By Michael Coleman and John Fleck

From the Albuquerque Journal

WASHINGTON — U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu offered scant hope for a stalled plutonium project at Los Alamos National Laboratory on Thursday, but he did offer some encouragement for those who want to store additional nuclear waste near Carlsbad.

Chu told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the Department of Energy decided to abandon — at least for now — a planned LANL plutonium lab because of budget constraints. However, he said design work at the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility will continue until it is 90 percent complete.

“That’s very prudent because for a number of reasons, before you start construction it is best to have most of it designed,” Chu said at the hearing to examine President Barack Obama’s 2013 DOE budget.

Press Conference Advisory:  Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9:15 am

Rotunda, Roundhouse at the corner of Old Santa Fe Trail and Paseo de Peralta 

  

Topic: Map Documenting Community Water Concerns to be Released as Part of Legislative Day for People of Faith Concerned about Clean Air, Water and Earth 

  

Contact: Joan Brown, Partnership for Earth Spirituality

              505-266-6966 (Albuquerque), joankansas@swcp.com 

               Joni Arends, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety 

              505-986-1973 (Santa Fe), jarends@nuclearactive.org 

            

A map documenting community and people of faith concerns for water will be released Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9:15 in the Rotunda of the State Capitol. The document release is part of a Legislative Day for People of Faith Concerned for Water, Land, Air and People. The project was initiated by people of faith and communities concerned about water and funded by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy – Northeast Community. 

A new agreement between the state Environment Department and Los Alamos National Laboratory would accelerate shipments of radioactive waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad (pictured)—but would also leave more than half the waste on the hill indefinitely.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is trumpeting a new radioactive waste cleanup agreement that would allow it to leave half of its radioactive waste in place indefinitely—and defy federal environmental protection guidelines.

Nov. 25, 2011

From The Republic

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Los Alamos National Laboratory is asking the state of New Mexico for more time to meet some mandated cleanup milestones as it faces shifting priorities and uncertainty about its environmental cleanup budget.

The northern New Mexico lab would be able to speed up the shipment of radioactive waste from lab property to a permanent disposal site if allowed to shift resources to higher priority work, George Rael, head of environmental management for the federal government's Los Alamos Site Office told the Albuquerque Journal (http://bit.ly/v5Ystc ).

The changes in lab cleanup priorities come amid discussion among the state, the lab and members of the public regarding the lab's 2005 agreement on environmental cleanup milestones.

Nov. 11, 2011

By Annette Cary
From the Tri-City Herald

Hanford official Joe Franco has been named to lead the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for the Department of Energy.

Franco, the DOE assistant manager for the Hanford river corridor, will become manager for the DOE Carlsbad Field Office.

The office oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, the nation's repository for transuranic waste generated during the research and production of nuclear weapons. It's where Hanford's transuranic waste, typically debris contaminated with plutonium, is sent for disposal in rooms mined out of an ancient salt formation 2,150 feet below ground.

Oct 11, 2011

By John Fleck

From the Albuquerque Journal

Cutting the federal budget seems all the rage in political circles these days.

The problem, as is becoming increasingly obvious, is that all that money is currently going to someone. Those people very much seem to want to continue to receive it or, if possible, get more.

As an example, consider the tug of war over money the Department of Energy is spending in southeastern New Mexico to dispose of its backlog of radioactive waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad.

Congressional budget cutters have proposed modest spending reductions. The project’s defenders have gone into hyperdrive.

ANA thanks the Santa Fe Reporter for their excellent feature article on toxic waste coming from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The following article quotes several ANA members and asks "Why are we expanding weapons production and cutting corners on environmental protection?"

Nov. 2, 2011

By Wren Abbott
From the Santa Fe Reporter

In the summer of 2010, an excavator lifted a 1940s-era radiation protection suit from a pit in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Technical Area 21. With it came two pickup trucks of the same vintage—one of which may have been involved in the famous Trinity nuclear test near White Sands—and a 30-foot-tall chemical mixing tank.

The successful excavation of Material Disposal Area B, the lab’s oldest waste site, disproved a commonly held belief: that comprehensive cleanup of radioactive waste at the lab was cost-prohibitive, if not impossible. The project cleared a 200,000 square foot area and removed 750,000 cubic feet of toxic waste that had lain dormant since World War II. It cost $110 million—a modest sum for a facility with an approximately $2 billion budget.

Unfortunately, Area B is one of 24 waste sites at LANL, which in 1944 started burying everything from uranium chips to contaminated dump trucks in unlined pits. More than half of the lab’s estimated 17 million cubic feet of remaining waste lies in Area G—the only disposal site where LANL continues to dump, and one it seeks to expand. Though Area G’s fate has been bandied about for decades, it has now reached a critical turning point.