Watchdog group reports 'extreme contamination' of plutonium at Los Alamos open space

By Daniel J. Chacón dchacon@sfnewmexican.com

Aug 15, 2024

The legacy of environmental waste is “hiding in plain sight” at a popular open space in the heart of Los Alamos that became a dumping ground during the Manhattan Project, according to testing results a nuclear watchdog group released Thursday.

Soil, plant and water samples collected in July from Acid Canyon — yes, Acid Canyon — revealed “extreme contamination,” including detections of what Nuclear Watch New Mexico said is some of the earliest plutonium produced by humankind.

“What I found here in Acid Canyon [is] pretty much the most extreme contamination scenario I’ve seen in an off-site, uncontrolled environmental setting,” Michael Ketterer, a professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry at Northern Arizona University, said during a virtual briefing.

Ketterer, who collected the samples in July with the help of the watchdog group, said he’s analyzed tens of thousands of plutonium samples in a decadeslong career.

“This is way, way, way, way, way at the top end of the charts in terms of how much,” he said. “This is extreme contamination.”

Ketterer said he would compare it to “Chernobyl proximity samples” and samples close to Palomares, Spain, after a B-52 bomber carrying hydrogen bombs collided with a refueling plane in 1966 and coated the seaside town in radioactive dust.

“Hundreds of samples from near Rocky Flats do not come close at all,” he said, referring to a former nuclear weapons production facility in Colorado.

Asked whether he was suggesting the public steer clear of the open space, Ketterer said “not really.”

“I’m saying, be aware. Don’t live in a fantasy land if you live in Los Alamos that this place is not impacted by legacy contamination,” he said. “This is not some pristine alpine stream at all. This is a plutonium-contaminated open sewer is what it is.”

Asked whether the public was in danger or if there were health risks associated with the contamination, Ketterer said he wouldn’t encourage ordinary recreational uses of the popular hiking and biking trails there.

“I think [signs] should be posted,” he said. “I think the hidden dangers, like fire and just the slow, relentless ... migration of this stuff downstream, those are the worst things that I see here.”

In a news release ahead of Thursday’s briefing, Ketterer said he found plutonium concentrations in Acid Canyon as high as 86 picocuries per liter in water, 78 picocuries per gram in sediments and 5.7 picocuries per gram in plant ash. He noted the federal Environmental Protection Agency standard is 50 picocuries per liter and the result “warrants immediate postings and efforts by [state and local] agencies to warn people and their pets away from contacting Acid Canyon water.”

Ketterer also found “significant plant uptake” of plutonium near the Totavi Philips 66 station along N.M. 502, about 7 miles downstream from Acid Canyon, some of which he believes predates the July 1945 Trinity test of the first atomic bomb in Southern New Mexico, he said in the news release.

On Thursday, Ketterer emphasized his findings were unlike anything he’s seen before, adding Acid Park is an unrestricted area.

“It’s just an extreme example of very high concentrations of plutonium in soils and sediments … hiding in plain sight,” he said.

The report comes on the heels of another study by Ketterer and the watchdog group that found trace amounts of plutonium from decades of weapons work at Los Alamos National Laboratory have contaminated the Rio Grande at least as far as Cochiti Lake and could be in the regional aquifer that serves a large population of New Mexicans.

Leslie Bucklin, a spokeswoman for Los Alamos County, said the county received Ketterer’s latest report Thursday and will need time to review it.

“Los Alamos County has always and continues to support the importance of legacy waste cleanup,” she wrote in an email.

From 1943 to 1964, liquid waste from nuclear research at the lab was piped into the canyon, which is among the tributaries that eventually pass through San Ildefonso Pueblo lands on their way to the Rio Grande.

The federal government began cleaning up Acid Canyon in the late 1960s and eventually transferred the land to Los Alamos County. Officials determined in the 1980s that conditions within the canyon met U.S. Department of Energy standards and were protective of human health and the environment.

Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch, said the detection of high levels of plutonium in the heart of Los Alamos is a concern, particularly as the lab — under the direction of Congress, the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration — gears up to begin producing the next generation of plutonium pits for the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

Coghlan said the situation at Acid Canyon presents an immediate threat.

“The biggest danger would be in the event that a wildfire swept through Acid Canyon and, as we know from hard experience, wildfire is all too real a threat in the Los Alamos area,” he said. “Plutonium is most dangerous when inhaled, so if you have dispersion of plutonium to the air via a wildfire, that is a dangerous situation.”

Ketterer said the contamination really can’t be undone.

“It’s kind of like trying to pick up salt that’s been thrown into a shag carpet. … Making sure that people don’t drink it, don’t ingest it and they don’t inhale it is the starting point.”

The Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office said in a statement it continues to collect and monitor sediment and water samples in the Acid Canyon area.

“The results have consistently shown the levels of plutonium remain very low and well within the safe exposure ranges,” the agency said. “The information presented today by Dr. Ketterer and Nuke Watch is consistent with the Department’s data, which has been publicly available for years and further confirms the Department’s findings, that the levels detected continue to show that Acid Canyon remains safe for unrestricted use.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Published comment by Greg Mello:

Perhaps Ketterer's data and comments will help dispel the notion that the LANL site, downstream drainages, and downwind aerial deposition zones -- likely including some residential areas (try starting near TA-21) -- will ever be "cleaned up." "Cleanup" means multiple things -- the actual cleanup, i.e. moving contaminated soil and other materials to another and hopefully safer location, where warranted by a balance of risks and costs -- a bureaucratic program and budget line of the same name, and a metaphysical, ritual, public relations, and cultural operation that accomplishes "cleanup" through the mysterious ministrations of the program. In other words, a "healing" campaign that seeks, as Lady Macbeth did, to get out the damned spots. There's guilt and uncertainty involved, all the more so because the industrial production of plutonium warhead cores ("pits") at LANL may be about to start up again for the first time at any scale since 1949 -- a dubious mission in the public eye.

The news media, including the New Mexican, is also complicit here. How, the editors wonder, can we credence "anti-nuclear" activists without actually taking on LANL or the national security establishment? The answer for the media as well as for activists is often nuclear hysteria, which compartmentalizes, narrows, and fetishizes a much bigger problem in order to contain and neutralize its wider political, moral, and career ramifications. We all want to turn away from highly unpleasant realities. In this case, the reality that the greater Santa Fe area is now the world's best-funded center for weapons of mass destruction, with the eager support or embarrassed, passive silence of elected officials in the City, County, State and our congressional delegation, and has officially become the nation's "plutonium center of manufacturing excellence," -- well, that's very unpleasant. It's better to talk about picocuries of historic plutonium and some signage.

BTW, even a cheap hand-held Geiger counter can still pick up beta contamination in some Los Alamos canyons, as well as in Bayo Canyon (into which Acid Canyon drains), the latter being Sr-90 residues from the old RaLa tests there, which ended in 1963. And there are dozens of kilos of plutonium and fission products buried at LANL uncontained, the residues of "hydronuclear" tests.

Obviously the degree of contamination matters greatly. In this case, expert opinions differ. I once did this kind of assessment for a living, along with planning and enforcing cleanups, for the State and in industry. In this case I have not seen the data, nor do I have time or motivation to do so. I have in the past looked closely at Acid Canyon, and so has the Santa Fe New Mexican, on multiple occasions. Up to a point, the unresolved issues at Acid Canyon are well-known, as the Department of Energy said. Up to a point. Right now, I do not fully credence either side -- Ketterer or DOE. I was not impressed by Ketterer's earlier study, at least as relayed by news accounts and NWNM. I do like Ketterer's excellent summary, in response to reporter Chacon's good, what's-the-bottom-line question: “I’m saying, be aware. Don’t live in a fantasy land if you live in Los Alamos that this place is not impacted by legacy contamination,” he said. “This is not some pristine alpine stream at all. This is a plutonium-contaminated open sewer is what it is.” (That last bit is exaggerated.)In the past, it was not necessary to say this.

The most unfortunate part of this picture is the hypocrisy of Nuclear Watch, which has advocated for LANL to be the nation's center for plutonium pit manufacturing for the past 21 years and continues to do so today. in 2008-2009 Nuclear Watch also wanted LANL to do all U.S. processing and manufacturing of uranium, tritium, lithium, as well as plutonium, while advocating and litigating to get a nuclear weapons factory complex moved to Albuquerque, consolidating the industry as much as possible in New Mexico.