- LOS ALAMOS (Reuters) - Workers
trying to thin forests near Los Alamos National Laboratory have been told
not to remove trees cut down in certain areas because they might be radioactive,
lab officials said on Tuesday.
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- "The lab has identified a few patches in a zone
not heavily forested that was surveyed before and after experiments in
the 1940s and 1950s," said Jim Danneskiold, a spokesman for the lab
in New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was built in 1945. "As a
precaution, we've told them (workers) to steer clear of those areas."
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- The trees are located in Bayo Canyon, a destination about
40 miles northwest of Santa Fe that is popular with horseback riders and
hikers. The site, formerly known as Technical Area 10, was used in the
1940s and 1950s as a place where scientists at the nuclear lab studied
explosions.
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- Danneskiold said the area where radioactive contamination
has been detected is a one-acre (0.4 hectare) site in Bayo Canyon, where
all the trees were blown away during tests on explosives.
-
- That area has been fenced off to both workers and the
general public. The lab is warning workers not to remove wood thinned in
the 30 surrounding acres as a precaution against possible radioactive contamination.
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- "There is no risk to recreational users," Danneskiold
said.
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- But not everyone agrees.
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- "Recreational users should be worried. Breathing
that dust is not good," said Greg Mello, who heads the Los Alamos
Study Group, which monitors lab activity. He contends there are several
contaminated sites near the lab.
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- Hundreds of homes and thousands of acres were burned
in May 2000 when fire ravaged the area near Los Alamos and threatened the
laboratory.
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- Since then, forest and county officials have been thinning
parts of the pine forest to reduce the risk of fire, said Bill Armstrong,
a forester with the US Forest Service.
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- Trees collected on laboratory property from areas where
experiments never occurred are being offered to the public as free firewood,
Danneskiold said.
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