LANL Releases 2024 Annual Site Environmental Report, Highlighting Lab's Impact

Los Alamos National Laboratory's air emissions in 2024 delivered an estimated maximum dose of 0.78 millirem to a hypothetical member of the public, a figure that amounts to less than one day's worth of background radiation exposure in northern New Mexico and sits far below the 10 millirem annual limit set by the Clean Air Act. The statistic is among the headline findings in the laboratory's 2024 Annual Site Environmental Report, which LANL promoted through its Connections newsletter on March 17.

The full ASER runs more than 300 pages and was produced by the laboratory's environmental science staff. For context, background radiation sources in this part of the state, including cosmic rays and naturally occurring uranium in the soil, expose residents to about one millirem per day, or roughly 350 to 400 millirem per year.

"There is an enormous amount of information in the full ASER report's 300-plus pages, so if anyone has questions about our work or environmental impact, this is an incredible resource," said Nell Larson, manager of the Lab's Enduring Environmental Stewardship program. "While it is very detailed, it's also written in a style that is intended to be understandable by everyone. You don't have to be an expert to understand this report."

Beyond radiation monitoring, the report documents work that rarely gets public attention: LANL archaeologists conducted cultural resources surveys for 34 projects on Lab property in 2024, helping project staff identify and avoid 530 protected cultural sites. Those sites span an extraordinary range of history, from Ancestral Puebloan settlements and Hispanic homesteader-era locations to Manhattan Project and Cold War-era resources.

Alongside the technical report, LANL released a companion ASER Summary, a magazine-style publication written by Lab students that distills the findings into 13 articles. The summary covers pressing environmental topics including PFAS, commonly referred to as "forever chemicals," water quality, and forest treatments designed to reduce the risk of large-scale wildfire — a concern with direct relevance to the Pajarito Plateau.

The 2024 ASER and the ASER Summary are available on LANL's Environmental Reports website. The site also maintains a "Changes and Corrections" section where revision histories are posted; the laboratory's 2023 ASER, for reference, was first published in September 2024 as Version 1 with subsequent updates tracked there.