Secretary Hazel O'Leary announces increased plutonium work at LANL
LANL thyroid cancer study findings inconclusive
LANL worker goes home in radioactive clothes
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Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary has officially announced that, beginning in 1998, Los Alamos National Laboratory will begin manufacturing replacement plutonium pits, the triggers for nuclear warheads, in order to preserve and maintain the United States' nuclear deterrent capabilities. This would be the first time since the 1950's that Los Alamos has been involved in manufacturing this key element of nuclear weapons. The new program will require a $100 million dollar remodeling of Technical Area-55, the lab's 18-year olf plutonium research facility, as well as the eventual construction of Atlas, a pulse-powered machine used to measure the initial dynamics of a nuclear explosion. Atlas data would then be used in computer simulations of full nuclear detonations. Anti-nuclear activists say this would violate the spirit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The government plans to spend $250 million on defense programs at Los Alamos this year. Before the turn of the century, the Department of Energy plans to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium by burning it in reactors, sealing it in ceramics, or burying it underground at experimental disposal sites such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
LANL thyroid cancer study findings inconclusive
After a two-year investigation, a recently released study by the New Mexico Department of Health showed no conclusive link between the high number of thyroid cancer cases found in Los Alamos County between 1988 and 1995, and radioactive contamination from LANL. However, the extent to which radiation exposure could have contributed to the cases could not be directly addressed by the study because of lack of exposure data, which the Lab has been unwilling to release. Although the study's purpose was to look for "any singular explanatory variable ... shared by the majority of cases," the scope was limited to information available in existing records. Tyler Mercier, a former member of the cancer steering committee appointed by the Health Department for the study said, "The lad has been unwilling to release exposure data - that's really the only reason you can't connect the cases [to radiation exposure]." The report ends by recommending further monitoring of thyroid cancer cases in the county.
LANL worker goes home in radioactive clothes
An unidentified LANL employee who had been working in the lab's Chemical and Metallurgical Research building recently left work with radioactive contamination on his pants and one of his shoes. Contamination was also discovered on two of the employee's coworkers during routine monitoring procedures. The employee apparently visited a store in Espanola after leaving work, where later testing did not reveal any contamination. According to the lab description of the incident, the radiation levels found on the clothing were low enough that they represented no health risk to the employee. Lab officials are now looking into how the contamination escaped detection, as well as identifying the radioactive material the employee carried out of the lab, which may have been plutonium.
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