Beyond Nuclear comments to the New Mexico Environment Department, opposed to the expanded Forever WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant)

Public Comments Re: PUBLIC NOTICE No. 20-03 - New Shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

Dear Mr. Maestas:

We submit these public comments on behalf of our Beyond Nuclear members and supporters in New Mexico, as well as our Beyond Nuclear members and supporters across the rest of the United States who live on WIPP transportation routes.

We object to the proposed permit modification that would authorize construction of a new WIPP shaft, and new WIPP drifts (tunnels). We also object to the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) allowing construction to begin seven weeks before the draft permit was issued, and long before the public hearing will be held.

NMED's actions make it clear that the public participation, consultation, and comment processes are neither supported nor respected when it comes to WIPP. The fact sheet for this permit modification provides little vital information in Spanish, doesn't say that the shaft is already being built, and continues to claim that the shaft is needed for air flow in the current underground repository. Yet it is clear there is no emergency requiring NMED to sidestep the public process. In fact, the New Filter Building will provide over 100% of the air required for workers in the partially contaminated repository and will be providing that air nearly two years before the new shaft and drifts are finished.

The new shaft actually is needed only for an expanded WIPP that could more than double the current disposal area. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) needs this space because existing waste rooms will soon be filled and DOE wants to expand WIPP for more waste and more kinds of waste, including:

            • high-level radioactive waste from Hanford, Washington and other sites;

            • weapons-grade plutonium from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina;

            • commercial waste from West Valley, New York; and

            • 50 years or more of waste from building new nuclear weapons, including plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Lab, as well as at Savannah River Site.

In 1999 and before, DOE promised the citizens and residents of New Mexico that WIPP would operate for 25 years and then close. Despite this promise, DOE says now it needs to keep WIPP open FOREVER.

It’s time for NMED to support the promises DOE made to the People of New Mexico and close WIPP in 2024.  The new shaft must be stopped.  NMED must withdraw the temporary authorization to build the shaft and deny the modification request.

In addition to the high-level radioactive waste from Hanford, Washington and other sites, and other new waste streams being targeted at the expanded Forever WIPP for permanent disposal, there are also two commercial irradiated nuclear fuel and highly radioactive waste consolidated interim storage facilities (CISFs) targeted at the area. The first, proposed by Holtec International and the Eddy Lea Energy Alliance, is targeted at Laguna Gatuna, halfway between Hobbs and Carlsbad; this site is only 16 miles from WIPP. The second, proposed by Interim Storage Partners, is targeted at Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas, located about 40 miles from WIPP, immediately upon the New Mexico state border, just five miles from Eunice.

In fact, Beyond Nuclear is an official legal intervenor, opposed to the licensing of both CISFs, in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing proceedings. Beyond Nuclear has, as of now, already appealed adverse NRC rulings in favor of the Holtec/ELEA CISF, to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. We plan to do the same, as needed, in the ISP proceeding.

The expanded Forever WIPP, and these consolidated interim storage facilities for highly radioactive wastes, are an attempt to turn southeastern New Mexico, and its immediate neighbors in west Texas, into the radioactive waste sacrifice zone for the country. This is an environmental justice outrage. There are numerous majority Hispanic communities in southeastern New Mexico. The Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation is not far from WIPP and these proposed CISFs, and numerous other Native American tribes, including Pueblo Indian tribes, such as the Hopi, have land claims and connections, in southeastern New Mexico, including at the targeted CISF site itself.

In fact, New Mexico, with its very large proportion of Native American and Hispanic, as well as other people of color, communities, is a majority minority state. In addition, New Mexico also ranks towards the very bottom of many socio-economic indicators, when compared to other states across the country. Finally, there are high cancer rates in southeastern New Mexico, as well as significantly shorter life expectancies. This could well be due to both nuclear and fossil fuel pollution in the Permian Basin. And despite all the wealth generated by the fossil fuel and nuclear industries operating in southeastern New Mexico, it is not equally distributed. There are significant issues of poverty, even in this region. There is also significant overlap between these low income communities, and people of color communities, in this area. To further burden this area with the expanded Forever WIPP scheme's increased waste amounts, and new waste streams, over a prolonged time period, is an unacceptable environmental injustice. And yet, these environmental injustice impacts, stemming from this expanded Forever WIPP scheme, have not been analyzed nor addressed.

The expanded Forever WIPP's clear connection to current and expanded plutonium pit production for new nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Lab, and unprecedented plutonium pit production for new nuclear weapons at Savannah River Site, South Carolina, is objectionable. Keeping WIPP open for additional decades, to dispose of not legacy wastes but rather newly generated wastes, is yet another violation of past promises and agreements made to the citizens and residents of the State of New Mexico, regarding how much waste would be dumped at WIPP, when WIPP would close, and what kinds of waste streams, for which origins, would be dumped at WIPP. There have been plenty of broken promises at WIPP over the years and decades. This latest proposed round of additional broken promises is unacceptable. The expanded Forever WIPP scheme must be stopped dead in its tracks.

Last but not least, we are submitting these comments on behalf of not only our members and supporters across New Mexico, but also those across the country. This includes our members and supporters in numerous states, who live along WIPP-bound transport routes. Whether TRU, weapons-grade plutonium, highly radioactive waste, and/or commercial radioactive wastes that would be shipped from Hanford, Washington, Savannah River Site, South Carolina, West Valley, New York, or elsewhere, the transport risks to corridor communities are significant. In fact, it is as important to understand impacts along the transportation routes to WIPP, as it is to understand exposures from the WIPP site itself. Perhaps the transportation risks are even more important, as almost all the negative health effects from the entire WIPP project during normal operations are estimated to occur along the transportation routes.

Of course, abnormalities in operations are always possible. The underground vehicle fire at WIPP in February 2014, that sent several underground WIPP workers to the hospital with smoke inhalation, permanently disabling one, and the TRU release to the environment just nine days later, exposing nearly two-dozen WIPP workers at the surface to ultra-hazardous alpha particle inhalation doses (not to mention the public further downwind, to ongoing exposures to long lived hazardous TRU particles, now loosed on the environment), were accidents that were supposed to have been impossible. And yet they happened. Expanded Forever WIPP transportation risks, from both normal operations as well as potential accidents or even attacks, must be analyzed and addressed, as under the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and yet they have not been. To continue to not do so would represent a violation of federal law.

Thank you for your careful consideration of our comments, made on behalf of our members and supporters across New Mexico, and around the country.

Sincerely,

Kevin Kamps

Radioactive Waste Specialist

Beyond Nuclear

7304 Carroll Avenue, #182

Takoma Park, MD 20912

Cell: (240) 462-3216

kevin@beyondnuclear.org
www.beyondnuclear.org

Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.

Update on August 11, 2020 by admin

See the backgrounder, "WIPP History: The Forever WIPP Expansion & the New Shaft Permit Modification," dated July 20, 2020, posted at the CCNS (Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety) website.