Scene from tonight’s town hall at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. Courtesy photo

Speaking at tonight’s town hall, from left, Ike White, Senior Advisor for DOE and EM; Jill Hruby, Under Secretary for Nuclear Security/NNSA Administrator and moderator Anna Hansen, SF County Commission Chair. Courtesy photo

More than 200 people attend a Town Hall this evening at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center in collaboration with Jill Hruby, Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and Ike White, Senior Advisor for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM).

The officials addressed LANL clean up, WIPP, plutonium pit production and transportation of surplus plutonium.

Santa Fe County Commission Chair Anna Hansen moderated the town hall, which included special guests scheduled to be in attendance, Archbishop John C. Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe; Jeff Chamberlain, NNSA’s Associate Deputy Administrator for Material Management and Minimization; Mark Bollinger, WIPP Acting Manager of the Carlsbad Field Office; Ted Wyka, NNSA Los Alamos Field Office Manager and Michael Mikolanis, DOE Environmental Management at LANL.

The event featured a brief overview of NNSA and EM’s national security and environmental cleanup priorities and then moved into an expanded public question and answer period. Community members had an opportunity to share their thoughts and concerns and some 59 attendees signed up to speak, mostly in opposition to nuclear pit production, expansion of WIPP, etc.

For nearly three years leading up to this event, the public has requested a town hall event featuring representatives from DOE EM and NNSA, together, to answer questions about plans for the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Commissioner Hansen traveled to Washington, D.C., in February and invited Administrator Hruby and Senior Advisor White to travel to Santa Fe to answer questions from the public.

Hansen and Santa Fe County Commissioners Hank Hughes and Anna T. Hamilton have hosted previous town hall meetings about these topics, and they were well attended by concerned members of the public.

The WIPP facility has been disposing of transuranic waste from DOE sites across the country since 1999. Community members also are concerned about the slow pace of removal of waste from LANL and the hexavalent chromium plume. NNSA is now considering a dilute and dispose program for plutonium. The preferred alternative would be to ship minute amounts of plutonium to LANL for downblending, send it to South Carolina’s Savannah River Site for further processing, then ship it to New Mexico for final disposal at WIPP.

There also are several subalternatives. NNSA recently hosted four public comment opportunities on the surplus plutonium disposition (SPD) program. The program would increase shipments along N.M. 4, U.S. 285 and N.M. 599 (the bypass around Santa Fe) to WIPP.

WIPP is working to increase the size of the underground disposal area in accordance with the capacity limits as outlined under the Land Withdrawal Act for radioactive and hazardous waste. WIPP is at 40 percent capacity as defined by the Land Withdrawal Act limits, based upon volume estimates. DOE expects WIPP will operate through at least 2080. The original estimated closure date, based upon projections in 1999, was 25 years of operations or until 2024.

There is a growing concern among Santa Fe County residents and watchdog groups about the disposition of surplus plutonium that is to be shipped from the Pantex Plant in Texas to LANL then to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and then back to WIPP in more than 25,000 shipments. The impact on the roads, emergency preparedness and response, and protection of public health and safety are huge concerns.

NNSA is working to fabricate 80 plutonium pits (also known as triggers or fissile cores) for nuclear weapons by 2030 but is behind schedule. LANL has fabricated 29 plutonium pits in total since the 1990s, fabricating the most in 2011 with 11 pits. Even so, LANL’s budget has increased by $1 billion for nuclear weapons fabrication in the past three years.

Scene from tonight’s town hall at the at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. Courtesy photo  

An attendee at tonight’s town hall at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. Courtesy photo