Biden Administration Asked to Review Plutonium Pit Expansion Plans
News release, February 12, 2021 – by South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP), SRS Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico & Tri-Valley CAREs
Public interest organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) requesting that it address calls for a rigorous environmental review of plans to expand production of nuclear bomb cores at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina.
The non-profit groups—Nuclear Watch New Mexico, SRS Watch and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment—have previously submitted a number of formal comments and information related to the environmental and public health risks associated with a significant expansion of plutonium “pit” production at the two DOE sites.
The three organizations’ documents, which include several legal filings since 2019, were consolidated and re-submitted on Wednesday so the DOE under the new Biden administration has “immediate access to these documents,” the letter states.
A key concern among the three public interest groups is the necessity of preparing a legally mandated Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) analyzing the potential impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at all relevant DOE sites. The groups want to ensure that the administrative record is intact and that reconsideration of the PEIS be undertaken before legal action is pursued.
“We are hopeful that a review of programs with significant environmental impacts under NEPA will return to normalcy with the new presidential administration,” said Leslie Lenhardt, staff attorney for the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, a non-profit environmental law firm representing the organizations. “DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration have a new opportunity to revisit their prior refusal to conduct a PEIS for this critical issue.”
Full news release posted here on South Carolina Environmental Law Project website: https://www.scelp.org/news/biden-administration-asked-to-review-plutonium-pit-expansion-plans
Link to letter, documents resubmitted to DOE and NNSA: https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5f2c352f324853b8b51c50db/6026d57a783019fa720a89cb_Feb%202021%20letter%20to%20DOE.pdf