New Mexico is going after the federal government over hazardous waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory, warning that delayed cleanup efforts are increasing environmental risks.
What's happening?
The New Mexico Environment Department recently announced enforcement actions against the United States Department of Energy, including up to $16 million in civil penalties for violating groundwater safety standards near Los Alamos, where the atomic bomb was first created, according to The New York Times.
State regulators said that years of missed cleanup deadlines for the toxic by-products from the Cold War era are increasing the risks of nuclear contamination. With the recent expiration of the nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, production could ramp up again before the existing waste is taken care of.
"The continued presence of a large volume of unremedied hazardous and radioactive waste demonstrates a longstanding lack of urgency by the U.S. Department of Energy," regulators wrote in a statement, reported the Times.
Why is nuclear waste concerning?
The dispute highlights tensions surrounding nuclear power. On one hand, nuclear technology can produce large amounts of low-pollution electricity. On the other hand, it also generates long-lived radioactive waste that creates environmental and public health risks if not properly contained — and the Department of Energy doesn't yet have a disposal facility.
Contamination concerns in New Mexico go back decades. Waste was buried in unlined landfills and septic systems, and between 1956 and 1972, water containing hexavalent chromium — a carcinogenic heavy metal — was released into a nearby canyon. The chemical was later detected in the regional aquifer and in groundwater beneath San Ildefonso Pueblo, at levels up to 140% above state standards.
What's being done about New Mexico's legacy nuclear waste?
Los Alamos is now central to efforts to produce plutonium bomb cores and modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This is creating new waste on top of accepting waste from other states, without taking care of the roughly 500,000 cubic meters of legacy waste already on the land. Federal funding for cleanup has been cut as well, so progress is slow.
That's why the state is demanding more progress in cleaning up the existing nuclear waste problem. New Mexico's Environment Department is also demanding documentation of why cleanups have been deferred.
Jessica Kunkle, who oversees environmental management at Los Alamos, has said legacy waste is a priority, noting recent efforts to dig up and remove 158 metal pipes full of radioactive waste that were dumped in a landfill in the mid-1980s. The U.S. has also taken controversial steps to recycle some of the Cold War-era plutonium.
Meanwhile, the federal agency has said it remains "committed to public safety, efficiency, and transparency," per the Times, and is reviewing the enforcement actions from New Mexico.
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