Dec. 7 -- A plan to release vapors from containers of radioactive waste has been put on ice.
As Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Nuclear Security Administration wait for regulatory approval and warmer weather, the venting of four 51-gallon, stainless steel pressure containers containing tritium waste will likely have to wait until the spring, at least.
Venting wasn't scheduled for this year, as the New Mexico Environment Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hadn't yet authorized the release, wrote LANL spokesperson Steven Horak in an email to The New Mexican. Nevertheless, "readiness activities were conducted throughout the year" in case those approvals came though.
LANL wants to get rid of the legacy waste, which dates back to weapons developed during the Cold War. An NNSA audit found lead in the containers, designating them as a hazardous waste requiring off-site disposal. That requires moving them from their current location at Area G -- a site that stores legacy radioactive waste -- to a licensed off-site facility after being repackaged at LANL's tritium facility.
But moving the containers could become more difficult over time, and the venting is intended to release some of the pressure to make them safe to handle. LANL documents state that the transport is part of an effort to reduce waste held at Area G and the risk associated with it.
"There is currently a window of time in which safe, compliant controlled venting can be performed," Horak wrote. "Once that time passes -- likely in less than four years -- any effort to move or mitigate the containers becomes much more difficult and introduces new risks, including possible curtailment of Area G cleanup."
It's already been four years since the plan was first publicized. The containers were supposed to be vented in April 2020, but the action was postponed due to pandemic-era staffing challenges.
By then, the plan had caught the attention of not only advocacy groups and community members living nearby but also former New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall and current Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, who requested a public meeting and additional transparency about the move. At the meeting, several individuals and groups expressed concern about potential health impacts.
Colorless and odorless, tritium can be both naturally occurring and man-made. A radioactive hydrogen isotope, the gas is typically considered low risk when at low levels, according to an EPA fact sheet. But exposure to higher levels, which could come from broken exit signs or other sources, can come with health risks.
In 2019, the lab received a three-year authorization from the EPA to conduct the venting. In 2023, it appeared the venting would be delayed again. That year, thousands of people signed an online petition circulated by Indigenous advocacy group Tewa Women United in opposition to the venting plan.
More recently, two studies prepared for Tewa Women United underscored concerns about health impacts. One, authored by German researcher Bernd Franke, said the venting plans did not take into account more vulnerable populations like infants. In the report, Franke stated that when exposed to the same amount of tritium as an adult, babies will receive a dose more than three times as high.
"Tritium makes water, our sacred source of life, radioactive," said Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez, a member of San Ildefonso Pueblo and co-founder of Tewa Women United, in a statement. "We were shocked to learn that LANL's compliance calculations did not take infants and other children into account."
The second report, authored by Institute for Energy and Environmental Research president Arjun Makhijani, states LANL's venting application "systematically underestimates" the dose of tritium that would be released in bad weather.
"I have long been concerned about the problem of tritium pollution," Makhijani wrote. "Tritium is the most ubiquitous radioactive pollutant associated with nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Tritium, once in the body in the form of water, pervades every cell."
The EPA doesn't set specific regulatory limits for children or infants, Horak wrote. But, Horak added, "Venting of the flanged tritium waste containers will be conducted to ensure that emissions remain within EPA limits. ... The limits established by the EPA are protective of even the most vulnerable members of the public, including children, the elderly, and pregnant women."
In a news release, members of Tewa Women United said they want to hear alternatives.
In a question-and-answer post about the plan on LANL's website, the lab mentions potential alternatives but says it deemed venting the most viable.
"The selected option, while more complex and expensive than many alternatives, was deemed to be the safest option for both the workers and the public," the webpage reads.
Tritium decays into helium. But waiting for that could delay the project by more than 80 years, Horak wrote. Meanwhile, pressure would still be building in containers.
There are six flanged tritium waste containers at LANL. The four in question are at Area G, while the other two remain at the laboratory's Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility. The latter two don't need to be vented before transport, Horak wrote, and venting of other containers is not expected.