Campaign to prevent radioactive tritium venting from Los Alamos National Laboratory
UPDATE:
Friday, April 4, 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Los Alamos Field Office, the U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) submitted a request to New Mexico Environment Department to safely perform the controlled release of headspace gas from four flanged tritium waste containers (FTWCs) at Technical Area 54, Area G at LANL.
LANL aims to begin venting on or after June 2, 2025.
LANL has four waste containers filled with approximately 100,000 curies of radioactive tritium that they want to transport. They say that if they do not vent them into the air, there may be a tritium explosion. CCW has worked diligently since 2020 to hold LANL accountable to the harm that the venting of the tritium waste containers could have on our communities.
Here are the facts:
LANL has not measured the gas and metal contents found in the headspace of the tritium waste containers - they do not know if it is actually necessary to vent the containers.
LANL wants to vent about 9 grams of tritium (~100,000 curies) over the span of a few days. This is three times the amount of tritium as Japan is dumping into the Pacific Ocean over the span of 30 years from the tsunami and nuclear reactor explosions at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
One teaspoon of tritiated (HTO) water will contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water.
When calculating the risk, LANL does so for adults - they are not required to do so for children, infants or pregnant women/fetuses. This does not properly represent the real impact on our communities. The author of one report, Bernd Franke, stated, “In the case of tritium, infants and small children get a radiation dose about three times greater than adults, with the same concentrations of tritium in air, water, and food.”
CCW’s work to prevent tritium venting continues our collaboration with Tewa Women United (TWU) since 2020, when TWU released a petition that totaled more than 3,000 signatures. Since the petition, Tewa Women United has continued working to prevent the tritium venting, commissioning two reports to study impacts and finding: “LANL Omitted Dose Calculations to Infants & Children in Their Compliance Application.”
In Tewa Women United’s November 2024 press release, Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez, member of San Ildefonso Pueblo and one of Tewa Women United’s co-founders, said, “Tritium makes water, our sacred source of life, radioactive. We were shocked to learn that LANL’s compliance calculations did not take infants and other children into account.”
In 2020 the All Pueblo Council of Governors distributed a press release titled “Pueblos Concerned about Los Alamos National Laboratories Planned Release of Radioactive Vapors.”
For more information, read Searchlight New Mexico’s June 2024 article about LANL tritium venting.
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Communities for Clean Water (CCW) contracted the German engineering firm Ingenieurbüro Rau to do Weather Modeling to see the impact that the Tritium Venting could have on rainwater, surface water and groundwater in the case of weather events (rain/wind) during venting.
Weather Modeling Report by Matthias Rau, Ingenieurbüro Rau
The present report “examines the dispersion and environmental impact of tritium released during the venting of Flanged Tritium Waste Containers (FTWCs) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).”
“The primary goal of the study is to assess how tritium disperses in the air and how it deposits through precipitation. This evaluation is critical for understanding the potential contamination risks at nearby locations, such as La Vista Church (2.2 km from the release site) and the Rio Grande River (5 km away).”
In Rau’s Conclusion, he states:
“The probability of high tritium deposition at the nearest receptor locations is relatively low, as rain events from the critical wind direction (west-northwest) are infrequent.
However, significant tritium release into the environment occurs during venting, with potential implications for local water bodies and ecosystems.
The report emphasizes the need for careful monitoring and potential mitigation measures to limit environmental exposure.”
That said, in a rain event, the amount of tritium released would contaminate local water bodies, including the Rio Grande, well above both the drinking water standard and the New Mexico surface water guideline. It would also contaminate groundwater and streams other than the Rio Grande in the area.
Read the report below:
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Dr. Arjun Makhijani with the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) wrote a summary report of Matthias Rau's Weather Modeling document, in which he compares Rau's results to both national and New Mexico water standards and guidelines.
The main findings in Dr. Makhijani’s report are as follows:
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drinking water standard is a common reference value for understanding water contamination. For tritium, it is 20,000 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). In New Mexico, there is also the reporting guideline for surface water in the Rio Grande downstream of Los Alamos; it is 4,000 pCi/L. This short report interprets the Rau and Winkler (2025) modeling results in terms of these reference values.
Rainwater contamination on the venting day: The venting of the Flanged Tritium Waste Container (FTWCs) most loaded with tritium over one-day (24 hours) would, under specified adverse weather conditions, result in rainwater contamination at White Rock between 750 and 3,500 times the drinking water standard and between 3,750 and 17,500 times the New Mexico guideline. Venting of all four FTWCs under similar conditions would create proportionately similar contamination of rainwater to hundreds to thousands of times the two reference levels.
Annual average contamination: The drinking water standard and New Mexico guidelines would also be greatly exceeded even if the rainfall contamination were averaged over an entire year, assuming zero tritium releases on all days except those during which the ventings would be done.
Rio Grande contamination: Tens to hundreds of curies may be deposited in the Rio Grande River as a result of the ventings. A heuristic calculation of cumulative impact indicates that the Rio Grande may be seriously burdened with tritium as a result of the ventings.
Groundwater contamination: Tritium in rainwater would also contaminate groundwater as well as streams other than the Rio Grande in the area.
Los Alamos failure to evaluate groundwater impact: Los Alamos National Laboratory is required to assess groundwater impact under DOE Order 458.1. It has not done so.”
Read the report below: