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Wildfire Threatens Los Alamos Labs
1sockchuck writes "A fast-moving wildfire has closed the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a Department of Energy facility responsible for weapons design and a vast array of research, as well as two of the world's top supercomputers. Lab officials said all radioactive and hazardous material had been accounted for and protected."
Adds an anonymous reader: "I live near LANL and apparently they have begun to evacuate the whole town. Here is some information I've received through an email chain: 'Our main concern is that the Las Conchas fire is about 3 1/2 miles from Area G, the dumpsite that has been in operation since the late 1950s/early 1960s. There are 20,000 to 30,000 55-gallons drums of plutonium contaminated waste (containing solvents, chemicals and toxic materials) sitting in fabric tents above ground. These drums are destined for WIPP. ... We understand that LANL has been working since late last night to build a fire line in Water Canyon, between the fire and Area G. ... Over the last 26 hours the fire has grown from 0 acres to about 45,000 acres – about the size of the Cerro Grande fire in 2000."
Quick! Move all the old junk in "The Black Hole" to a safe location:
http://www.blackholesurplus.com/
Sheldon
Apparently I'm the only one who wishes people would put city/states when describing specific places...
It's not the first time, it won't be the last.
more scary atoms news?
would this seriously have made the front page on /. prior to the Japanese Tsunami?
There is a fire very close to Los Alamos National Laboratory. They have begun to evacuate the whole town. Here is some info from someone on the ground: Our main concern is that the Las Conchas fire is about 3 1/2 miles from Area G, the dumpsite that has been in operation since the late 1950s/early 1960s. There are 20,000 to 30,000 55-gallons drums of plutonium contaminated waste (containing solvents, chemicals and toxic materials) sitting in fabric tents above ground. These drums are destined for WIPP. We understand that LANL has been working since late last night to build a fire line in Water Canyon, between the fire and Area G. Over the last 26 hours the fire has grown from 0 acres to about 45,000 acres – about the size of the Cerro Grande fire in 2000.
It's as if Mother Gaia is giving us arrogant humans a lesson about overreaching our abilities. :) Maybe we need to dismantle all nuclear power, and just learn to live with less electricity in general. Think about the first word: reduce, reuse, recycle. Make no mistake: continue abusing the planet and the planet will strike back. Hard.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Those guys came up with the idea; now they get to deal with it first hand.
The fire danger has never been higher. Some places make it against the law to even smoke outside. Over the past month there have been days when we've been inundated with smoke from the wildfires in Arizona. It is hot, dry, and windy.
You would think that selling and setting off fireworks would also be illegal this year (it is usually allowed for a week before and after July 4th, but this hasn't stopped people from lauching fireworks whenever they want to) yet there are huge tents in the parking lots of all the grocery stores selling fireworks. The reason is that in New Mexico there is a state law that makes it illegal for communities to ban the sale and use of fireworks. Instead of working to fix this crazy law, the governor asked New Mexicans to "exercise caution and restraint when it comes to using fireworks."
Is this a great state or what?
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I was up in the mountains about 7 miles away when it started... It's ridiculously dry right now, high winds, and high temps. All that's going to be possible is evacuating people. The bad thing is it's going in the opposite direction of the 2000 fire, so there's plenty of fuel. The Bandalier National park has had about half of it's area burned so far as of earlier today. Thoughts and prayers to all who are in its path.
What the frack are you fracking about? What is this "Mother Gaia" hippy bovine excrement? Anyone who thinks "Mother Gaia" is a loveey-dovey God only needs to spend a week or two alone and without supplies in a tropical rainforest or in the middle of the desert. Nature favors only the strong. The weak get eaten, starved or pushed out, never to pass their genes. Humanity is here today because we harness and exploit nature. What is this about the planet "striking back"? The planet had tried to kill us and all life many times over, even before the industrial revolution. Stop antrophomorphing the planet and stop reading hippy bullshit.
Back before the damn hippies forced us to can Project Plowshare we would have just dusted off a couple of bits and pieces from the back room and showed that fire what a real man's 'controlled burn' looks like. Kids these days. A few trees catch fire and they run around panicking. In my day, 'threat' meant 50 MIRVed megatons return-addressed 'Ivan', not an overgrown burn pit.
http://www.youtube.com/user/NMFires2011#p/u
The lab was closed today and will be again tomorrow, and the townsite started voluntary evacuations last night. It turned into a mandatory evacuation this afternoon.
Luckily, I have some friends to stay with in Santa Fe.
Posted from the wireless couch.
They set fires every once in a while to smoke out Chinese spies.
Have gnu, will travel.
ANOTHER potential disaster threatening a facility with major nuclear equipment ? oh my.
Read radical news here
I'm worried about the fires disturbing all the giant ants. If they were that big back in the 50s how big are they now?
I live at San Ildefonso Pueblo. Los Alamos National Lab is within our aboriginal land rights/claims. We have "Sacred Areas" that abut Los Alamos. While our geographic aims may diverge, I can think of no other people I would like up at the "Hill" (we are at 5500 feet and Los Alamos is over 7000 feet) than the security forces at Los Alamos as well as the firefighters that have come from all over (including many Native Americans). May the Lord protect them and the fire abate. Excuse me, I must pack in case we need to evacuate....
That the "radioactive and hazardous material" had to be accounted for and protected? Shouldn't the statement have read that such materials, as always, were secure?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Yeah, you might lose some small towns to fireworks, but they'll just evacuate everyone. Just think about the founding fathers who risked their lives so you could have fireworks and guns!
And you've not got a way cooler new state anthem too!
So what you're saying is... These fires were set by some pyro to check for spies?
Should be no problem.
Simply
1. find the scientist who is already wearing an HEV suit.
2. arm him with a crowbar
All wll be fine.
My friend's house burned down a few days ago because of this fire.
Fire! Fire! Help me! 123 Carrendon Road. Looking forward to hearing from you.
All the best,
Maurice Moss
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Forget all the nuke sensationalism. LANL had a big wakeup call about a decade ago, concrete doesn't so easily burn, and it's unlikely anything really terrible that the "reporters" want to talk about, is going to happen. It would take a transgovernment level of incompetence; something humanity hasn't seen yet.
OTOH, adios Pajarito. I was there three and a half weeks ago, and when I checked the fire maps last night .. Camp May is totally inside the fire perimeter now. It's been an annual tradition for us to drive up there for Summerfest every year, hike on the ski slopes and watch the bikers, drink nearly all of New Mexico's microbrews, hang out with the Atom Mashers (Los Alamos' version of our Dukes of Ale) and have a good time. Reminisce about a previous year (finally amusing with hindsight) when some ravers scheduled their thing at the same time as Summerfest, so that the forest echoed with techno all night while we tried to sleep off our drunkenness. But now, I think all that is over.
Driving up there, you see the 2000 fire is still a massive scar, a forest of dead trees. That tells me that a decade from now, all of the stuff we're losing right now, will still be gone. Sure, if you take the long view, these fires are inevitable and the forest will always grow back. A lot of good that does me, a mere human without centuries to spare. I'll never see it again.
Bandolier is trashed too. Valles Caldera is at least seriously threatened. Dixon Apples (no 2011 crop anyway) had a damn close call; with pretty much everything surrounding the orchard destroyed. Urban Northern New Mexicans (i.e. the majority of the voting population) are really feeling this one, because this time it's one of our very favorite playgrounds getting burned.
You can see a shift in public attitudes about fireworks. I don't know that fireworks even caused this fire, but reason always said that it was a serious risk, and now the common New Mexican is having the lesson pounded into their hearts regardless of whatever their brains were telling them. They're (mostly) all changing their attitudes, right before my eyes. I think we'll almost certainly see some policy changes as a result.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
KMZ fire map at http://matei.org/url/1c3
I would recommend some of the economic incentive and job creation money be used to hire people to do controlled burns
I think that it's not so bad.