Santa Fe, NM -  In less than 24 hours the Las Conchas wildfire has burned 43,000 acres of forest and has raced 12 miles to the southwestern boundary of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) where a number of sensitive tritium facilities are located. In the year 2000 the Cerro Grande Fire took nearly two weeks to burn ~48,000 acres in the same general vicinity of the east side of the Jemez Mountains, including ~5,000 acres within LANL boundaries. At that time, the Lab and Los Alamos County underwent a hurried mandatory evacuation, with only essential personnel left behind to guard sensitive Lab facilities. Because of the emergency routine monitoring of daily radioactive emissions came to an abrupt halt, arguably precisely when they were most needed.  

Ironically public comments are due by the end of Tuesday June 28 on the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) - Nuclear Facility, a huge plutonium facility that will be the keystone to an expanded plutonium pit production complex at Los Alamos. The Nuclear Facility will store up to six metric tons of “special nuclear materials” (re: mostly plutonium), and will have up to 300 kilograms of plutonium in process at any given time (enough for ~50 nuclear weapons). It is generally accepted that several tens of micrograms of respirable plutonium-239 in the lung will dramatically increase the risk of lung cancer (1 kilogram = 1 billion micrograms). The primary purpose of the Nuclear Facility is to provide materials characterization of and analytical chemistry on “special nuclear materials” so that production capability can be expanded from the currently sanctioned level of 20 plutonium pits per year to 80.