Representatives from Los Alamos National Labs fielded an array of questions during a Sept. 27 meeting about a proposed waste storage facility. But there was only one question they flat-out refused to answer, and it seems to be an important one: Where will LANL take its nuclear waste after the Carlsbad waste storage facility closes in 2030?---
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety executive director Joni Arends posed that question at the meeting, which was intended to bring the public up to speed on modifications made to the design of its proposed Transuranic Waste Facility (TRU). The facility is supposed to be up and running by 2016, and will have a 25-year service life. Twice per year, radioactive waste packed in drums will be loaded onto a truck and driven to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, where it will be stored.
Arends pointed out at the meeting that the TRU will be in operation until 2041—that's 11 years after WIPP is supposed to be closed. But TRU program director Matthew Nuckols wouldn't answer the question, saying it was outside the scope of the meeting. Nuckols and other LANL staff answered questions they received at a previous August TRU meeting as part of their presentation, but omitted that question, which Arends says was asked in August. Nuckols said that LANL was only going to answer the August questions that were written down and submitted, which this one apparently was not.
Since the LANL staff also answered new questions from the audience Sept. 27 on everything from seismic concerns to floor sealant at the TRU, it wasn't clear why Arends' question was "outside the scope" of the meeting.
"It is always the case that when NNSA bureaucrats are asked relevant policy questions they want to define the scope of the meeting, the scope of the analysis, the scope of their jobs, so narrowly as to exclude the relevant questions," Los Alamos Study Group director Greg Mello writes SFR in an email. "In essence, they want the public to accept their own bureaucratic impotence and limitations. They are hirelings and agents of agendas set by others above them."
In an email to SFR, Arends points out that the plutonium-contaminated waste will be radioactive for 240,000 years, adding, "After 2030, there will be no disposal site for the waste, and there are no plans for another disposal site. So where will the waste go? If there is no answer to this essential question, LANL must stop creating it."
A LANL spokesman didn't immediately provide a comment.
