Cheryl Rofer who works at Los Alamos National Laboratory wrote this interesting piece on her blog Phronesisaical.
It strikes at the fear mongering reporting we see not only here at the DK but on every news outlet and every blog where anti-nuclear commentator opine rumor into fact, metamorphicize fantasy into reality. But that's...my opinion...not necessarily facts. Anyway, it's nice to have an actual scientist on the ground...albeit having been made a refugee like thousands of others.
Those Drums at Area G
The Las Conchas Fire has become less threatening to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and, as I write, the director, Charles McMillan, is talking about how the Lab is planning its restart. So the scaremongers will have to move on from the drums containing low-level waste at Area G to the next sensation. Yesterday I talked to someone who has actually repacked some of the drums and has dealt with the paperwork. I learned some things I didn't know.
The drums are not just any old things from Joe's junkyard, but are manufactured to a list of specifications, including the fit of the covers and closures. Each one has a hepa (high efficiency particulate air) filter so that air can move into and out of it with changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure without carrying waste materials out.
There are no mysterious sludges and uncontrolled chemicals in the drums.
The fabric buildings have fire suppression systems. I realized, some time after yesterday's conversation, that this must be the foam that was mentioned in a few accounts of the drums, frequently disparagingly. Foam is a standard fire-suppression agent. The accounts I saw made it sound like a joke. I don't know whether this was because of the way it was presented by Lab representatives or the way it was reported by people who didn't know what they were talking about.
I'll add a bit about fabric buildings. I'm thinking that they must be made of fire-retardant fabric. There have been too many deadly tent fires, and I think that the laws about such buildings have long been that they must be fire-retardant. They have, however, been standing for some time now, and those properties can change with exposure to the weather. (Also see comment from Anonymous below.)
The drums are there because some of the scaremongers who are saying the drums should be in WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Carlsbad, NM) are the same people who fought and delayed the opening of WIPP and fought and delayed transporting the waste there.
I'm wondering why the Lab didn't say all these things, perhaps issue a fact sheet, in response to media inquiries. Early Lab responses on the subject were a refusal to comment. But this has long been the way the Los Alamos National Laboratory has handled such things. That's too bad, because it allows the scaremongers to get their fantasies publicized.