The Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Wednesday released its final site-wide environmental impact statement and its record of decision to implement an “expanded operations alternative” at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
“Expanded operations” means exactly what it sounds like: all activities at Los Alamos will continue as they are, but the lab would work to increase capabilities “beyond those that currently exist” with construction of new facilities “to respond to future national security challenges,” the agency said.
“LANL is critical to the Stockpile Stewardship/Weapons mission; Global Security Program; and the Nation’s excellence in science, technology, and engineering,” the record of decision said. “NNSA has concluded that the Expanded Operations Alternative would best fulfill its statutory missions and responsibilities. Therefore, NNSA has decided to fully implement the Expanded Operations Alternative.”
Some of the expanded operations will include construction and operation of another supercomputing complex and a new electron laser facility to work with the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, the agency’s press release said.
A site-wide environmental impact statement, or SWEIS, is a requirement of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to review the environmental effects of continued operations at the lab through 2038. Last year, the DOE and NNSA gave a 60-day public comment period as part of the SWEIS process for any affected parties and the general public to weigh in on the impacts of the lab’s operations.
The SWEIS discussed three alternatives: no action, modernized operations, and expanded operations. “No action” would mean operations would continue at Los Alamos as they are, including legacy cleanup, environmental remediation, decontamination, decommissioning, and demolition. “Modernized operations” would have meant continuing operations and upgrading existing facilities and infrastructure while constructing replacement facilities.
“The United States already has a reliable, extensively tested nuclear weapons stockpile that can end human civilization overnight,” Jay Coghlan, director of the citizen group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said in a statement. “These exorbitant sums for the production of new-design nuclear weapons will just push us deeper into the new, increasingly dangerous nuclear arms race. LANL should be cleaning up instead of building up nuclear weapons. That would be a real win-win for New Mexicans, permanently protecting our irreplaceable groundwater while providing hundreds of high paying jobs.”
Dylan Spaulding, senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in his own statement that “NNSA has made clear that it is prioritizing the creation of a new parking lot, for example, over safeguarding the cultural heritage sites of local Pueblo peoples.”
“UCS has previously called for meaningful consideration and integration of Pueblos’ concerns into the laboratory’s plans, particularly around environmental justice issues,” Spaulding continued. “Not only were environmental justice topics removed from the plan due to a federal executive order, but as many as 33 cultural heritage sites could be impacted to make way for new construction.”
The statement also pointed out that in May, NNSA is supposed to release a programmatic environmental impact statement for pit production, after a 2024 settlement on a case that found NNSA and DOE did not follow NEPA guidelines in reviewing the environmental impacts of plutonium pit production, or the fissile cores of a nuclear weapon, at Savannah River Site and Los Alamos National Laboratory.