New Mexico advocates urge feds to move barrels of radioactive waste amid wildfire risk 

The group, known as Fire on the Mountain, said the billboard along Interstate 25 near Cienega is aimed at stopping the Energy Department from fighting a New Mexico Environment Department effort to increase the amount of legacy nuclear waste that is deposited in the federal Waste Isolation Pilot Plant repository in Carlsbad. 

In February, the NMED announced it was seeking to modify its 1999 permit that allows WIPP to operate in the state. The proposed modification would require WIPP to ensure that at least 55% of radioactive waste it deposits at WIPP between 2027 and 2031 comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The department also seeks to require the DOE to inter by July 1, 2028, all of LANL’s above-ground nuclear waste stored at an area known as Disposal Area G, which sits near White Rock, New Mexico.

Area G, among other legacy nuclear waste, contains 2,500 barrels containing radioactive and other chemical waste that is stacked under four tent-like structures. That particular waste is the focus of the new “Bury the Barrels” billboard that a small group of activists gathered underneath Tuesday, as wildfire smoke from the nearby Frijoles Fire cast a pall over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

“New Mexicans have a healthy fear of wildfires, but they don’t know that they should fear something else, and that’s wildfire and radiation,” group spokesperson James Oyster said at a news conference under the billboard. “This is a real possibility because the Department of Energy has left Cold War-era nuclear weapons’ waste sitting … right over that way, in drums stacked in fabric tents in a forest known for repeated catastrophic wildfires.”

The group held signs urging the DOE to stop fighting the NMED and sang a version of the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain,” with lyrics tweaked the DOE to “bury the barrels.” 

Oyster cited the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire, which burned near Area G and sent smoke plumes throughout the region, as well as other recent wildfires that burned on or near LANL property, as evidence that LANL needs to act swiftly to prevent a wildfire that sends radioactive material through smoke into the lungs of nearby communities. 

The NMED’s move to modify its WIPP permit says that requiring the DOE to reduce the amount of radioactive waste in New Mexico is meant to codify a 2023 settlement agreement between DOE and the state in which the federal government “committed to prioritizing” New Mexico legacy waste. 

Instead, the DOE shipped 992 waste containers from Idaho National Laboratory to WIPP between 2023 and 2025, according to NMED, compared to fewer than 200 waste containers from LANL. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Energy did not immediately respond to Source NM’s request for comment on the billboard or the group’s concerns about wildfire risk to Area G.