National Nuclear Security Administration October 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Council on Environmental Quality's implementing regulations for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) (40 CFR 1502.9[c][1] and [2]) and DOE's NEPA implementing regulations (10 CFR 1021.314) require the preparation of a supplement to an environmental impact statement (EIS) when there are substantial changes to a proposal or when there are significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns. DOE may also prepare a supplemental EIS at any time to further the purposes of NEPA. Pursuant to these provisions, the NNSA, a semi-autonomous agency within the DOE, intends to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) to assess the potential environmental impacts of the construction and operation of the nuclear facility portion of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building Replacement Project (CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, New Mexico. The CMRR Project, including the CMRR-NF, was the subject of NNSA's Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building Replacement Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico (DOE/EIS-0350; the CMRR EIS) issued in November 2003, and a February 2004 Record of Decision (ROD) (69 FR 6967). Over time, due in large part to detailed site geotechnical investigations, some aspects of the CMRR-NF Project have changed from what was foreseen when the CMRR EIS was prepared. The potential environmental impacts of these proposed changes will be analyzed in the CMRR-NF SEIS.