The public comment period closed Tuesday evening on an expansive new set of rules governing federal cleanup of legacy defense nuclear waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
The draft revised consent order between the Energy Department and the state of New Mexico would amend a 2005 agreement that remains in force until DOE and the state formalize the state-authored changes.
The biggest change the state proposes is the so-called campaign approach that would require DOE to finish cleaning up certain parts of LANL before moving on to others. Under the current agreement, DOE and its primary cleanup contractor, Los Alamos National Security, are essentially working every cleanup on the site simultaneously.
The time table for finalizing the consent order depends on which, if any, changes New Mexico makes to the draft in response to the public comments.
“We have to finish with the comments and finish analyzing them before we really know what comes next and what the timeline is,” a spokesperson for the New Mexico Environment Department said Tuesday. “We don’t have a calendar with the specific next steps.”
In late March, when the state released the draft revised consent order, Flynn said July 4 would be a “good target” for finalizing the new agreement.
DOE knew it would blow the Dec. 6, 2015 cleanup deadline in the 2005 consent order years before the deadline passed, but early attempts to negotiate a new deadline went off the rails after an improperly sealed barrel of transuranic waste from LANL burst open and leaked radiation at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. in 2014.
DOE settled up with New Mexico over the accident, and an unrelated underground fire at WIPP, in January, to the tune of $74 million.
The nonprofit group Nuclear Watch New Mexico opposes the new draft consent order, while the DOE-chartered, locally staffed Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board supports the new framework.
