Fining and Feeding LANL
Friday, December 22, 2006
From the Santa Fe New Mexican - State Secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department Ron Curry continues an attempt to get Los Alamos to pay attention. So now he's trying to fine "them" $1000 a day.
"These recent enforcement actions show reluctance by the lab, (the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration) to be subject to state oversight of environmental cleanup efforts,'' Curry said in a statement. ``All cleanup activities under the consent order are subject to state approval precisely because the lab has had a strong record of delaying cleanup and a poor record of environmental protection.''
Maybe it's contrary to some logic - cleaning-up what you're going to foul again. Or the disconnect between old messes and making new ones at Los Alamos is just symptomatic the big-ass unaccountable military and industrial bureaucracies that run it.
One hand is cleaning up waste, not-so-much, while the other hand continues to feed the beast - expanding the Lab's mission - expanding our capacity for new and improved nuclear destruction.
From the Los Alamos Study Group site about the pits and shafts of Material Disposal Area C:
Estimated Volume: 3,186,000 ft3 of TRU waste
Pits contain, as of January 1973:
25 Curies (Ci) of uranium
26 Ci of plutonium-239
149 Ci of americium-241
Shafts contain:
49,136 Ci of tritium
40 Ci sodium-22
20 Ci of cobalt-60
31 Ci of strontium-90
5 Ci of uranium-233
50 Ci fission products
200 Ci of induced activity
Also contains quantities of mercury, copper, cobalt, boron, beryllium, and silver.
Potential environmental impacts:
Lies near Ten-Site Canyon New Mexico Environment Department's (NMED) Hazardous and Radioactive Material Bureau (HRMB) ranks this MDA as an area with a high probability of contaminant mobilization and a moderate to high potential of release to the groundwater.
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