Newly Released Tritium Review Analyzes LANL Tritium Reports
Contact:
Marissa Naranjo, Council Member, Communities for Clean Water
marissa@sovereignenergy.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 14, 2026
[ccwnewmexico.org/tritium]
Newly Released Tritium Review Analyzes LANL Tritium Reports, Highlighting Infant Doses, As Well As LANL’s Procedural and Report Shortcomings
Los Alamos, NM - A newly released independent review of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s 2025 tritium venting reports raises serious concerns about radiation risks to children and infants, questions about whether the venting operation should have been permitted as planned, highlights major gaps in LANL’s public reporting and decision-making process.
“Community members pushed for transparency every step of the way, and that pressure forced important admissions that were absent from LANL’s original planning,” said Kalyn Finnell, with Communities for Clean Water. “But serious questions remain about whether children and families are being adequately protected.”
On May 14, 2026, Communities for Clean Water published a review analyzing two reports LANL released following its controversial September 2025 tritium release operation. Authored by Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) the “Review of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s tritium venting reports – Volume 1 (November 2025) and Volume 2 (February 2026)”, gives a summary of the tritium venting as well as the data and estimates that came from the two reports published by LANL:
FTWC Radioactive Air Emissions Summary, Volume 1: Stack Emissions & Off-Site Dose Consequence, LA-UR: 25-31093, November 14, 2025; and
FTWC Radioactive Air Emissions Summary, Volume 2: Environmental Sampling & Expanded Plume Modeling, LA-UR: 26-20967, February 17, 2026.
Notably, LANL formally acknowledged for the first time that estimated radiation doses to infants were more than three times higher than doses to adults — a change that came only after sustained public pressure and community participation in hearings. Still, infant doses were not considered during the planning and modeling that took place prior to the tritium release, and they will not be taken into account moving forward, according to LANL.
According to Makhijani:
“Had infant doses been considered during permitting, the operation would not have been allowed as planned, since infant doses under LANL’s appropriately conservative source term assumption would have been more than the regulatory limit of 10 mrem. This raises the question of whether EPA’s “standard practice" of enforcement for adults only is providing equal protection under the law to infants and children when infant doses are estimated to exceed the regulatory limit of 10 mrem but adult doses do not. The fact that the actual venting resulted in doses well below 10 mrem for infants is not relevant to the question of whether the permit was properly granted” (2026).
The findings raise broader concerns about how federal agencies assess radiation risks to nearby communities, particularly for infants, children, pregnant women, and Indigenous communities living near nuclear facilities.
The review’s findings are especially relevant as DOE NNSA moves forward with plans to expand plutonium pit production at LANL under the draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). Community advocates note that the draft PEIS similarly fails to adequately analyze impacts to infants, children and pregnant women as those demographics are not considered as members of the public in the draft PEIS’s analysis of impacts to health and human safety. Hybrid Public Comment for the draft PEIS will take place on Thursday, May 14th at 5pm to 8 pm at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute, 1607 Paseo de Peralta, in Santa Fe, NM.
The review also questions LANL’s decision to proceed with venting despite no measurable pressure buildup in the waste containers — meaning the explosion risk used to justify the release may not have existed.
You can read the report at ccwnewmexico.org/tritium.
