Los Alamos National Laboratory

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) — New Mexico's top environment officials and the U.S. Energy Department are wrangling over more than $54 million in fines levied in the wake of a radiological leak at the federal government's underground nuclear waste repository.
Now, state officials are threatening even more fines if the Energy Department doesn't accept responsibility for numerous violations outlined in compliance orders issued by the state last year. The New Mexico Environment Department is working on a new compliance order that could include fines of more than $100 million.
Because negotiations with the federal government are ongoing, officials said the total penalties that could be assessed remains unclear.
Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn and other community leaders from New Mexico were in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to discuss cleanup efforts in the wake of last year's mishap at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico. The facility has been closed since February 2014 when a container of waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory ruptured, contaminating 22 workers and parts of the underground waste dump.

Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the United States could face “grave danger” from foreign entities in his response to President Obama’s 2015 National Security Strategy.
Of particular concern to the DOE, Moniz said, was the proliferation of nuclear weapons by “irresponsible” foreign states and terrorists.
The strategy highlighted several points, number one of which was the advancement of the “security of the United States, its citizens and U.S. allies.”
The NSS was presented by National Security Advisor Susan Rice Friday at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C.
Among the most important aims of national security, outlined in the president’s strategy were maintaining a strong national defense, reinforcing homeland security, developing the capacity to prevent, detect and respond to biological threats and striving for a world without nuclear weapons.
In addition, the NSS states the importance of ensuring nuclear materials “don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
Moniz said he was behind the strategy outlined.

LOS ALAMOS (AP) — A Los Alamos National Laboratory employee misclassified information that should have been kept secret but instead was made public, federal investigators said.
The review by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General found that an official at the bomb-building lab didn’t adequately protect classified information in six instances, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported Tuesday.
Those included an employee’s remarks to a public gathering in which the employee unknowingly included material that should have been classified.
Another involved an employee’s article that included material that should have been classified but wasn’t.
The review said the classification officer was lax about keeping his staff current on guidelines for determining what information must be kept secret.
Specific details about the classified material were not provided.
The report criticizes the consortium of private contractors that manages the lab for ignoring the problems, even though it was aware of them.

Annika Hofgaard of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research will give a presentation Wednesday at the Research Park.
The presentation, “Subarctic Forest Advance — Empirical-Based Results vs. Modeled Predictions,” is scheduled for 1 p.m. on the second floor of the Research Park. The presentation will focus on the northward movement of subarctic forests.
According to research, a larger proportion of the earth’s surface area may become darker and thus absorb more heat and change of this nature could have a major impact on global climate. The assumption is that a warmer climate will cause the forest-tundra ecotone to advance steadily northward. Empirical-based results, however, do not confirm such an assumption outright.
Hofgaard is a leading figure in the International Arctic vegetation science community. Currently, her main research interests include impacts of changing climate on vegetation, focusing on Arctic ecology at the tree line.