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"Clean up of more than 130 old uranium mine and mill sites around New Mexico could be fast-tracked under federal legislation introduced by New Mexico's three congressmen. Reps. Harry Teague, Ben Ray Lujan and Martin Heinrich have proposed legislation that would make funds available under the Surface Mine and Reclamation Act for the remediation of uranium sites. If the bill passes, it would make more than $14 million available for cleaning up the New Mexico sites."

"The Nuclear Review, Issue# 7 : Nuclear Constructions, Waste Management, More, March 29, 2010, by Arn Specter, Phila. 1.Managers Warned Against Bungling Los Alamos Lab Construction project 2.Costs Climb for Los Alamos Research Site 3.Project Estimates Go Up and Up, 4.Secretary Chu, NNSA Administrator and the Tennessee Congressional Delegation Join Local Officials in Dedicating Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility at Y-12 5.A recent uranium mining ruling could lead to NM nuke renaissance 6.Need for an Information Repository in the Española Valley as part of NMED Hazardous Waste Permit for LANL 7.Under the Nuclear Shadow 8.Los Alamos scientists write in Physics Today about enabling largest superfund cleanup to date, 9. Australian Prime Minister's Russia Meltdown, 10. IAEA Could Acquire Russian Uranium for Fuel Bank, 11. House Members Criticize Proposal to Halt work on Yucca Mountain"

"Louisiana Energy Services and International Isotopes Inc. have agreed International Isotopes will provide uranium deconversion services for LES' National Enrichment Facility, which will produce enriched uranium for commercial nuclear power plants. The $3 billion enrichment facility also will produce tons of depleted uranium tails each year, which Idaho Falls, Idaho-based International Isotopes will use in a uranium deconversion and fluorine extraction processing facility. The contract allows International Isotopes to take no more than 25 percent of the depleted uranium tails. LES does not consider them waste and plans to recycle much of the material in the future for more enriched uranium. International Isotopes expects to break ground next year west of Hobbs. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the Idaho company's plan."

"The State Land Office and Lea County have agreed on a land swap to provide a site in southeastern New Mexico for a plant to process depleted uranium. Land Commissioner Pat Lyons said Wednesday the state gets about 3,900 acres from the county in exchange for 640 acres near Hobbs. The newly acquired land between Eunice and Jal will be leased by the Land Office for agricultural purposes. The land near Hobbs will become the site for a proposed plant by Idaho Falls, Idaho-based International Isotopes Inc. The plant is to extract commercially valuable fluoride compounds from tailings created by the refining of uranium for nuclear power plant fuel. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the company's license application."

New Mexico officials and International Isotopes Inc. have reached an agreement that will limit the amount of waste that can be stored at the company's planned uranium deconversion plant in southeastern New Mexico. The company plans to build a plant near Hobbs that would convert depleted uranium into certain types of acid and gas that could be used for industrial manufacturing applications. Uranium waste would be disposed of at a licensed facility outside New Mexico. Environment Secretary Ron Curry said the agreement will protect the environment and area residents while allowing the company to operate in the state.

New Mexico officials and International Isotopes Inc. have reached an agreement that will limit the amount of waste that can be stored at the company's planned uranium deconversion plant in southeastern New Mexico. The company plans to build a plant near Hobbs that would convert depleted uranium into certain types of acid and gas that could be used for industrial manufacturing applications. Uranium waste would be disposed of at a licensed facility outside New Mexico. Environment Secretary Ron Curry said the agreement will protect the environment and area residents while allowing the company to operate in the state.

"Proposed new legal deadlines for treating or shipping Hanford's transuranic waste could extend work past the date a national repository is projected to be open to accept the waste. Proposed Tri-Party Agreement deadlines would allow the Department of Energy to continue treating or shipping transuranic wastes -- typically debris contaminated with plutonium -- through 2035. No previous deadline had been set for shipping the waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the nation's repository for transuranic waste. But current projections anticipate WIPP will stop accepting waste in late 2030 and work then would begin to close the repository. "

"- An organization long critical of Los Alamos National Laboratory's plan for a new nuclear facility says the National Environmental Policy Act needs to be followed before the building can move ahead. The Los Alamos Study Group contends the project is on a larger scale than alternatives analyzed seven years ago and has not been subjected to a NEPA analysis. The watchdog group is sending a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and National Nuclear Security Administration head Tom D'Agostino about their concerns. The group says reasonable alternatives to the project were never analyzed."

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authorized startup of a $3 billion uranium enrichment plant in New Mexico, the first major nuclear facility to be licensed in the US in the past three decades. NRC officials said in a news release Thursday they are satisfied the facility can begin operations. The Louisiana Energy Services facility near Eunice will use an enrichment process that employs centrifuges to separate uranium isotopes. The enriched uranium will supply fuel for nuclear power plants in the US and overseas. LES president and chief executive Gregory Smith calls the NRC approval "a turning point" for the nation's nuclear industry. The technology used at the New Mexico plant has been in place in Europe for more than 30 years."

"Opponents of the New Mexico oil industry would have you believe that life in New Mexico hangs by a thread due to the potential disasters tied to oil exploration, development and production. Further, they insist that state government must intensify the rules on drilling or the water, air and land of New Mexico will be ruined for generations. Not true. There was a time when New Mexico was very contaminated, and it has taken decades for that terrible pollution to abate. Many New Mexicans were sickened by this pollution and the human damage remains to this day. This pollution was not by oil; rather, it was plutonium. No one seems to remember this."

"Thousands of feet under a hot patch of sand and brush is buried a deposit of uranium so rich it could revive a hardscrabble New Mexico town pocked with vacant lots and shuttered buildings. The mining industry and those residents of the area who are eager for an influx of jobs see the plateau around Mount Taylor near the town of Grants in the northwest corner of New Mexico as an irresistible opportunity for economic gain. "It's what we need, it's what's going to fuel the future," said Star Gonzales, director of the Grants chamber of commerce. "They will be good paying jobs.""

"Tularosa downwinders prepare for vigil, meetings this week There will be a candle for Ruthina Utter Tyler, who died after battling a series of cancers. There will be a candle for Tony Cordova, who endures two types of cancer, and a candle for Demetrio Montoya, a former mayor of Tularosa who died of pancreatic cancer. There will be candles for mothers, sons, a daughter or a father, a grandparent who told their children of their memories of that morning 65 years ago when the brilliant light and roar of the very first detonation of a radioactive bomb at the historic Trinity Test site brought a secret military project to the Tularosa Basin and an unexamined legacy. These and hundreds of others will be honored at a candlelight vigil Friday evening at the Tularosa Little League Park to begin a weekend of educational programs and documentation of as many oral histories as possible of the fateful day. Organizers hope it will bring more light onto the dark secret of suffering and a widespread "cancer culture" among residents of the area. Ruthina Tyler believed her cancers were a result of exposures throughout her life to the contaminated food, water and land after the Trinity Test. Her son Fred Tyler agreed with her and while she was still alive, he publicly questioned the impacts of the historic test on local residents in Tularosa and the surrounding areas."

"This is the third and final installment of a series of stories about the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium and the possible effects the Trinity Site test may have had on residents of the area developing cancer. "I hate the fact that we have been treated as insignificant scientists have been compensated but our community has been ignored," cancer survivor Tina Cordova said. "We have to fight for the recognition that our environment was damaged and, in the process, we were also damaged. It is a shame that they did not come back and tell us our food supply is compromised." Cordova, who grew up in Tularosa, was a medical student for two years before creating her own business in Albuquerque. After much discussion, she and Tularosa resident Fred Tyler formed the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium to collect data and see what they could do to help survivors in the wake of the 1945 Trinity atomic bomb explosion that shook the Tularosa Basin. In July 2005, they worked with several volunteers to collect cancer histories from local residents ending up with well over 100 documents of a cancer culture that had festered quietly among generations of families."

"Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the Proposed International Isotopes Uranium Processing Facility AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice of Intent. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: International Isotopes Fluorine Products, Inc. (IIFP), a wholly owned subsidiary of International Isotopes, Inc. (INIS), submitted a license application, which included an Environmental Report (ER) on December 30, 2009, that proposes the construction, operation, and decommissioning of a fluorine extraction and depleted uranium de- conversion facility to be located near Hobbs in Lea County, New Mexico. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its regulations in 10 Code of Federal Regulations Part 51, announces its intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) evaluating this proposed action. The EIS will examine the potential environmental impacts of the proposed INIS facility. DATES: NRC invites public comments on the appropriate scope of issues to be considered in the EIS. The public scoping process required by NEPA begins with publication of this Notice of Intent. Written comments submitted by mail should be postmarked by no later than August 30, 2010 to ensure consideration. Comments mailed after that date will be considered to the extent practical. "

The Department of Energy will make the medical records of former Los Alamos National Laboratory workers available to help them prove whether they qualify for federal compensation for exposure to radiation and beryllium. Sen. Jeff Bingaman and Sen.-elect Tom Udall, both New Mexico Democrats, welcome the DOE's announcement Thursday of its decision to provide the records available to lab employees. The medical records are from the Los Alamos Medical Center and were created before the facility was privatized in 1964.

After 35 years, New Mexico's senior senator - Pete Domenici - is retiring for health reasons. Domenici was a power broker in Washington who got results for Clovis and New Mexico. He was instrumental in stopping Defense Department plans to close Cannon Air Force Base in 2005 and in landing a new mission with Air Force Special Operations Command. Domenici sits on the powerful Defense Appropriations Commitee and is the ranking member for the Senate's Committee on Energy and Nautral Resource.

The New Mexico Environment Department will hold a water fair to test well water from private wells only in the San Mateo Basin from noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21 at Cibola County Building, 515 High St. in Grants. All present and future owners and users of private wells that are within the advisory area are advised to sample their wells to ensure the quality of well water does not pose health concerns. Water from public drinking water systems will not be tested because those supplies are routinely tested and deemed to be safe pursuant to the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act. In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 will hold a community meeting 6-8 p.m., the same day, also at the Cibola County Building.

Parsons has been awarded a two-year contract by LES to "provide engineering, construction management, and construction services" for the expansion phase of the National Enrichment Facility, Parsons announced February 3. The value of the contract was not disclosed. Parsons, a California-based engineering and construction firm, said it was awarded the contract "based on its approach, engineering excellence, and ability to partner and develop the project in a fast-track manner while meeting [NRC] licensing requirements." LES announced in November that it plans to expand the annual capacity of its centrifuge uranium enrichment facility under construction in Eunice, New Mexico from 3 million SWU to 5.9 million SWU. That will push the plant's predicted completion date to the end of 2014, resulting in a total construction cost of more than $3 billion, LES said last year. When completed, the facility will be able to provide 50% of all enriched fuel for the 104 operating power reactors in the US, Parsons said.

Lighting a cigarette in the middle of a New Mexico windstorm is the kind of thing an aging uranium miner like Milton Head does with precision, finesse-and frequency. He keeps smoking as we drive down Highway 605, toward the mines where he spent 40 of his 69 years working. Though the highway is empty now, Head remembers ambulances screaming past him toward town on his daily drive. "I lost a lot of friends [in the mines]," he says. "But you know, we all knew what was involved, every time we went to work."

DOE announced today that a group of buildings at Los Alamos National Laboratory will now be known collectively as the Pete V. Domenici National Security Science Complex. "The honor acknowledges Senator Domenici's long and distinguished career as a U.S. Senator from New Mexico and is a testament to the vision and leadership of a great public servant," DOE said in the announcement.

The Navajo Nation's top health official told the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that Navajos continue to live with the Cold War legacy of uranium mining, and that a long-term, comprehensive assessment and research program with adequate resources is needed to address it. Anslem Roanhorse Jr., executive director of the Navajo Nation Division of Health, said 520 radioactive uranium mines on the Navajo Nation were abandoned without being cleaned up. The uranium taken from Navajo land from 1944 to 1986 was used to meet the federal government's demand for nuclear weapons material, he said. Testifying Thursday before the bi-annual CDC and Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry Tribal Consultation session on the Environmental Public Health in Indian country, Roanhorse said four million tons of uranium ore, known as "yellow cake," were mined from Navajo land for more than 40 years. "There are about 500 abandoned uranimum mine sites throughout the Navajo Nation and only one has been fully assessed,