“Los Alamos lab’s plutonium modernization funding would climb to $1.56 billion from this year’s $1 billion, a more than 50 percent increase.
Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, expressed concerns about the agency indicating it saw no need to assess expanded pit production itself in the review.
“NNSA’s dubious argument is that it performed the legally required NEPA analysis for expanded plutonium pit production” in past assessments, Coghlan wrote.”
By Scott Wyland, The Santa Fe New Mexican | September 12, 2022 santafenewmexican.com
The federal agency that oversees nuclear weapons will hold two hearings this week to give the public a chance to comment about the first full sitewide environmental review of Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2008.
The National Nuclear Security Administration is conducting the sitewide review of the lab under the National Environmental Protection Act — breaking from its past resistance to doing fresh analysis of possible impacts as the lab gears up to annually produce 30 plutonium bomb pits by 2026.