[Military Environmental Forum] RADIATION: "U.S. Underestimates Peril if Los Alamos [NM] Were to Leak Plutonium, Study Says"

[Lenny Siegel <Lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

U.S. Underestimates Peril if Los Alamos Were to Leak Plutonium, Study Says
An accident at the lab that produces America’s nuclear bomb cores could lead to more fatalities than previously estimated by the federal government, according to new research.

By Alicia Inez Guzmán
New York Times
July 10, 2026

The Energy Department has underestimated the potential deadly consequences should plutonium escape the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which produces bomb cores for America’s nuclear weapons, a study published today by independent scientists found.

The chances of a leak are considered minuscule. But one is possible, especially following a natural disaster like an earthquake. Plutonium could escape from protective work stations inside a building called Plutonium Facility 4, or PF-4, and ignite. Then, if one or more of the building’s safety systems fail, radioactive plutonium particles could enter the outside air and spread through the surrounding communities in a plume of smoke.

The Energy Department, which manages the country’s nuclear weapons production, had previously concluded that a so-called loss of containment at the lab could spread about one kilogram of plutonium, a radioactive metal, leading to nine cancer deaths on average in the surrounding area. But modeling in the new study, published in Science and Global Security, showed the potential for much worse: Hundreds of people who inhale or ingest particles from a leak could eventually die from cancer, the researchers said.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/nuclear-bomb-energy-department-lab.html

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)





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