NMELC NEW RELEASE
On Friday, Sept. 12, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center sent a letter to New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham urging her to intervene and to halt the planned venting of radioactive tritium into the atmosphere by Los Alamos National Laboratory.
LANL announced this week it plans to release the dangerous and harmful tritium Saturday, Sept. 13 despite years of opposition from surrounding Indigenous communities, scientists and environmental groups.
Governor Lujan Grisham:
This letter serves as an urgent call to halt Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) proposed tritium venting scheduled to begin tomorrow, September 13, 2025. Given your strong commitment to the health and well-being of New Mexico’s children, most recently demonstrated through your initiative to guarantee no-cost universal child care to all New Mexicans – we urge you to act quickly to protect children who stand to be the most impacted by LANL’s actions this weekend.
As you know, tritium is a highly radioactive isotope of ordinary, non-radioactive hydrogen. Given its structure, tritium bonds very easily to water, creating a vapor that is highly absorbable by the human body, pervading every cell. Tritium can be very dangerous if inhaled and has been shown to cause cancer, genetic mutations and birth defects. The amount of tritium LANL proposes to vent is three-times more tritium than would be dumped into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan over the course of thirty years.
Notably, the dose to an infant from tritiated water vapor is estimated to be over three times greater than the dose to any adult expected to be exposed on Saturday. LANL has never considered the impacts to children from this project.
Rather than address LANL’s gross mismanagement of its nuclear waste, the New Mexico Environment Department, just a few days ago, made a rushed and reckless decision to authorize LANL’s venting, regardless of the uncertainty, the lack of adequate infrastructure to notify the public in the event of an emergency, and LANL’s disregard for the impacts of creating contaminated rain water, even in the face of rain forecasted for Saturday afternoon.
As the state’s only exclusively environmental-justice focused law center, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center has been engaging with communities impacted by LANL’s toxic legacy for over three decades. NMED’s most recent decision only perpetuates the same environmental and cultural violence LANL has inflicted upon communities since LANL’s creation. We are calling on you to do the right thing for New Mexico’s children and put a stop to LANL’s upcoming tritium venting.