Stalled LANL Cleanup to Court

By Elizabeth Miller

Arguing that the cleanup of nuclear contamination at Los Alamos National Laboratory is and has been out of compliance with the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act for some 7,853 days and counting, Nuclear Watch New Mexico has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Energy and Los Alamos National Security LLC.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico cites 12 violations of the requirements in the 2005 Consent Order, the document mapping out the cleanup plans for contamination from manufacturing nuclear weapons, for a total of nearly $300 million in civil penalties.

"The federal government plans to spend a trillion dollars over the next 30 years completely rebuilding US nuclear forces. Meanwhile, cleanup at the Los Alamos Lab, the birthplace of nuclear weapons, continues to be delayed, delayed, delayed," Jay Coghlan, executive director of NukeWatch, said in a press release. "We seek to make the for-profit nuclear weaponeers clean up their radioactive and toxic mess first before making another one for a nuclear weapons stockpile that is already bloated far beyond what we need."

Santa Fe Reporter

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