NNSA to Delay Cleanup at Los Alamos

September 2025
By Lipi Shetty

The U.S. Department of Energy will not clean up a nearly 12-acre radioactive waste site at Los Alamos National Laboratory, or LANL, until active operations at the site cease, the department told a state environmental agency June 18.

The New Mexico Environmental Department said in response that it “will utilize to the fullest extent all statutory and legal authority necessary to … ensure that New Mexicans receive effective cleanup of legacy contamination at LANL in a timely manner.”

The June 18 letter referred to Material Disposal Area C waste site at LANL, which contains radioactive and chemically contaminated waste in six disposal pits, a chemical pit, and 108 shafts. The site, one of several similar locations in the LANL area, was active from 1948 to 1974.

According to the letter, Material Disposal Area C “is associated with active Facility operations and will be deferred from further corrective action [until it] is no longer associated with active Facility operations.” LANL’s plutonium pit production facility, known as PF-4, is located near the site.

In September 2023, New Mexican authorities proposed that the U.S. Department of Energy excavate and remove hazardous waste at the site at a cost of roughly $800 million, as estimated by the Energy Department. The department had preferred a cleanup plan that involved paving over the site’s current interim soil cover with a layer resistant to erosion, wildlife, and vegetation, which it said would cost 
$12 million.

Los Alamos is one of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two proposed sites for restarting plutonium pit production. To meet congressional requirements to produce 80 pits per year, NNSA intends for LANL to produce 30 pits per year and for the under-construction Savannah River Plutonium Production Facility to produce an additional 50 pits per year.