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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
It's not the first time, it won't be the last.
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.
Yeah, if there's a real risk the the Los Almamos Lab then it should be here.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
From The Fine Article: "The lab is about 35 miles from Santa Fe." Santa Fe is also the capital of New Mexico. If you can't click a link or Google then I won't waste my time to suggest that you to step away from the keyboard pick read a book. It wouldn't have taken much more time than to click the AC box. Pussy.
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
Los Alamos, plutonium, and mass evacuation always make for a nerd-worthy story.
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.
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.
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.
Someone's been getting stoned and watching Captain Planet again...
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....
Right, because clearly -everything- was better in the pre-industrial, pre-scientific age. I mean, who -doesn't- want to die from easily treatable infections, live their lives in darkness and generally live like we did in the 1700s.
Go ahead and live your life worshiping the earth, no one is stopping you. For the rest of us, it makes a lot more sense to continue to increase our standard of living.
I can guarantee you that all the natural disasters that happened this year put together has a much smaller death toll than what the death toll would be from life in the pre-industrial, pre-scientific age.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
No. Even if the material hasn't been moved in 50 years and inventory taken yesterday, they've still got to recheck everything before a fire 'blows through'.
It takes one slack-jawed yokel making the assumption "safe yesterday, safe today" for a serious disaster to turn worse, much worse.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
The point he's trying to make is that the news media in general is trying to capitalize from the furor surrounding the Fukushima incident by focusing on any kind of incident involving nuclear material.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
Haha. No. (At point 2)
Fukushima has six reactor cores worth of nuclear material (25000 kg of Uranium per core - example is specifically the 1 GW Westinghouse AP1000 reactor), plus the spent fuel. The weapons program testing stuff has largely been moved to Nevada deserts, from what I've heard. It's not the good ole days of putting two hemispheres of HEU (on the order of several inches diameter) together and counting neutrons... there's minimal material of note in Los Alamos. (That's why we have the super computers that were mentioned.)
Yes, I work(ed?) at LANL.
(Point 1 has, IMO, been addressed by the Lab's press release... Not that the media cares.)
Show some respect. There's a town full of people around LANL whose lives are being threatened.
Show some respect. People lived in the western states for ten thousand years and simply moved their seminomadic existence every time there was a fire. In California in particular they burned their homes down every year to touch off yearly brush fires that would clear the undergrowth and leave the forests standing. Living where those people live in the homes those people live in is fucking stupid and they deserve neither sympathy nor respect. (I'm in a rental right now in the same situation, but I signed the agreement, so I don't deserve them either. Maybe a little more than a homeowner.)
We put homes in places they don't belong and then cry when they are wiped out when we fail to manage fires correctly, i.e. by preventing them utterly. Then the flammable material stacks up and you get what we have today; a firestorm across multiple states. The people who buy and/or build these homes are THE PROBLEM.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My friend's house burned down a few days ago because of this fire.