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LANL releases and Cerro Grande fire 

Testing and experimental activities since the 1940s at Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) have resulted in widespread dispersal of various radioactive contaminants into New Mexico's soil, air and water. LANL has disclosed that past activities have resulted in air emissions of a number of radionuclides - including Plutonium 238/239/240, Beryllium, Tritium, Uranium-235/238, Iodine-131, Cesium-137, and Strontium-90. Largely due to LANL's long-time failure to comply with environmental laws regarding stack monitoring, the quantities of radioactive substances emitted since the 1940s are not fully known however are being determined in a dose reconstruction study being carried out by the Centers for Disease Control. (Study the findings in Chapter 4 of the Interim LAHDRA Report here) 

Of concern is a recent finding that indicates plutonium emissions from LANL activities were about twice that of the Hanford site. In addition, there are a number of waste disposal sites associated with LANL from which radioactive materials on the surface can be suspended by gusty winds (10 mph or greater) or fire into the air.   

In 2000, the Cerro Grande forest fire, which encircled Los Alamos National Laboratory, burned through outdoor areas tainted with contaminated soil and vegetation. The inferno may have resuspended radioactive substances - including depleted uranium, plutonium and americium - at levels up to 135 times the yearly limit the government sets for nuclear workers' exposure. 

Since 1972 LANL and other nuclear laboratories in the state have conducted open-air DU burns that have released 'large amounts of DU oxides into the air' that were carried over ' very, very long distances...'   

Read: Blowing Smoke - LANL is sending deadly depleted uranium into the air we breathe - A Special Report for Sun Monthly (April 2006) and
Heavy Metal or Death Metal? Depleted Uranium Draws Criticism At Home and Abroad

DARHT

On December 4, 2009, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that it had successfully completed its first experiment at taking two X-ray images of a fake nuclear explosion. The experiment, conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) facility, was hailed a success in a NNSA press release.

DARHT (an anagram of DARTH!) is part electron-accelerator, part X-ray machine, and part 3-D nuclear explosion image generator. If DARHT sounds like a physicist’s idea of a game park, it is. If it sounds like the NNSA just got its favorite Christmas toy ever, you’ve guessed right again.

In case ‘particle physics’ has any interest to you, the DARHT facility is constructed with two perpendicular (that is 90 degrees) electron Linear Induction Accelerators. These puppies pump out an approximate 20 megavolts (million volts) electron ray that gets chopped up (pulsed) and creates an X-ray beam. Wikipedia notes that ‘Everyday examples of particle accelerators are cathode ray tubes found in television sets.’ (Actually, in the late 1960s, with the advent of color television, and poor factory and repair settings, millions of Americans were simultaneously enjoying TechniColor movies and sitcoms while getting many milliRems PER HOUR from X-rays generated by excessive voltages running through their televisions' color receivers).

So, while these fancy accelerator things are creating X-rays, a chemical explosion is occurring at the same time around a full-scale mock up of a nuclear weapon pit, or ‘primary.’ A pit is the first ‘stage’ of a nuclear weapon that contains a hollow sphere of plutonium or uranium. The first stage is the fission part, or A-bomb. The second stage is the fusion part, which is a hydrogen-bomb. The mockup pit is subjected to a chemical explosion to simulate the physical properties (heat, pressure, etc…) that plutonium or uranium undergoes during the first few instants (we’re talking millionths of a second) of a nuclear explosion. If it sounds like a subcritical test, it is. The major differences are that these ‘hydrodynamic’ tests at LANL are conducted above-ground and involve fissile surrogates, while the subcritical tests at the Nevada Test Site are held underground and involve weapons-grade plutonium. The chemical explosion in these tests succeeds at heating the pit ‘material’ up to such a high temperature (and pressure), as in ordinary nuclear explosions, that the materials becomes ‘like water’(like a liquid), thus the name ‘hydro’-dynamic.

Play ""DARHTS" (print out pic, paste over dart board) and see how long you can last before something goes horribly wrong 

The X-rays are ‘taken’ of the pit while it is condensing under the implosion force of the chemical shock and the two sets of X-rays give a 3-D snapshot into the implosion itself. What makes it 3-D is this: we all know from our dentists and broken-bone incidents at a hospital that regular X-rays are 2-D, but gaining a second view of a target will enable a 3-D image. This isn’t possible with ordinary subcritical tests. The X-rays help shed ‘light’ on the size, shape, and density of the imploding pit that can’t be determined with high accuracy in subcritical tests. The lab is named the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test facility because of the ‘dual axis’ capability of viewing a mock nuclear explosion from two different viewing angles.

The NNSA has said it would only use non-nuclear materials for DARHT tests to simulate weapons grade plutonium and may involve depleted uranium, but also possibly something called plutonium-242 (Pu-242). Pu-242 is actually fissionable – capable of going ‘critical’ – but wouldn't undergo the same nuclear chain reaction as weapons-grade plutonium because it takes 10 times as much (plutonium-242) to start a nuclear chain reaction, or about 100 kilograms. That’s where it gets interesting: since Pu-242 is virtually identical to Plutonium-239, the NNSA can actually use a mock pit with the critical mass needed for Pu-239 but with Pu-242, implode it, and test new nuclear weapons designs. The NNSA argues that these X-rays taken from two directions would improve the accuracy of computer models for predicting ‘weapons performance’ – to understand the properties of aging plutonium in nuclear weapons and to learn what would affect reliability when the DOE ever repairs, replaces, retrofits or upgrades existing weapons. But the 1995 DARHT Record of Decision notes "However, in the event that this nation decides…that new nuclear weapons should be developed…DARHT could be used to assist in the development of weapons or weapons components.” ¹

Thus DARHT tests can help weapons designers gauge the performance of newly designed warheads.  Thus, they pose the same problem as subcritical experiments: they go against the spirit of test ban treaties; and they would help improve technical understanding of nuclear weapons and a dangerous consequence of this is that countries lacking this testing technology could be provoked to resume full-scale underground testing. (paraphrased from Cynthia McKinney’s letter to Pres. Clinton on our subcritical page: http://idealist.ws/subcritical.php)

The worst part of all of this is that until 2005 these were open-air tests. The original plan was for a ‘phased in’ containment system over something like 30 years. Phase one (first 5 years) will insure up to 5 percent containment of the experimental material at DARHT. Phase two (next 5 years) will involve ‘a permanent vessel cleanout facility’ that would contain ‘up to 40 percent of the experimental material.’ Through 2025, when the facility will ‘expire’ and a new one will be sited at the NTS (!), goals to bring ‘containment…up to 75 percent’ will occur. In the meantime, materials from the explosions ranging from depleted uranium, beryllium, lead to plutonium-242 would disperse - and had dispersed - into the environment.

Apparently this containment phasing was really not happening quickly. The U.S. DOE Inspector General noted in a 2005 audit that ‘The current strategy utilized at DARHT to mitigate the dispersal of materials to the environment during a test is not the most efficient. Before a hydrotest is performed at Los Alamos, a tent structure is constructed over the firing pad and filled with aqueous foam to mitigate releases of materials such as beryllium, depleted uranium, and lead into the environment. It takes approximately two months to clean up the DARHT firing pad following a hydrotest using foam to control releases. Although Los Alamos uses foam, it is neither the only form of mitigation nor is it the preferred method. According to the DARHT Record of Decision (ROD), containment vessels are the preferred alternative for mitigating releases of materials during a hydrotest. In fact, Los Alamos planned to use vessels once the first axis of DARHT was operational in July 1999….However, according to Los Alamos officials, they did not fully implement Phase 1 of the vessel program. Further, our audit determined that Los Alamos is about a year behind schedule in conducting the first Phase 2 hydrotest using a vessel at DARHT. According to Los Alamos officials, the recent stand-down and other programmatic missions have affected vessel implementation at Los Alamos…Vessels would improve the turnaround time of each hydrotest…. In addition, the amount of waste generated from these tests would be reduced.’

On May 17, 2007, LANL announced that they fired the first successful DARHT test that was fully contained. The event, read the press statement, ‘mark[ed] the beginning of an era of fully-contained tests at DARHT as virtually all future testing at the facility will be conducted inside huge steel vessels, eliminating nearly all environmental hazards… Post-test sampling and monitoring confirmed that the experiment was completely contained.’

The DARHT program initially began in 1988 but construction was stopped in the mid-1990s when the Los Alamos Study Group and Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS), two anti-nuclear groups, filed suit noting there was no EIS. Although an Environmental Impact Statement was completed in the late 1990s, project complications and rebuilds delayed the inaugural first dual-axis (both accelerators firing) test until Dec. 4, 2009. Yet, in 2008, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety wanted to be sure that open-air tests wouldn’t happen and made numerous requests for additional information about whether the DARHT tests will indeed be conducted in vessels, or open air. They received no response to their inquiries.

Even if all future DARHT tests will occur in sealed vessels, there is still danger.   First, there is a remote possibility that the 2-inch walls of Navy-developed steel might not be able to contain the explosion, and thus plutonium would escape into the environment.  This is called the 'vessel containment breach' scenario.  The second danger is the 'uncontained detonation' a.ka. 'inadvertent detonation' scenario.  

The Final Environmental Impact Statement for the DARHT facility considers the odds of a containment failure for a DARHT test (with plutonium in 'double containment') in the 'incredible' and 'not credible' categories.  'Incredible' is defined as an event happening with a probability of no greater than 1 in 1,000,000 (per year), which also translates into an event that happens every 1 million years, which the DOE calls a 'not credible' danger: "By definition, scenarios determined to occur less than once every 1,000,000 years are not credible."  The DOE, however, considers the odds of an inadvertent detonation as 'unlikely' to 'extremely unlikely' or 1-in-100 to 1-in-1,000,000².  The amount of Pu-242 used in these tests is classified, but if it is in the 'kilograms,' then these subcritical DARHT tests could likely inadvertently become plutonium dispersal experiments.   It doesn't matter if Pu-242 is 1/15th as radioactive as Pu-239, especially if you're usually a heck of lot more of it.    The Los Alamos Study Group notes on their website: 'Should an unconfined explosion occur prior to sealing the vessels, kilogram quantities of plutonium would be dispersed.  The typical result of a “small” unconfined plutonium explosion (10 kg of explosive, 2 kg of plutonium) is [see pic: here]. Explosions up to 200 kg of explosive are planned. In such an accident, radioactive fallout and respirable particles of plutonium could easily reach thousands of people and leave a permanent swath of contamination covering dozens of square miles. Fatal cancers and other health effects would occur; property values, tourism, and businesses could be severely impacted. Close-in areas might have to be abandoned for residential purposes, and cleanup of highly-contaminated zones for even industrial purposes would be difficult, dangerous, uncertain, and expensive."

Are these tests worth it?  Visit our action page to help stop all subcritical nuclear tests

Read the article about DARHT tests - 'U.S. conducting secret subcritical nuclear tests, group says' -  that circulated in Japanese media outlets in 2000.

RaLa tests

From 1944 to 1962, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) carried out 250 open-air implosion physics tests of radioactive lanthanum (RaLa).  The purpose of the program was to test weapons designs using conventional high explosives and a surrogate material to plutonium: radioactive lanthanum, which has a half-life of under 48 hours.   The tests were conducted at a location two miles east of the town of Los Alamos and usually carried out when the wind was blowing north and east despite the fact that the population center of the San Ildefonso Pueblo Indians was only eight miles downwind.   LANL also carried out four atmospheric tracking tests as add-on experiments to its RaLa test program.  The dispersal tests were carried out in 1950 and involved the 'study of implosion and of the dispersal, fallout, and radioactive decay of materials from the explosion of simulated nuclear devices.'   These tests released radioactive lanthanum over sparsely populated areas, however one cloud was tracked as far as the town of Watrous, New Mexico, 70 miles east of Los Alamos.   

Read our other related analyses: DTRA Watch, and WSMR.

¹ http://www.epa.gov/EPA-IMPACT/1995/October/Day-16/pr-1395.html

² http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/enviro/eis-0228/Appen-i.htm

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Idealist's public document archives: 1. 2.

U.S. NUCLEAR tests: 128 A + 899 U in NV,
1 A in NM, 10 U (in NM, CO, AK, MS, central NV),
100+ A, U in Pacific, 3 A in S. Atlantic
(A=aboveground; U=Underground)

'The greatest irony of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that 
the only victims of U.S. nuclear arms since World War II have been our own people.' 
- Forgotten Guinea Pigs Report, 1980

In 1986, the U.S. Dept. of Energy used the cover of the Chernobyl fallout cloud over the United States to release huge amounts of radiation into the air from a failed underground Nevada nuclear test. It was called Mighty Oak.

learn more on our global fallout page

 

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