Panelists: Plans for plutonium transportation put New Mexicans at risk
Transportation of weapons-grade plutonium to and from Los Alamos National Laboratory puts New Mexicans at risk, according to panelists who presented to the interim Legislative Radioactive and Hazardous Waste Committee on Friday.
Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hansen said the panel presentation came in response to the federal fiscal year 2022 budget, which includes surplus plutonium disposition.
There are current plans to move weapons-grade plutonium from Pantex in Texas to LANL, where it will be turned into a powdered plutonium oxide and then transported to South Carolina. In South Carolina, it will go through more processing before being sent back to New Mexico to be stored at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project near Carlsbad. The entire process requires transporting this plutonium about 3,300 miles across a dozen states using trucks.
“Probability and common sense tell us that when a mission is not well thought out, involves a huge increase in shipments, spans a number of years, passes our neighborhoods twice using a troubled transport system, is a more dangerous form of waste and has packaging problems, an accident will occur,” Hansen said. “It’s a matter of time. Unfortunately, the consequences of an accident with this type of substance are catastrophic.”
Read more: https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2021/11/15/panelists-plans-for-plutonium-transportation-put-new-mexicans-at-risk/
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