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More than 60 residents of Livermore and the surrounding region turned out to a public meeting this week on the local lab’s role in a nationwide program to enhance the production of plutonium weapons, with additional public meetings now set to come for a program-wide environmental review process officials agreed to in a settlement with nuclear watchdog groups this month.
The public scoping session hosted by National Nuclear Security Administration officials Wednesday was an early step in the preparation of a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) on LLNL’s role in nationwide efforts to enhance plutonium pit production at multiple national labs, with the written public comment period extended as of this week’s meeting.
According to a presentation from the lab and NNSA officials at the start of the meeting, LLNL currently serves – and will continue to serve – primarily in a research and development capacity for the development of new nuclear weapons, having recently contributed to the design of a new plutonium pit that was produced at Los Alamos National Laboratory for the modified W87-1 warhead set to replace existing W87 weapons, and with its El Capitan supercomputer serving as a major driver in the development of the new W93 warhead that is intended to replace existing nuclear submarine weapons.
Part of the NNSA’s plans to enhance plutonium pit production include changing the security clearance at LLNL from its existing Category III status to Category II, a move officials said Wednesday was necessary for the overall program but would not lead to an increase in the lab’s existing administrative threshold for plutonium.
Nonetheless, tensions were high from the dozens of residents whose comments took up a majority of the two-hour long meeting that evening, with concerns encompassing the development currently underway for new warheads, LLNL’s proximity to nearby communities, and the very existence of a nuclear facility in the Bay Area – or anywhere – amid heightened domestic and geopolitical anxieties in the early days of the current presidential administration.
The public hearing came on the heels of an announcement from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Tuesday that its “Doomsday Clock” had been moved “as close to midnight as it’s ever been,” with 89 seconds left until midnight – citing disruptive technologies, climate change and natural disasters, and “daunting biological threats” in addition to geopolitical turmoil. It was previously changed to 90 seconds until midnight in 2023.
With anxieties over nuclear weapons in the present geopolitical and environmental landscapes rising globally, speakers at this week’s hearing also emphasized specific local concerns for Livermore and the surrounding region.
“I would urge NNSA to reevaluate their plutonium expansion proposal,” said Anoushka Raj, environmental program manager at Tri-Valley CARES. “I believe it blatantly violates environmental justice principles and perpetuates a systemic harm against some of our most vulnerable neighbors.”
Raj pointed to the high number of minority and low-income residents in particular at apartments on East Avenue in Livermore near the lab as those who could be disproportionately impacted by the lab’s activities.
“These communities have been systemically excluded from the decision making as we can see in NNSA’s failure to provide any translated materials or any in-person hearings,” she continued.
The call for in-person hearings and translated materials was echoed by numerous other speakers that evening, and Raj said she believed the lack thereof “is not an oversight – it’s plain discrimination.”
Some speakers Wednesday evening specifically called for additional hearings and public outreach in Livermore’s neighboring communities.
“The citizens of Tracy, Pleasanton and Dublin should have the chance to speak, and there have been no public hearings scheduled for those communities,” Livermore resident Donna Cabanne said.
Cabanne added that she urged the NNSA to reject its current trajectory and instead take no action on increasing plutonium pit production.
“It’s too dangerous to store nuclear-grade weapons plutonium so close to thousands of residents,” Cabanne said. “I propose increased measures for toxic waste are not sufficient to guarantee public safety. This is not a reasonable risk to impose on thousands of nearby residents in the Tri-Valley and millions in the Bay Area.”
While LLNL’s proximity to populated areas – and the unique security challenges and health risks that poses compared with other nuclear facilities – was a chief concern of local residents and speakers from miles away, some also expressed concerns over broader issues, with Livermore resident Shirley Lewandowski pointing toward the lab as a potential local target for global change.
“Our planet is already in trouble,” Lewandowski said. “There is a lot of climate changes challenging us. So in this one case, this is controllable. Livermore can say no, we won’t have to do that. They will control the fact that they listen to the customers and they listen to the residents.”
Other concerns specific to LLNL that evening included the history behind its current Category III security status, which was downgraded in 2012 from a Category I/II level according to Scott Yundt, executive director of Tri-Valley CARES.
“Up until 2012, the lab had a security I/II, which enabled them to have a classified amount, but what was later known to be roughly 3,000 pounds of plutonium on site in vaults at the superblock,” Yundt told Livermore Vine ahead of Wednesday’s meeting. “Following the failure of force-on-force security drills that were mandated after 9/11 – the government decided our nuclear facilities should be tested with force-on-force drills to see if they could withstand a terrorist attack – those were scheduled in 2008 and Livermore failed two different drills.”
LLNL began the process of de-inventorying its plutonium supply shortly after, with two thirds having been moved to other nuclear sites as of 2009 according to a press release from the lab at that time, ultimately moving to its current Category III status three years later when it met the less than 400-gram threshold of plutonium metal required for that status.
Yundt said that from the perspective of Tri-Valley CARES and other nuclear watch groups, that move had been a step in the right direction, with the current proposal to reclassify the lab’s security clearance status serving as a step backwards.
“We were really hopeful in 2012 when the lab lost its authority to have large quantities of plutonium, and it’s concerning and sad to us that the tides have turned and we’re moving back into an era that puts communities at risk,” Yundt said.
However, Tri-Valley CARES and others concerned about increased nuclear technology and weapons had achieved what they classified as a victory earlier in the month, when a settlement was reached with the NNSA and Department of Energy in a lawsuit filed in 2021 contesting the planned enhanced plutonium pit production program’s compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
As part of the settlement, LLNL and other nuclear sites involved in the plan are now subject to a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) process and associated review, requiring at least two public hearings – one on the scope of the project, and another on the draft PEIS before it is finalized. The dates, times, and locations of those meetings and public review periods remain to be determined.
This week’s separate public scoping session comes following the initial notice of intent to prepare an SEIS for changes at LLNL that was filed by the NNSA on Jan. 13. At Wednesday’s meeting, officials announced that they had extended the public comment period from its previous 30-day period through Feb. 12 to March 3, with some speakers calling on them to extend it further for up to 90 days.
The next step in that process is for the NNSA to prepare a draft SEIS with public input in mind, which is set to be announced upon its completion. The draft will be the subject of one or more public hearings in which public input will be considered in the preparation for the final SEIS. Information on the SEIS for Livermore and the environmental review process for other sites is available at energy.gov/nnsa/nnsa-nepa-reading-room.
LLNL officials referred questions from Livermore Vine to NNSA spokespeople, which they had acknowledged as of Friday morning, but said they would need approximately a week to fully respond. “Current response times may be longer than usual,” according to a notice on the NNSA website. In the meantime, they pointed to the presentation Wednesday evening for additional information.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story had an incorrect figure for how much plutonium is believed to have been at LLNL before its de-inventory process in 2012. Embarcadero Media regrets the error.
