Plutonium found in Los Alamos runoff
KOB.comSANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - The state Environment Department says runoff last summer from part of Los Alamos National Laboratory contained high levels of plutonium and other radionuclides.
The department measured elevated levels of plutonium, americium and strontium in the runoff that resulted from a large potable water spill and several storm events in Los Alamos Canyon in July and August.
In July, a water line break at the lab's Technical Area 21 triggered monitoring equipment maintained by the state in Los Alamos Canyon.
About 4 million gallons of potable water released over a 26-hour period eroded soil and carried contaminants into the canyon and beyond lab boundaries. Analysis of five samples showed plutonium levels about 100 times greater than levels detected during normal storm events in previous years.
48 comments:
Looks like Ron Curry is trying to justify his salary again.
I hope this hits LANS where it hurts - bonuses and fee. Welcome to Los Alamos LANS! Not as easy as you thought, eh?
This has not been a good week for LANS, our Leadership may have been better off spending our $$$ for a leagl defense firm insted of a high priced PR frim, that as of today has accomplished very little in terms of selling the lab to either the Country or the State as a viable lab. The latest headlines serve only to remind the rest of the world just how bad things have become. They (LANS) did well for about 6 month, with only a few minor blimishes, but as always they can't seem to go much longer without the real LANL showing through.
What do you mean LANS did well for 6 month (sic)? Only a few minor blimishes (sic). Nonsense. What about the CREM de METH incident when LANS allowed JQ access to the vault after her contract had expired? Didn't that happen right after LANS took over? What about the John Mitchell incident? Didn't that happen within 6 months? What about the LANS board of directors getting caught e-mailing classified information?
How can you possibly say that LANS ever did well, especially since they immediately increased LANL's non-productive management costs by $175M annually?
No, LANS never did well. Ever. Period.
Well, that is unless you compare them to NNSA's management; on NNSA's scale LANS is doing quite well, thank you for the $79M very much.
Pu is used in many common consumer items. What's the big worry?
- Kevin Roark
11:50 AM "... What about the John Mitchell incident? "
What about the Seestrom and Neu incidents?
Would someone in Congress please start working hard to kick out for-profit LANS (Bechtel and BWXT) and hand this lab over to a decent non-profit organization that gives a damn about both the area and the LANL employees?
How delicious. Just a few days ago we heard Mikey patting himself on the back for another successful year by LANS. Now it looks like the perfect storm is converging: missing laptops, beryllium exposures, and contaminant releases. Is any of it significant? Who cares? The press has found a reason to talk about LANL again.
No wonder the water tastes funny and I'm growing hair on my tongue.
Mikey
"I hope this hits LANS where it hurts - bonuses and fee. Welcome to Los Alamos LANS! Not as easy as you thought, eh?"
It won't. They'll just fire enough people who's salary is equal to the bonus they're entitled to, and that'll be the end of the story. You can't win against ULM.
JQ did many things, but gaining access to the VTR where she worked after the contract under which she worked did not happen.
LANS took over in the summer, and the contract under which JQ worked expired September 30.
She was busted long before September 30 and banned from the site.
The signal-to-noise ratio on this site is low enough ("expect this big screwing over to happen...expect that thing to happen...") without demonstrably false statements being thrown out.
When will POGO start going after LLNS with the same zealot outrage they directed at UC.
This story came from KOB.com. Maybe they got it from POGO, I'm not sure. Could you please make the connection?
As for JQ gaining access to a VTR after her contract expired, I don't remember that happening. But it isn't hard to believe.
What I do remember is that the computer she used at home to do classified work was not taken by the police in the initial raid and was gone by the time the FBI showed up. As far as I know it was never recovered.
Getting back to the topic, how did the loss of 4 million gallons of water affect the lab's ability to fight a fire over those 26 hours?
Why was Tigger swimming in the Rio Grande?
He was looking for Pu.
Frank said: "What I do remember is that the computer she used at home to do classified work was not taken by the police in the initial raid and was gone by the time the FBI showed up. As far as I know it was never recovered."
You "remember" this? Well, since it is absolute horseshit, you might want to get checked out. Maybe the TA-55 fantasy is starting to come true.
No need to be an ass. Here's the POGO version of the story. It's possible they got the facts wrong. Where do you think that computer is?
Methamphetamine Drug Raid
September 14, 2007
A computer which may have contained highly classified nuclear weapons information from the Los Alamos National Laboratory was traded in exchange for drugs, according to unconfirmed sources. The computer was owned by Jessica Quintana, the former contractor employee at the Lab who pled guilty in May to removing classified information after hundreds of pages of documents were discovered in a methamphetamine drug raid at her trailer.
Among the list of items collected by the Los Alamos Police Department during the execution of the search of the trailer were three memory sticks containing classified LANL documents, as well as hard copies. No computer was listed. A senior POGO source claims that the LAPD did search the computer looking for drug information and found none. They did not search for classified LANL information. POGO has also been told that the FBI never obtained a search warrant to seize the computer for a review of evidence of classified information.
Ms. Quintana allegedly broke down during an FBI polygraph session and indicated the computer she was using to work with the information on the memory sticks was now missing.
The computer remains missing. Stay tuned.
Additional Resources:
Department of Justice press release, May 15, 2007.
http://albuquerque.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel07/nationalsecurity051507.htm
Document - Los Alamos County Police Department Press Release
http://pogoblog.typepad.com/policedocs.pdf
POGO Alert - Los Alamos Classified Info Found in Drug Raid
3:50 PM
JQ's contract did expire on September 30.
JQ was busted on October 17 not "long before September 30". She in-fact was not banned from the site before October 18.
I wonder why you would make up such false statements. Me thinks thou dost protest to much.
"A senior POGO source claims that the LAPD did search the computer looking for drug information and found none. They did not search for classified LANL information."
And how, exactly, was LAPD to search for "classiified LANL indformation"??
I don't think anyone is faulting LAPD. It wasn't their job to search the computer for classified information. As soon as they noticed possibly classified information on the thumb drives (not at the scene, later at the station) they did notify the FBI.
Our LANS-loving, blog diss'ing, double "??" poster seems to be very active of late.
He appears to be waging a one man dis-information campaign in behalf of LANS. I can only wonder who this fellow might be.
11:34 AM - it could be a fellowette or two at the AD level.
Someone within LANL is passing along internal lab email to POGO. This GSN article below has a link to the email message, which was generated within ADTR:
www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/
gsn/nw_20090130_3781.php
It has been suspected for some time that someone withing DOE has been passing along info to POGO. Now, it appears we have a POGO mole deep within LANL, itself.
How dare they send that email to POGO instead of me!
The email was not distributed lab wide. It was clearly email that was passed around within the upper levels of ADTR.
So the question becomes... who within the ADTR Directorate is leaking internal lab emails to the muckrakers over at POGO, and more importantly, why are they doing this?
Could it be that they are a whistleblower? Quoting from the LA Monitor story:
"We’ve confirmed that the employee followed all lab policies for having unclassified government computer equipment in the home for official use."
The email seems to indicate that is not true. Which are you more worried about, the whistleblower or the lab misrepresenting the facts to the public and the government?
Looking at this email (it's a PDF over at the POGO site), it came from ADTR's Steven Blair, but was then forwarded by Christina Behr-Andres to "isr-mgrs". It would seem that someone within the "isr-mgrs" mail group was the likely candidate. Anyone know who is in this mail group? It would seem to be a group of managers over in the ISR Division.
There is also the following line at the top of this forwarded message:
"We will discuss this at our meeting tomorrow morning. Thanks. T"
I'm surprised that the person who sent this thing to POGO didn't sanitize it more thoroughly before sending it along. The first few lines of this email are like a smoking gun! Managers over in ISR better get ready to hunker down.
Frank seems like a very decent guy and he may dislike LANS attitude (don't we all!), but he doesn't appear to be a LANL-hater or an unreasonable anti-nuke activist. I suspect he cares about the situation that the majority of LANL employees find themselves in with LANS running this mad house of a lab.
The same cannot be said of POGO. They have a long reputation of trashing LANL, it's employees, and in fact, the whole US defense establishment. They can barely hide their disgust for the US nuclear establishment.
Whoever within LANL was stupid enough to give POGO an email like this one is not only hurting LANS, they are also hurting the whole LANL work force. I cannot understand why anyone who works at LANL would want to do such a thing? POGO has nothing but ill wishes for all of LANL and it's employees. It's like getting in bed with CBS News.
POGO has never hidden its disgust, even barely. Unfortunately, the people running the Nuclear Weapons establishment are so damned incompetent that POGO doesn't even really need insider info to raise concerns.
Thanks, 3:18! Have we ever met? You sound like you know me.
It's true, I met a lot of great people the times that I worked at LANL, I don't hate any of them, and I also liked the town of Los Alamos.
And I'm not an anti-nuclear activist, reasonable or otherwise. Ask around, I'm fairly well known in anti-nuke circles. I doubt you can find anyone who doesn't know that I respectfully disagree with them.
I also do care, as you put it, "about the situation that the majority of LANL employees find themselves in with LANS running this mad house of a lab." I don't get paid for blogging except for the satisfaction of knowing that every once in a while I may have helped.
I really can't offer a defense of POGO simply because I don't know much about them. I've spoken with Pete Stockton on the phone. I met Pete, Daniel Brian, and Ingrid Drake in DC last year but only long enough to shake hands and say hello.
POGO is a nonprofit that focuses on achieving an accountable federal government. They count on donations to pay their employees. Perhaps most of the anti-LANL bias can be explained away as simply doing their jobs. You have to admit, LANL is certainly an easy target lately.
I've got some news from the DC area, but I'm not certain whether it's good or bad. Nobody seems to care about the lab's most recent flap(s).
No one has mentioned what has contributed to stolen LANL equipment. LANL employees who are willing to work more than the alloted 40 hours/week from home can no longer work from their own computers.
They are forced by the unreasonable decision pushed down from the CIO to have LANL equipment at home. LANL has put itself behind the 8 ball with this decision, and it has only itself to blame. How about someone telling the CIO that he's nuts and knows nothing about computer security.
11:34 am: "Our LANS-loving, blog diss'ing, double "??" poster seems to be very active of late."
One doesn't have to "love LANS" in order to object to the posters here who engage in paranoia and victimhood. All wrongs are the fault of LANS, and all rights are the achievements of Frank? Or POGO? People choose where to focus their energies. Hopefully, that focus increases your chances of success in the world, and minimizes your likelihood of failure. There's a lot of failure being rationalized as the fault of LANS, or DOE, or NNSA, on this blog. Just leave, and find a life where you don't have to put up with all this drama. Unless you like it this way...
8:34,
I have been very careful not to take credit I don't deserve. "every once in a while I may have helped" is hardly the same as "all rights are the achievements of Frank". I'm the first to say the lion's share of the credit, if not all of it, belongs to the readers and to the bloggers who came before me. If you ever catch me saying otherwise, please call me on it.
If you have a similar complaint about POGO, well, they have a blog too. Let them know how you feel.
Maybe POGO has managed to insert a trojan on LANL's network.
I've got some news from the DC area, but I'm not certain whether it's good or bad. Nobody seems to care about the lab's most recent flap(s).
2/1/09 6:20 PM
Of course not. That would be an admission by NNSA that they made a big mistake in letting LANS LLC take over LANL. NNSA doesn't make mistakes!
"There's a lot of failure being rationalized as the fault of LANS, or DOE, or NNSA,"
And who else would the failure be with. The workers at LANL? No we have been down that road with Nanos and that dog did not hunt. I would say that NNSA is reall who is to blame.
"LANL employees who are willing to work more than the alloted 40 hours/week..."
Hahahahahahahaha...
Hahahaha...
Have you ever looked at the productivity at LANL!
2/1/09 11:29 PM
???????
There is a significant fraction of scientists who work more than 40hrs per week. As for productivity you can say what you want but the fact is we can all agree that LANL is still very productive despite everything. Please get your facts straight before you make you lame ass troll comments. Let us take a guess, are you a bitter loser who got RIFed for being incompetent? Ahh yes, well stop blaming the world for your own shortcomings and everyone will win!
6:36 am: "...well stop blaming the world for your own shortcomings and everyone will win!"
Ah. Yes. I believe that was the point 2/1 8:34 pm was making.
"There is a significant fraction of scientists who work more than 40hrs per week." (6:36 AM)
Maybe a few of the Asian foreign nationals work 40+ hours, but I know of almost no regular TSMs who are willing to put in extra hours at LANL since the lab switched to for-profit management and the TSM morale collapsed.
Would agree with 11:10 as far as my group goes. Very rare that anyone stays late or works weekends anymore.
Would agree with 11:10 as far as my group goes. Very rare that anyone stays late or works weekends anymore.
So nobody is coming in anymore on his/her off-Fridays either? That was usually one day where research was possible without distractions. Because nobody expected that one was here, and no meetings or mandatory training on that day either.
While I left the lab a year ago and don't know what the state is at the moment, I do know that most of my group (which was in TR) usually worked greater than 40 hours. The TSMs and technicians who worked less than 40 were the rarity
Even Director Mikey seems very eager to get out of LANL in the late afternoons and zoom-zoom in his LANS sports car back down to Santa Fe.
If even the Director can't wait to leave each day, what message does that give to the rest of the staff?
Rare that anyone in my group comes in on their Fridays off. Seen the GL maybe once-twice for a partial day on their Fri off over the past year. GL is older though, and getting close to retirement.
Then again, my group isn't exactly working on the leading edge of science. I think some in my group would come in on their Fri off or stay late if they thought what they were doing were more interesting or meaningful than what they do when not there.
"No wonder the water tastes funny and I'm growing hair on my tongue.
Mikey - 1/31/09 1:04 PM"
Uh Mikey, that is not what causes hair on your tongue...
wahhhh wahhhhhh
Go to bed, Kevin.
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