On Tuesday, August 9 th the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission will hear virtually a petition for review of the groundwater discharge permit, DP-1132, filed by non-governmental organizations CCNS and Honor Our Pueblo Existence (HOPE). DP-1132 allows Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to handle, store and discharge treated radioactive and hazardous waters from the Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility into Effluent Canyon, a tributary of Mortandad Canyon.

August 6 th and 9 th were the days in 1945 when the U.S. bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs 77 years ago. Every year community members gather at to commemorate those events, to recognize the harm done, and to recommit to working for peace. You are invited to participate in these commemoration events.

Did you know the hazardous waste permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is up for its ten-year renewal? In August, the New Mexico

Environment Department may release a draft permit for public review and a 60-day comment period.

In the face of continuing problems and escalating costs for expanded production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores for nuclear weapons, U.S.

Congressman John Garamendi, of California, has offered a common sense amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 

plutonium pit accountability.

Holtec International recently purchased two shutdown nuclear power plants in Michigan to create a supply chain of spent fuel rods for its proposed consolidated interim storage facility in southeastern New Mexico’s Permian Basin. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff is expected to issue a Final Environmental Impact Statement this month and an operating license in early 2023 for the proposed “temporary” storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.

Did you know that the Department of Energy (DOE) plans to continue disposing of plutonium-contaminated radioactive and hazardous waste in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) essentially forever? In filings submitted to the New Mexico Environment Department on Monday, DOE stated, “[the] final facility closure could begin no earlier than [Calendar Year] 2083.”

This week before the start of the First Meeting of States Parties for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna, three countries

deposited their ratification documents with the United Nations. Grenada, Cabot Verde, and Timor Leste joined 62 countries to ratify the treaty, 

for a total of 65. One-third of the world’s 195 countries have now ratified the Treaty.

If you were in charge of allocating U.S. taxpayer money, would you invest $84,094 [dollars] per minute for nuclear weapons? What would your priorities be?

While you may not be able to travel to Vienna, Austria for the First Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, you can sign the online Statement on the Existential Threat of Nuclear Weapons. 

Decisions being made by federal and state agencies about the plutonium-contaminated waste stored at the Waste Control Specialists facility located on the Texas-New Mexico border may foreshadow how non-compliant waste may be stranded in the future.