Plutonium levels near US atomic site in Los Alamos similar to Chornobyl, study finds
Plutonium levels near US atomic site in Los Alamos similar to Chornobyl, study finds
Much of the land near the atomic bomb’s birthplace was converted to recreational areas, but toxic waste remains
Much of the land near the atomic bomb’s birthplace was converted to recreational areas, but toxic waste remains
Soil, plants and water along popular recreation spots near Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, are contaminated with “extreme concentrations” of plutonium, a new study has found, but calls for the federal government to act have been dismissed.
Michael Ketterer, a Northern Arizona University scientist and lead researcher on the project, said the plutonium levels in and around New Mexico’s Acid Canyon were among the highest he had ever seen in a publicly accessible area in the US during his decades-long career – comparable to what is found in Ukraine at the site of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.
The radioactive isotopes are “hiding in plain sight”, Ketterer said.
The comparison to Chernobyl is obviously powerful rhetorically, but is it relevant? Is plutonium the most dangerous set of isotopes at Chernobyl? Are there other decay products at Chernobyl that make it an exclusion zone which are not present at Los Alamos?
It should be a scientific discussion which informs public policy, and framing it as comparable to Chernobyl is perhaps misleading.
fuck no, currently most important isotopes are cs-137 and sr-90, both with half lives about 30 years. plutonium isotopes have half lives from 14 (241; probably tiny amount) 90 (238; also not much) to thousands of years (239 and 240; most likely bulk of it). what did the most damage in chernobyl were even shorter lived (days) and so spicier isotopes that normally are given time to decay in spent fuel pools
The exposure level and immediate danger to those using the trails is low despite the high plutonium level
This led me to look for more details: https://searchlightnm.org/the-long-path-of-plutonium-a-new-map-charts-contamination-at-thousands-of-sites-miles-from-los-alamos-national-laboratory/
Though I can't find any credibility ratings for the source
edit: More
https://apnews.com/article/plutonium-contamination-los-alamos-6b1c2cab6fdd31a442ac98c7f030bc27
Is this where they filmed that John Wayne movie and everyone later died of cancer?
Sweet, time to go collect some free plutonium!
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Isn't the wind spreading it around the globe?
Yup. The radiation from the tests spread it around so much that there's a
geographicgeological level in the rock record.Do you mean geologic, not geographic?
How does that work though? Sedimentary rocks formed in the last 100 years must be way deeper than any of the soil that could be affected by the atmosphere?
Or am I overthinking this and you're saying that there's an indicator in recent soil deposits that correlates to radioactive testing.
The same is true of where I grew up, only miles away from Trinity site. Where the first atomic weapon was detonated.
No wonder Alamogordo is such a strange place
I never gave that any thought, but you are correct!