Comments due about WIPP’s Legacy Transuranic Waste Disposal Plan by Friday, January 3rd, 2025
There is a unique opportunity to provide your comments about the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s Legacy Transuranic Waste Disposal Plan. The disposal plan describes WIPP’s strategies to keep the disposal site for plutonium-contaminated hazardous wastes open for 60 more years, despite WIPP’s promises to New Mexicans to close in 2024.
Comments are due to WIPP on or before Friday, January 3rd, 2025. Sample public comments you can use are available on the Stop Forever WIPP website. https://stopforeverwipp.org/home You can review comments already submitted on the WIPP website at the third blue box labeled “Legacy TRU Waste Disposal Plan.” https://wipp.energy.gov/
Once the comment period ends on January 3, 2025, WIPP must submit the public’s comments to the New Mexico Environment Department for its review about whether to accept the disposal plan or reject it as inadequate because it does not meet the hazardous waste permit requirements.
This administrative process is being done because the Stop Forever WIPP Coalition’s efforts to hold the Department of Energy, WIPP and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) accountable for the plutonium-contaminated wastes generated since the making of the first nuclear weapons tested in New Mexico and used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. Testing and developing nuclear weapons has been the main work at LANL since 1943. Such work generates plutonium-contaminated waste that must be disposed to prevent exposure to radiation. For that reason disposing of the waste in WIPP 2,100 feet below ground surface is to prevent such exposures. The term “legacy” refers to waste generated before 1999, the year the WIPP disposal site opened.
For New Mexicans, it is important to provide comments about why the plutonium-contaminated legacy waste buried and stored at LANL must be prioritized, packaged, transported and disposed of at WIPP, as required by the state hazardous waste permit. LANL has instead prioritized newly generated waste from nuclear weapons fabrication over legacy waste to the detriment of the needed cleanup to protect public health and the environment. 
It is also important that your comments support another new permit condition that requires WIPP to provide a detailed report on progress to site another repository for plutonium-contaminated waste in a state other than New Mexico. By December 31st of each year, WIPP is required to submit the Repository Siting Annual Report to the Environment Department. 240924 NMED WIPP HazWaste Renewal Permit Conditions
Please submit your comments electronically to LTWDP@wipp.doe.gov by Friday, January 3rd, 2025.
TOGETHER WE ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE!
- Friday, December 20th at noon
at the intersection of West Alameda and Sandoval for the weekly one-hour peaceful protest for nuclear disarmament. Join the weekly peaceful protest with Veterans for Peace, CCNS, Nuclear Watch NM, Loretto Community, New Mexico Peace Fest, Pax Christi and others. Bring your flags, signs and banners!
- TODAY! ACTION ALERT: Stop Tritium Venting and Protect the Most Vulnerable – TWO ACTIONS TO DO NO LATER THAN TODAY THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2024 https://tewawomenunited.org/2024/11/action-alert-stop-tritium-venting-and-protect-the-most-vulnerable
In collaboration with New Mexico Environmental Law Center, Tewa Women United issued a press release on November 19: “New Report Reveals Los Alamos National Laboratory Tritium Venting Could Have Triple the Radiation Exposure to Infants Compared to Adults”
TWU commissioned two independent technical reports by respected scientists to study impacts of the venting of radioactive tritium. The finding: LANL omitted dose calculations to infants and children in their compliance application.
We are requesting that TWU supporters and everyone concerned about protecting the most vulnerable take these two actions no later than Thursday, December 19, 2024:
1) CALL/EMAIL EPA REGION 6:
Earthea Nance, PhD, PE
Regional Administrator, Region 6
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(214) 665-2200
Email Earthea Nance (script to copy and paste)
2) CALL/EMAIL THE NATIONAL NUCLEAR SAFETY ADMINISTRATION (NNSA):
Theodore ‘Ted’ Wyka, Environmental Manager
National Nuclear Security Administration
Los Alamos Field Office
505-667-5105
Email Ted Wyka (script to copy and paste)
Tags: Hiroshima, LANL, Legacy Transuranic (TRU) Waste Disposal Plan, legacy waste, Los Alamos National Laboratory, LTWDP, Nagasaki, New Mexico Environment Department, NMED, plutonium-contaminated waste, Prioritization and Risk Reduction of New Mexico Waste, protect public health and the environment, Repository Siting Annual Report, Stop Forever WIPP Coalition, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, WIPP
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