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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"
Before someone marks this as funny, would a forest fire be an extream hazord because of the radioactivity?
Let's not forget that recently the Los Alamos area was on fire from forest fires.
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When I worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the late '80s, we had a stand of trees (poplars, I believe) between the main road through the heart of the facility and a research reactor building. I used to walk right by these trees every day to get to the cafeteria. One day, the sidewalk on that side of the road was blocked off, and several men, wearing bunny suits and wielding chainsaws, were hard at work felling the trees. By the next day, even the stumps were gone.
We've had our share of radioactive frogs too, some with some, shall we say, unique anatomy. Once, on that same main road, one of these unfortunate amphibians wandered underneath the tread of one of the facility's vehicles. Again, we see the bunny suits, this time with sprayers full of this black, sticky foam. Down the road every so often, you'd see a bunnyman either spraying or scraping an already-encapsulated piece of frog from the road where the contaminated tire had deposited it.
Maybe they can make glow in the dark furniture out of those trees?! :)
When I was a teenager, my father (a nuclear physicst) took a group of boyscouts on a merrit badge "expedition", we were "prospecting for uranium".
Back in the bad old days, there were tests done using mock-up weapons equipped with DEPLETED uranium (U-238). The experiments consisted of a fairly authentic weapon with a real primary (the high explosive part which "squishes" the fissionable materals together.)
The weapons did NOT have real uranium, rather U-238 (the stuff they use on armor piercing shells.) When they detonated the mock-up, the weapons usually blew all apart throwing chunks of U-238 all around the country-side.
My dear old dad, being a wise-ass, took us out with several geiger-counters looking for the U-238.
As I recall, we found a rock which seemed "hot", we began digging under the rock, getting closer and closer to the source of what seemed to be setting off the counters when my dad told us to stop. Not because of the radiation, rather the damn rock was likely to roll over and crush the lot of us.
He ended our field trip by letting us push the rock over into the hole we had excavated; great fun.
also people who work in those areas wear Dosimeters. SO they KNOW for sure that people are not being exposed. Even the town dump is ringed with dosimeters. What about your town. Got any dosimeters? Lots of industries produce rad waste. to name a few: phosphate fertilizer plants, (old) ceramics, coleman laterns, glow in the dark exit signs, hospital isotope waste and manufacture.... For example, the dosimeters in our town have gone off lots of times. One time was a vet disposing of radioactive kitty litter (radioactive iodide is used as a medical treatment). Another time my neighbor set of the alarm because he was wearing pile (patagonia) jackets which if you did not know collect Radon gas that accumualtes in poorly vented closets in many parts of the country. Another time a load of radioactive steel manufactured in mexico drove through town on its way elsewhere. (the mexicans plant hat recycled and melted down a hospital cesium canister. Many steelworkers and truckers in the US and Mexico received high doses, something like a dozen people at the steel plant eventually died of exposre related illnesesses.
So the good news about living in los alamos is that we know we're no being irradiated cause we monitor it. You dont know and there are lots of ways you could be exposed. for example do you know where the steel rebar in you concrete walls came from? Are you breathing radon?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I have lived in Los Alamos my whole life. I have mountain biked in Bayo Canyon many, many times. It's an absolutely beautiful spot. I wish I could show you a photo or two. The trees don't look funny, the ground isn't hot and I have suffered no poor effects.
The lab (LANL) has fenced off a few areas, but I do trust that the canyon is generally safe. I bet spokesman Jim Rickman is basically telling the facts straight, too. He's a good man.
Moral of the story: this isn't really news. Look at how small the story on the local TV station is. This is less news than the time the garbage dump radiation detectors got set off (by the poop of a cat undergoing anti-cancer radiation treatments, not by the lab).
Oh, and the high tritium levels in the water must make it taste so clean and fresh.