Los Alamos fire chief confident nuclear lab protected for now

As reported by KRQE/KASA t.v. of Albuquerque, the Los Alamos County fire chief has spoken confidently about progress made yesterday in defending Los Alamos National Lab against the encroaching wildfires to its south and west. The Albuerquerque Journal reported similarly, and included a YouTube video from Los Alamos National Lab showing controlled "back burns" on the very edge of its property, intended to starve the wildfires of fuel. The Los Alamos Lab director described feeling the heat of the fire on his face, as he stood atop the roof of the Lab's emergency operations center. Not mentioned was the fact that a "controlled burn" at the nearby Bandelier National Monument in May 2000 got out of control, and whipped up the biggest wildfire in recent history at Los Alamos -- until the current one. Also, Lab officials repeatedly speak of no risk from radioactivity or hazardous chemicals at the Lab. This obscures the fact that parts of Lab property are contaminated -- in both soil and flora -- with radioactive and toxic chemical contamination, which could indeed go up in flames and travel downwind on the smoke clouds. Also, the Lab's storage depot of tens of thousands of 55 gallon drums of plutonium contaminated wastes are catastrophically vulnerable to fire, according to a former Lab security chief, Dr. Walp.