NNSA NEWS RELEASE
(Received 12:30 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 14)
National Nuclear Security Administration Los Alamos Field Office Manager Ted Wyka has released an op-ed available to all news outlets, responding to concerns raised about the plan to depressurize a small amount of built-up gas in four waste containers that have been in temporary storage at Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2007.
https://losalamosreporter.com/2025/09/14/wyka-plan-to-depressurize-tritium-waste-containers-is-safe-and-rigorously-vetted-by-independent-experts/
NNSA and the lab have received authorization from federal and state agencies to safely depressurize the containers, one at a time, starting as soon as this weekend. The process will follow all applicable environmental and safety regulations and will not result in a danger to workers and the public.
Key parts of the op-ed describe the scientific rigor that lab, NNSA and neutral experts have followed to develop the depressurization plan over more than a decade.
“Leaving the four containers on the mesa indefinitely prolongs and increases the risk to our workers and the public. It is time to alleviate this risk and dispose of the containers by taking safe measures to reduce the gas,” Wyka wrote. “We have thoroughly examined numerous possible alternatives. Make no mistake, the lab’s plan is rooted in science and safe for the surrounding community and lab employees—and it is the best solution available to us. Earlier this summer, an independent technical review was the latest to confirm this.”
Importantly, the op-ed addresses egregious disinformation that has been spread about the plan and puts in perspective how minimal the risk of depressurizing is for workers and the surrounding communities.
“This false information has led to a great deal of unnecessary concern among the public, which is deeply unfortunate. The most egregious example—comparing the depressurization to the release of tritium from the Fukushima nuclear power plant over 30 years—has unfortunately been repeated in local news outlets, which apparently did not see it fit to do basic fact-checking. There is no similarity between these operations,” Wyka wrote. “Any downwind doses of tritium will be indistinguishable from tritium levels naturally occurring in the environment.”
“The desired and likely offsite dose from depressurization will be extremely low—below 6 mrem, possibly even 0 mrem, at the site boundary. To put this in perspective, background radiation dose in this part of Northern New Mexico is about 1 mrem per day or more—about 350-400 mrem per year,” Wyka continued. “The EPA and the Clean Air Act allow DOE facilities to emit radioactive material that could contribute up to 10 mrem per year above this background level. LANL’s emissions for the past several years have been a fraction of 1 mrem per year. For further comparison, a cross-country round-trip airplane flight results in about 3.7 mrem of radiation exposure.”