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department of energy
'Significant Victory': Court Rules Planned Plutonium Pits for New Nukes Violate US Law
"Public scrutiny is especially important because the activities at issue here, by their very nature, result in the production of dangerous weapons and extensive amounts of toxic and radioactive waste," a plaintiffs' lawyer said.
Oct 03, 2024
In what advocates called a major win for frontline communities and the rule of law, a U.S. district court judge ruled on Monday that the federal government could not move forward with producing plutonium pits—"the heart and trigger of a nuclear bomb"—at two proposed sites in New Mexico and South Carolina.
Instead, Judge Mary Geiger Lewis agreed with a coalition of nonprofit community groups that the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to fully consider alternatives to producing the pits at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory and South Carolina's Savannah River Site (SRS). Now, the federal government must conduct a full environmental impact statement of how pit production would work at sites across the U.S.
"This is a significant victory that will ensure NEPA's goal of public participation is satisfied," attorney for the plaintiffs Ben Cunningham, of the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, said in a statement. "Public scrutiny is especially important because the activities at issue here, by their very nature, result in the production of dangerous weapons and extensive amounts of toxic and radioactive waste. I hope the public will seize the upcoming opportunity to review and comment on the federal agencies' assessment."
"This is a victory for public transparency, and hopefully will result in alternative proposals that are more protective of the environment and affected communities around these sites."
Making plutonium pits means working with "extremely hazardous and radioactive materials," Nuclear Watch New Mexico, one of the groups behind the suit, pointed out. As of 2018, the government had planned to produce at least 80 pits a year by 2030—30 or more in New Mexico and 50 or more in South Carolina.
Yet these pits are not intended to maintain the United States' existing nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, they would be for future, experimental weapons that could not even be tested without violating the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. What's more, making the pits would cost U.S. taxpayers over $60 billion over the next three decades, and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the NNSA has not made reliable cost estimates for production at the two proposed sites.
"The DOE and NNSA have been on the GAO's 'High Risk List' for project mismanagement and cost overruns for more than 30 years," said Jay Coghlan, the executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. "Nevertheless, these agencies think they can proceed with their most expensive and complex project ever without required public analyses and credible cost estimates."
Coghlan continued: "Public scrutiny and formal comment under the National Environmental Policy Act have proven time and again to improve public safety and save taxpayers' money. A nationwide programmatic environmental impact statement [PEIS] on expanded plutonium pit production will hold DOE and NNSA accountable for just that."
It will also give local communities a chance to have a say in potentially dangerous projects being implemented near their homes. The plaintiffs were composed mostly of frontline groups: Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition.
"Native Gullah/Geechees, including the Gullah/Geechee Fishing Association and Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition members, rely on safe and healthy water in order to sustain ourselves and our community," said Gullah Geechee Nation Chieftess Queen Quet. "Therefore, it is critical that the public is fully aware of any and all potential negative impacts that projects will have on critical resources such as our water supplies and water bodies."
If the DOE and NNSA's plans had gone ahead, it would have been the first time that plutonium pits were manufactured at the Savannah River Site, at a facility which could cost between $11 and $25 billion to complete. However, Judge Lewis concluded that the agencies had not updated their plans to account for production at two sites at once and must therefore conduct a PEIS considering production at potential sites across the U.S. as well as the handling and disposal of waste.
"In our comments, it was repeatedly stressed that the agency violated the law by failing to take a hard look at alternatives for this 'two-site' plan," said Scott Yundt, executive director of the Livermore, California-based Tri-Valley CAREs. "Additionally, commenters pointed out the lack of inclusion in the environmental review of the other affected sites involved in the plan, chief among them Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, where the scope of work and the corresponding impacts was largely left out of the analysis and, again, no alternatives were offered or analyzed as required by NEPA. The judge saw these violations clearly and ordered agencies do the analysis that should have been done at the outset. This is a victory for public transparency, and hopefully will result in alternative proposals that are more protective of the environment and affected communities around these sites."
Tom Clements, who directs Savannah River Site Watch and was also an individual plaintiff in the case, said the ruling was "a notable victory for the main argument in our lawsuit—that the NNSA's NEPA analysis on plutonium pit production was inadequate."
In addition, it provides a reprieve for the project's concerned neighbors.
"The design and construction work on the proposed SRS pit plant should be put on hold until the PEIS has been finalized," Clements said.
Dylan Spaulding, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, also applauded the ruling.
"NNSA skirted the rules and now they are being held accountable—this is a victory for transparency," he said.
Spaulding added that he was unsure whether or not this would delay the planned plutonium pit production blitz.
"There are still a lot of environmental hazards and questions that need to be addressed," he said. "We should be pausing and thinking about that before this hugely expensive project goes forward."
This piece has been updated to included comments from Dylan Spaulding of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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Massive Climate Coalition Demands Biden Kill LNG Export Licenses
"We deserve a future that protects our families and our planet, not one that fuels further destruction," one frontline advocate said.
Sep 09, 2024
A coalition of more than 250 climate, environmental, and frontline community organizations on Monday urged U.S. President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to reject all requests for approval to export liquefied natural gas to non-fair trade agreement countries.
The demand came in the form of a letter following a recent ruling by Trump-appointed District Judge James D. Cain Jr. to lift a pause that Biden's Department of Energy had placed on new LNG export approvals while it updates the criteria it uses to determine whether these exports are in the public interest. It also comes a week after the DOE signed off on the export of LNG from an offshore New Fortress Energy plant near Altamira, Mexico.
"After the hottest summer on record, on track to be the hottest year, it's clear that expanding climate-heating gas exports is not in the public interest," Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, said in a statement. "There's no reason on Earth to approve more LNG exports that lock in decades of damage to the climate, human communities, and imperiled species like Rice's whales. The Department of Energy must reject every single one."
"With climate-induced disasters becoming a regular part of our lives, it's hard to understand how anyone can prioritize fossil gas exports over our health and safety."
The Center for Biological Diversity is one of the many signatories of Monday's letter, backed by dozens of large national groups as well as scores of smaller, more local organizations. Other groups include Earthworks, Food and Water Watch, Oil Change International, the Sunrise Movement, Public Citizen, several branches of 350.org and Extinction Rebellion, Port Arthur Community Action Network, and the Vessel Project of Louisiana.
In the letter, the groups applauded the administration for instituting the pause on approvals in the first place and for acknowledging that the data it used to determine whether exports were in the public interest was "outdated and insufficient."
Since the court ruling leaves the department without a deadline for updating its data, the groups urged the DOE "to continue seeking the best available information on the impact of LNG exports on the public, the environment, and economy."
"When the department completes its analyses, the weight of evidence will make it clear that new LNG exports are not in the public interest and that all pending applications to export LNG must be rejected," the groups wrote.
With the world "on the verge" of exceeding the 1.5°C limit enshrined in the 2015 Paris agreement, the coalition warned against new infrastructure and export policies that will only exacerbate the global emissions crisis at a critical moment in history.
"The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next year, and then steeply decline, for our planet to have the best chance of avoiding this fate," the letter reads. "The only way world leaders can avoid this moral and political failure is to work together to end fossil fuel production."
This goal has been hampered by the record rise in U.S. gas production facilitated by the fracking boom. Whereas global gas production had been predicted to be on the wane, it is now expanding instead. At the same time, new research has shown that, due to methane leaks, gas is not a "bridge fuel" to cleaner energy but in fact just as detrimental to the climate as coal.
Another major concern raised by LNG opponents is the local pollution generated by export facilities. Many of these new facilities are located in, under construction in, or slated for the Gulf South, which is already overburdened by toxic emissions from oil, gas, and petrochemical production.
"As a mom living in a community surrounded by industry, I feel the weight of every decision made about our environment," Vessel Project founder and director Roishetta Ozane said in a statement. "With climate-induced disasters becoming a regular part of our lives, it's hard to understand how anyone can prioritize fossil gas exports over our health and safety. The Department of Energy has the power to reject these LNG export permits, and it's crucial they do so. We deserve a future that protects our families and our planet, not one that fuels further destruction."
The letter suggests the broad environmental movement, both at the local level and nationally, is united behind the demand to halt the LNG buildout as the groups applauded Biden's efforts to curb exports thus far but also asked him to go further.
"We initially urged you to pause approvals of LNG exports," they wrote to Biden and Granholm, "we fiercely celebrated and defended your decision to do so in January, and now we write to let you know we continue to stand behind you as we insist that you take the next step of stopping new LNG exports."
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'Permit to Kill': LNG Buildout Would Boost Premature Deaths, Health Costs
"The bizarre rush to overbuild methane gas export capacity is not only a climate and an economic mistake—it is also a public health disaster," said the report's co-author.
Aug 14, 2024
Permitted emissions from both currently operating and planned liquefied natural gas terminals in the United States "have a major price tag for communities' public health," with existing facilities already estimated to cause scores of premature deaths and nearly a billion dollars in damage each year, according to an analysis published Wednesday.
The report— Permit to Kill—was published by Greenpeace USA and the Sierra Club, which said the analysis "adds to the mounting body of evidence showing that LNG exports are not in the public interest."
Greenpeace USA senior research specialist and report co-author Andres Chang said in a statement that "this study shows that any discussion of LNG exports that ignores the deadly air pollution from LNG terminals is missing the boat."
"The bizarre rush to overbuild methane gas export capacity is not only a climate and an economic mistake—it is also a public health disaster," Chang added. "Our research shows that air pollution from continuing the LNG buildout would hit fenceline communities the hardest, but would also be carried downwind to further away cities like Dallas and New Orleans, causing childhood asthma onset, lost work and school days, and premature death."
Among the report's key findings:
- Direct air pollution from currently operating LNG export terminals is estimated to cause 60 premature deaths and $957 million in total health costs per year;
- If all the planned terminals and expansion projects are built, these numbers would increase to 149 premature deaths and $2.33 billion in health costs per year;
- By 2050, the same permitted air pollutants from currently operating LNG export terminals alone are expected to yield 2,020 premature deaths and $28.7 billion in total health costs;
- There is a strong overlap between areas that are already experiencing climate harms and the areas slated to suffer the worst air pollution impacts;
- At the national level, Black and Hispanic Americans would respectively experience air pollution from LNG terminals at 151–170% and 110–129% the rate of white Americans, if all projects slated for 2030 are built; and
- If the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) halts approvals of new LNG export applications, it would save an estimated 707 to 1,110 lives and avoid $9.88 billion to $15.1 billion in health costs through 2050, compared with a scenario in which all proposed LNG projects are built.
"This briefing provides a new compelling and distressing data point in the long list of reasons to stop approving LNG export applications," said Sierra Club energy campaigns analyst and report co-author Johanna Heureaux-Torres. "It is shocking that regulators do not already consider deadly pollution impacts in their environmental analyses of gas export projects and related infrastructure."
"DOE and other federal agencies should listen to the science and frontline communities, and develop more robust controls on the cumulative impacts of air pollution from these high-polluting projects," Heureaux-Torres added. "The health of communities and the climate depends on the folks in charge to stand up and do the right thing based on the facts of the situation on the ground."
Climate defenders applauded U.S. President Joe Biden's January pause on LNG export permit applications pending a review of their environmental and economic impacts.
However, the Biden administration has also presided over what climate campaigners have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects that, if all completed, would make U.S. exported LNG emissions higher than all of Europe's combined greenhouse gas footprint, according to climate campaigner Bill McKibben.
"It's time for DOE to stop using permitted emissions from operating and planned LNG export terminals as a license to pollute our most vulnerable people and places."
Numerous other studies have highlighted the public health harms of LNG, including a 2023 study by the University of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Health that found children who live near fracking operations are roughly five to seven times more likely to develop lymphoma than those whose homes are at least five miles away from drilling sites.
"The Permit to Kill report underscores what residents in frontline communities have been saying for decades—it's time for DOE to stop using permitted emissions from operating and planned LNG export terminals as a license to pollute our most vulnerable people and places," said Robert D. Bullard, director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University.
"DOE now has the opportunity and moral responsibility to correct its flawed approach, methodology, thinking, and assumptions that follow the dominant pattern and allow Black, Hispanic, and low-income residents to be overburdened with health-threatening air pollution," he added. "Our communities matter."
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