Cost of Cold War Cleanup (Again)

Scott KovacJanuary 30, 2019January 31, 2019DOE, Environmental Impact, High-level Radioactive Waste, Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab, Nuclear Waste

EM site map GAO 2019 — Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) Sites Where Cleanup Remains

At some point, DOE will have to admit that it has no idea what it will cost to cleanup the Cold War nuclear weapons complex sites. DOE should stop making more wastes until the existing wastes are remediated. The new estimate is more that twice the amount that has been spent in total since cleanup began in 1989, with the most difficult sites still to come.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – Clean Up, Don’t Build Up!

The thing is that the new $377 billion estimate includes leaving much of the waste behind.

Program-Wide Strategy and Better Reporting Needed to Address Growing Environmental Cleanup Liability GAO-19-28: Published: Jan 29, 2019. Publicly Released: Jan 29, 2019.

The Department of Energy is tasked with cleaning up waste from Cold War nuclear weapons production, much of which is hazardous or radioactive. The department’s Office of Environmental Management estimates that future work could cost at least $377 billion—$109 billion more than last year’s estimate.

Principles for Safe Management and Geological Isolation of Irradiated Nuclear Fuel

Sophia MerynJuly 24, 2018December 11, 2023High-level Radioactive Waste

Summary: The environmental risks posed by irradiated fuel are extreme: As observed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, it has “the capacity to outlast human civilization as we know it and the potential to devastate public health and the environment.” Nuclear Energy Inst., Inc. v. Envtl. Prot. Agency, 373 F.3d 1251 (D.C. Cir. 2004).If irradiated fuel is dispersed into the environment, its radionuclides are sufficiently toxic to cause irreparable contamination of large areas of land and entire river and lake systems and coastal ecosystems.

The risk of nuclear weapons proliferation posed by irradiated fuel is also significant. Each metric ton of spent fuel typically contains more than one Nagasaki-bomb equivalent of plutonium and, as of 2016, well over 70,000 metric tons had already be been created in the United States by the commercial nuclear power reactors. Spent fuel, storage and/or disposal may pose a risk of theft if it is stored or disposed of in a manner that would allow access in a few hundred years when the fission product radiation barrier would have declined to low levels.