A three-day conference, organized by the Clean Energy Association of New Mexico, is the latest indication of a renewed interest in nuclear power.
Nuclear
Q&A: Will the Oppenheimer legacy help rebuild trust in nuclear energy?
Charles Oppenheimer talks about engaging a younger pro‑nuclear generation and the benefits of aligning policy and capital around fission.
Amid uranium’s rise, drilling proposal in Chama watershed causes alarm
Demand for weapons and nuclear power has mining companies looking to New Mexico. Legacy waste may be an obstacle.
“They didn’t want to see us”
New Mexican downwinders, receiving financial compensation for the first time, reckon with the ongoing tragedy of the Trinity bomb detonation — and fight to ensure remembrance
Seismic shift: How U.S. policies on nuclear weapons are likely to change under Donald Trump
Searchlight spoke with six experts about what the new administration could mean — for everything from Los Alamos National Laboratory to a possible return to underground detonations at the Nevada test site
Plutonium just had a bad day in court
In a major decision whose consequences are still being assessed, a federal judge declared that plutonium pit production — one ingredient in the U.S. government’s $1.5 trillion nuclear weapons expansion — has to be performed in accordance with the nation’s strongest environmental law
Elemental questions
After Searchlight New Mexico and other news outlets published a researcher’s findings of 80-year-old plutonium contamination in Los Alamos’s Acid Canyon, lab director Thom Mason deemed the local recreation area a “cleanup success.” Is it? And according to whom?
A nuclear legacy in Los Alamos
After three cleanups, independent analysis shows 80-year-old plutonium persists in Acid Canyon and beyond
LANL plans to release highly radioactive tritium to prevent explosions. Will it just release danger in the air?
The venting may harm pregnant women and fetuses, advocates say.
The long path of plutonium: A new map charts contamination at thousands of sites, miles from Los Alamos National Laboratory
Plutonium hotspots appear along tribal lands, hiking trails, city streets and the Rio Grande River, a watchdog group finds


