[Federal Register Volume 87, Number 160 (Friday, August 19, 2022)]
[Notices]
[Pages 51083-51086]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2022-17901]


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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

National Nuclear Security Administration


Notice of Intent To Prepare a Site-Wide Environmental Impact 
Statement for Continued Operation of the Los Alamos National Laboratory

AGENCY: National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy.

ACTION: Notice of intent.

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SUMMARY: The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-
autonomous agency within the Department of Energy (DOE), announces its 
intent to prepare a new Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement 
(SWEIS) for the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL or Laboratory) in 
Los Alamos, New Mexico (DOE/EIS-0552) in compliance with the National 
Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). The SWEIS will analyze the 
potential environmental impacts of the reasonable alternatives for 
continuing operations of the Laboratory for approximately the next 15 
years. The continued operation of the Laboratory is critical to NNSA's 
Stockpile Stewardship Program to prevent the spread and use of nuclear 
weapons worldwide and to many other areas impacting national security 
and global stability. The SWEIS will also analyze environmental impacts 
of legacy waste remediation conducted by DOE's Office of Environmental 
Management (DOE-EM). The purpose of this Notice is to invite public 
participation in the process and to encourage public involvement on the 
scope of analysis (e.g., range of alternatives, impacts, and actions) 
and alternatives that should be considered in the SWEIS. Following 
completion of the SWEIS, NNSA will decide which reasonable alternatives 
to implement and will announce its decisions through a Record of 
Decision (ROD). Absent any new decisions associated with this SWEIS 
process, NNSA would continue to implement decisions announced in 
previous RODs.

DATES: NNSA invites other federal agencies, state and local 
governments, federally recognized Indian tribes and the public to 
comment on the scope of the LANL SWEIS. The public scoping period 
begins with the publication of this Notice in the Federal Register and 
continues until October 3, 2022 (the Comment Period). NNSA will accept 
public participation in written and oral form, and comments concerning 
the scope of the SWEIS will be given equal weight regardless of method 
of delivery. For receiving oral comments, NNSA will host two virtual 
public scoping meetings. The decision to hold only virtual meetings is 
based on the continuing high level of community spread of COVID-19 in 
the areas where in-person meetings would be held, as measured and 
reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
Meeting details will be provided in a future notice posted on the 
following website: www.energy.gov/nnsa/nnsa-nepa-reading-room. NNSA 
will hold the scoping meetings no earlier than 15 days from the posting 
of the notice. Details of the public meetings will also be announced in 
local media outlets.

ADDRESSES: Written comments will be considered if received or 
postmarked by the end of the Comment Period. Comments received or 
postmarked after the Comment Period will be considered to the extent 
practicable. Written comments on the scope of the SWEIS or requests for 
information related to the SWEIS should be sent via postal mail to LANL 
SWEIS Comments, 3747 W Jemez Road, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87544 or by 
email to: [email protected]. Before including your address, phone 
number, email address, or other personally identifiable information in 
your comment, please be advised that your entire comment--including 
your personally identifiable information--might be made publicly 
available. If you wish for NNSA to withhold your name and/or other 
personally identifiable information, please state this prominently at 
the beginning of your comment. You may submit comments anonymously.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For further information about this 
Notice, please contact Kristen Dors, NEPA Compliance Officer, U.S. 
Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Los 
Alamos Field Office, 3747 W Jemez Road, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87544; 
phone: (505) 667-5491; or via email at [email protected]. This 
Notice and related NEPA documents are available at: www.energy.gov/nnsa/nnsa-nepa-reading-room.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Background

    The Laboratory has been operating for nearly 80 years in Northern 
New Mexico. Today, the Laboratory is a national security laboratory, as 
defined by 50 United States Code (U.S.C.) 2471, and operated as an NNSA 
facility by a Management and Operating (M&O) contractor with an annual 
budget of approximately $4.6 billion and a workforce of approximately 
14,000 people. The Laboratory exists to support NNSA missions, which 
are established by law, including: (1) to enhance U.S. national 
security through the military application of nuclear energy; (2) to 
maintain and enhance the safety, reliability, and performance of the 
U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, including the ability to design, 
produce, and test, in order to meet national security requirements; (3) 
to promote international nuclear safety and nonproliferation; (4) to 
reduce global danger from weapons of mass destruction; (5) to support 
U.S. leadership in science and technology. NNSA missions are carried 
out in a manner that is consistent with the principles of: (1) 
Protecting the environment; (2) Safeguarding the safety and health of 
the public and of the workforce; (3) Ensuring the Security of the 
nuclear weapons, nuclear material, and classified information. As a 
Federally Funded Research and Development Center, the Laboratory is 
primarily sponsored by NNSA but does work for other federal agencies 
and partners with a wide variety of entities. LANL also has an 
important legacy waste remediation mission, which is overseen by DOE-
EM. The potential impacts of these ongoing DOE-EM remediation 
activities will be included in the LANL SWEIS. This Notice signifies 
the fourth site-wide EIS undertaken for the Laboratory since 1976.

Purpose and Need for Agency Action

    The purpose of the continued operation of the Laboratory has not 
changed and continues to be to provide support for NNSA's core missions 
as directed by the Congress and the President. NNSA's need to continue 
operating the Laboratory is focused on its obligation to ensure a safe 
and reliable nuclear stockpile. For the

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foreseeable future, NNSA, on behalf of the U.S. Government, will need 
to continue its nuclear weapons research and development, surveillance, 
computational analysis, components manufacturing, and nonnuclear 
aboveground experimentation. Currently, many of these activities are 
conducted solely at the Laboratory. A curtailment or cessation of these 
activities would run counter to national security policy as established 
by the Congress and the President. The Laboratory plays vital roles in 
NNSA missions including: enhancing U.S. national security through the 
military application of nuclear energy; maintaining and enhancing the 
safety, reliability, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons 
stockpile, including the ability to design, produce, and test, in order 
to meet national security requirements; promoting international nuclear 
safety and nonproliferation; reducing global danger from weapons of 
mass destruction; supporting U.S. leadership in science and technology.
    The 2016 Compliance Order on Consent between the State of New 
Mexico Environmental Department and the Department of Energy (the 
Consent Order) is the principal regulatory driver for legacy waste 
cleanup at LANL. The Consent Order contains requirements for 
investigation and cleanup as well as enforceable deadlines for 
achieving desired remediation milestones, which may include the 
submission of documents such as investigation work plans, investigation 
reports, periodic monitoring reports, and corrective measures 
evaluation reports.

Requirements To Fulfill DOE NEPA Compliance

    The SWEIS will be prepared pursuant to NEPA (Title 42 U.S.C. 4321 
et seq.), the Council on Environmental Quality's NEPA regulations (40 
CFR parts 1500-1508) and the DOE NEPA implementing procedures (10 CFR 
part 1021). The DOE regulations (10 CFR 1021.330) require preparation 
of site-wide documents for certain large, multiple-facility sites, such 
as the Laboratory. 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, to provide a basis for site-wide 
decisionmaking 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 
allows NNSA to ``tier'' its later project-specific NEPA analyses at the 
same site. Tiering is a method used in NEPA analysis that allows 
agencies to eliminate repetitive discussion of the same issues and to 
focus on the specific issues in future proposed actions.
    The NEPA process enables federal, state and local governments, 
federally recognized Indian tribes, and public participation in the 
environmental review process.

Preliminary Alternatives

    The scoping process is an opportunity for the public to assist NNSA 
in determining the alternatives, issues, or analyses that should be 
included in the SWEIS. 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; during the development of 
the SWEIS, NNSA could include other reasonable alternatives.

No-Action Alternative: Continue Current Operations

    The No-Action Alternative would continue current operations 
throughout the Laboratory that support currently assigned missions. 
NEPA regulations require analysis of the No-Action Alternative to 
provide a benchmark for comparison with environmental effects of action 
alternatives. This alternative includes the programs and activities for 
which NEPA reviews and decisions have been made, such as DOE-EM legacy 
waste cleanup activities pursuant to the 2016 Consent Order. The No-
Action Alternative includes, for currently assigned mission scope: (1) 
construction of minor replacement facilities; (2) upgrades to existing 
facilities and infrastructure; (3) decontamination, decommissioning, 
and demolition (DD&D) projects.

Modernizing Current Operations Alternative

    The programmatic context for the Modernizing Current Operations 
Alternative is the continued support of existing programs and 
activities by modernizing facilities as necessary. This alternative 
includes the scope of the No-Action Alternative, as described above, 
plus additional modernization activities. This alternative includes: 
(1) construction of replacement facilities; (2) more significant 
upgrades to existing facilities and infrastructure; (3) more 
significant DD&D projects. Under this alternative, NNSA would replace 
facilities that are approaching their end of life, upgrade facilities 
to extend their lifetimes, and improve work environments to enable NNSA 
to meet operational requirements. The proposed DD&D of older facilities 
would eliminate excess facilities and reduce costs and risk. This 
alternative would not expand capabilities and operations at LANL beyond 
those that currently exist.

Expanded Operations Alternative

    The Expanded Operations Alternative includes the modernization 
actions included in the Modernizing Current Operations Alternative, as 
described above, plus actions that would expand operations and missions 
to respond to future national security challenges and meet increasing 
requirements. This alternative includes: (1) construction and operation 
of new facilities, and (2) significant upgrades to existing facilities 
that result in changing the nature and capabilities of these 
facilities. This alternative would expand capabilities at LANL beyond 
those that currently exist. For example, under an Expanded Operations 
Alternative NNSA may consider the construction and operation of an 
additional supercomputing complex that would enable NNSA to expand the 
capabilities of that program. In the Draft SWEIS, NNSA will identify 
and analyze other actions that could expand the capabilities at LANL.
    The Draft SWEIS will identify the specific actions associated with 
the alternatives and will assess the potential impacts of implementing 
the alternatives. The Draft SWEIS will also identify and evaluate any 
actions related to environmental management and land transfer that are 
reasonable for each of the alternatives.

Other Potential Reasonable Alternatives

    The 1999 and 2008 LANL SWEISs included a Reduced Operations 
Alternative. Those SWEISs were prepared at times when DOE/NNSA deemed a 
reduction in Laboratory operations to be a reasonable alternative. For 
the foreseeable future, NNSA does not consider reducing operational or 
environmental remediation missions at LANL as reasonable. However, the 
timeframe for the SWEIS analysis is approximately 15 years into the 
future, and NNSA recognizes that requirements, needs, opportunities, 
and vision may change over such a long planning horizon. Consequently, 
NNSA has not made a final decision on whether to include a Reduced 
Operations Alternative in this SWEIS. NNSA welcomes input on this and 
any other alternative the public

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thinks are reasonable and should be analyzed in the SWEIS.
    Alternatives that NNSA will not consider reasonable are (1) the 
complete closure and DD&D of the Laboratory and (2) transfer of current 
missions/operations from the Laboratory to other sites, as those 
actions would be inconsistent with the LANL mission defined by NNSA. 
Such possibilities were considered as recently as 2008 when NNSA 
prepared the Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic EIS (CT 
SPEIS). In that document, NNSA concluded that ``as a result of the 
continuing challenges of certification [of nuclear weapons] without 
underground nuclear testing, the need for robust peer review, benefits 
of intellectual diversity from competing physics design laboratories, 
and uncertainty over the details [of] future stockpiles, NNSA does not 
consider it reasonable to evaluate laboratory consolidation [or 
elimination] at this time.'' That conclusion has not changed today. In 
addition, as one of only three NNSA national security laboratories, 
LANL contributes significantly to the core intellectual and technical 
competencies of the U.S. related to nuclear weapons. These competencies 
embody more than 75 years of weapons knowledge and experience. The 
Laboratory performs the basic research, design, system engineering, 
development testing, reliability and assessment, surveillance, and 
certification of nuclear weapons safety, reliability, and performance. 
From a broader national security perspective, the core intellectual and 
technical competencies of the Laboratory help provide the technical 
basis for the pursuit of U.S. arms control and nuclear nonproliferation 
objectives.
    The CT SPEIS also considered and evaluated the transfer of missions 
and operations to and from the Laboratory, and NNSA has implemented, as 
appropriate, decisions that followed preparation of that document. NNSA 
has not identified any new proposals for current missions/operations 
that are reasonable for transfer to/from the Laboratory.

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.

 Potential effects on the public and workers from exposures to 
radiological and hazardous materials during normal operations, 
construction, reasonably foreseeable accidents (including from natural 
phenomena hazards), and intentional destructive acts
 Impacts on surface and groundwater, floodplains and wetlands, 
and on water use and quality
 Impacts on air quality from potential releases of radiological 
and nonradiological pollutants and greenhouse gases
 Impacts to plants and animals and their habitats, including 
species that are federally or state-listed as threatened or endangered, 
or of special concern
 Impacts on physiography, topography, geology, and soil 
characteristics
 Impacts to cultural resources, such as those that are 
historic, prehistoric, archaeological, scientific, or paleontological
 Socioeconomic impacts to affected communities
 Environmental justice impacts, particularly whether or not 
activities at the Laboratory have a disproportionately high and adverse 
effect on minority and/or low-income populations
 Potential impacts on land use and applicable plans and 
policies
 Impacts from traffic and transportation of radiological and 
hazardous materials and waste on and off the Laboratory campus
 Pollution prevention and materials, and waste management 
practices and activities
 Impacts on visual aesthetics and noise levels of Laboratory 
facilities on the surrounding communities and ambient environment
 Impacts to community services, including fire protection, 
police protection, schools, and solid waste disposal to landfills
 Impacts from the use of utilities, including water and 
electricity consumption, fuel use, sewer discharges, and resource 
conservation
 Impacts from site contamination and remediation
 Unavoidable adverse impacts
 Environmental compliance and inadvertent releases
 Short-term uses and long-term productivity
 Irreversible and irretrievable commitment of resources
 Cumulative effects of past, present, and reasonably 
foreseeable future actions
 Mitigation commitments

LANL SWEIS Process and Schedule

    Fourteen years have passed since the publication of the 2008 LANL 
SWEIS. Because of comprehensive site planning activities that are under 
consideration, as well as other reasons, NNSA determined that it was 
appropriate to revisit the 2008 SWEIS analysis. The scoping process is 
intended to involve all interested agencies (federal, state, and 
local), public interest groups, federally recognized Indian tribes, 
local businesses, and members of the general public. Interested parties 
are invited to participate in the SWEIS process to refine the 
preliminary alternatives and identify environmental issues that are 
reasonable or pertinent for analysis. Input from the scoping process 
will assist NNSA in formulating the alternatives and defining the scope 
of the SWEIS analysis.
    Following the scoping process announced in this Notice, and after 
consideration of comments received during scoping, NNSA will prepare a 
Draft SWEIS for the continued operation of the Laboratory. NNSA expects 
to issue the Draft SWEIS in 2023. NNSA will announce the availability 
of the Draft SWEIS in the Federal Register and local media outlets. 
NNSA will hold one or more public hearings for the Draft SWEIS. Any 
comments received on the Draft SWEIS will be considered and addressed 
in the Final SWEIS. NNSA could then issue a Record of Decision no 
sooner than 30 days after publication by the Environmental Protection 
Agency of a Notice of Availability of the Final SWEIS.

Signing Authority

    This document of the Department of Energy was signed on August 15, 
2022 by Jill Hruby, Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and 
Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, pursuant to 
delegated authority from the Secretary of Energy. That document with 
the original signature and date is maintained by DOE. For 
administrative purposes only, and in compliance with requirements of 
the Office of the Federal Register, the undersigned DOE Federal 
Register Liaison Officer has been authorized to sign and submit the 
document in electronic format for publication, as an official document 
of the Department of Energy. This administrative process in no way 
alters the legal effect of this document upon publication in the 
Federal Register.


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    Signed in Washington, DC, on August 16, 2022.
Treena V. Garrett,
Federal Register Liaison Officer, U.S. Department of Energy.
[FR Doc. 2022-17901 Filed 8-18-22; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6450-01-P