August 18, 2011 FEED is an ongoing monthly community meeting that invites public involvement and active dialogue about issues of environmental monitoring, contamination and remediation around Los Alamos National Laboratory. The New Mexico Community Foundation invites the public to attend the Forum for Environmental Education & Dialogue Thursday, August 18 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. Pojoaque Valley School Administration Building 1574 New Mexico Highway 502, Santa Fe, NM 87506 The evening will feature  a panel presentation followed by an open discussion of the [more...]

The light rains yesterday freshened the air briefly and helped lift spirits. Although there is still some smoke in the air today it is reportedly just from residual fuels burning within the established Las Conchas Fire perimeter and some continued intentional burnout of areas between containment lines. The managers and crews working this fire have turned around an explosively violent wildfire, that although destructive could have been much, much worse. Their skill and efforts are commendable. Also a step in [more...]

Overview: Nuclear Watch New Mexico Comments on the draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Nuclear Facility Portion of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building Replacement Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, New Mexico. We appreciate public involvement in the NEPA process. We also support safe, monitored storage of radioactive wastes as a matter of national security and environmental protection. However, these should not be interpreted as support for more nuclear weapons, pit production, nuclear power, or [more...]

We’re lucky in that it appears Los Alamos Lab has dodged the bullet with respect to the Las Conchas Fire, but I do want to say something about 100,000 acres of some of the most beautiful land in New Mexico burning up in the Jemez Mountains. I know it fairly well. Back in the early 1980’s I would take my kids out on a full moon night in the winter after it snowed on Highway 4 near the Valle Grande [more...]

New Mexico Environment Department NMED has Air Quality Monitoring information online. Go to the Maps link at the top of the page, choose New Mexico maps and the area you are interested in. Double-click on the monitoring site dot. The most recent information will then be displayed in a chart Direct Links to Monitors near the Las Conchas Fire: Santa Fe Runnels Building Santa Fe Airport Taos Fire Station Smoke Outlook and Monitor Locations (for Arizona New Mexico and parts of [more...]

Nukewatch has been utilizing satellite-based fire detection data and fire intelligence information published by the US Forest Service Active Fire Mapping Program. The information in these data are dynamic and updated twice daily. The information is represented as an overlay on Google Earth and is in the form of a KML (Keyhole Markup Language) file. This file can be obtained at http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/googleearth.php Select the “Fire Detection: current” option to download the KML. Double click the downloaded file to launch Google [more...]

Nicolas Roth, Policy Analyst, at Union of Concerned Scientists sent us a handy reminder of what is located in the area of LANL nearest the fires: Technical Areas on Southwest Corner of LANL TA-16 S Site (active: former explosives casting/machining operations; burning ground; weapons engineering tritium facility, Began in the 1950s Materials: Plutonium, DU, Tritium, X-rays, natural uranium S Site (active): former explosives casting/machining operations; burning ground; Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility. Began in the 1950s. TA-16 is the weapons Engineering Tritium Facility [more...]

A recent letter from DNFSB, the Safety Board charged with oversight of the nation’s defense nuclear facilities, raised questions about the computer software program used to develop the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement project Nuclear Facility basic design inputs. In an April 8, 2011 letter to the Deputy Secretary of Energy, the Board stated that the computer program SASSI (A System for the Analysis of Soil-Structure Interaction), which is used extensively within the DOE complex for seismic analysis and design [more...]