[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION: Los Alamos National Laboratory's "Long Environmental Cleanup"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

LANL’s Long Environmental Cleanup

By ED WILLIAMS
KUNM Public Radio (NM)
September 6,  2016

Los Alamos National Laboratory has been one of the country’s foremost nuclear research centers ever since the atomic bomb was developed there in the 1940s. Weapons and engineering programs continue there today, but the U.S. Department of Energy is still cleaning up contamination left over from World War II.

When the U.S. government was running the atomic bomb program at Los Alamos, they generated a lot of dangerous waste—things like plutonium, mercury and chromium, which in many cases, they just piped off the edge of nearby canyons. Now the lab has moved outside of town, but much of the pollution remains.

“We would have expected what came out of this pipe was liquid waste. And in this case we’re sure it had plutonium in it,” said Todd Haagenstad, who directs soil cleanup projects in Los Alamos. He pointed to a bare patch of ground marked with red flags where a disposal pipe used to be. “And so that waste would come out and it would come down that pipe, and it would come out onto the side of the canyon here.”

...

For the entire story and a link to the audio, see
http://kunm.org/post/lanl-s-long-environmental-cleanup

--

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/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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