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LANL Warning About Radioactive Trees
coryboehne writes "KOB-TV in Albuquerque is reporting that Los Alamos National Labs is warning personnel who are cutting trees in a canyon east of Los Alamos that some trees in the area might be radioactive.
The canyon, known as Bayo Canyon, was formerly known as Technical Area 10, and was used for weapons testing from the 1940s until 1961. A full summary of Environmental Direct Penetrating Radation in the Los Alamos area is available from the LANL Meteorology & Air Quality Group"
Of course, you seem to be ignoring the fact that we now have nuclear power (whether this is a good thing or not is debatable) and also the fact that millions of lives were saved from a conflict in Asia (whether this benefit outweighs the result is also debatable).
Bottom line: it can have terrible consequences, but it can also be construed as being something that has done much more.
Do you like acid rain, deforestation, and resperatory ailments. Then close down the nuke plants. Then you'll either have to switch to coal, hope for a miracle, or change your standard of living (sorry now 1000 watt Itaniums for you instead you can freeze in the dark.)
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm a native New Mexican expatriated in hostile, relentlessly right-wing Texas (but in the oasis of Austin). I'm not sympathetic even the tiniest bit to the nuclear alarmists in northern New Mexico. CCNA's bullshit just infuriates me more than most things, actually. (When I was there last fall, I heard on their little news show on KUNM a story about low-level contaminated stuff recycled into materials incorporated into consumer items and they provided no scientific context whatsoever. I actually shouted at the radio.) I've known many people that worked at LANL (and Sandia), and I know some that still work there.
Having made it clear that I'm skeptical and hostile to nuclear fear-mongers, I think that there's reason for Los Alamosans to be mildly concerned about their risk. As a casual student of the history of the Manhattan Project, I know that a) the health danger of cumulative, long-term radioactive dosages was grossly underestimated at that time (and the acute danger was somewhat underestimated, too); and b) in the interests of expediance justified by national security concerns, they were notoriously careless about safety during and after the Project. Just take a look at Hanford and Rocky Flats for examples of just how careless the DOE has been. Or take note of what the supposedly ex-Oak Ridge employee writes above.
Also, my sister was a tumor registrar. She was not a registrar of that district, but she was a registrar of another district in a different state that included a DOE nuclear-related facility. It was her observation that there was clearly an unusual rate of cancers clustered around the facility, although it didn't reach the rigorous threshold of confident statistical significance. But it was not discussed, and the community remained unaware of any possible risk.
I also know that in the case of the cluster of brain tumors of ten years ago that the LANL and the DOE were shown to have been at the very least uncooperative and at the most actively dissembling.
I really think that people need to consider the implications of the fact that Los Alamos has a unique history. It was in its entirety a government installation on an urgent mission where civilian safety considerations didn't apply. It was only in the early sixties that it stopped being a "closed" city. LANL and the DOE is in the awkward position of worrying about a civilian apple-pie American population living in a city that was once wholly part of a government nuclear installation. Whether or not they were reasonably or unreasonably cavalier about safety in the past is irrelevant to the fact that, today, many people live alongside areas that were contaminated to a greater or lesser extent.
These trees are probably not of any real concern. But that doesn't mean that there's not some amount of significantly heightened risk in the area, nor that LANL and the DOE aren't always entirely forthcoming.
(Note: upon reviewing what I've written, I'm uncomfortable that I may give the impression that I'm sympathetic to the people that go berserk and totally irrational at the mention of the word "nuclear". I want to make the point that people are, in general, very very bad at risk analysis. Even though I write above that I believe there's some risk in Los Alamos, I want to make it clear that it is very likely that many people do things, thoughtlessly, on a daily basis that put them at considerably higher risk.)