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Welcome to the 27th quarterly report on lessons learned in the NEPA process.

Fair Credit Reporting Act Authorization

Minutes of the May 30, 2001 Board meeting at Walatowa Visitor's Center Presentation DOE, Environmental Restoration, Ted Taylor

Special Review of the Rocky Flats Closure Project Site

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA) (DOEIEA-1381) to analyze the proposed action to relocate the Atlas pulse power machine from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to the Nevada Test Site (NTS). At the NTS, Atlas would be reassembled in a newly constructed building within a designated Industrial, Research, and Support site in Area 6. After reassembly, Atlas would be commissioned to ensure proper operation and then used to conduct approximately 40 pulsed power experiments per year, with a potential to increase to approximately 100 experiments per year, should the Stockpile Stewardship Program require it. The EA also addresses alternatives to the proposed action and analyzes the noaction alternative wherein the Atlas pulse power machine would remain in Los Alamos, New Mexico and continue to be operated at the LANL site.

The Proposed Action (the No Burn Alternative) would consist of implementing a Wildfire Hazard Reduction and Forest Health Improvement Program at LANL that would not use fire as a treatment measure. This ecosystem-based management program would initially be composed of a series of individual, small-scale projects using mechanical and manual thinning methods that would be conducted over about 10 years with ongoing, long-term maintenance projects conducted thereafter. These carefully planned initial projects would be conducted to bring the forests at LANL to the desired end-state for wildfire risk followed by an on-going maintenance program to maintain the forests in this desired state with enhancements to improve overall forest health. An estimated 35 percent, approximately 10,000 ac (4,000 ha), of LANL would be treated under this program using forest thinning and the construction of access roads and fuel breaks as treatment measures. Wood materials generated by the treatment measures would be either donated or salvaged; waste wood materials (slash1) would primarily be disposed of through chipping and used as mulch on-site.

Wildfire Hazard Reduction and Forest Health Improvement Program, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico

Since the creation of the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex, large amounts of low-level waste have been generated as a result of the processes which are part of the mission of the complex. To date, the Department has disposed of nearly 69 million cubic feet of this waste at its facilities, and over the next 70 years, plans to dispose of an additional 358 million cubic feet of low-level waste. In February 2000, the Department announced that it had developed a hierarchy of preferred options for disposal of the lowlevel waste.

Utilization of the Department’s Low-Level Waste Disposal Facilities