Much of the land near the atomic bomb’s birthplace was converted to recreational areas, but toxic waste remains
Soil, plants and water along popular recreation spots near Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, are contaminated with “extreme concentrations” of plutonium, a new study has found, but calls for the federal government to act have been dismissed.
Michael Ketterer, a Northern Arizona University scientist and lead researcher on the project, said the plutonium levels in and around New Mexico’s Acid Canyon were among the highest he had ever seen in a publicly accessible area in the US during his decades-long career – comparable to what is found in Ukraine at the site of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.
The radioactive isotopes are “hiding in plain sight”, Ketterer said.
Public health advocates also called for the government to post signage warning visitors so they can make an informed decision about using a trail contaminated with toxic waste.
Members of the general public can’t make this sort of informed decision. They don’t have the very specific background knowledge necessary. Plutonium in small amounts is not dangerous unless you eat it or breathe it in as dust. How much Plutonium dust is in the air near this trail? What is the level of radiation exposure from it compared to the background level that everyone is exposed to? What risk of cancer does the increased exposure correspond to?
These are questions that experts are able to answer but almost all hikers aren’t. The general public already trusts experts to regulate nuclear power plants, radiology equipment, etc. It makes no sense to want a warning sign here unless you already live in a state of constant paranoia.
It’s ironic to use public ignorance as a reason to keep information from them.
I don’t see it as a matter of keeping information from the public. The wording on the sign would be technically true, but the clear implication would be that the area is particularly dangerous. Why else would there be a sign? If the area is not particularly dangerous (which is what experts have determined) then the sign is actually causing the public to believe something false.
It’s like those California warnings about cancer-causing chemicals in pretty much everything. They’re not literally false but they don’t take relative risk into account and the right thing to do is to ignore all of them. To the extent that the public doesn’t ignore them, the public has been misinformed by the California government.
That’s the whole point of things like this.
Make it seem super scary, turn public opinion against anything nuclear.
Usually you see articles like this pop up whenever there are renewed discussions for nuclear power plants. Not sure if this is one of those, or just clickbait.
I feel like this is the difference between marking something as “plutonium area” versus something designed to target the fears associated like saying “Warning: Minor Risk from Plutonium Exposure” and then post a blurb in decent size font below that explaining the warning.
Because what California does is post a generalized warning that doesn’t quantify the risk and does not inform the public accurately about what the warning exists for and that is not helpful.
The exposure level and immediate danger to those using the trails is low despite the high plutonium level
This led me to look for more details: https://searchlightnm.org/the-long-path-of-plutonium-a-new-map-charts-contamination-at-thousands-of-sites-miles-from-los-alamos-national-laboratory/
Though I can’t find any credibility ratings for the source
edit: More
https://apnews.com/article/plutonium-contamination-los-alamos-6b1c2cab6fdd31a442ac98c7f030bc27
Is this where they filmed that John Wayne movie and everyone later died of cancer?
Sweet, time to go collect some free plutonium!
Isn’t the wind spreading it around the globe?
Yup. The radiation from the tests spread it around so much that there’s a
geographicgeological level in the rock record.Do you mean geologic, not geographic?
How does that work though? Sedimentary rocks formed in the last 100 years must be way deeper than any of the soil that could be affected by the atmosphere?
Or am I overthinking this and you’re saying that there’s an indicator in recent soil deposits that correlates to radioactive testing.
The current geological era will have measurable levels of radioactive isotopes different from expectations. Just like we can tell when plants started making oxygen from the Fossil record and rock chemistry, we’ll be able to tell when humans started having some physics fun time in the atmosphere.
Other fun fact is that we’ve added a decent set of new markers for future archeologists to date things with.
I think we’ve caused some of the carbon dating techniques to need a little * in the future, since we’ve shifted the baseline level around quite a bit.
We also added some new radioactive isotopes to the mix, like strontium, which show up in your teeth. Not new-new, but measurably increased levels.
We can actually use the levels in your teeth to predict your age within a year or two.The discovery of this is part of what motivated the partial nuclear test ban that had both the US and Soviet Union stop testing in the atmosphere.
Fun fact! This is also how we know when certain asteroids smashed into the earth, because the impact deposits a layer of minerals and elements not found super common in the crust.
Also, sensing equipment that uses or detects radiation as part of its function has to be made of non-radioactive materials in order to not interfere. And since hairless apes started cracking atoms open, all steel is ever so slightly radioactive. They need special preparations to make steel without any isotopes present. This also means pre-1945 steel fetches a higher price in some instances.
Maybe it’s soil vs rock? I think that there wouldnt have been enough time for new layers to form given how slow of a process it is
Yeah it’s in the soil. It can be dated.
I did mean geologic. Coffee was only beginning to be consumed when I wrote that.
The Guardian - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for The Guardian:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United Kingdom
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
