New Mexico lawmakers discuss nuclear impacts during meeting at Los Alamos National Lab

Fears of nuclear waste exposure were expressed by New Mexicans to legislators, as the DOE prepared to move weapons-grade plutonium around the country to get it ready for disposal at a repository in southeast New Mexico.

The comments came during a Monday meeting of the Legislature’s interim Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee, meeting in Los Alamos to be briefed and discuss nuclear-related issues throughout the state.

The plan is to ship about 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium, mostly at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, to Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico for processing, then to Savannah River Site in South Carolina for additional processing.

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From there, the waste will be sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant after it is downblended to meet WIPP’s waste acceptance criteria for disposal.

It will be buried at WIPP in an underground salt deposit about 2,000 feet underground at the site about 30 miles east of Carlsbad.

The Department of Energy’s plan became controversial as some residents in the Santa Fe area expressed concerns for the safety of transporting the plutonium via truck through New Mexico multiple times during the project.

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State Hazardous Materials Coordinator Craig Tucker with the Department of Homeland Security said the state was preparing for the potential of incidents during the transportation of the plutonium, collaborating with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to property train and equip responder, mostly volunteer fire departments, along the routes.

“There’s a strong sense of what’s being carried and what the response may be,” he said to lawmakers. “This is what we’re focused on. The intent here is to provide the resources and equipment necessary.”

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Cynthia Weehler of activist group 285 ALL argued people living in the area along the waste’s route could be in danger of exposure to the highly radioactive material should an incident occur enroute to the labs or WIPP.

Much of the waste would travel down U.S. Highway 285, a highway connecting the Santa Fe area with southeast New Mexico.

“Thousands of us live near or on this route. Everything we care about is at risk,” she said.

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Trinity Site downwinders talk progress to reparations

Lawmakers also heard from groups advocating for federal reparations for residents living near the Trinity Site in south-central New Mexico where the first atomic weapons were tested in 1945.

Although the federal government identified the area as largely uninhabited at the time of the test, descendants of residents living in communities like Tularosa and Carrizozo, within an hour’s drive of the site, contended they suffered through generations of cancers and other health problems associated with resulting radiation exposure.

Tina Cordova, founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium said the federal government had a duty to compensate the communities for their medical expenses related to the Trinity Site.

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That could come in the form of lump payments via the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) that are currently offered to those living near the Nevada Test Site, which began nuclear tests in the 1950s.

A bill to amend RECA to also include New Mexico downwinders passed the U.S. Senate earlier this summer via the chamber’s passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) used annually to fund national defense and military investments in the U.S.

If passed, the legislation would also increase payments from $50,000 to $150,000 for downwinders who are able to show that their medical expenses were tied to impacts from radiation, and establish a process for screening for such effects.

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The bill still must be acted on by the U.S. House of Representatives before being sent to President Joe Biden for signing into law. The House version of the NDAA did not include the added RECA funding for New Mexico, meaning it would go through the reconciliation process before going to Biden’s desk.

The RECA program is heading toward a sunset in 2024, meaning without additional legislation to extend it the expansion to New Mexico downwinders would be impossible.

Cordova said New Mexico lawmakers should support the bill and pressure Congress to expand the payments to New Mexicans.

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“People have been suffering ever since, and people have been dying ever since,” she said.

She said the group is working to develop the path of the fallout from the Trinity Test, showing that populated areas were affected, arguing such mapping could aid in gaining financial support.

“The U.S. government has for years said to New Mexico that the fallout went northward in a very orderly fashion through an unpopulated area of the state,” Cordova said to the lawmakers. “We know that is not factual.”

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Barbara Webber at Health Action New Mexico said before the committee that the exposure caused by Trinity was much broader than originally believed.

She called on lawmakers to take action to require health impacts be considered for any license or facilities coming to the state, aiming to avoid unintended effect like those she said were caused by the test at Trinity.

“This experiment resulted in an unanticipated impact to 46 states,” she said. “By not being included in the RECA funding, New Mexico has paid double the medical expenses for its downwinder communities picking up the tab for this lack of government oversight.”

The committee voted to write a letter to Congress voicing support for including the RECA amendment in the NDAA.

New Mexico Rep. Tara Lujan (D-48) argued the nuclear industry has damaged New Mexico and New Mexicans for generations, and the affected should be compensated by the federal government.

“There are families that suffering due to the consequence of this industry,” she said.

Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Lawmakers discuss nuclear impacts at meeting in Los Alamos