Federal review clears path for expanded operations at LANL

The Trump administration has approved a sweeping alternative in an environmental review that could expand the footprint of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The lab could add 705,000 square feet of new facilities by 2038 if it follows through with plans outlined in the administration’s recently released environmental impact statement.

“For the foreseeable future,” the National Nuclear Security Administration wrote, it will need to “continue its nuclear weapons, (research and development), surveillance, computational analysis, components manufacturing and nonnuclear aboveground experimentation.

“A curtailment or cessation of these activities would run counter to national security policy as established by Congress and the President.”

NNSA, a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy, owns the lab and contracts operations to Triad National Security LLC, a consortium of Battelle Memorial Institute, the University of California and the Texas A&M University System.

In January, the NNSA presented the public an opportunity to comment on three alternatives for the lab’s continued operations through 2038. On Wednesday, the agency announced in a record of decision it had selected the most expansive — and some say disruptive — of them.

Under the no-action alternative, NNSA would have continued current operations at the lab, including deactivation and decommissioning, cleanup of legacy waste and environmental remediation. A second option — the modernized operations alternative — included those activities plus modernization, upgrades and replacement of facilities.

But NNSA selected the expanded-operations alternative, which includes all the actions proposed under the other two alternatives, “plus actions that would expand operations and missions to respond to future national security challenges and meet increasing requirements.”

The NNSA said the expanded-operations alternative “will enable LANL to undertake the construction and operation of new facilities designed to expand LANL’s existing capabilities.”

“Some of the activities included in the Expanded Operations Alternative include construction and operation of an additional supercomputing complex and a new X-ray-free electron laser facility, which will complement the capabilities of the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center,” the agency said.

The lab — which occupies 40 square miles on the eastern flank of the Jemez Mountains along the Pajarito Plateau, near several pueblos — has already seen its budget doubled to $4 billion since the last time it underwent an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act. That was in 2008, and the lab employed 13,500 people. Now it has a workforce of 16,000, including federal employees, contractors and subcontractors — and a renewed mission to increase production of plutonium pits for nuclear weapons.

The recently approved alternative also includes plans for expanded production of plutonium pits — the bowling-ball-sized spherical shells of the radioactive element that serve as the core of nuclear weapons. The Trump administration has previously announced plans to increase pit production in Los Alamos.

“Although most operations associated with the Expanded Operations Alternative would be similar to existing operations at LANL, there would be notable increases to annual electricity and water requirements,” the environmental impact statement says. “Several proposed facilities would involve nuclear material operations that could increase radiological air emissions, radiological waste quantities, worker and public radiological doses, and hazards at LANL.”

Toni Chiri, public affairs specialist at the NNSA Los Alamos Field Office, said there were “no specific timelines for new projects at the moment.”

Nuclear Watch New Mexico has successfully sued the NNSA, alleging NEPA violations at the lab. The nonprofit was critical of the lab’s decision on its latest NEPA review to expand operations.

“LANL’s budget for nuclear weapons programs has already more than doubled in the last decade,” the group said in a statement. “ … In addition, nearly all of the lab’s remaining programs either directly or indirectly support those nuclear weapons programs. Cleanup and nonproliferation programs are being cut…”

Brandon Williams, the undersecretary for nuclear security at the DOE and administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, in a record of decision signed March 17, said the expanded-action alternative, when compared to a no-action alternative, would increase the generation of transuranic waste by 1%; low-level radioactive waste would increase by 16%; and hazardous waste by 10%. The alternative would also increase radiation doses to transportation workers and the populations that live along roads where radioactive waste is routed.

“Potential doses to the public and workers would be well below regulatory limits,” Williams said in his decision.

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., in a March 6 interview with the Journal answered questions about expanded pit production at LANL.

“My concern is just to make sure that we’re always putting that workforce first,” Heinrich said. “So we should move quickly but it should be limited by exactly what we can do safely with that workforce. I think we should lead with safety.”

Asked whether the lab can meet expanded pit production targets, Heinrich said, “LANL’s doing better than anyone else in the world.”

“They’re the only guys who really figured this out,” he said. “So they are the strongest card that we have to play to make sure that we have a stockpile that is absolutely safe, secure and reliable.”

State Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, called the potential expansion "a very good thing potentially for northern New Mexico and even the state because frankly the budget would expand commensurate with the expansion of these various activities, which means more jobs, more tax revenue and, if construction is involved, there's tax revenue in that."

However, Chandler added that she has concerns about the lab's footprint, namely its water and power use, as well as the strain more lab employees put on housing supply in the landlocked community, which is surrounded by federal and tribal lands. She said she is also worried about "the environmental impacts associated with generating more waste and the like."

"The lab does not have a history of being in my opinion very responsible; they've been very slow in getting the legacy waste at the lab down to WIPP," she said of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad.

Justin Horwath covers tech and energy for the Journal. He can be reached at jhorwath@abqjournal.com.