[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION: Los Alamos National Labs (NM)

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico's water sources
Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio 
Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there's 
no health risk.

By Frank Clifford
Los Angeles Times
November 1, 2009

Reporting from Los Alamos, N.M.

More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped 
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial 
sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water 
to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico.

Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an 
ideal place to store a bomb factory's deadly debris. But the heavily 
fractured mountains haven't contained the waste, some of which has 
trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the 
most important water sources in the Southwest.

So far, the level of contamination in the Rio Grande has not been high 
enough to raise health concerns. But the monitoring of runoff in canyons 
that drain into the river has found unsafe concentrations of organic 
compounds such as perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket propellant, and 
various radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-radiation-newmexico1-2009nov01,0,6423820.story

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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