Tri-Valley CAREs’ staff and members recently attended public tours of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Site 300 high-explosives testing range near Tracy, California and its Main Site in Livermore.
We have a decades-long history of organizing community tours of the Lab’s Superfund cleanup projects, but these were the first such tours the Lab has allowed since 2019. The tours give the directly affected community a chance to see the site and ask questions directly to the cleanup staff about the current status of the contaminated areas, the cleanup remedies they are applying, and upcoming environmental decision-making process in which the public can participate.
Tri-Valley CAREs helped organize these tours so our membership and interested community members could better understand what cleanup looks like on the ground and how they can engage in decision-making. While organizing the visits came with challenges due to the Lab’s less than collaborative outreach as well as its new social media based sign-up system for the tours, fifteen of our members were able to sign up and attend.
THE SITE 300 TOUR
Site 300 is an active high-explosives testing facility and a federal Superfund cleanup site. High explosives are used in the detonation of nuclear weapons. Decades of this testing has contaminated soil, groundwater, and surface water. In addition, the Lab dumped hazardous waste in unlined trenches at Site 300 for decades. Many of those have leaked dangerous contamination into the groundwater. The site was added to the EPA Superfund list in 1990 because of the scale and seriousness of the contamination.
Contaminants include hazardous materials such as high-explosive compounds, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like TCE, perchlorate, PCBs, dioxins, metals, oils, and radioactive materials such as uranium and tritium. The hilly 17 square-mile site has very complex hydrology which adds to the difficulty of the cleanup.
During the tour, LLNL staff repeatedly emphasized that the areas we were visiting were focused on environmental remediation. However, Site 300 is still an active explosives-testing facility. In fact, an explosive test was being conducted on the day of the tour, and our tour stops had to be cut short as a result.
That moment captured the central contradiction of our tour of Site 300. Cleanup was our tour’s focus, but it is taking place alongside ongoing nuclear weapons-related testing. And, active nuclear weapons operations can affect access, delay cleanup, create additional hazards, and make it harder for the public to understand what is actually happening at the site.
We also learned that two treatment facilities damaged by the 2024 Corral Fire are still not operational. LLNL did not provide an estimate for when they will be fully repaired and brought back online, stating cost as a limiting factor.
One of the most concerning examples is the damaged 830-DISS pipeline and treatment system. During the Corral Fire, a pipeline carrying contaminated groundwater burst, releasing approximately 6,000 gallons of untreated groundwater containing perchlorate and volatile organic compounds onto the soil. We previously reported that the damaged pipeline was 830-DISS, and LLNL’s Corral Fire presentation identified significant damage to the 830-DISS GWTS, which treats groundwater for perchlorate and connects to the CGSA GWTS.
On the tour, LLNL staff stated that replacing the damaged pipeline would be expensive and that there is still no clear timeline for doing so. This is unacceptable. A contaminated-groundwater treatment system should not remain in limbo nearly two years after a major fire, especially at a site where groundwater contamination has already affected areas near Corral Hollow Road and the surrounding Tracy region. In addition, the Lab has been lavished with a 28% increase in tax payer funding over the last two years. Here, too, the tour’s central contradiction was exposed: Cleanup does not have priority over new warheads (and new pollution).
The Corral Fire itself raised serious questions about emergency preparedness and transparency at Site 300. The fire began on June 1, 2024, burned 14,168 acres, damaged multiple cleanup systems, and disrupted groundwater and soil-vapor treatment infrastructure. Tri-Valley CAREs previously reported that all 10 pump-and-treat systems in Operable Units 1, 2, and 7 were impacted, 21 monitoring wells were put out of commission, and multiple pipelines were damaged. We also later obtained, through a Freedom of Information Act request, LLNL’s root cause analysis of the fire. That report concluded that the fire began because of an electrical failure at high-voltage pole 8009, where an aluminum hand tie failed and allowed two power lines to contact each other, creating sparks in dry grass under high-wind conditions. In simple terms, the Lab’s lack of maintenance spending caused the fire.
The Site 300 Superfund tour highlighted the site’s more than 800 groundwater wells, its dozen groundwater treatment facilities, its extraction wells and its soil vapor treatment facilities. These are scattered throughout Site 300, as the contaminants are widespread. Questions abound regarding the methodology to remediate more than a thousand acres of soils contaminated with uranium and other pollutants from past outdoor high-explosive bomb tests – alongside other major cleanup challenges.
The Site 300 tour made one thing clear: community oversight is still urgently needed. While Tri-Valley CAREs appreciates the opportunity for staff and members to visit Site 300 and ask questions directly, a tour cannot substitute for full transparency, timely repairs, enforceable cleanup deadlines, and meaningful public accountability.
THE MAIN SITE TOUR
Tri-Valley CAREs also attended the Livermore Lab Main Site Superfund tour. The Lab was founded in 1952 to develop the hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the United States’ second nuclear weapons design lab after Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Prior to this, the land had been used by various occupants, including a stint by the Navy as an aircraft maintenance facility. The Main Site stretches just over one square mile, and is located within the City of Livermore. Homes, apartments, little league fields and more are built up to the fence line. There are more than 50,000 people living within 2 miles of the Main Site, and more than 7 million within a 50-mile radius.
The Main Site conducts experiments with numerous hazardous substances, including weapons-grade plutonium, uranium, and tritium (radioactive hydrogen used in the hydrogen bomb). Documented accidents and releases from the Main Site total approximately one million curies of radiation.
The Main Site was placed on the EPA Superfund list of most contaminated sites in the nation in 1987. In addition to tritium and plutonium, the Main Site cleanup has included metals, PCBs and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), most often trichloroethylene (TCE). With the exception of the plutonium found in soil at the Main Site, there is a consistency in the types of pollutants between the Main Site and Site 300.
Therefore, we were surprised that the Lab presentation at the Main Site tour expressly blamed the Navy for most of the cleanup being done by the Lab. This assertion flies in the face of the facts that the Navy never used many of the non-VOC pollutants and was in operation only for a short period of time compared to the Lab, the federal EPA named the Lab as the “responsible party” for those contaminants, and Site 300 officials did take responsibility for the VOCs and other similar hazardous and radioactive materials at that location.
While the “public relations” was off-putting, the Superfund tour became interesting when we visited several of the cleanup facilities on the Main Site, including two longstanding treatment locations and an innovative cleanup site where the Lab has experimented over the years to perfect the anaerobic conditions needed and the right mix of natural “bugs” to inject into a VOC-polluted area to break down those contaminants into harmless compounds. One concern that lingered in our last (pre-2019) Superfund tour was whether the bugs could break down the contaminants completely, or would they only get them to the final stage, which is toxic vinyl chloride, and get stuck there. Good news – complete breakdown is being found.
Since cleanup got going in 1989 (two years after becoming a Superfund site), more than 7.9 billion gallons of groundwater has been treated and 1.8 billion cubic feet of soil vapor has been treated, removing nearly 4 tons of VOCs. The tour did not include the same level of detail for the non-VOC parts of the cleanup.
In 2011, the Lab estimated that the Superfund cleanup would not be completed until 2080. More recently, Lab officials have stated that they cannot say by what year the cleanup will be done, it could be later.
The facts we saw on the ground highlight the severity of the pollution and the continued need for public participation in decisions. The Superfund tour we attended is a good step in that direction but falls far short of the full transparency and accountability that the community needs.
We will continue to participate in future Superfund cleanup tours of both sites. That said, we are calling on the Lab to make its signup process more community-friendly and the Main Site tour in particular less technical in terms of its jargon. Stay tuned for announcements if you are interested in attending.
LLNL Main Site Superfund Tour handouts