Q&A: Is New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory Really Safe?By: Olivia B. Waxman
What's the worst case scenario here?There was a big fire in 2000, and LANL was really going to get things straightened out for fires after that.
got tipped off in 2009 by a whistleblower that in PF-4—where the six metric tons of plutonium is, as well where pits are manufactured —they've painted over the sprinkler system so many times that it doesn't work. And we blasted them, and it turned out to be absolutely true; they didn't work at all. And then it was determined that LANL had never tested the fire hoses in the building, even though the lab had been there for something like 15 years.
...They found out about a year later that the pressure in the system isn't great enough to get to the entire building, so they had to do something to mitigate that problem. So I hope that they have taken fire a little more seriously because wildfires are wild; embers and everything are flying all over the place...
SNIP
...There is concern about a radioactive smoke plume forming if the wildfire reacts with LANL's hazardous materials. What is the risk of that happening?
TA-54 contains 20,000-30,000 drums of waste, but just because it's low-level waste doesn't mean anything. If that becomes airborne, and just a speck of plutonium gets into your lungs, you're going to end up with cancer down the road. It's the most toxic substance known to man. It would be very nasty if those drums blew apart, and the wind carried them downwind...
SNIP
...Should residents in the surrounding area be worried about the wildfire reacting with LANL's drums of hazardous waste?
Los Alamos is very concerned, but TA-54 is (also) right next to the town of White Rock. We have a very good friend who lives in White Rock, and he has his RV packed, and we said get out of town because when they do a compulsory evacuation, the roads are going to be a mess. So he's in a state park 100 miles away now, and he can see the smoke from there. But at least he's out of town. They've done an evacuation of Los Alamos, but White Rock, as of early yesterday, hadn't done a mandatory one. (These towns) are at the whim of nature now...
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/06/29/qa-is-new-mexicos-los-alamos-national-laboratory-really-safe/#ixzz1QjPKS1Rv
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