Los Alamos National Laboratory cleanup costs continue piling up
The U.S. Department of Energy in 2016 drafted a list of 17 projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory and in the surrounding town to clean up soil and groundwater that remained contaminated decades after the Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear weapons work.
At the time, more than $2 billion had been spent in a decade on environmental cleanup projects. The Department of Energy estimated it would cost another $1.1 billion to $1.5 billion to finish the job — and up to 25 more years.
The work is far from complete.
A mile-long, creeping plume of highly toxic hexavalent chromium rests beneath Sandia and Mortandad canyons. At the western edge of the national lab’s campus, groundwater is rich with RDX, an explosive chemical, exceeding state water safety standards. And dozens of acres of land, known as material disposal areas, are pock-marked with pits and trenches holding barrels of radioactive waste — some of which sit above ground, waiting to be shipped away.
Federal and local advisory groups and nuclear watchdogs say the lab has long lacked a true accounting of how it is spending vast sums of money allocated for cleanup projects, or a true record of progress and setbacks.
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