New Mexico Rebukes Federal Agency Over Nuclear Waste at Los Alamos

After years of missed deadlines, New Mexico is demanding that the Energy Department speed up cleanup of legacy nuclear and hazardous waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and will fine the agency up to $16 million for violating groundwater safety standards.

Regulators wrote, "The continued presence of a large volume of unremedied hazardous and radioactive waste demonstrates a longstanding lack of urgency by the U.S. Department of Energy," and said the backlog "elevates the risk of waste storage failures" at the lab.

Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, is the linchpin of a federal effort to upgrade the nation’s nuclear arsenal and currently produces plutonium bomb cores. The laboratory is creating new waste before Cold War‑era byproducts have been mitigated; the Energy Department estimates roughly 500,000 cubic meters of legacy waste — the equivalent of about 200 Olympic swimming pools — remain on campus.

United States, Los Alamos, New Mexico

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