Los Alamos National Laboratory will start venting radioactive gas on September 13 to release pressure from legacy waste containers, officials said Tuesday. The announcement followed state environment officials’ approval of the plan on Monday.
Over the next two weeks, LANL aims to vent four waste containers filled with tritium and hazardous waste that it packed in 2007 and left at the lab’s legacy waste disposal site, called Area G. In 2016, a laboratory audit found the containers had been packed incorrectly and posed a threat of exploding.
Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, can be naturally occurring or a byproduct from nuclear power and weapons. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency characterizes the gas as a lower threat, emitting radiation that often cannot penetrate the skin. Tritium is only considered hazardous in large quantities from inhalation, skin absorption or consumed in tritiated water – when tritium replaces the hydrogen molecules in water.
New Mexico Environment Department’s conditional approval came after pressure from federal officials urging the state in a recent letter to finalize a decision and pushback from anti-nuclear and Indigenous groups about the proposal.
“The operation is scheduled to take place over a two-week period and avoids impacting neighboring Pueblo Feast Days,” LANL’s Tuesday notice stated. “It also considers weather conditions to ensure activities occur at the best and safest time possible.”
Tewa Women United and other groups raised concerns that the federal government based its tritium exposure levels of 10 millirem — a measure of radiation dose — on men, and did not take into account the impact on pregnant women and young children.
Based on those concerns, the state will require a “hard stop” limit at 6 millirem, versus LANL’s proposed limit of 8 millirem.
Chenoa Scippio (Navajo/Santa Clara), the environmental justice project coordinator at Tewa Women United, told Source NM the group is still concerned about the potential impacts for pregnant people, noting that tritium can pass through the placental barrier.
“When it comes to the knowledge that’s shared between the labs or the government and the community, it really puts the burden onto the community to research these things to find out what it does to the body to find out how it impacts the land and water,” Scippio said. “That’s not transparency.”
Scippio said people concerned about exposure should stay indoors during the weekend venting sessions.
“That’s really the best we can offer, which is unfortunate,” she said.
Representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state environment department will be onsite to view the venting process, officials told Source NM on Monday.
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This story originally appeared on Source New Mexico on September 10, 2025. It is published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-ND 4.0).
Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: info@sourcenm.com.
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