Los Alamos National Laboratory set to start venting containers of radioactive gas Saturday

After years of pushback from advocacy groups, small amounts of radioactive gas can be released into the air as early as Saturday from waste containers stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The goal is to move the four containers to a different location for permanent disposal. But there’s pressure building in them and a risk for a flammable, pressurized mix of hydrogen and oxygen within them. If too much pressure builds up, there could be an uncontrolled release of the radioactive gas.

That risk of an uncontrolled release is why the New Mexico Environment Department approved a request from the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration Los Alamos Field Office and Triad National Security LLC to vent the containers, and potentially release tritium gas into New Mexico’s air.

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen gas. It rarely occurs naturally on Earth and is a key component in nuclear weapons. It can also be in the form of tritium oxide, also called tritiated water.

Although NMED approved the release, state Environment Secretary James Kenney was critical of hazardous waste handling at Los Alamos.

“The primary reason the permittees requested a temporary authorization stems from the permittees’ failure to properly manage hazardous waste at the time of generation,” Kenney wrote in his approval letter.

The four waste containers were packaged in 2007.

NNSA and Los Alamos National Laboratory will start depressurizing the containers on Saturday. The depressurizing is scheduled to take place over a two-week period and avoids feast days of neighboring pueblos. The timeframe also takes into account weather conditions, according to a notification from NNSA.

“We’re pleased to be on our way to successfully completing this project and addressing this safety issue,” said Toni Chiri, spokeswoman for the NNSA Los Alamos Field Office.

NMED had an outside expert check the release plan to make sure it was sound, said Hazardous Waste Bureau Chief JohnDavid Nance. The process includes ways to capture and filter out the tritium molecules as the containers are vented. The tritium could be in the form of gas or water vapor.

Only one container at a time will be vented, according to a Los Alamos National Laboratory guide on the containers.

NMED staff will be at air monitoring stations during the release, and collecting samples to confirm if any tritium is released into the air and at what concentration, Nance said. The Environmental Protection Agency will also be on-site doing risk modeling with real-time data.

Several advocacy groups are strongly opposed to venting the containers.

“The violence of building the world’s most destructive weapons in our backyard has desecrated our lands, our waters, and our Indigenous land-based spirituality and traditions since the Manhattan Project,” Kathy Sanchez with Tewa Women United said in a statement. “That violence continues today with projects like tritium venting, plutonium pit expansion, the Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade transmission line project, and the increasing risks from piling up radioactive waste.”

One concern advocacy groups like Tewa Women United have pointed to is that tritium exposure could pose more risk to vulnerable populations like children, the elderly and pregnant women.

In response to that concern, NMED required a lower maximum level of tritium release than the Energy Department originally asked for.

A millirem is a measure of radiation dose. In the U.S., the average person is exposed to approximately 620 millirem per year, according to an Environmental Protection Agency radiation calculator.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is allowed to release a maximum of 10 millirem in a calendar year. DOE asked for approval to release between 0 millirem and 8 millirem when venting the tritium containers. NMED set the maximum allowed release to 6 millirem.

In the approval letter, Kenney also criticized DOE, NNSA and Triad for a “failure to meaningfully engage with concerned individuals.” Much of the feedback NMED received from the public was that they had trouble making comments during a public meeting on the release, Nance said.

The NMED approval requires the agencies to meet with the public after the tritium containers are vented.