Los Alamos National Laboratory officials at a public meeting Thursday proposed soil removal and other cleanup at nine sites on or near former Lab facilities.
The recommendations are contained in a 459-page report on potential residual contamination within the Los Alamos town site and on DOE property in Upper Los Alamos Canyon. Scientists took more than 700 soil samples, looking for contaminants left over from the Manhattan Project.
Overall, 24 sites had no unacceptable risks to people or the environment, 14 need more samples, and 9 had sufficient levels of plutonium, arsenic, lead, or other chemicals to warrant proposed cleanup. None of those areas is residential.
“We found very few surprises,” project manager Becky Coel-Roback said.
Coel-Roback said no soil removal is proposed for residential areas. Access to remediation sites through private property will be coordinated with the property owners to ensure minimal disruption.
“We do not work on private property without your permission,” Coel-Roback told the public meeting.
Work on one site is already planned: the removal of residual PCBs from a steep hillside in Upper Los Alamos Canyon, to be completed by December 31.
Additional work or study will come after a review by the State of New Mexico and submittal of a phase II investigation work plan. The report, plus 500 pages of maps, figures, and tables, was submitted to the New Mexico Environment Department as part of the New Mexico Consent Order. The Consent Order is an agreement between New Mexico, DOE, and the Lab that outlines investigation and cleanup of Lab contamination from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War by 2015.
The report is also posted on the Lab’s Web site at http://www.lanl.gov/environment/cleanup/docs/LA-UR-09-3325.pdf.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and the Washington Division of URS for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.