Reading Room


Submit Your Letters

October 8, 2020
Source: The Independent News

I would like to let the community of Livermore know the importance of submitting a letter to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to outline important issues, questions and topics that must address in the upcoming Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for the continued operation of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore Lab) Main Site in Livermore and Site 300 high explosives testing range near Tracy. 

More than 2,000 current and former Livermore Lab employees have applied through the Labor Department for compensation for serious illnesses, including cancer, believed to have been caused by on-the-job exposures to radioactive and toxic materials. The SWEIS must analyze worker exposures and consider worker health and safety.

NNSA noted in particular that the SWEIS would seek to raise the emission limit for tritium, which is radioactive hydrogen. There shouldn’t be any justification for the increase of any radioactive emissions. If anything, it should be reduced. 

The SWEIS should analyze an alternative future for Livermore Lab; one in which the lab does more unclassified, civilian science work and less work on developing new and modified nuclear bomb designs. Furthermore, the decision makers and the public should have these facts in hand when making decisions in regards nuclear weapons. 

The Livermore Lab Main Site was placed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list of most contaminates sites in the nation in 1987. The Site 300 high explosives testing range near Tracy was placed on the EPA Superfund list in 1990. It will take 60 to 80 years, if not more, for the cleanup of radioactive toxins. 

As a resident of the Central Valley, I am particularly concerned about Livermore Lab’s plan to increase the size and weight of open-air bomb blasts at Site 300 by as much as 10 fold per each blast and more than seven fold annually. ”

Please, it is important to write your letter and send it by email to [email protected]. 

For more information on this issue, you can visit www.trivalleycares.org or email [email protected]. If you are a Spanish speaker, you can email [email protected], I will gladly help to translate your letter and send it. 

NNSA will hold a second virtual public meeting on Monday, Oct. 5, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time.  Deadline for public comment is Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020. For the NNSA NEPA reading room, visit energy.gov/nnsa/nnsa-nepa-reading-room.

Raiza Marciscano-Bettis,

Livermore

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