[Federal Register Volume 67, Number 116 (Monday, June 17, 2002)]
[Notices]
[Pages 41224-41227]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 02-15165]


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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY


Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory

AGENCY: National Nuclear Security Administration.

ACTION: Notice of intent.

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SUMMARY: The National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Oakland 
Operations Office (OAK) announces its intent to prepare a Site-Wide 
Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) to evaluate the environmental 
effects of the operation of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 
(LLNL) in Livermore, California. The SWEIS is being prepared in 
accordance with the Council on Environmental Quality's National 
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Implementing Regulations (40 CFR Parts 
1500-1508) and the DOE NEPA Implementing Procedures (10 CFR Part 1021). 
The SWEIS will analyze the potential environmental impacts associated 
with continuing current LLNL operations and foreseeable new and/or 
modified operations and facilities for approximately the next ten 
years. The No Action Alternative, to be analyzed in the SWEIS, is to 
continue current LLNL operations of programs in support of assigned 
missions, without foreseeable new operations and facilities for the 
next ten years. A reduced operation alternative will also be analyzed. 
The SWEIS will utilize the baseline information from the previous LLNL 
SWEIS (Environmental Impact Statement and Environmental Impact Report 
for the Continued Operation of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories 
and Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, August 1992), to the 
extent possible. The purpose of this Notice is to invite public 
participation in the process and to encourage public involvement on the 
scope and alternatives that should be considered.

DATES: NNSA invites other federal agencies, State and local 
governments, Native American Tribes and the public to comment on the 
scope of this SWEIS. The public scoping period begins with the 
publication of this Notice in the Federal Register and will continue 
until August 13, 2002. Written scoping comments postmarked by that date 
will be considered in the preparation of the draft SWEIS. Comments 
postmarked or received by e-mail after that date will be considered to 
the extent practicable.
    Two public scoping meetings will be held at two different locations 
as indicated below. This information will also be published in local 
newspapers in advance of the meetings. Any necessary changes will be 
announced in the local media.

July 10, 2002, at 1:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., Double Tree Club (formerly 
the Holiday Inn), 720 Las Flores Rd., Livermore, CA 94550, (925) 443-
4950
July 11, 2002, at 1:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., Holiday Inn Express, 3751 N. 
Tracy Blvd., Tracy, CA 95304, (209) 830-8500

    The following website may be accessed for additional information. 
http://www-envirinfo.llnl.gov/. A toll free hotline 1-877 388-4930 has 
been established for leaving messages. The hotline will have 
instructions on how to record comments and requests for information.

ADDRESSES: Written comments on the scope of the SWEIS or requests for 
information should be sent to: Mr. Thomas Grim, Document Manager, U.S. 
Department of Energy, 1301 Clay Street, 700N, Oakland, CA 94612-5208, 
Phone (925) 422-0704.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For general information on the NNSA 
NEPA process, please contact: Mr. James J. Mangeno, NNSA NEPA 
Compliance Officer, U.S. Department of Energy/NNSA, 1000 Independence 
Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585; or telephone 1-800-832-0885, ext. 6-
8395; or Ms. Janet Neville, Oakland Operations Office NEPA Compliance 
Officer, U.S. Department of Energy, Oakland Operations Office, 1301 
Clay Street, 700N, Oakland, CA 94612-5208, or telephone (510) 637-1813. 
For general information on the DOE NEPA

[[Page 41225]]

process, please contact: Ms. Carol M. Borgstrom, Director, Office of 
NEPA Policy and Compliance (EH-42), U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 
Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585. Ms. Borgstrom can be 
reached at 202-586-4600, or by leaving a message at 1-800-472-2756.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

LLNL Mission

    LLNL has been in existence for 50 years. LLNL has an annual budget 
of approximately $1.4 billion and employs approximately 8,000 people. 
The LLNL main site is located approximately 40 miles (65 kilometers) 
east of San Francisco in the Livermore Valley adjacent to the City of 
Livermore. The LLNL Experimental Test Facility (Site 300) is a high-
explosives test site located 12 miles (20 kilometers) southeast of the 
City of Livermore between Livermore and Tracy, California.
    National security is LLNL's primary mission. The Laboratory is 
focusing its efforts on two of the nation's top priorities: ensuring 
the safety, security, and reliability of the United States nuclear 
stockpile; and preventing and countering the proliferation of weapons 
of mass destruction. To support this mission LLNL will bring into 
operation significant new capabilities required for nuclear weapons 
stockpile stewardship. These include the National Ignition Facility and 
the Terascale Simulation Facility that is part of the Advanced 
Simulation and Computing Program (aka ASCI). In addition, LLNL will 
continue to apply its scientific and engineering capabilities to 
develop advanced defense technologies to increase the effectiveness of 
United States military forces.

Meeting National Needs

    The Department of Energy and NNSA have enduring missions that are 
vital to the national interest. In addition to its national security 
mission, the Department's priorities include enhancing the nation's 
energy security by developing and making available clean energy; 
cleaning up former nuclear weapons complex sites; finding more 
effective technology for minimizing, treating, and disposing of nuclear 
waste; and leveraging science and technology to advance fundamental 
knowledge and economic competitiveness. The Laboratory's mission 
includes: energy security and long-term energy needs, environmental 
assessment and management, nuclear materials stewardship, advancing 
biosciences to improve human health, and pursuing breakthroughs in 
fundamental sciences and applied technology.

Role of the SWEIS in the DOE NEPA Compliance Strategy

    The SWEIS will be prepared pursuant to the National Environmental 
Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.), the Council on 
Environmental Quality's NEPA regulations (40 CFR 1500-1508) and the DOE 
NEPA Implementing Procedures (10 CFR Part 1021). The DOE has a policy 
(10 CFR 1021.330) to prepare site-wide documents for certain large, 
multiple-facility sites, such as LLNL. The purpose of a SWEIS is to 
provide the public with an analysis of the potential environmental 
impacts from ongoing and reasonably foreseeable new and modified 
operations and facilities, and reasonable alternatives at a DOE site, 
to provide a basis for site-wide decision making, and to improve and 
coordinate agency plans, functions, programs, and resource utilization. 
The SWEIS provides an overall NEPA baseline so that the environmental 
effects of proposed future changes in programs and activities can be 
compared to the baseline. A SWEIS also enables DOE to ``tier'' its 
later NEPA project-specific reviews at a site to eliminate repetitive 
discussion of the same issues in future project-specific NEPA studies, 
and to focus on the actual issues ready for decisions at each level of 
environmental review. The NEPA process allows for Federal, state and 
local governments, Native American Tribes, and public participation in 
the environmental review process. The Final Environmental Impact 
Statement and Environmental Impact Report for Continued Operation of 
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National 
Laboratories, Livermore [DOE/EIS-0157], August 1992, is the existing 
site-wide document for LLNL. In addition, a Supplement Analysis for 
Continued Operation of LLNL and SNL, California (DOE/EIS-0157-SA-01), 
dated March 1999, conducted a 5-year review and concluded that the 1992 
SWEIS remained adequate for LLNL. To the extent possible, this SWEIS 
will utilize and update the data developed for the 1992 and 1999 
documents. There is a potential to adopt this document for California 
Environmental Quality Act purposes, as was done in 1992.

Preliminary Alternatives

    The scoping process is an opportunity for the public to assist NNSA 
in determining the alternatives and issues for analysis. NNSA welcomes 
specific comments or suggestions on the content of these alternatives, 
or on other alternatives that could be considered. A preliminary set of 
alternatives and issues for evaluation in the SWEIS is identified 
below. Additionally, during the development of the SWEIS, DOE may 
consider other alternatives that are judged to be reasonable.

No Action Alternative, Continuing Present Operations

    The No Action Alternative would continue current facility 
operations throughout LLNL in support of assigned missions. NEPA 
regulations require analysis of the No Action Alternative to provide a 
benchmark for comparison with environmental effects of the other 
alternatives. This alternative includes the programs and activities 
described above in the LLNL Mission section and those activities for 
which NEPA review is already underway. Additionally, the No Action 
Alternative will include any interim actions that proceed independent 
of the SWEIS.

Proposed Action Alternative

    This alternative would include the No Action Alternative as 
described above. In addition this alternative could include an increase 
in facility operations to levels that can be supported by current 
facilities, and operations that may require new or modified facilities, 
that are reasonably foreseeable over the next 10 years. Activities in 
support of this alternative could include revised waste management 
strategies that may consider additional options for on-site treatment 
and storage, and off-site disposition. The programmatic context for 
this alternative is the continued support of existing missions, and 
receipt of additional missions or projects, which need to be supported. 
The following two new operations, as a minimum, will be included in the 
SWEIS.

National Ignition Facility

    The Record of Decision (ROD) (61 FR 68014) for the Stockpile 
Stewardship and Management, Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement 
(SSM PEIS) indicated that the Department would construct and operate 
the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory as a key component of the NNSA's science-based stewardship 
of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. A lawsuit challenging the 
adequacy of the SSM PEIS alleged that there were new DOE proposals to 
conduct experiments at the NIF using hazardous and radioactive 
materials and that none of these materials were contemplated in the SSM 
PEIS. In a Memorandum

[[Page 41226]]

Opinion and Order issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of 
Columbia on August 19, 1998, in NRDC v. Richardson, Civ. No. 97-936 
(SS) (D.D.C.), the Court dismissed the Plaintiffs' case against the 
Government. Pursuant to paragraph 6 of the Order, DOE, no later than 
January 1, 2004, will (1) determine that experiments using plutonium, 
other fissile materials, fissionable materials other than depleted 
uranium, lithium hydride, or a Neutron Multiplying Assembly will not be 
conducted in the NIF, or (2) prepare a Supplemental SSM PEIS analyzing 
the reasonably foreseeable environmental impact of such experiments.
    As indicated in the January 15, 2002 Federal Register Notice (67 FR 
1969), ``* * * at the present time there are no DOE proposals to use 
any of these materials in experiments in the NIF.'' The Department has 
in place a process to determine whether or not to propose the use of 
any of these materials in NIF experiments. If DOE were to decide not to 
propose the use of any of these materials in the NIF, the SWEIS would 
analyze the impacts of current NIF operations. If DOE were to decide to 
propose the use of any of these materials in the NIF, a NEPA analysis 
and determination would be undertaken as a project specific analysis to 
be included in the SWEIS. In addition to addressing the impacts of 
using these materials, if DOE were to decide to propose their use, the 
NIF project specific analysis would update the information from the NIF 
portion of the SSM PEIS and would address the potential impacts of any 
proposed changes to NIF operations.

Defense Nuclear Technology, Classified Project

    A second project-specific analysis for a proposed classified 
Stockpile Stewardship project involving facilities and equipment in the 
Superblock will be included in the LLNL SWEIS as a classified appendix. 
The project-specific analysis will include information on the mission 
need and an evaluation of the environmental impacts of the 
construction, commissioning, and operation of this proposed project. To 
the extent possible, the main body of the SWEIS will include as much 
unclassified information on this project as possible, including 
potential impacts.

Reduced Operation Alternative

    The overall programmatic context for this alternative is the 
maintenance of existing missions at a reduced or modified scope. In 
this alternative, DOE would consider and analyze proposals for the 
reduction or cessation of specific operations to reduce adverse 
environmental impacts. This alternative may include reasonable 
proposals for consolidating operations into fewer facilities (including 
subsequent analysis of decommissioning or demolition of vacated 
facilities) that have technical merit and would still meet NNSA's 
national security missions. Analysis would include waste generated from 
facility decommissioning or demolition, and from sustained operation at 
the proposed reduced level. Analysis of this alternative would include 
impacts on staffing, traffic, energy consumption, and natural 
resources. The Reduced Operations Alternative will not consider the 
complete closure and decontamination and decommissioning of LLNL and/or 
Site 300 for the reasons that follow. As one of only three nuclear 
weapons laboratories, LLNL contributes significantly to the core 
intellectual and technical competencies of the United States related to 
nuclear weapons. These competencies embody more than 50 years of 
weapons knowledge and experience. The laboratories perform the basic 
research, design, system engineering, development testing, reliability 
and assessment, and certification of nuclear weapon safety, 
reliability, and performance. From a broader national security 
perspective, the core intellectual and technical competencies of LLNL 
(and Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory, 
DOE's other nuclear weapons laboratories) provide the technical basis 
for the pursuit of United States arms control and nuclear 
nonproliferation objectives. As such, NNSA has determined that the 
alternative to shut down LLNL completely is unreasonable and will not 
be analyzed in the SWEIS.

Preliminary Environmental Analysis

    The following issues have been identified for analysis in the 
SWEIS. The list is tentative and intended to facilitate public comment 
on the scope of the SWEIS. It is not intended to be all-inclusive, nor 
does it imply any predetermination of potential impacts. The NNSA 
specifically invites suggestions for the addition or deletion of items 
on this list.
    1. Potential effects on the public and workers from exposures to 
radiological and hazardous materials during normal operations, 
construction, and reasonably foreseeable accidents.
    2. Impacts on surface and groundwater, floodplains and wetlands, 
and on water use and quality.
    3. Impacts on air quality.
    4. Impacts to plants and animals and their habitat, including 
species which are Federally or State listed as threatened or 
endangered, or of special concern.
    5. Impacts on physiography, topography, geology, and soil 
characteristics.
    6. Impacts to cultural resources such as those that are historic, 
prehistoric, archaeological, scientific, or paleontolological.
    7. Socioeconomic impacts to affected communities.
    8. Environmental Justice, particularly whether or not activities at 
LLNL have a disproportionately high and adverse effect on minority and/
or low-income populations.
    9. Potential impacts on land use plans and policies.
    10. Impacts from transportation of radiological and hazardous 
materials on and off the LLNL sites.
    11. Pollution prevention and waste management practices and 
activities.
    12. Impacts on visual aesthetics and noise levels of the LLNL 
facilities on the surrounding communities and ambient environment.
    13. Unavoidable adverse impacts due to natural phenomena (e.g., 
floods, earthquakes, etc.).
    14. Cumulative effects of past, present, and future operations 
including SNL/CA.
    15. Reasonably foreseeable impacts associated with the shutdown or 
demolition of excess facilities.
    16. Impact of mitigation measures.

Related NEPA Reviews

Programmatic NEPA Reviews

    The Waste Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement 
(PEIS) (DOE/EIS-0200) analyzed the DOE plan to formulate and implement 
a national integrated waste management program. The Final PEIS was 
published in May 1997 and a Record of Decision was published in the 
Federal Register on January 23, 1998 (63 FR 3629). The Final Stockpile 
Stewardship and Management PEIS was published in September 1996 [DOE/
EIS-0236] and a Record of Decision (ROD) was signed by the Secretary of 
Energy on December 19, 1996 (61 FR 68014). Inherent in the many 
decisions made in the SSM PEIS ROD was the decision to continue the 
operation of the three national weapons laboratories, LLNL being one of 
the three. The ROD emphasized stockpile stewardship as an essential 
program to maintain the safety and reliability of the stockpile in the 
absence of underground nuclear testing, therefore requiring enhanced 
experimental capabilities in the future at the three national weapons 
laboratories. The SSM PEIS ROD also selected the LLNL as the site to 
construct and operate the NIF.

[[Page 41227]]

Sandia National Laboratories, California

    A Notice of Intent to prepare a Site-Wide Environmental Assessment 
(SWEA) for Sandia National Laboratories, California (SNL/CA) was 
published in the Federal Register on February 4, 2002 (67 FR 5089). The 
SWEA will address operations and activities that DOE foresees at SNL/CA 
for approximately the next 5 to 10 years. The LLNL SWEIS will include 
the impacts from SNL/CA in the cumulative impacts section.

SWEIS Preparation Process

    The SWEIS process begins with the publication of this Notice of 
Intent in the Federal Register. This notice establishes the public 
scoping period and the public scoping meetings as indicated above under 
DATES. Each public scoping meeting will begin with a briefing on the 
LLNL mission, proposed changes in operations and facilities, 
preliminary SWEIS alternatives, and the proposed action of the SWEIS. 
Copies of the meeting handouts will be available to anyone unable to 
attend by contacting the NNSA as described above under ADDRESSES. 
Following the initial presentation, NNSA representatives will answer 
scope-related questions and accept comments. After the close of the 
public scoping comment period, NNSA will begin development of the draft 
SWEIS. The draft SWEIS is expected to be available for public review in 
late 2003. Public meetings will be held following the Notice of 
Availability of the draft SWEIS. The publication of the final SWEIS is 
scheduled for mid 2004 and the Record of Decision is scheduled for late 
2004.

Classified Material

    NNSA will review classified material while preparing this SWEIS. 
Within the limits of classification, NNSA will provide to the public as 
much information as possible to assist public understanding and 
comment. Any classified material NNSA needs to use to explain the 
purpose and need for the action, the use of materials, or the 
development of impacts, will be segregated into a classified appendix 
or supplement, which will not be available for general public review. 
However, all unclassified results of calculations will be reported in 
the unclassified section of the SWEIS, to the extent possible in 
accordance with federal classification requirements.

Availability of Scoping Documents

    Copies of scoping materials related to the SWEIS will be available 
at the following locations:

The DOE Energy Information Center, Oakland Federal Building, First 
Floor of the North Tower, Room 180N, 1301 Clay Street, Oakland, 
California. Phone (510) 637-1762.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Public Reading Room in the 
Visitors Center Trailer 6525, located at the East Gate Entrance off of 
Greenville Road, Livermore, California. Phone (925) 424-4026.
Livermore Public Library, 1000 South Livermore Avenue, Livermore 
California.
Tracy Public Library, 20 East Eaton Avenue, Tracy, CA.


    Issued in Washington, DC, this 7th day of June, 2002.
John A. Gordon,
Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration.
[FR Doc. 02-15165 Filed 6-14-02; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6450-01-P