-----Message-----
Subject: RE: New information re: plutonium discrepancies
Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 08:11:30 -0400
From: "Madden, Ray"
To: "Lisa Ledwidge/IEER"

Lisa:

Good morning and greetings!

Thank you for your e-mail. It just arrived.

I will forward this additional information to the individual in the IG who is tasked with this review. Please get back with me in about 10 days and I will be glad to provide you with a status update.

I hope you will enjoy a good Friday.

Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Lisa Ledwidge/IEER
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 5:28 PM
To: Madden, Ray
Subject: New information re: plutonium discrepancies

May 18, 2006

Ray Madden
DOE IG Hotline

Dear Mr. Madden:

Thank you for speaking with me yesterday.

To briefly summarize our conversation, I called to check the status of our complaint regarding plutonium discrepancies at Los Alamos National Lab. You reported that the IG's office reviewed the complaint (number I06ZH116) on April 4, 2006, and determined that the issues raised by our complaint were already addressed by the NNSA. The case was closed April 6.

There is substantially new information regarding this case, so I'm sending this email message as you suggested.

The new information, which is attached, includes:
* The IEER report, Dangerous Discrepancies: Missing Weapons Plutonium in Los Alamos National Laboratory Waste Accounts, November 29, 2005, reissued with corrections April 21, 2006, which contains a more detailed analysis of the waste accounts by period (pre-1980 and post-1980);
* May 2, 2006 letter to IEER from the EPA; and,
* IEER's May 15, 2006 response to the EPA.

EPA's May 2, 2006 letter clearly indicates it believes that the WIPP account of how much plutonium is in retrievably stored waste is correct. The February 28, 2006 letter to IEER from the NNSA director, Ambassador Linton Brooks (faxed to the DOE IG office on March 21 and again on March 23, 2006), says NNSA believes the security account (the NMMSS account) is correct. However, we've shown in Dangerous Discrepancies that both cannot be right. The reasoning is as follows. The NMMSS account shows that over 550 kilograms of plutonium was added to waste streams in the 1980s and 1990s. Almost all of this would be retrievably stored. But the WIPP account shows only 200 kilograms on retrievably stored waste. Both accounts cannot be right. This is explained further in IEER's letter to the EPA of May 15, 2006 and the revised report, both attached.

While the NNSA has expressed "utmost confidence" in the security accounts, this claim cannot be taken at face value. But even if NNSA is determined to be correct, the situation still warrants investigation because that means LANL's estimate of what is destined for WIPP is wrong, presenting potentially serious environmental, health and safety risks. Of course, it is possible that the NMMSS account could be wrong, which has serous security implications. It is also possible that both accounts are wrong.

The WIPP and NMMSS accounts simply cannot be reconciled. A detailed full audit of the matter is clearly warranted and IEER requests you to carry one out.

Documentation and correspondence regarding missing plutonium, including all of the attached and referenced documents, are archived on IEER's web site at [ http://www.ieer.org/pu/index.html ]

We look forward to your review of this new information. I will call you in a couple weeks to check the claim's status. If you have questions or would like additional information, please feel free to contact me at 612-722-9700 or Arjun Makhijani, author of Dangerous Discrepancies and president of IEER, at 301-270-5500 or […]@ieer.org.

Thank you.

Lisa Ledwidge
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER)

cc: Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D., IEER president
    Betsy Thurlow-Shields, IEER office manager